The US Immigration

Immigration to the US is the international movement chance of people around the world to reside their nationality permanently in the country. Immigration becomes a major source of population growth and cultural changes through United States history. And nowadays, the United States is the top country that has the largest immigrant population.

Immigration to the US has stared since the 17th. Immigrants were mostly from Europe. Until the 20th, there were more people from Europe, Mexico, Asian countries that moved to the US. From 2000 to 2010, nearly 14 million immigrants entered the US and over one million persons got their US citizenship in 2008. According to the world’s statistic, the US has about 244 million international migrants worldwide, representing 19.1% and 14.4% on the US population in 2015.

One of the reasons the US allows more people immigrate to the country is economic and social impact by the immigrants. Immigration has always been a formidable engine of economic and demographic growth for the United States. During the last decades of the 19th century, immigrants contributed substantially, providing labor for the industrialization and electrification of the country. That wave of immigration was ended by the very restrictive immigration laws passed in 1929. While the “Immigration and Nationality Act” of 1965 abolished national quotas and allowed the flow of immigrants to resume, it has only been during the last 30 years that the mobility of the world’s people has increased significantly. Young, motivated, and often highly educated people are on the move, and many of them would like to come to the United States. With its 41 million immigrants, the United States is by far the largest magnet for international migrants. Moreover, according to Gallup World Polls, there are about 150 million more people who say that they would migrate to the United States if they had the opportunity.

People love moving to the US because they want to look for a better life. For example, the refugees from my country, Vietnam after the 1970s, when the US-Vietnam war ended, the government treated their citizens really bad, they didn’t have enough food to eat, no house to live, no field to work, and more important is no freedom. Therefore, they tried to escape the border by boat and hoped for being accepted by the US or European countries. And the things they were looking for at that time was freedom and a better life. For my experience, I really appreciate the US immigration policy that gives me a chance to become US citizen after 13 years processing document and 5 years contribution as a permanent resident.

Nowadays, it is reasonable for the country has a strict policy because it accepted too many people from the last two centuries so the government has to control the US population. How is strict policy? It is more difficult about the requirements to become a US citizen. However, the strict immigration policy of the US makes non-US people try to get into the country illegally, especially people from Mexico. Therefore, the government is seeking more solutions to prevent it as much as possible.

Comments about free college idea

This criticism is about my classmate post " Free college education, more affordable education?" .

First, I think this is a very nice idea and I think every student would love to discuss that. Why? Because besides studying hard, we don’t have to worry about tuition, don’t have to worry about figuring out a job while we are handling too much pressure from class, from deadlines and school projects. Paying tuition for college, it’s not only the responsibility for students, but sometimes, it is also the responsibility of parents who have kids go to college and they make good income. According to Chau’s article, the college tuition fee is not cheap at all. I agree with that.

 I go to both ACC and Texas State University, and on average, my tuition fee is always over $10,000 per year. This amount deducts my Texas Grant and Federal Grant money, I support to pay out of pocket $5,000 per year. However, I agree to submit the subsidized loan, not the unsubsidized one to cover the rest of my tuition fee. I’ve been in college for 4 years, my student loan will be around $20,000 after I graduate and I don’t have to pay it back after 6 months when I graduate. Absolutely, I can make a payment plan for my student loan and I am confident that my job in the future can help me to get this loan pay off soon. To myself, the tuition fee is not really a big problem while I am in college and my parents didn’t pay for me any pennies. I am from Vietnam and in this country, I don’t think the government supports their students as the US government. At least, in the US, the government still supports college students by granting them a part of the tuition fee and offering them the loan to pay in advance. I already appreciate it.  Moreover, I came to the US when I was 19 so I didn’t have a chance to go to elementary or high school here. But I appreciate the US government for granting all the kids under 18 to go to school, get their basic general knowledge in public school.

Other countries offer free college and I think the US starts doing that in some certain states based on Chau’s information. However, it is difficult to offer free college for the whole country. Moreover, our country has too many people and people sometimes demand too many benefits from the government.

Talking about the solution how do we offer free college? I think most the colleges and some sponsors of college do offer the scholarship. I think it is a very great way to reward our studying hard students. And, if students are serious to study and want to help themselves for tuition fee, trying their best to get the scholarships are very reasonable. The proposing solution about raising tax for millionaires or billionaires is kind of hard for these people. Why? Because I think at the current tax rate, I think the US government did charge them lots of tax already. I know they are rich people, but they also used to study hard and work really hard every day to be a millionaire or billionaire.

In conclusion, I think it is reasonable for the US government may cut down the tuition fee standards to colleges or universities but offering free college for the whole country is very challenging for the government.

The border wall, worth it or no?

The border wall is always the hot topic to be discussed recently when people mention about US national government: the reason to create this wall, anyone agrees or disagrees, the cost of the wall, any pros, and cons of this wall and so on. So, let’s take a moment to circle back what we’ve heard and discussed and what my personal thinking is about this problem.

The wall became a symbol for Trump’s presidency, a promise that he would limit immigration. The thing is, he has been very effective at making immigration more difficult for people trying to enter legally and illegally – yet the wall project still eludes him. Why does Trump want to limit immigration? Illegal immigration is estimated to cost the United States millions of dollars in lost income tax revenue. People who own business take advantage of this issue then hiring illegal immigrants at the low pay rate, no recording for-pay stuff. To anyone who illegal immigrants, this is the chance for them to survive in the US land, make incomes and pay no tax because they don’t have their legal identification. Moreover, illegal immigration is considered as a strain on government spending by overburdening social welfare, health, and education programs.

Historically, policing borders has been integral to the preservation of nations around the globe for centuries. The construction of a barrier to safeguard American citizens from illegal activities is considered by some to be in the best interest of the nation. However, there are more than 60% of American opposed the border wall of president Trump.

The pros of a border barrier include overall homeland security, the cost of lost tax revenue and strain on government resources and the past successes of border enforcement. How're about the cons of the border wall? According to washingtonpost.com, it would take more than 10 years to build the kind of 1000 miles wall by around 10,000 construction workers. In reality, the US-Mexico border is around 1,150 miles long, 40 feet high, 10 feet deep into the ground and 1 foot wide, crosses very vast deserts and mountains in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. How much will it cost? It costs about $25 billions but that number is not official, it can be more if the US government actually makes a decision to agree with Trump and build it. Has Trump ever wondered that if it’s worth to build the wall? In my opinion, the fund to build this world may be way too high compared with the loss of tax income that the US has to face.

Instead, if the president wants to prevent illegal immigration problems, there are some other multiple ways to do. The government can have more officers who can access to some businesses such as groceries stores, restaurants… where owners tend to hire cheap labor and check their identification. Moreover, the US government can establish some strict punishment to whoever breaks the law being illegal immigrants or supports illegal immigrants.

Blog stage 4: Critique an editorial or commentary from a blog

Back to 2012, Nationalreview published the critique of Michael Tanner, named "Because Angels don't govern us", talked about the US government governs the society.

Michael Tanner is the Senior Fellow in Cato Institute, a book author, researches into a variety of domestic policies, with an emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care, and Social Security and entitlement reform.

In 2012, he posted his criticism on blog National review about what he thinks about how the US  government governs us. In this article, the US government always believed that they always thought that they were the right one and anything they did, any policy they promulgated was good for the people in this society.

Let’s recall what happened in 2012. In 2012, the president was Barack Obama and the popular event happened that Obama conducted the health insurance obligation to every people, because “the Obama administration believes that the government should run our health-care system”. Do you think everyone agrees to comply with that policy? They have to and have to comply with it, it doesn’t matter they like it or they don’t. What if they didn’t follow the healthcare policy? They would get a penalty from their tax return annually.

According to Michael, he wondered that instead of being micromanagement system, why the government didn’t concern and solve the GSA or Secret Service scandals, looked through the bigger picture about economic issues or financial banking industry, housing market. They showed us that they were like the rest of us, affected by failures and corruptions. Michael also pointed out that if the individual made mistakes, these mistakes just impacted to that individual. The business made mistakes, the business would take that responsibility. But if the US government made mistakes, all of us would be affected and all of us would be the one who took that responsibility with them.

Michael also recalled what the Founding Father had understood the citizens, that’s why they insisted that “the government is necessary to protect our rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and they wrote the Declaration of Independence”. However, the current US government were doing different things.

Michael named the title of this article “Because Angels don’t govern us”, but he believed that the US government really governs us and overreach the power. So, according to Michael, what do you think that who did the US government represent?

Critique an editorial/ commentary from national newspaper

On February 27th, 2019, Washingtonpost published the article about "Kellyanne Conway says House Republicians failed Trumps of border wall funding" by John Wagner.
First, let get to know Kellyanne Conway. Kellyanne Conway is an American pollster, political consultant and current is the White House counselor for US President Donald Trump. The reason for this news is due to the opposing to the border wall of Trump by the House Republicans. According to Kellyanne, she supports the border wall of President Trump because of two appropriate reasons from Trump. First, this is his “solemn duty” to secure the US border. Second, “the president waited for Congress to do its job”. Therefore, Kellyanne thinks the border wall should be supported by Congress and they should accept the fund. But as we know, Congress didn’t accept this idea, didn’t approve for a huge fund and created a shutdown for 35 days. Kellyanne thinks this should be a part of the House Republicans's responsibility. Wagner, the author wrote, “She sharply criticized that House Republicans for failing to deliver sufficient border wall funding to President Trump when they controlled the chamber and cited that as a justification for his emergency declaration”. Moreover, she insisted that Congress is failing to do their job to support President Trump.
On Washingtonpost.com on Jan 11, it published the article named “American don’t want Trump’s border wall”. In this article, they showed us why American don’t want the border wall. It is huge money and this source is coming from American’s contribution. Initially, Trump insists on getting around $6 billions for building the wall and then the fund amount just keeps raising more and more. In order to come up with this article, they did the survey. If they gather 10 people to vote for the border wall, 4/10 of them will vote for building the border wall because they are persuaded by the counterargument. It means the majority of American don’t want this wall. According to most of the American, they think there are lots of ways to manage the legal immigration by limiting to provide visa, by creating strictly law for immigration employment and so on more than spending huge money just for the wall.
In general, there are too many ways for illegal immigration happened, not only by crossing the US border. Moreover, most American doesn’t oppose immigration. Therefore, Congress or House Republicans don’t support Trump because they are not working for Trump, they work for American. And I, really disagree with what Kellyanne said.

Embedding a Link in Blog

On Thursday, February 14th, 2019, The CNN published the article titled "Trump will sign bill to avoid shutdown, then declare national emergency to free billions for border wall".

Let me summarize about some previous news related to this article. President Trump started a demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a US- Mexico border wall. Why? Because Trump wants to manage illegal immigration into our country strictly. His decision has been opposed by Congress since it obviously costs billions from the federal funds. On Dec 22, 2018, the United States federal government shutdown for 35 days because the Republican President Donald Trump could not agree on an appropriation bill to fund the operations of the federal government and agencies. Shutdown time lasts 35 days and the federal government is back to normal on Jan 25, 2019. The article link listed above mentioned that President Trump agrees to sign bills to avoid government shutdown but he still used his power of the executive branch’s leader to declare a variety of administration funding sources to help finance construction of his wall on the border. He announced that the national emergency declaration is expected to be one part of that. He also mentioned that 8 billions is the range of the fund. I think this article breaks out some main points that we all concern how the president Trump reacts when he doesn't give up the battle with US government about the border wall. 

Blog stage 1- Introduction

Welcome everyone to the 1st touch to US Government!!!!