The Broken Melting Pot
The United States is supposedly the Melting Pot of the world, for a melting pot to work you must add plenty of ingredients and stir. With hardened immigration laws we are removing ingredients and the people who stay are not moving, but rather staying in community’s that are primarily consisting of immigrants. The number of immigrants is less than it was at the start of the twentieth century. The population of immigrants is low, its population is about a third of what it was (rapid 1). The foreign born population of illegal immigrants is difficult to estimate, through a number of methods it was estimated at 3.2 million. The rate of illegal immigrants is agreed by experts to be about a quarter of a million more ever year. Half of these are immigrants whom enter the United States legally then overstay their visas. Even with this the United States government has estimated a 20 million shortage of workers by 2026 (1), we should wonder why we have such strict immigration laws. With the many changes to American laws can we really be called “the great melting pot?”
From the nineteenth century to now the United States of America has been an immigrant hotspot. From the Chinese building railroads to Mexicans working agriculture the United States has always had immigrant help. The United States has been called the permanently unfinished country, because it has been continuously built and rebuilt by immigrants. By the 1880s more than 500,000 immigrants entered the country each year (Melting 3). These immigrants would consist of Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians moved into the upper Midwest where they would set up farms that develops that regions agricultural economy (3).
The Statue of Liberty has an inscription on it that would lead to believe that the United States wants the worlds tired and poor. For years now U.S policy makers have been debating the idea of granting green cards to foreigners with science doctorates (Chronicle 1). The nation...