Contemporary Proposal

A seemingly controversial topic over the course of American history has been immigration and the formation of the laws for the issue. Throughout our country’s history, if one wasn’t an American born citizen, they were then considered an immigrant. Over the years certain measures or laws were made to restrict or reduce the number of immigrants allowed into the Continental U.S.A. Only until Ellis Island open in 1892 were immigrants allowed to flow into America and granted citizenship without being shunned away. Today many people often flee to America for the unique opportunities the country holds. Although without proper paperwork, they are labeled illegal immigrants and, if caught, are sent back to their home country. Even though many feel Arizona’s immigration law is intolerable, SB 1070 is needed to help the overburdened and overpopulated nation. In April of 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the “Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”, this law has “most of the debate surrounding S.B. 1070 has focused on the extent to which it (empowers) or (allows) state and local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws” (Su 1). This means that even if one is a legal citizen, one can be searched based strictly on appearance alone. This law was passed mainly for people of Mexican decent because they are illegally crossing over from Mexico into the boarder states like Arizona and Texas. These illegal immigrants are being used as cheap labor cutting out Americans from making money. In addition, illegal immigration is making these towns somewhat overpopulated, we see seeing whole families living on the street. The illegal immigrants children start to steal and become criminals so the family may eat. This is the problem that the federal government is facing on a day-to-day basis. Not much has been done to prevent these problems to be solved; so many people can only control the illegal immigration along the boarder. Eventually, there will be a hole where people will crawl through and into the U.S.; Arizona now has measures to further prevent this problem. This figures to be a very effective way of dealing with this issue, and my just are the building block that gets the nation free of illegal immigration and overpopulation. The issue of overpopulation and immigration stems itself throughout history, many pieces of literature have been written on this very topic. In A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, he writes about a problem that occurs back in the early 1700’s. Ireland has famine; food is scarce yet families are still producing children at a rapid rate. At the time, Ireland is still under British rule, although the English are not doing anything to help solve the problem. Similar to Arizona, Swift comes up with his own solution to fix the issue. Just as Swift brought social attention to the famine through writing, Arizona must call awareness to illegal immigration by SB 1070. Swift writes “These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work”(1). He “suggested” eating the poor’s one-year-old children to help all the starving families in Ireland. This was his way of a verbal slap to hopefully wake up the government and have them help Ireland. Swifts solution was a bit more radical than Arizona’s but this was an attempt to wake up the government to address the issue at hand. In retrospect this law can look demeaning to some, and can look like racial profiling to others, if SB 1070 gets the job done does the negative really matter? The benefits to this law are that a person can only be checked if they break a law. Also this law is a quick and easy way to weed out all the people that don’t belong in a swift clean way. I do not have problem with