Rex Trulove
In the US, a lot of news stories revolve around illegal immigration, primarily through the southern border. Not surprisingly, a large majority of US citizens are in favor of curbing illegal immigration. However, the topic is often used as a political talking point, and the news media isn’t prone to discuss the topic of legal immigration since they don’t consider it to be news.
It is important to look a legal immigration, though. There are many facts that people both inside and outside the US might find quite surprising, especially since it these are so rarely discussed.
For example, did you know that the US has the highest percentage of the population that are first generation legal immigrants in the world? Did you know that more people legally immigrate to the US every year than those who legally immigrate to any other country in the world?
The news media doesn’t want to mention either fact because it might then make the US seem like a good place since so many people want to move here. That is something they don’t want to admit because it might then make the president seem not to be as bad as they are trying to make him out to be.
In a recent discussion with a person who apparently thinks that the US is being unfair to Mexicans, specifically, a statement was made in which it was claimed that Mexicans are prevented from legally immigrating to the US, while at the same time, the US allows lots of Asians and Russians into the country.
That statement is totally false, of course. It is interesting to look a legal immigration from Mexico in comparison to either Asia or Russia, though.
Mexico has a total population of right around 131 million people. Every year, about 175,000 people immigrate to the US from Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
The population of Asia is approximately 4.5 billion people. That is about 34 times as many people as in Mexico. On a level playing field, 34 times as many Asians should be allowed into the US than Mexicans. Yet, total Asian immigration amounts to a little more than 400,000 people. That is a lot of people, but it is only a little over twice as many immigrants as those who come here from Mexico. It turns out that if anyone is being treated unfairly, it is the Asians and not the Mexicans.
How about Russian immigrants? The disparity is even more noticeable. Russia has a population of about 144 million people. Each year, around 9,000 legal immigrants from Russia come to the US. That is less than 20% of the number of people who immigrate from Mexico, though Russia has a greater population.
The truth is that over a million people from all over the world immigrate legally to the US every year. It might surprise you to know that each year, around 19,000 of those immigrants come from Canada, too.
How about the number of legal immigrants from “advanced” nations or nations that are often in the news? Here are some of the numbers for a few countries. The numbers are for the approximate number of people immigrating to the US and there is some variation from year to year.
France — 5,000
Germany — 6,000
United Kingdom — 15,000
Iran — 9,500
Philippines — 51,000
Australia — 4,000
The next time someone tries to tell you that the US is anti-immigration, you should now know the truth. The US isn’t against immigration and over a million people legally immigrate into the US every single year. What the US is overwhelmingly against is illegal immigration. In this, the US is like virtually every other country in the world.
Good and informative article. Thanks for sharing.
I’m glad that you liked it!
I agree 100% with your post and what Gary said. I am all for immigration if it is done legally. That should be simple enough but it is not sadly. And lives are lost every day as a result.
Quite true, and that includes a lot of people who try to immigrate illegally. I wish the wall would get built already.
I live in a neighborhood that is loaded with immigrants. I think it’s great as long as they come here legally.
I used to work in a Catholic church with a large number of Mexicans, both legal and illegal immigrants. One day several asked me what I thought about immigration. I explained that I was for it but it had to be done legally. I explained that, since 9/11 we had to know who was coming into the country. I told them that I objected to illegal immigration because it cheated those immigrants who were trying to come in legally. They told me that they agreed with me 100%.
That is something the media and the leftist elitists simply don’t get. The segment of our population that is the most against illegal immigration are the legal immigrants. My son-in-law is Guatemalan. He was here illegally when he and my daughter was married (illegal on a technicality, but still illegal). He was deported. His brother and father are both here legally and he will be eligible to go through the legal steps to get citizenship in 2021. Until then, our daughter flies down to visit him for several weeks each year and they talk to each other every night on the phone. He didn’t know that he wasn’t here legally and even graduated from our local high school. He was illegal because he had two different official documents from Guatemala that had different birth years on them. Under the old rules, that meant that both documents were invalid, and the government extrapolated that to mean that he was here illegally. Still, he’s determined to come back the right way so he can once again be with his wife. He and his family are against illegal immigration, too.
I wish the government could expedite cases like this.
The irony is that if he’d been a wealthy drug dealer, he wouldn’t have been deported. Instead, he is a good, hard-working individual who paid his taxes, never asked for a government handout, and volunteered his services to help others.
The Dems don’t want those sorts of immigrants because they won’t become dependent on them for support and vote Dem to keep these fools in office. I have no problem with Trump wanting the best immigrants instead of the ones who will be a drain in the system. I don’t care what country they are from, I just want people of character.
I agree. People throughout the country know it, too. Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi remain in office largely due to the illegal immigrants that reside in California.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about legal immigration since my late parents came from Costa Rica and Panama legally in 1978 after the Carter-Torrijos Treaty passed since the tensions between the two nations was starting to heat up. Since my sisters and myself were born in the former Canal Zone, we came here legally. If the media reported the truth, they would go out of business since they like to feed us bad news.
You are right about the media. They also still think that they control the population since they only talk about what they want to talk about. It is propaganda, but they don’t care as long as they get their market share.
That is true. The catch is I would rather report the good deeds this world has to offer.
The problem is that good news doesn’t sell. So most media outlets are in a competition in regard to who can be the most negative. If that means they need to make up stories, they will. If it means that they need to give a negative slant on good news, they’ll do that too.
That is what I have noticed that good news does not sell since I believe that T B S had a show called “Good News” hosted by Bill Tush and I guess the show flopped since people did not watch that show.