“The immigration system has been completely paralyzed and the federal government is in a big dilemma that it does not know how to get out of,” said Hani Bushra, an immigration lawyer, noting that the government intends to increase the number of judges in the courts specialized in immigrant and refugee cases, to confront the unprecedented increase in American history. Asylum requests due to the exodus of thousands of migrants daily from the southern border.
Bushra suggested that the government plan will not be sufficient to resolve the cases in the courts, as the number of judges is now about 700, and the government wants the number to approach a thousand judges. Despite this, the judicial crisis will continue because there are about 3 million cases in the courts, meaning each judge will be responsible for 4,000 cases. This is an amazing number! While there are about 2 million other cases in asylum offices, the number of specialists is not sufficient, which causes long waiting periods to extract official documents and conduct personal interviews in accordance with legal controls.
As the influx of refugees continues from the southern border, we have monitored 8 challenges facing the government and Congress: –
1. Educational level
It has been noted that many illegal immigrants do not have an appropriate level of education, as some are uneducated and some have not completed basic education, while others receive poor basic education and are therefore not useful to the labor market in the short and medium term.
It is also known that illegal immigrants only aim to earn money and not to develop themselves. Although their children usually enroll in public schools, not everyone is able to complete the educational path after that.
2. Economic risks
Increased spending on infrastructure and decreased tax payments in return, due to most illegal immigrants and refugees resorting to receiving salaries in cash rather than through checks.
But there will only be a positive effect for the wealthy who will use unlicensed labor, which is to achieve temporary profits, but they will be forced to pay high taxes in the future due to damaged infrastructure and weak public services!
Although labor offices have imposed restrictions on companies in the states, not to employ workers without a work permit, there are actually violations on the ground, especially in restaurants, factories, car repair shops, and many others.
Therefore, business owners will benefit directly and temporarily, but they will be harmed in the near future, as they will enjoy cheap labor and not bear the government burden of paying the traditional expenses of a worker who spends more than 40 hours at work per week.
3. Professional skills
Illegal immigrants usually do not have the minimum professional skills that enable them to integrate into the labor market in different states, but at the same time they compete with American workers or legal residents because their salaries are very low, and this increases the unreal unemployment rates among Americans. Also check The quality of the national industry is due to the inefficiency of the workforce.
4. Cultural integration
A heavy struggle haunts Americans every day, as the Spanish language has become a way of life for dealing with restaurant and hospital workers and taxi drivers. Therefore, the issues of language, customs and traditions are at the top of the priorities of the challenges facing America during the coming period.
The cultural identity of America may be negatively affected by the adoption of the Spanish language as a second language and it has become widespread in most government institutions as well as in public life, which will make the English language gradually merge with the Spanish language, which threatens the concept of American nationalism and the United States may turn into sectors that speak only Spanish in the future. As is the case in Montreal, Canada, where the majority of its residents speak French while the minority speak English.
5. Burdens on local governments
– Schools and hospitals: The increase in the number of students and patients leads to an increase in government allocations to local governments and the federal government in annual public expenditures, although these two sectors have been suffering since the Corona pandemic in light of the lack of necessary financial resources and the inadequacy of the specialized personnel that manage these facilities.
– Infrastructure and roads: Increasing the number of refugees without special preparations will lead to rapid damage to sewage, water, electricity and road networks, which will require increased spending, with which local governments may be forced to increase taxes or abandon some of the projects they are undertaking to compensate for the infrastructure deficit.
Rates of organized and random crime: Police departments will be burdened with additional burdens due to the increase in the number of illegal immigrants in some attractive states such as New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas, as there may be some misfits among them, and crime rates will increase if they are not properly integrated into society with problems. Local governments.
– Drug trafficking and sexual assaults: It is no secret to anyone to know the tragic stories told by immigrants fleeing from Latin American countries about the difficult paths through which they came to the United States and the incidents of sexual harassment, rape, financial extortion, and others during their journey or before that, which qualifies them to suffer from some Mental and physical illnesses that will require special treatment, otherwise they may have adverse consequences for American society.
6. Burdens on the federal government
The state’s public spending will increase on infrastructure, unemployment benefits, housing immigrants, and granting them special aid to those who will apply for asylum. If some are deported, the state will bear these financial and administrative burdens before and during their deportation. The current and future governments will also bear financial burdens.
7. Ministry of Immigration invoice
It will be concerned with appointing more and more employees and training them as quickly as possible, which may result in many administrative problems, especially since this ministry has not yet recovered from the problems left by the Corona pandemic in 2020, as well as the Ukrainian war in Europe and now the Israeli war with Hamas in the Middle East. It received thousands of immigrants from these politically and militarily turbulent regions, in addition to the accumulation of nearly 2 million asylum cases in American courts. This is in addition to long waiting lists that perhaps belong to many asylum seekers and refugees who entered the country during the past years and whose position has not yet been decided due to crowding in asylum offices. The number of employees is limited.
The increase in requests submitted by displaced people from the southern border has led to the disruption of the work of many legal residents in all states through the impact of issuing their various documents, and this is what causes complaints to increase exponentially.
8. Burdens on Congress
Congress, with its two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate, will be forced to take decisive decisions to stop the flow of refugees, or perhaps tighten procedures to accept their cases and perhaps return them to their countries at the expense of the American government. All of these legislative measures may distract parliamentarians’ focus from other national issues and waste a lot of time and money. The situation may remain as it is.
