"Illegal Immigration and the Numbers Pure and Simple"

The film that I watched is called “Illegal Immigration and the Numbers Pure and Simple.” It was a lecture based video by Roy Beck. Roy Beck uses statistics and visuals during his speech and I think he does a great job of proving his point. He is a very good speaker and his statistics and facts are scary. Beck believes that there is no problem with immigrants; the problem is the number of immigrants. Beck makes an interesting point and I agree with him.

Beck says the reason Americans don’t talk about immigration is they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. Most Americans have foreign born friends and they really would rather not offend their friends. Americans need to stop worrying about hurting people’s feelings and being politically correct and start doing what is right for the country. Most Americans are pro immigrants but anti-immigration. The bottom line is that Americans are simply concerned about the sheer numbers of immigrants.

Beck gives some staggering statistics about the number of immigrants who enter the U.S yearly. In between the years of 1925-1965 there was an average of 178,000 immigrants per year. Congress changed the immigration law in 1965 allowing more immigrants to enter the United States. From 1965-1989 there was an average of 507,000 immigrants entering the U.S per year. But from 1990 to the present that number has risen to a staggering number of more than one million immigrants per year.

There has been as much growth from immigration as from normal population growth since 1970. This means there are twice as many Americans in the U.S as there would have been had immigration not been as prominent. Because of this America has been forced to build twice as many: schools, roads, sewage plants, hospitals, and other public buildings. This puts a strain on the economy and the infrastructure of our country. The really scary statistic is that by the year 2050 immigration growth will have quadrupled normal population growth in U.S

Beck says that many Americans have the belief that by allowing immigrants into the U.S our country saves people from poverty. We try to “rescue” people from third world poverty through immigration and it is impossible. There are 4.6 billion people who are more impoverished than average Mexican. It is impossible for America to “save” everyone from poverty by allowing them into the U.S. There can never be hope for third world population just by moving them to the U.S. There are many ways Americans can help, but immigration is not the answer. America takes 1 million immigrants from third world impoverished countries while those same countries add 80 million people to their population yearly. There is no way America can be a safety valve. We can totally destroy our own country and still wouldn’t keep impoverished countries from gaining millions of extra impoverished residents. Roy Beck is right, there is a congress merely has to lower number of immigrants back to where it was in 1965.