During the past years, President Obama showed a great interest in the immigration system.  He wants to fix the system and grant citizenships to people who deserve to be American. He said that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. These immigrants came either by crossing the boarders illegally or overstayed their visas.  Obama thinks that theses undocumented immigrants are affecting the country in many ways. They are creating cheap labor market that affects the American people. They also live in the shadows and that means they don’t pay tax.  Obama also gave example of two illegal immigrants who served in the navy and said that they are American through and through. They defended our country and they believe in our values.  This States is a country that is built by immigrants. Obama’s plan is to fix the immigration system and give chance to these people.  In his speech, Obama mentioned a very important point. He said that many international students come to the states to learn, and once they are done with their learning we make sure that they go back to their countries.  This practice is not right. We teach them and train them to go back and invent something in their countries. This reminded me with one of my friends, who is doing his PHD at UC Berkeley and he is working with US department of energy to develop a new source of energy.  He is an international student, who will return to his home country with all the knowledge he got once he is done with his studies. He simply cannot stay in the United State and give to this country because it is illegal to overstay your visa, and there is no law that gives him citizen ship.

In 2010, Obama introduced the dream act into the house. The dream act is a bill that will provide permanent residency to certain undocumented residence. There are certain conditions that the person has to have in order to be qualified under the dream act. They have to show clean criminal records, they have to be in the States before the age of 16 years old, they also have to be in school.  The dream act has two sides, the economic side and the moral side. On the economic side it will provide trained workforce to the United States. On the moral side, these undocumented residence are American, they lived all their life in this country. It unfair to consider them foreigner simply because its their parents fault who brought them at a very young age here.

In short, the dream act is has many positive outcomes, however, I think there has to be more structure to it. There has to be high standards, otherwise, the act will encourage illegal immigrants to the country. Since it will just take them 5 years to get their permanent residence card.  

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/fixing-immigration-system-america-s-21st-century-economy