William Parker

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103
Topic Proposal

Illegal immigration is a topic that has not been touched on much until recently, when republican primary candidates brought it to the debate stage. Immigration is an extremely polarizing topic, and if you asked two different people their opinions on it, or the facts surrounding it,
you would likely get two completely different answers. There is little information out there about
the specifics of illegal immigration, and extremely little information from the government. Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation have found that on average every illegal immigrant
household pays $10,334 annually in taxes, however, these same households receive approximately $24,721 in government benefits. Pulitzer prize winning journalists have found that nearly
3 million illegal immigrants are coming across the border annually. Democratic syndicates usually parrot the opposite and say that although illegal immigrants are apparently swarming across
our border in hordes, there is no net illegal immigration to the US from South America. New York
Times best selling author Ann Coulter estimated that there are as many as 50 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Other organizations such as the Pew Research Center found that
the illegal alien population in the United States was 11 million in 2005, a number democratic
pundits still say is the total population of illegal immigrants in the United States.

That being said, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the topic, which leaves many
unanswered questions. How much could we save if we deported all illegal aliens? How much
would it cost to deport illegal aliens? How many illegal aliens are actually in the country? Is it

inhumane to deport illegal aliens? What is the most humane way to deport illegal aliens? How
much would a border wall cost? How much would a border wall slow illegal immigration? Is the
anchor baby policy constitutional? How does the population feel about illegal immigration? What
are the other effects of illegal immigration? What is the situation like in South America? Does
illegal immigration actually help the impoverished from those nations? How does illegal immigration effect the impoverished in our country? What does illegal immigration do to our environment? How could we allocate the funds we save from illegal immigration? Would this cause unemployment to go down? Would this help or hurt our economy?

I am citizen, native, as well as taxpayer of the United States. All of these unanswered
questions make me wonder what the right decision is for our country as well as the illegal aliens
residing within it. I would like to research this topic for the remainder of the semester and find
concrete answers to the questions, founded not in political bias but evidence.