Blog comment 2

Kyle Ames’ “House Bill 11 - A Necessary Measure Taken by Governor Abbott” talks about Texas’ initiative to stop illegal immigration from Mexico and why Governor Abbott took the “right move” by passing the House Bill 11. This may be a correct statement, but the reasoning behind Ames’ support isn’t strong. 

The reasons Ames supports this bill are that “these illegal immigrants are increasing crime rates among all the Texas cities that they live in,” they are “stealing jobs,” and allegedly “many of these illegal immigrants participate in both drug trafficking and sex trafficking.” Against the first argument, with higher population comes higher crime rate. To blame the change in crime rate on immigrants specifically is a false cause. That doesn’t mean it definitely is wrong, but it isn’t a fact that the higher crime rate is because of the crime Mexicans are bringing into the U.S., the crime rate is always larger in higher populated areas. In response to the second argument, immigrants don’t steal jobs because the jobs immigrants typically work aren’t jobs that people want or are willing to do. More often than not, these are low paying service jobs that need to be done, but pay is too low to be an attractive job to average citizens, and this is the job market immigrants typically come for. Lastly, Ames states that drug and sex trafficking happen and many of the immigrants are involved in the system. After this accusation, Ames gives no statistics or even a quote from a credible source saying this is true, but just suggests we take his word for it. This statistic could be completely forged with no evidence. 

Of course this blog is opinion based and Ames has every right to believe that House Bill 11 is necessary and productive, but these arguments don’t have me convinced. This article more so makes me further the conversation by asking is the problem illegal immigration or are the immigrants not welcome?