Robert Byrd

Illegal immigrants who have worked for many years in the United States should not be granted amnesty, argues Robert Byrd in the following viewpoint. Population growth in the United States—which has been accelerated by immigration—has started to exceed the government’s ability to provide adequate education, health care, and transportation to citizens. Immigrants are less likely to be educated or to have lucrative job skills than are native-born citizens, so they place even more of a burden on social services, states Byrd. Furthermore, granting legal residency to undocumented immigrants rewards people for breaking the law. Ultimately, amnesty leads to an increase in illegal immigration because it encourages others to move to the United States and ignore the processes by which one earns legal residency status or citizenship. Byrd...