May The Best Man Win

After you graduate from college, you will be putting in your application for a job that you went to college for. Even though you might be the most qualified for the job you still might not obtain the position. Affirmative Action sometimes causes this because companies have to hire a certain number of minorities relative to the size of the company. This means that if there are no minority citizens available, immigrants who aren t even US citizens can take the position. This is why Affirmative Action should be readjusted, because it is helping immigrants instead of the people it was meant for, American citizens.

The fact is that the current Affirmative Action plan is helping immigrants more than it is helping the American people. For instance, millions of immigrants and foreign visitors are eligible for, and many are actually using, Affirmative Action benefits to grab a head start of US born minorities because they do not have enough US minorities to fill the positions. In effect, many of today s immigrants are coming to this country and moving right to the head of the line. James Robb, a Senior Analyst of the The Social Contract, a quarterly journal and the author of the study, Affirmative Action For Immigrants: The Entitlement Nobody Wanted came up with a great example of how immigrants are using affirmative action to there advantage. He states, Of all US science doctorates awarded in 1993, forty-six percent went to foreigners. There were ten science PhD s awarded to non-citizen Asians to every one awarded to a US Asian (Robb). It doesn t end there, because after they receive their PhD s many immigrants will stay in the US to take jobs. This is bad for American citizens who have their PhD s because they struggle to find jobs, many of which are already taken by people who aren t even U.S. citizens.

It is a big deal that immigrants are using Affirmative Action to their advantage. There is something wrong with giving opportunities to non-US citizens over US citizens. Yes this is a big deal because if you put non-citizens and US citizens in the same job market, you are taking away opportunities from people that have been living here their entire lives. This creates a feeling of hatred between US and non-US citizens, which is the last thing we need. In contrast, there is nothing wrong with giving immigrants job opportunities because this is America, the land of opportunity, but all US citizens, minority or not, should be considered for jobs before immigrants are.

Some say that Affirmative Action needs to stay because companies should hire a quota of minorities into their company. Many voices say that quotas are used to right the past wrongs when so many minority groups were discriminated against. That no matter what minority that you are from you still deserve some form of compensation for the wrongs that were done not only to your ethninicity, but also to their past family relatives. This is a true point that is worth looking at, but fro how long will the white male have to lose out on jobs that he is more qualified for because of mistakes in the past. We need to look at this from the aspect of what Affirmative Action was originally set up for.

Affirmative Actions original intentions, in the 1960 s, were to correct the wrongs that minorities have gone through throughout history, such as slavery, racism, and other horrible anti-minority practices. It just never occurred to government planners, when they made up the affirmative action plan, that there would be so many immigrants in the US and that they would be considered minorities. Robb says, because affirmative action is keyed to race and ethnicity, without regard to American nationality, foreign citizens routinely get special consideration (Robb 3). They receive these special considerations because of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which were passed by Congress in 1986. The Immigration Reform and Control Act was an obscure amendment, which stated that employers couldn t refuse to hire non-citizen immigrants unless an American is equally or better qualified (Skerry). In simple terms it means that companies can t avoid hiring non-citizens, which is extremely bad for the American people.

Obviously we need to do something to correct all the wrongs that are occurring with the current affirmative action plan. Whatever the long-term fate of the affirmative action program is, Congress and the administration should act quickly and decisively to reserve race preferences only for US born minorities. A mere paragraph or two of legislation and a short executive order could end the use of affirmative action by immigrants.

Although that past statement makes it sound easy, there are many plans, both radical and conservative, circling around about how to fix Affirmative Action. James Robb came up with the simplest and most effective plan, to add a subparagraph to the federal law known as 8 U.S.C. 1324 b. This is the law that states that it is illegal not to hire immigrants. The subparagraph would state that they would make an exception for the right to reserve affirmative action for US born persons (Skerry). Not withstanding any other provisions of this section, it is not an unfair immigration related employment practice for a person or other entity to reserve Affirmative Action programs for persons born in the United States. This basically states that the only way affirmative action would count if and only if they are minority citizens, which would give American citizens a better chance of finding a job because immigrants wouldn t be accepted towards the number of minorities companies have to hire. After this subparagraph would be added, the president would then have to sign an executive order stating that although contractors may hire immigrants, only US born minorities would count toward meeting the affirmative action set goals. I think this would then take care of the non-citizen immigrants hiring problem.

By reading the facts and opinions of this paper, I believe you will understand that this is a problem that needs to be faced. Affirmative Action is not pulling its weight in what it was initially created to do. Steps need to be taken to right this wrong, so people who deserve a shot, in turn receive a shot.

Works Cited

Robb, James S. Affirmative Action For Immigrants: The Entitlement Nobody Wanted 1996. http://pwz.netcom jimrobb/NR-article.html(July,1996)

Skerry, Peter. Borders and quotas: immigration and the affirmative-action state

Available from http://humanitas.ucsb./cgi-bin/mfs/11docs/skerry.html?99#mfs