Curbing illegal immigration in the United States Essay examples -- Imm

Immigration, both legal and illegal, has been an issue since the first European set foot on the shores of this country. Approximately 400,000 new illegals enter the United States each year. With an estimated 11,000,000 people currently living in the U.S. illegally, the problem has reached critical mass (Haerens 18). Dealing with this, costs the country an estimated $113 billion annually: $16.4 billion in Texas alone (Barnes C1). According to the Center For Immigration Studies, tax credits paid to illegal immigrants exceeded payments by illegals by $7.3 billion during the period from 2005 to 2010 (Schulkin 2). Education, health, food assistance, police, and municipal support, also contribute to the overall cost. Many experts and politicians, on both sides of the debate, claim to have solutions to the problem. Sadly, most of them address the symptoms and not the cause. For all the rhetoric, current immigration laws and policies have done little to curtail the influx of illegals into the US, over the past ten years (Passal C2). Consequently, immigration control remains a poorly managed problem. By evaluating the reasons individuals enter this country, and how other countries manage their immigration problem, a different perspective and perhaps novel way to deal with the issue may be considered. A significant motivating factor for illegal entry to the USA is the disparity in lifestyles of their homeland compared to America. Life, for people outside the US, can be very hard. For example: indigenous Mayans in Mexico and Central America suffer severely from racial prejudice. Many peasants in Thailand, Vietnam and China, with hopes of a better life for their offspring, unknowingly ‘sell’ their sons and daughters into prostitution. Life... ...migrant-population- brnational-and-state-trends-2010/. Pomfret, James. Out of Africa and Into China, Immigrants Struggle .Reuters UK. 29 August 2009. Print. Schulkin, Peter. Illegal Immigrants Receive Billions of Dollars More From The IRS Than They Pay In. Center For Immigration Studies, 2011. Print. Slevin, Peter. Deportation of Illegal Immigrants Increases Under Obama Administration. Washington Post. Washington Post Company, 26 Jul. 2010. Web. 14 Oct 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072501790.html. Steiner, Niklaus. International Migration and Citizenship Today. Routledge, 2009. Print. Tamny, John. Markets Solve the Immigration Problem. Forbes Magazine. 26 Jan. 2009. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/25/immigration-economy- mexico-oped-cx_jt_0126tamny.html

Marriage and Percent Cohabitation Increase Essay

Cohabitation is living together and having a sexual relationship between unmarried couples. Cohabitation is legal in some country and illegal in the others, it is illegal in our country Lebanon. The number of couples who are in cohabiting relationships has steadily risen throughout the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st as the social, religious and political attitudes to cohabitation outside of marriage have changed. Couples live together without marriage for several reasons. According to statistics the percentage of cohabitated couples in Lebanon is increasing â€Å"Recent figures have shown a 12 percent cohabitation increase from 1970 until early 2003,† (The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www. dailystar. com. lb). Cohabitation should be legalized in our country. First of all, cohabitation can be a preparation for marriage or a good experience for the couples. After cohabitating a period with your partner you will be able to decide to break up or to marry him/her. Living together with your partner will let you know all the good and the bad habits of him/her, cohabitation will give you a good idea about your life when you will marry your partner, and it will show you the difference between dating your partner and getting married. The percentage of divorce in Lebanon is increasing in the last years, some couples are married in 3 or 4 months after they met first, cohabitation could be the solution of this problem, these couples can cohabit 3 or 4 months and then they will decide to get married or to end the relationship. Without cohabitating, it is extremely hard for a couple to have an assumption about each others.

MNCs and International Law - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 5 Words: 1437 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Law Essay Type Review Level High school Did you like this example? The advancement of this subject has been reflected in a large body of principles and rules that have been incorporated into several treaties, binding acts of international organization, state practices and soft law commitments, applied bilaterally, regionally and globally. Some principles of international environmental law are embodied or specifically expressed in binding instruments, while others are predominantly based in customary law. Among the most supported and frequently endorsed principles in practice are: (i) State sovereign over natural resources, (ii) responsibility not to cause environmental damage, (iii) principle of preventive action, (iv) principle of co-operation, (v) principle of sustainable development, (vi) precautionary principle/approach, (vii) polluter pays principle and (viii) principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.[1] Some of these principles have their origin in the 1972 United Nation Conference on the Human Environmen t and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "MNCs and International Law" essay for you Create order Both conference produced declarations of principles (Stockholm Declaration[2] and 1992 Rio Declaration[3]), which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. After the adoption of these declarations, further developments in international environmental law have taken place that affect the definition, status and impact of principles and concepts in international environmental law. In the mid-1970s, the UN Commission on Transnational Corporations considered, for the first time, the idea of a code of conduct. Nevertheless, it was in the 1990s when there was a proliferation of codes of conduct, resulting from an increased international attention on corporate human right abuses[4] and emphasis on corporate responsibility.[5] PROBLEMS WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW The international legal system seems completely inadequate to regulate powerful non-state actors, such as MNCs, as nations battle over sovereignty and are reluctant to give up power to international regulatory bodies, c aring more for the bottom line of economic growth than human rights. MNCs consist of international entities beyond national jurisdictions in terms of economic resources and decision-making responsibility. This legal conundrum has been obvious for at least thirty years, yet there have been only minor improvements in accountability.[6] The outmoded regulation system and the dynamic MNCsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ considerable economic and political power combine to create a problematical regulatory task. The MNC has transcended national legal systems and ignored the feeble international system to make the imposition of human rights norms nearly impossible. The negative impact that the phenomenon of economic globalization has had on state regulation and peoplesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ lives is becoming apparent. The move to more à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“competitive nationsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  often means moving to states that have reduced regulation or lower tax incentives in order to attract the fickle eye of multinational corporations. This in turn means other countries must regulate less in order to attract investment and employment. It has become impossible for nations, even if they are willing, to impose any obligations upon MNCs to contribute to the communities from which they are extracting resources and making vast profits. Any attempt to do so would reduce that nationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s competitiveness. The proceeds of economic development are thus denied to host national governments which are instead extracted as profits for foreign investors. The nation has been weakened in terms of managing human rights obligations and the first to be abandoned are social, economic and cultural rights, as the original provision of these rights directly costs money. The traditional approach to human rights law dictates that they protect the individual against the state. This doctrine was developed in a time when international business was less prominent and international economic interdep endence was far less important. Since international business is now mobile enough to avoid stringent national regulations,[7] or influential enough to persuade against the adoption of such regulation, international law must move beyond the traditional view towards regulating all of the organs of the international community. This historical bias of international law concerning the regulation of interstate relations has begun to give way to emerging trends conferring rights and duties on non-state actors such as supranational institutions[8] and other actors, including insurgent or rebel groups,[9] individuals and corporations.[10] This new type of non-state actor liability and responsibility under international law is emerging in two ways. The first entails indirect accountability through the horizontal application of international law and the other through the application of international law directly to the non-state actors in question. The lethargic response regarding social , economic and cultural rights by the international community has been a failure in its duty to enact laws to regulate for the good of humanity as a whole[11]. This is, in part, due to the fact that law-makers consider the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“globalizationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  phenomena to be a socio-economic problem that they are not capable of dealing with. Politicians are equally loath to alter the status quo, as they fear discouraging profit-maximization and growth, and thereby impairing their nationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s economic competitiveness. Social and economic rights generally imply positive obligations on the part of the state and private actors such as MNCs, which cost money, and therefore reduce profit maximization. Furthermore, multinational financing, operations and joint-ventures have combined with decreasing national control over international commerce to weaken corporation-state relations, thereby making regulation even more difficult.[12] Until recently, this gap in intern ational law was increasingly widening. As both cause and effect of growing corporate economic power, the international and domestic political systems have increasingly relinquished their control over business. Economic power holds political influence. The MNCs dominate national planning on issues such as trade, patent and economic policy. While governments remain divided by conflicting interests, such as competitiveness versus social reform, MNCs have a clear concise purpose of profit maximization, which speaks loudly and clearly to influential members of national populations. Fortunately, international and national laws have begun to adapt in order to regulate effectively in an increasingly dynamic world. There now exists a wealth of international regulation that reflects a move away from the traditionalist view of international law, whereby actions within one stateà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s jurisdiction are subject to domestic sovereignty only.[13] Internationally, these include GATT, Draft Multilateral agreement on Investment (MAI), Anti-corruption, Environmental Regulations, the International Criminal Court and advances concerning individual responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the international tribunals. Regulations within domestic systems have advanced as well with the adaptation of the Alien Tort Claims Act in the US and the relaxation of Forum Non Conveniens rules in Great Britain, which allow for MNCs to be held liable for actions of their subsidiaries committed abroad. However, the gap in international law regarding MNCs, clearly still exists. It is time to move towards solutions. Solutions are imperative in this regard due to the enormous impact of MNCs on the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. [1] PH. SANDS / J. PEEL, (note 19) p. 187. [2] See Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (16 June 1972) UN Doc A/CONF.48/14/Rev.1: https://www.un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf. [3] See Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (13 June 1992) UN Doc A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I): https://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm. [4] M. MONSHIPOURI / C. E. WELCH / E. T. KENNEDY, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Multinational Corporations and the Ethics of Global Responsibility: Problems and Possibilitiesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  Human Rights Quarterly, 25, 2003, pp. 965-989. [5] R. JENKINS, Corporate Codes of Conduct. Self-Regulation in a Global Economy, Technology, Business and Society Programme Paper Number 2, 2001, p. 6. [6] Over thirty years ago, Professor Vagts pointed out that the present legal framework has no comfortable, tidy receptacle for such an institution, producing a tension between the legal theory of independent corporate u nits, each operating as a native within the country of its incorporation, and the reality of the economic interdependence of the multinational corporation. Vagts, Detlev F. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“The Multinational Enterprise: A New Challenge for Transnational Law,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  83 Harvard Law Review 739, at 743. [7] Blumberg, Phillip I., The Multinational Challenge to Corporation Law: The Search for a New Corporate Personality (1993) p.205. [8] Reparations for Injuries Case ICJ Reports, 1949, pp.149. [9] For Example, Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions enjoins insurgent groups and state armies to protect prisoners and to respect prohibitions relating to attacks of civilians, hostage taking, terrorist attacksor the use of starvation as a mode of combat. The Optional Protocal to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 16 2000 also places an obligation on armed groups including rebel forces to prevent children from participating in armed conflict. It also prohibits the recruitment of children into their forces. [10] For example, Autronic AG v. Switzerland, Eur. Ct. H.R. Series A. 178 (1990); 12 (1990) E.H.R.R. 485, para 47. [11] UNCTAD, World Investment Report 1999: Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Development, Geneva-New York, United Nations Publications, 2009. [12] Claudio Grossman Daniel D. Bradlow, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã…“Are We Being Propelled Towards a People-Centered Transnational Legal Order?à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  9 American University Journal of International Law Policy 1, 8 (1993). [13]