Social Issues in America
There are many social issues that lie within the Unites States of America, but some stand out more than others. These issues effect the way that American society works and can be a determining factor in things such as elections, media, and government laws. Two main social issues that exist in America are gay marriage and immigration. Though they are not prevalent issues in all of the states, they are still commonly talked about by many people throughout the country.
Since 2001, when September 11th happened, many people in the United States have had a fear of allowing immigrants into the United States. It went to levels of border control and more. Therefore some judge that immigration is a threat to the United States. FAIR estimates that “ in 2010 the illegal alien population is about 12 million persons. Government and academic estimates estimate that population at about 11 million.” This makes people have concerns because they think that many illegal aliens are taking jobs from other American citizens. Also, some people contribute the high levels of crimes and drugs in certain areas to be the cause of illegal immigrants who work for other countries. According to the Heritage website “When three out of every 100 people in America are undocumented (or, rather, documented with forged and faked papers), there is a profound security problem.” Many people see this is a large issue because of what happened on September 11th.
Gay marriage has also slowly become a significant social issue in today’s American society. According to Wikipedia, “Since 2000, eleven countries (Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden) and several sub-national jurisdictions (parts of Mexico and the United States) have begun to allow same-sex couples to marry.” In the 2012 election, there were four states that had some sort of gay-marriage amendment added to their ballots. In Minnesota, the ballot discussed whether or not gay marriage should be defined in our constitution. This was a social issue here in Minnesota because many people felt that marriage should not have anything to do with state laws. Across the nation, people are split in the middle because of other outside factors such as religion.
Overall, these social issues have been spoken about a lot over the past months due to the election season. Gay marriage and immigration issues are here to stay and I personally think that they will continue to be issue for a long time because Americans have many different feelings about them. These social issues will continue to define American society and the standards that they live by. Hopefully, there will come a day when American society does not let social issue define who they are, but I know this will not be soon.
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