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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