Is the best solution to the problems plaguing the US immigration system to export nearly all immigrants and start over?

If a system fails, the most reasonable reaction would be to examine it in order to find out what caused the dysfunction. That is exactly what every lesson in life teaches us. When you make a mistake, take your chance to evaluate what to change to make it better next time.

Desperately searching for a punching bag will not solve the problem. How can you expect things to be ending up different during your next try if you keep on following the same pattern? In the end you will find yourself at the very same point you started from. As the previous U.S. president Obama admitted already a few years ago, the States’ immigration system is anything but perfect. But who would honestly ever come up with the idea to force immigrants to leave the country and start all over again?

A nation can not deny its responsibility for the people that live in it. This includes non-natives as well. Many of them began a new life in the U.S. . Separating them from their new social environment by exporting them to their former home countries would be nothing but an enormous sign of inhumanity, let alone of a lack of sensibility. Any society benefits from a wide variety of cultural aspects, be it traditions, food, arts and crafts or anything else. Certainly, even a particular American wannabe politician with a very distinctive hairstyle will enjoy burritos and tacos every once in a while.

Gamze Yilmaz answers: "Is the best solution to the problems plaguing the US immigration system to export nearly all immigrants and start over?"

This blog entry discusses the question whether the problems of the U.S. immigrant system can be solved by exporting nearly all immigrants from America. Considering to start from scratch and exporting almost all immigrants would be a serious downfall for the economics of a country. Catching up on that would not take a few weeks or years, but decades to build a decently stable country all over again. A country without migrants would be completely desolated, companies would experience a great loss of employees, many great ideas and developments would not even exist, schools and universities would not have any diversities and the level of education would decline, etc. As a result, without „foreigners“ and open-minded people a country would have a very depressing atmosphere.

Immigrants are never a burden, but rather an enrichment for any country, because of the variety of different cultures and traditions that come with a growing melting pot. I do not think that exportations will solve any problem of the U.S. immigration system. There are "illegal" people in the U.S., but they exist anywhere else too. However, it is known that immigrants come to the country for work-related reasons. One example are Latin Americans: As soon as latinos arrive in the USA, they are looking for work to support their families with money; be it for the one’s who already live in the U.S. or those back in their homelands. How could one improve this situation? By possibly creating guest workers' programs that allows immigrants to work legally, earn money and be carefree. This relief will ensure that people will stop worrying about how to gain money and thus will not consider doing illegal business such as selling drugs or work under the table.

Also, a further measure could be a change at U.S. borders. I am surely not talking about building endless walls on borders to America, but maybe organize an increased presence of policemen and soldiers. But this idea directly leads to a disadvantage: there is a possible increase in shootings at even more innocent people and of mistaken-identity, which often ends fatal. Building a wall as Trump intends to, will cost billions and will be paid by U.S. citizens, but the wall cannot prevent further illegal immigration. When people have nothing left to lose, they will risk their lives to enter a country where they see a better life for themselves. So not all of those who look at the black side will die, but eventually reach the “country of desire“. There are endless possibilities to do so, as it happens in Afghanistan or Palestine: underground tunnels, tips of relatives about gaps and cracks, errors which are caused by the government, etc.

If the government were to work towards solidarity and integration, instead of blaming anyone who wants to immigrate, the migrants would also feel more welcome and respected, therefor caring for the country and its laws. Even small changes of the immigration system could already improve and help solving problems. There are numerous subjects politicians should focus on instead of immigrants only. Overall, race, gender, religion, age or sexuality does not matter, because each individual is needed to maintain a sustainable society and bring on further developments for the  countries we live in.

Gamze Yilmaz answers: "Can traditional journalism survive in a media environment in which consumption happens mostly on social media, and sites like Buzzfeed use sensationalism and shock to increase clicks?"

The principle of journalism, no matter if online or traditional, is to create content and write articles about it. I think that traditional journalism can survive even if such a huge media environment exists, because the world does not only consist of people who use the internet, but also of older generations, who will probably stick to traditional journalism.

Surely, the online journalism predominates. On the one hand, young people, even children, use smartphones, notebooks or tablets and surf the web. Sites like “Buzzfeed“ are very eye-catching and have an appealing design. Each article has a ‘loud’ and interesting title and amusive content. Reading through one article almost 100% ensures reading at least three more articles because of the sensationalism shock that appears at the end of a page. “Buzzfeed tasty“ and similar organizations, e.g. “Tastemade“ replace cookbooks, since one can search directly for the food he or she has in mind and not browse through different cookbooks and search for the recipe first. This is, however, rather an improvement. Some online newspapers demand money for an article, but these are comparably only a few. What has to be paid on the one page could be easily found for free on a different page with a slightly different content.

On the other hand, it also happens that people do not want to keep looking at their technical devices and read texts in small format for hours. Also, the warmth and the lights of a device can be perceived as disturbing after a certain time of usage. Newspapers, by contrast, are very handy, even if a little larger. They can be folded and read whenever one wants. Nevertheless, the selection of good journalists with correspondingly high quality articles will be even more important in future, since the online competition is strong and consumers generally are expecting permanent improvements.

The newspaper, and thus traditional journalism, will never be completely replaced but will probably be reduced to major, more important and serious newspapers such as "Hamburger Abendblatt" or "Frankfurter Allgemeine" and other qualitatively similar newspapers. In my opinion, the “Bild“ will not be easily replaced by online journalism, since the newspaper is counted as entertaining, cheap and owns different and lastest news than presented on their homepage. But at the same time, social media has enough entertaining content and it does not matter if it is on Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, whereas, from my point of view, newspapers like the “Elbe Wochenblatt" could be disposed immediately. When the demand actually diminishes, it makes no sense to continue printing the paper mainly concerning the climate protection. Unlike online articles, unwanted newspapers will eventually end in garbage anyway, so why produce them? Magazines, on the contrary, will continue to be popular with topics on fitness and health, or house furnishings and garden designs. It is a common thing to do for one’s daily routine: having a tea or coffee, sitting comfortably on the sofa and browsing through magazines. This can be quite relaxing, while imagining to hold a technical device in hands instead of a magazine destroys the illusion of the perfect moment. In my judgment, the chances of magazines surviving the online journalism seems doable.

The world is in a constant change; albeit in small steps. The climate change and economics are not the only important subjects of our world, but also the labor markets, the internet and journalism. With that being said, everyone knows that older products get replaced by newer and more efficient inventions and that, of course, is a good point. Over the years, carriages were replaced by cars, DVD players substitute video cassettes, whereby DVDs slowly become replaced by online movie streaming sites, whether paid or illegal.

The competition "traditional versus online journalism" is tough and the online competition is immensely strong. In my opinion it is obvious that the internet, and therefor online journalism will eventually “win“, because the possibilities of the internet are endless. No matter which topic, one can assuredly inform oneself, and by the changes of our times, not only younger but also older generations will certainly start using the web.