Immigration, damaging or helpful? Immigration has been a problem in the United States since before the country was established. Many citizens and politicians claim that illegal immigration is a hindrance to the country’s economy because immigrants take American jobs and that they don’t pay taxes. They also agree that our government spends too much money in keeping them out. People on the other side of this argument claim that immigrants help by taking unwanted jobs with very little pay, and in doing that they are helping keep the prices of domestic goods down across the country.
Because hospitals must provide free health care and immigrants mostly cluster in specific areas the costs are not evenly distributed. Therefore, the data does not accurately represent the cost of provision of health care for illegal immigrants only, but rather considers the cost of providing health care for every uninsured person. Whereas emergency room costs are higher for foreign born children than children born in the United States, it is lower for foreign born adults than it is for adults born in the United States. In fact in the under 65 age group the value of health care services used ranged from 30-75% lower for persons born in the United States than for immigrants. The Udall study also concluded that by 2003, of the uninsured figure of 5.1 million, 3.6 were born in the United States, the remaining 1.3 are immigrants making the United States born uninsured constitute the larger proportion of uninsured persons in the country.
In fact, in the regions where immigrants have settled in the past two decades, crime has gone down, cities have grown, poor urban neighborhoods have been rebuilt, and small towns that were once on life support are springing back” (MacDonald, Sampson 2012). Whether or not people are for or against immigration, it is very obvious that immigration rarely has negative effects on the country they choose to migrate to. Just because they left their home country, by no means does that mean they want to create crime in another country. Since when did wanting to find a better way of life ever negatively affect anyone around them? Never.
Non-refugee immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to go on welfare and risk deportation if they do so in their first five years in America (226). Furthermore, being on the dole lessens an immigrant's likelihood of being approved to sponsor a family member for residency in the US, which is many immigrants' primary objective (226). There are economic benefits from immigration. These benefits occur because certain abilities brought to America by immigrants complement the skills of the native population (Borjas 233). Also the jobs taken by immigrants will create more jobs by spewing the
In a debate regarding illegal immigrants Mitt Romney and President Obama had different opinions toward the issue that had the same outcome. President Obama suggested that illegal immigrants should “get to the back of the line for citizenship”. Romney in the other hand said that it would be nice if they “self-deported” them self, and “lined up back home for legal re-entry to America”. The question here is not who has the better idea, but it’s whether or not this “line” is even possible. Both suggestions seem to be ineffective since most of the immigrants are ineligible for a citizenship, and have no chances of re-entry in the first place.
It is believed that American immigrants take jobs from Americans. That is not the case. “Fears that immigrants threaten American workers are based on two fallacies: that there is a fixed number of jobs to go around, and that foreign workers are direct substitutes for American ones. Foreigners do not take jobs from Americans; they create them, For example, when Mexican construction workers are hired to build buildings, this creates jobs for people selling building materials, interior designers, and in some cases exterior designers. Also, while the number of immigrants increases, unemployment rates in America decreases.
Illegal immigration does not have a negative economic impact in the United States as some people would make it seem. This misconception is due to people thinking that the illegal immigrants are stealing the jobs of good citizens leaving them without work. Another misconception is that the workers are taking money from our economy. However both of these reasons are quickly proven unfounded in fact. This topic is of importance to the people of the United States because there are around 12 million illegal immigrants living and working in this nation.
Most people immigrants who are undocumented don’t pay taxes because they are paid under the table. Edward P. Lazear, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, stated, “Immigrants not only help fuel the Nation’s economic growth, but also have an overall positive effect on the income of native-born workers”. Immigrants are a critical part of the workforce (1 in 7 workers) and contribute to productivity growth and technological advancement. Without the immigrants, we would have a decline in labor force of 3 to 4 percent, we could not have grown nearly as much as we did in the ‘90s and in the last few years our growth would have been slower. Edward Lazear also says that immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs than native-born U.S. citizens.
Sometimes it is just the opposite, sometimes it works well. Well developed economies would benefit largely from the immigrants, because there the labor market is highly-stretched upwards. There is no one to fill in the niche for low-paid service workers or those involved in physical and hard work. That is the place of the immigrants, and that is the new form of slavery in the 21st century. The raise in GDP doesn’t come mainly from taxes, because even if they are legal immigrants (which are not the case usually) they have minimal income.
The article “Paga ser Bilingue” by Domenico Maceri discusses why workers should be reward for being bilingual. Growing immigrant population in the United States that is not fluent in English requires providing more services in different languages. Many government agencies and American companies are looking to hire bilingual employees. Instead of hiring expensive professional interpreters, the companies prefer save money by providing stipends for multilingual workers. However, some people disagree with providing services in different languages because emigrants will never learn English.