Immigration: The Solution or The Problem

The United States is known to immigrants somewhat as a “lifeboat”, as my grandfather says, because of our willingness to accept foreigners pursuing their vision of the American Dream we all live today. There are politicians and even many citizens of the United States that ae in favor of a stricter immigration policy; and by doing that we would be helping ourselves out. Immigrants who come into the USA, threaten Americans by causing unemployment and taking jobs that would normally go to American workers, immigrants also use up most of the social services who would normally be reserved for American Citizens. In my experience I think we ought to throw those “excuses and wrong information” out and give the truth about immigrant workers. We as Americans are always saying how great our country is and how free everyone is to do whatever it is they want to make themselves better; well the immigrant workers that come to America are only trying to do the same for their families and themselves. Immigrants who come here to work actually help out our social services rather than bring them own. For example, immigration actually creates more jobs, boost social service funds by paying funds through taxes, and bring very valuable technical knowledge and skills to the USA. Basically it ultimately comes down to the truth; our country was built by immigrants and is what it is today because those immigrants worked very hard to create and maintain our system thinking and making decisions. Our thoughts as a country need to be

A common argument among those opposing further immigration is that foreigners take U.S. jobs and cause unemployment among the displaced American workers. In the July 13, 1992 edition of Business Week , a poll states that sixty-two percent of non-blacks and sixty-three percent of blacks agree that "new immigrants take jobs away from American workers." This is a widely held, if erroneous belief, among Americans. However, Julian L. Simon, author of The Economic Consequences of Immigration, states: immigration does not exacerbate unemployment...Immigrants not only take jobs, but also create them. Their purchases increase the demand for labor, leading to new hires roughly equal in number to the immigrant workers.

In the same Business Week poll, eighty-three percent of non-blacks and eighty-seven percent of blacks agree that "many new immigrants are very hard-working." The results of the poll may seem somewhat contradictory, but not necessarily negative. Those polled seem to be at least a little open-minded in their view of the quality of new immigrants. However, in order to overcome their distrust of foreigners, Americans must abandon their suspicions and recognize, as Simon has, that our lives are enhanced by immigrants creating, not taking, U.S. jobs.

A widely held belief among Americans against immigration is that foreigners "strain social service budgets." According to the same poll, sixty-two percent of non-blacks and fifty-nine percent of blacks agree "immigrants use more than their fair share of government services, such as welfare, medical care, and food stamps." This belief has its roots in the nineteenth- century, when "one of the first immigration laws was designed to exclude the entry of people likely to become a 'public Charge'," according to the CQ Researcher These beliefs are misguided and more than likely attributable to illegal immigration, which is not an issue on this topic. In actuality, immigrants are young and healthy when they arrive, and therefore, "do not receive expensive Social Security and other aid to the aged," according to Simon. In fact, Americans should be thankful for immigrants as they "contribute more to the public coffers in taxes than they draw out in welfare services" and put "about $2,500 into the pockets of natives" from excess taxes. They are, in fact, raising the quality of life of those dependant of the social services.

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