Student Essay on Immigration

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Immigration

Summary:   Immigrants actually do help the country out more. They do not take away jobs from the American born citizens, they do not benefit from the welfare act more then the Native born, which proves that they give more then they take. Any other cultures here in the continent try to learn English so they can have a better life while they are living here.

Chris Ta

4/27/06

T + Th 7:30

Dr. Stockings

Research Paper : Why Immigrants Should Have Better Immigration Process

All my life, my mother and father has told me how hard it has been to support our families in Vietnam. The economy from here to there is so horrible that we have to support them. We're always sending at least about a million in Vietnamese money which is equal to about a hundred in American money due to the currency between America and Vietnam. Because of these two reasons, I am in favor of having better immigration process for people who come outside the US.

Through out the US, there are many ignorant people out there. Who are only thinking about money and how to make money? While not thinking about how other races has affected our countries. Unknown to many people, they could trace back their families to see that they actually have multi-cultured ancestors. There are many signs in America proving the multicultural decent and how we have benefited from them. The signs of America's ethnic diversity can be discerned across the continent . . . Chinatown, Harlem, South Boston, the Lower East Side, places with Spanish names like Los Angeles and San Antonio or Indian names like Massachusetts and Iowa. Even back during the early years of American life, there was even many teachings from the multicultural. The "forty - Niners" of the Gold - Rush learned their techniques from the Mexicans. While the American Cowboys acquired their herding skills from Mexican vaqueros and adopted their range terms.

While immigrants have certainly left their cultural mark on American society, for most people, the issue of Immigrants comes down to dollars and cents. Let's take a look at specific complaints that have been made against immigrants. Again, research and statistics can always support both sides of the story, depending on how you use them.

"Immigrants take away jobs from native workers."

This is true in most cases when it comes down to the last penny. Many academics, including the most famous sociologist alive today, William Julius Wilson has proven the fact why many Immigrants work in such low paying jobs in the service sector. Namely because many Native - US born citizen just do not want them. In other words, there is a demand for their labor because low-income Blacks and Latinos frequently won't take those kinds of jobs. In fact, it is proven that Immigrants can actually generate more jobs. Given the fact that, they have revitalize the reproduction of garment manufacturing, shoe manufacturing and even agriculture. Because of all these immigrants taking over what the Native born Us would take, industries like these have actually been recovering from being shut down. Now with new departments and industries being opened, they create many new jobs for the middle range people allowing them to continue on with their own standard way of living (i.e. personal services, in hotels, restaurants, maintenance, cleaning, construction etc.).

"Immigrants abuse the welfare system."

Now another reason on why many people complain about there being too many immigrants would have to be on the welfare system. After many refugees entered America due to many disasters or even wars, only about 2.5 percent, had actually received public assistance. That's only compared to the 4.2 % of the native born. Refugees who actually came after into America after the year 1980 have a rate of 15%, which is understandable because they did not come here voluntarily and had little preparation and skills.

Now many supporters of the Immigrations argue about the welfare system because such a large portion of the recent immigrants are young. As they grow, they will eventually produce a significant benefit for the Social Security System. Statistically, because many of the elderly are growing older each year, the Social Security System will definitely need more works to help support these retirees. Immigrants will provide that help to these retirees for many years to come because they tend to be much younger than the US born workers.

Now many people should actually be very thankful because we have immigrants here in the US. If it wasn't for them, than the Social Security System would eventually become Bankrupt. Now because of the younger generation, that System is still moving and continuing. So this is another reason why immigrants are a must have.

Is There A Such Thing As A Definitive Answer

Right now, among the US, there is no positive answer whether or not immigrants receive more benefits than they contribute? Again this is a issue that is still going back and forth, only because that there is no positive answer due to that fact that everything is based on how we measure cost versus benefits. Some of the benefits that immigrants contribute, such as sale taxes and incomes are still very easily measured. But what about going into depth of subjective matters such as increased productivity and the profits for business that employ immigrants.

Now there is an argument about a process of helping businesses become successful, and how immigrants help create new jobs for the Native born workers. But the bad side to this argument is what should we consider as the cost of the immigrations? Even just thinking about adding a little bit more of a cost towards the education or other social services for the immigrants can become just a little bit more complicated to measure accurately. Then if immigrants take away the native born jobs, then the worker contributes less to the US overall taxes. Then to the third part, if immigrants can create new jobs, then the native born workers can contribute more. So many situation so little answers.

There was a study that estimated the overall contributions of the immigrants to be around ten billion dollars per year. While the whole US economy is valued in trillions of dollars, ten billion wouldn't sound all that much, but that's still a lot of money out of the pockets of the US continent. Now also there was a study that should also be noted that the benefits differed in three different areas. They are local, state and federals. With most of the taxes that are paid by the immigrants are collect, it practically all goes towards that federal level, while local and states levels reap less benefits from immigrants and can even experiences negative deviating impacts, especially since they are immediate points of providing most of the social and medical services to the immigrants.

Now because most immigrants clusters in a handful of states (ie. CA, NY, FL, etc), these states must bear disproportionate share of the costs. From what researchers generally find on a particular geographic area, they don't take jobs away from Blacks because immigrants tend to work in different types of jobs. Now either jobs that blacks don't want at the low end or not specially qualified for the higher end. There are some exceptions to all this through, and many immigrants do compete directly against native born workers. Vietnamese refugees are competing with whites in the shrimp industry is the earliest example, which caused a situation that lead to the anti - Asian incidents.

Although all this research is mixed, it sounds like about more then half of it, generally conclude that the immigrants offer more benefits then they receive. There is actual evidence that show immigrants namely Asian immigrants, can improve the wages and employment rates for skilled native workers by revitalizing dying industries. Again, back into the studies, study show that immigrants may slightly lower the wages of an unskilled native born black or Latino workers. Asian Immigrants don't exactly take jobs away from blacks but they do then to lower the wages.

A Second language

Here's the thing, there has been many disagreements and arguments over the fact that, should immigrants consider the fact about learning English. And the answer is Yes, research shows that with the first generation the fluency of English is extremely difficult to learn but becoming with the second generation about 95% is completely fluent in English.

Now with the process with the multicultural division, there had been many efforts to make English the official language in a city, county, state, or even through out the continent. Although the Official English campaigns complains that English should be the main language due to the fact that it could encourage the common culture. Many Official English provision prohibits bilingualism classes and prevents many governments from printing official documents and materials in any other form of language.

So now you can completely understand why there should be better immigration processes. Immigrants actually do help the country out more. They do not take away jobs from the American born citizens, they do not benefit from the welfare act more then the Native born, which proves that they give more then they take. Any other cultures here in the continent try to learn English so they can have a better life while they are living here. Immigrants are a big help in these times. So let them come, and let them stay. We're only benefiting from what they do.