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Abolish Immigration Essay

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But should European states even try to stop economic migration? Europe’s population is set to decline over the next 50 years. Italy will lose 28% of its population by 2050. In order to maintain its working age population, Italy would need to start importing more than 350,000 immigrants per year or, alternatively, keep its citizens working until they are 75.

The US (population 275m) has tended to take only small numbers of asylum-seekers – fewer than Europe, relative to its population. But it has a more liberal immigration regime. By the late 1990s, the US was taking in about 1m immigrants a year: 730,000 legal immigrants, 200,000 illegal aliens and about 100,000 refugees. About 70% of legal immigrants are admitted for the purposes of family reunification.

The in-flows of migrants during the 1980s and 1990s – the second great migration of the 20th century – has literally changed the face of America. In 1970 the US population was 5% Hispanic, 1% Asian and 12% black. A recent projection indicates that by 2050, it will be 26% Hispanic, 8% Asian and 14% black. …show more content…

Immigrants contribute to innovation – witness the number of foreigners in Silicon Valley. And they do jobs that native workers refuse, such as sustaining Californian agriculture. But in his new book, Heaven’s Door, Harvard economist George Borjas claims that the economic benefits brought by the latest 20-year wave of immigrants are more disputable. He points to the fall-off in skills relative to those who emigrated to the US in the 1950s and 1960s. He argues that America should admit only 500,000 immigrants per year, and select the most highly skilled. These are criteria which, he acknowledges, would have prevented him, a refugee from Cuba, from immigrating in the early

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