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America Needs Mass-immigration

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It is no secret that the United States’ economy has seen a massive drop within the last ten years. One of many facts that support this claim is that the United States’ GDP accounted for about 32% of the world’s economic activity in 2001, but has dropped to a very meager 21.6% in 2011 – just ten years later (Snyder, 2013). Also, as the nation’s debt continues to rise, all lawmakers in Washington, DC can do is point fingers at one another and claim their methods for fixing our economy are the best, while unconsciously refusing to listen to what the other group has to say. What they are unable to do is realize that there is a workforce of eleven million hard-working and eager people who have already assimilated into our population, with many …show more content…

The average income of a currently legal immigrant is $43,739 compared to the average native income of $50,293. While a $7,000 dollar difference doesn’t seem like much, consider this: of those same households, immigrants average 3.14 members per home while natives average 2.4 members per home (Camarota). So, immigrants have less money to pay for more people, thus making them more susceptible to joining social services. Now that we can see how immigration reform is such a complex problem, let’s look at the best way to fix it. A Nation of Immigrants, John F. Kennedy’s last book’s title, describes our first point well. Kennedy knew the importance that immigrants played in our nation’s history. He speaks of the different “waves” of immigration and their respective contributions to society. Immigrants, in Kennedy’s eyes, are not the menacing and threatening population that some proclaim them to be, but rather are a population who come here in search of freedom and economic opportunity that may not be afforded to them in their countries of origin. The Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, and other European groups that came in great waves during the later 19th and early 20th centuries each influenced the areas they moved to. They too, like the newest wave of Central Americans and Mexicans coming today, were largely poor and unskilled. The Irish, who came mostly in the years between 1820 and 1920, offered some 4.5

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