Illegal Immigrants: A Shortage Of Labor

Our economy is dependent on immigration labor now and in the future, the labor force will increasingly depend on immigrants and their children. This is a reason why it’s so important for immigrants to have permissions and papers like the ones that make them available to work. They need working papers to help businesses, contribute to the economy and to maintain themselves.

There has been a long standing debate that Immigrants are taking jobs away from the American people. Immigrants do not have to pay taxes, they get all the overtime and send all their money home instead of boosting our economy. These are some of the misconceptions that are backing the theory that immigrants are taking our jobs. The most astonishing amount of people being affected by immigration includes the poor, and uneducated; as well as the need to fix an immigration system, that is weak.

Employment of illegal immigrants in the United States, as well as other countries has been a highly controversial subject for many years now. There are many people living in various countries around the world that are unhappy with the way they are living, and want something more out of life than what their country can offer. Due to their unhappiness, they decide to immigrate to another country, and this is usually done illegally. Once they are in their preferred country, which a lot of the time is the United States, they are forced to work in low skilled jobs because higher skilled jobs require people to speak fluent English and show proof of residency. Although many people view illegal migrants as a

Third World immigration into the U.S. has not produced a highly skilled labor force, as the above statistics show. Instead, the U.S. labor pool has become flooded with low level, menial laborers, whose desperation for work of any sort has undercut the wages paid at the lower end of the labor market, which in turn made it more difficult for native born American citizens to escape poverty. An estimated 1,880,000 American workers are displaced from their jobs every year by immigration. The cost for providing welfare and assistance to these Americans is over $15 billion a year. (Associated Press, 1997)

Another fiscal problem immigration is the decreases in wages. When examining the issue,immigrants are more likely to willingly accept decrease wages which in turn allow businesses to favor immigrants. In a report “Immigration, Poverty, and Low Wage Earners, Mathew Graham, a second year PhD student in American Politics and Political Economy, who primarily focuses on immigration policy states that, “The reality is that immigrants and natives compete for the same jobs and native workers are increasingly at a disadvantage because employers have access to a steady supply of low-wage foreign workers.” Such labor disrupts the flow of other workers in certain industries displacing American workers and decreasing the average wages for the average work force. These industries include food preparation, building and ground maintenance, construction and other unskilled labor that requires little to no education. Illegal immigrants are the least educated “with nearly 75 percent having

According to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started 25 percent of public U.S. companies that were backed by venture capital investors. This list includes Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. According to the Small Business Administration, immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a business in the United States than non-immigrants, and 18 percent of all small business owners in the United States are immigrants. Increased immigration to the United States has increased the earnings of Americans with more than a high school degree. Between 1990 and 2004, increased immigration was correlated with increasing earnings of Americans by 0.7 percent and is expected to contribute to an increase of 1.8 percent over the long-term, according to a study by the University of California at Davis. According to the Census Bureau, despite making up only 16 percent of the resident population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, immigrants represent 33 percent of engineers, 27 percent of mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientist, and 24 percent of physical scientists. Additionally, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy, in 2011, foreign-born inventors were credited with contributing to more than 75 percent of patents issued to the top 10 patent-producing universities. Comprehensive immigration reform could support and create up

In Let’s Make America Smart Again, the speaker emphasizes the importance of immigrant scientists. For example, Einstein was of Jewish descent and his impact on science is tremendous because he came up with theory of relativity. Some of the other famous people mentioned was Steve Jobs, whose father is from Syria. All of these people were mentioned because they contributed to the scientific advancements of Americans.

In Ohio alone 83,000 people reside as illegals and approximately 50,000 have lived in the US over five years. As illegal immigrants, their options for jobs are severely limited because of having to stay undercover for fear of deportation, hindering their ability to get good jobs as most jobs available to the unauthorized job seekers are entry level jobs that businesses either have a hard time filling with the American people or the return on investment is better using illegal immigrant labor because they can cheaply hire these workers. An article from the Bloomberg View, provides an example of the pressure American employers face

are the effects of globalization and immigration on the nation’s economy. Globalization is speeding up and the discussion on whether movements like outsourcing will wear down U.S. competitiveness or provide long-term improvement continues to carry on. Many are misconstruing the positive impact immigrants are having on this country because there is this looming misunderstanding that immigrants are stealing American jobs. But there are countless numbers of skilled immigrants who are in our country legally and are actually creating jobs rather than stealing them. The goal of the data provided in this document is to prove the economic and intellectual contributions of skilled immigrants at a nationwide level. Saxenian provides numerous evidence of the economic impact skilled immigrants are having through data provided by a sample of all engineering and technology companies founded in the last ten

In 2011 the Migration Policy estimated around 2.6 million people were undocumented workers; the retail trade employed about 920,000, construction 910,000, agriculture 540,000, and manufacturing 520,000 (Francis Wilkinson, March 12, 2014). With these numbers that means that there is at least one undocumented worker per 6 million workers in the U.S. Most of these undocumented workers are illegal immigrants coming to the U.S to better their future and gain better opportunities, as for the companies, they like to hire illegal immigrants because they can usually get away with paying them less than they would have to with a U.S citizen because they aren’t documented. This became illegal in 1986, but employers still

Unauthorized Immigrant Workforce Stable After the Great Recession” by Pew Research center addresses the reasons behind the decline and stabilization of the unauthorized immigrant workforce. Through the use of statistics and data the author proves his claims. Passel does this to show the decrease of the immigrant workforce in the U.S after the recession. Passel writes,” Compared with their sizes at the start of the recession in 2007, the unauthorized immigrant workforce was slightly smaller in 2014 and the overall unauthorized immigrant population was markedly smaller”(Passel). This article helps to show the current size and rates of growth for the Unauthorized Migrant workforce in the U.S and the effects it has on the economy and the labor force. This article only highlights one of the many effects the Undocumented Migrants have on the

The Illegal immigrant population in the United States is a controversial and key immigration issue. Our Author John Savant (2009) talks about illegal immigrants in his article “Imaging the Immigrant: Why legality must give way to humanity”. He is a professor of English at Dominican University of California. Illegal immigrants immigrate in search of a better life. On the other side author Lamar Smith (2014) talks about legalization of illegal immigrant in his article “ Should illegal immigrants be legalized”? Rep. Lamar Smith is the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and its Immigration Subcommittee. Illegal immigrants cause people of America to become the victim of unemployment. Illegal immigrants are a problem that affects all Americans, take away jobs from citizens, increase crime rate, and should not be legalized.

An updated immigration bill, will be introduced by a group of cross-party senators, that will make an immense difference to non-immigrants requesting authorization to work in the United States under H-1B visa category (Issues in Science and Technology, 2006). The H-1B debate takes on a symbolic importance because it reveals conflicts and concerns with issues within America about unemployment and extending US control and opportunity. One may ask, “Why do we have immigration when unemployment is high?” Is there justification for immigration during an economic downturn and high unemployment? What is the legal risk for discrimination for US employees losing jobs to foreign workers?

Immigration is one hot topic in today’s conversation and society. Many think that immigrants coming to America are taking many jobs away from who need them. Some also think that there are jobs being taken away are not ones that Americans would not perform due to the horrible working conditions, low pay, and lack of important medical coverage. The immigration issue has come to a point where the United States must make a decision to spend a lot of money to curtail the amount of immigrants coming here.

Over the past two decades the number of low-skilled workers in the United States has increased because of immigration, both legal and illegal. (Chiswick, 2006)