Illegal Immigrants: A Shortage Of Labor

One common misconception among native-born Americans is that with a virtually unlimited supply of “outsiders” willing to do a job for less than the native who is currently doing that same job, the value of the low-skilled work force is decreased as a whole. This, in turn, leads to the belief that immigrants are depressing the wages of that working class. However, over the last twenty years, numerous studies have been conducted in order to find out if this is true or not and in most cases the findings indicate that, “Immigration seems to have no effects on the wages or employment of white natives and very slight, if any, negative effects on the wages and employment of native blacks.” (Waldinger, David, Lichter 19)

Employers are able to make money because production is fast and cheap for them. The Pew Hispanic Center concluded in 2001 classified an estimated 5.3 million workers in the U.S. as unauthorized workers in the labor force. These jobs include 700,000 restaurant workers, 250,000 household workers, and 620,000 construction workers (Murphy). This is a whole lot of cheap labor, and without it the U.S. would suffer. If 620,000 construction workers were gone, home improvement projects across the nation would quickly be hard to find. With a large number of these immigrants also earning wages working on farms, Americans would find much of their produce rotting in fields due to the lack of workers (Murphy 2). The positive effect of these immigrants on the nation’s labor force is well supported by Americans; however, the opinion of those rejecting these workers is accepted and taken into account as well.

Joe Messerli published an article that addressed the positive and negative effects immigrants have on the U.S. Obviously, having a larger population causes there to be greater competition to obtain work, however, the majority of the positions obtained by illegal immigrants are those that are undesired by Americans; low-skilled, low-paying, labor-intensive jobs (Messerli 2). Illegal immigrants pursue careers like dishwashers, landscapers, field workers, housekeepers, and food-processing plant workers. Very few Americans have the desire to obtain these jobs, whereas, illegal immigrants fill those positions gladly and do so at decreased wages. They also stay employed in those positions for many years, normally without the possibility of promotion. Americans however, only remain in such low-skilled, low-paying jobs for a short time, seeking to advance to higher paying positions.

The NCSES report found that immigrant scientists and engineers were more likely to earn post—baccalaureate degrees than their US-born counterparts.

In this paper the topic of immigrant labor is that people from around the world have long immigrated to the United States seeking employment opportunities to have a better life style, but while the U.S. economy has benefited by the talents and energy of migrants and immigrants there have also been concerns. According to Immigrant Labor (2015),

Not a long time ago, I came across an article in The Washington Post about a recent law introduced in Arizona in September 2012. According to the article, this new law obliges police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. The article includes a report by the National Immigration Law Center, in which specialists agree that such policies create an “environment of racial profiling.” The idea that you can have your documents checked just because you may look or sound foreign is really controversial.

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.

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

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.

A debate that always seems to raise its ugly head when the issue of "foreign labor" is discussed concerns the types of jobs that immigrants take and whether they are actually taking these jobs away from American workers. I look at it as jobs they are "left with", not ones they are taking. The debate always shows an American family that has been displaced or lost their livelihood because they can no longer compete with cheaper labor. In reality the jobs that the immigrants get are the most undesirable, strenuous and dangerous ones. The only American workers that they compete with are the unskilled ones. I intend to explore if immigrants "taking" American jobs, if they are only taking the jobs that

In the United States of America there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the U.S. Many industries depend heavily on immigrant labor , legal and illegal, to achieve productivity. The construction industry, nationally , employ at a fast rate about 1,000,000 illegal immigrants; almost one in five illegal immigrants work major industries. (Passel,2006). Immigrant reform will undoubtedly reduce the supply of illegal immigrant by encouraging enforcement of current laws by creating new legislation with harsher penalties for illegal immigration. The enforcement of the new laws will allow for industries to allow employers to recruit and hire foreign born workers only with signs of identification. However for the industries

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

As the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States begins to increase once more, the issue of allowing or prohibiting immigrants to gain temporary status in order to obtain work continues to create national problems. According to a report given by the Department of Homeland Security, it is estimated that the number of immigrants entering the U.S. is at about 1.1 million people per year. (Hanson Par. 1) These individuals come into the United States in search of better living conditions and opportunities. However, these immigrants face challenges when it comes to work and other types of living.

Grow, as well as his co-writers Adrienne Carter, Roger Crockett, and Geri Smith, make a compelling, fact-supported argument for the importance of illegal immigrants on certain sectors of the workforce. They state that “a wholesale expulsion [of illegal immigrants] would be crippling” (51). As proof, they