Illegal Immigrants Do NOT Benefit The United States

California is one of the largest agricultural centers of the world, has many farms with different crops that feeds more than half of the United States. When it comes down to the labor on these farms, looking closely we find that the people on these farms are illegal immigrants who are picking and packing all the fruits and vegetables that are sold in the supermarkets. In a New York Times article written by Dean Murphy, back in 2004, in California alone, there is an, estimated 8 million to 10 million illegal immigrants. The supply and demand that farmers have to meet here in the United States is higher than anywhere else in the world, and without the access to skilled workers that happen to be illegal immigrants, farmers would lose out on

Throughout the years there has been and increasing number of illegal immigrants in this country. Just recently Obama took executive action to shield illegal immigrants from deportation. A Texas Judge though blocked his executive action on immigration. Illegal immigration is a huge controversy here in the United States partly due to Americans thinking that illegal immigrates are taking jobs, causing lower wages, and the costs of education. In Immigration and the American Worker, George Borjas found that the presence of immigrant workers, whether they are legal or illegal, made the U.S economy about 11 percent larger each year. If overall the U.S economy is better off with illegal immigrant workers, then why is there a push for harsher immigration policies? The controversy is due to the fact that the impact of illegal immigration changes from state to state. I hypothesize that the problem is the distribution of illegal immigrants across the United States. I believe that the benefits outweigh the costs and that because of the distribution of illegal immigrants, the costs are only felt by a few. By granting amnesty to the undocumented workers we could increase the level of tax payers and better the lives of those who feel the costs of illegal immigrants the most. I will test this hypothesis out by looking at the impact illegal immigrant on the labor market, the cost of illegal immigration, cost of ant-immigrant policies, impact of legalization, and impact of amnesty.

There is question on whether or not the immigrants will help or hurt the economy. Some say immigrants will take jobs from Americans and damper U.S. tax rolls because they aren’t as skilled or educated. The fact is immigrants actually increase “overall wages and the pool of jobs” and add to the U.S. revenue (Dwoskin). In 2006 there was a suspected “21 million immigrants, about 15 percent of the labor force, [that] h[e]ld jobs in the U.S.” However, the U.S. only had about seven million unemployed. “So the majority of immigrants can't literally have "taken" jobs; they must be doing jobs that wouldn't have existed had the immigrants not been here,” (Lowenstein). Roger Lowenstein also presents a valid and insightful point in stating that immigrants who take these jobs that “wouldn’t have existed”, relative prices could be lowered in a similar way that global trade does.

But amazingly, the flow of foreign-born is so large that immigrants currently account for a larger share of labor force growth than natives (“U.S. Immigration and Economic Growth: Putting Policy on Hold”, 2003) When you do the math, it makes a good deal of sense to spend the little that we do—if not more—to keep them healthy (Karvounis, 2007). Care for undocumented immigrants represents a tiny fraction of the nation’s health care burden. They receive minimal care; some pay taxes. Between one half and three quarters of undocumented immigrants pay taxes and some work “off the books” jobs as well (What Immigration Reform Could Mean To The US Economy, 2009). Illegal aliens provide as much as 7 billion dollars a year to the Social Security Fund although they cannot claim benefits for this program (Immigrants’ Economic Contribution, 2009). Further still, undocumented workers pay sales taxes where applicable and property taxes—directly if they own and indirectly if they rent (“Undocumented Immigrants as Taxpayers”, 2007).

In the late 1800’s European, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants traveled To the United States. The Europeans came looking for opportunities while Japanese were recruited from Hawaiian planters as for the Chinese immigrants they came for many reasons some were attracted to the gold rush, while the others came to work for the railroads, farmed or became domestic servants. While immigration and urbanization was beginning to unfold they began creating social, political, and economic problems. These problems made life hard for immigrants but one race that seemed to be affected was the Chinese not only was it because they became successful but also because they increased in a big amount and as technology started improving labor was not needed as much. Chinese arrived between 1851-1882, 300,000 Chinese arrived on the west coast When the Chinese immigrants first came to work in the gold mines , agriculture , and railroads the Chinese were very instrumental in building railroads and at the time Chinese immigrants started to grow successful but as they increased so did the strength of anti-Chinese sentiment among other workers wanting to limit the amount of Chinese immigrants.

The US labor force would not survive if it was not for illegal immigrants. If there were no illegal immigrants our labor force would decrease by four percent (Isidore 5). “We could not have grown as much as we did in the 1990s if we did not have immigrants… our growth would have been slower (Isidore 5).” Having illegal immigrants in our labor force increases the amount of resources we have, which increases the amount of production in the country. “Some economists discuss that not only do U.S. consumers benefit from lower prices as an outcome of the low wages most immigrants are paid, but that the convenience of lower-wage labor helps create more work for higher-skilled, higher-paid workers who are generally born in the US (Isidore 14).” Illegal immigrants are opening up higher wage jobs, because they take over the lower wage jobs. Many immigrants take jobs in the field of construction, agriculture

The agricultural industry in the United States accounts for 4% of the economy. Without the illegal immigrants, there wouldn’t be any industrial crop trade, which means people wouldn’t be able to purchase vegetables at supermarkets. In terms of overall numbers, The Department of Labor reports that of the 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., over half (53 percent) are illegal immigrants. Growers and labor unions put this figure at 70 percent. Research by UCLA Professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda shows that legalizing our nation’s undocumented immigrant population and reforming our legal immigration system would add a cumulative $1.5 trillion to U.S. GDP over a decade. Undocumented immigrants also pay taxes, although they pay 37% less than the average American citizen, they contribute to the US

Illegal immigrants are helping America with its booming economy and improving it. In the U.S. there are many people, but with immigrants there are even more. The more people there are the more things people buy. Also, “Immigrants pay about 424.7 million in state revenues” (Davidson). Next, “Recent immigrants create a net surplus to the public sector of nearly $30 billion annually according to Urban Institute” (Haerens 29). There are many more taxes illegal

There are approximately 3.7 million unlawful immigrant households in the U.S. These households impose a net fiscal burden of around $54.5 billion per year (Richwine). The severity of illegal immigrants is visible when realizing the average illegal household collects around $24,721 in government benefits and only contributes $10,334, leaving a $14,387 deficit. This is detrimental to the US economy for several reasons. When millions of of uneducated, un-americanized immigrants come into the US they are not equipped to succeed due to their lack of education. Nor are they equipped with the proper salary to raise children.

Immigration could be potentially beneficial to the U.S. Economy. There are many reasons as to why it could be beneficial. There is information that leads to immigration being beneficial because it increases labor force productivity, non-natives take jobs that native born people do not want, and that immigration has a positive effect on GDP and long-run fiscal impact. To start, foreign-born workers account for a large part of the labor force. The current US labor force is composed of about 160 million people (Cite BLS here). Immigrants account for 15% of that, (Cite White House Article Here), which is about 24 million people. Not only do the immigrants account for a decent section of the labor force, but they account for a large part of the

Another benefit is the national debt will not go up because we will not be caring for these people. All the money we could save by wiping out the immigrant population sounds great. We could even be debt free and not be trillions of dollars in debt and politicians can be better than they were before and not looking out for themselves. There would not be a burden on the actual citizens because taxes could go down and jobs could be created. All of this can make our economy great

“With Asian and African undocumented communities comprising nearly 20 percent of the undocumented population” (Cho). Many people think that deporting Immigrants would make the United States a better place. Deporting Immigrants out of the United States would not only cost a lot of money, it would also cause a lot of casualties like reducing the population. People say that Immigrants are bad for the economy because they could only bring trouble to the United States. In reality Immigrants don’t do anything but working hard to provide food for their family and themselves. Many Immigrants are getting deported each day by the government. Imagine how our lives would be without a single Immigrant someday. We would not live without Immigrants because

You may be asking yourself how do immigrants hurt the U.S economy if they are working and paying taxes? The sad fact is that most immigrants do not pay taxes, instead they get paid so little the most paychecks are under the table, which means no taxes are being taken out. Most of the money that they make they send back to their home country, which means less money in circulation in the U.S economy. The U.S economy is already suffering enough, the gross US federal government debt is estimated to be $19.5 trillion, according to the FY18 Federal Budget. We as U.S citizens are obligated to pay off that debt and we need every job to do so. We the people of the United states will need to pay about $73,000 to pay off that debt, and there is no room for

There is an increasing number of undocumented immigrants, but field agents and census takers are unable to obtain a semi-accurate count of how many undocumented immigrants actually exist in the United States. These immigrants often hide from government officials in order to avoid being caught, and subsequently being deported back to their home country. As they are also migrant workers and constantly move around the state from farm to farm, it is also difficult to try and formulate a number of how many illegal or undocumented immigrants reside in the state of California. (Immigrant and Migrant workers in the Santa Maria Valley, California 2) Therefore, it is difficult to estimate how many jobs the undocumented migrant workers have taken from legal citizens that are looking for work within California’s agricultural sector.

Illegal immigration can be a double-edged sword. One side is that local economies are supported by the undocumented workers and the other side disadvantages the state with unpaid taxes by the workers and their employers. Both are pro et contra (for and against) arguments of unlawful immigration in the U.S., however without immigrants can the U.S. economy survive? Basically, it cannot. Yes, immigrants take the work others do not want for little pay, leaving fewer jobs for those who also demand higher salaries but depriving the U.S of those workers may leave farms with unpicked produce that never feed our communities. Without the immigrant workforce a large percentage of American economic life would be impacted, hurting the few largely immigrant populated states of Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas first, but then the ripple would reach all of U.S. The impact estimates could be horrendous. Then lastly, most importantly everyone deserves equal rights as humans, whether legal or illegal.