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Immigrants And Multi Generational Citizens Essay

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Introduction
Immigration is one of the central themes of the founding of the United States and as such it is often the epicenter of controversy among both citizens and policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, American citizens and policymakers have brought to the forefront the importance of immigration and the role immigrants play within society. This can be a cause of friction between immigrants and multi-generational citizens because immigrants are often viewed with a negative connotation. They are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking citizens, draining the healthcare system and adding to the homeless population. They are associated with crime, poverty and in general they are perceived as undesirable members of society (Spenkuch, 2014). The relationship between crime and immigrants is of particular importance because there is a common perception that immigrants cause crime and their neighborhoods are riddled with criminal activity. Also important to note is that the characteristics of immigrants tend to coincide with members of the native-born population that are disproportionally incarceration. In general, they are poorly educated, earn low wages and are young, males. This led to the perception that incoming immigrants continuously add to the lower class, criminal population. In order to clearly understand the relationship between the two concepts they must be examined both from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint
Empirical Data
Historically,

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