The Pros and Cons of Illegal Immigration in the USA

No one wants to leave their country, but war, famine, and employment can cause people to migrate to find a peaceful place to stay. More than a million undocumented immigrants migrate to America every year searching for jobs and safe places for their families to stay, Because of this, every undocumented immigrant in America should be granted citizenship. The U.S government should allow the immigrants who are here illegally to become U.S citizens. Many of the undocumented immigrants do their best to assimilate, pay their taxes, and contribute to American traditions and culture. Their contributions to our country have done so much for the people, we should be honored to have them.

“Wal-Mart had an outside cleaning company that had hired illegal immigrants that would sweep their stores and perform other cleaning activities for the night shift” ("Illegal Immigration Facts & Statistics”). Since legal immigrants are taking citizens’ jobs, the unemployment rate is higher for U.S. born citizens rather than immigrants. "There are approximately 7.7 million illegal aliens employed in U.S. jobs in 2008" ("Illegal Immigration Facts & Statistics”). One reason why non-citizens of the U.S. are working is because many employers consider them to be cheap labor which saves the employers money. An example of cheap labor I experienced was while working at a pizza restaurant. The owner of the restaurant liked to hire sixteen or seventeen-year old Mexicans that he would make work every day except Sunday from ten in the morning until nine at night. I know that the Mexicans were being paid only one-hundred dollars a week for working sixty-six hours. When I quit the restaurant, he only had one Mexican and one Venezuelan working for him as cheap laborers. Like him, self-owned managers prefer immigrants over American citizens because that saves them money. Having an effective border patrol not only gives more jobs to American citizens, but it also helps to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.

A common biased opinion on immigration is that immigrants coming to the United States are taking American jobs. According to the Immigration Policy Center, “research indicates there is little connection between immigrant labor and unemployment rates of native-born workers.” The jobs that immigrants are taking are the low-budget jobs that Americans do not want. They not only get less pay, but also less benefits in comparison to American workers. In fact, according to Forbes, “illegal immigrants actually raise wages for documented/native workers.” America is considered to be more productive when we have more trading partners, Undocumented workers with limited English skills allows more American workers

Contrary to what Americans believe, immigrants are not taking jobs away from Americans. In Immigration News: New Study Declares Immigration to be a Plus, it states that "Immigration benefits the American economy and overall and has little negative effect on the income and job opportunities of most native-born U.S. citizens." When you look at shops or restaurants in California, Texas, or New York, who do you notice that's running most of those shops and restaurants? Immigrants, whether they're Mexican, Asian, or Natives. Instead of taking away jobs, they create jobs by opening businesses. They spend their income on American goods, and pay taxes; this

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.

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.

There are more than 10 million illegal immigrants living in the United Sates, and each day that number is increasing by 1,400 illegal aliens. An illegal immigrant is a foreigner who either illegally crossed an international political border, whether it was by land, sea or air, or whether it be a foreigner who legally entered a country but nevertheless overstayed their visa in order to live and/or work there. The two focal attractions that the illegal immigrants perceive in the U.S are superior job opportunities, and better living for their families. Several businesses in our Nation are eager to hire cheap, submissive manual labor from overseas. Such businesses are hardly ever penalized due to

Illegal immigration is a big problem in the United States. One of the big problems is lost jobs. Millions of American citizens are out of jobs because of foreclosure caused by illegal immigrants. Jobs that are less alluring are being taken over by illegal immigrants. So the Americans who would take these jobs to provide for their families now can't.

One of the main points of rhetoric used when trying to show how undocumented immigrants are bad for Americans is that they are taking our jobs. This for the most part is false, in fact undocumented immigrants actually have raised wages for people working skilled jobs by more than 10 percent. This happens because they can be more productive because of the help they get doing the non-skilled work they used to do. The only people who are negatively affected by undocumented immigrants are adults who do not have a high school education. They have seen a decrease in wages between 0.4 and 7.7 percent (Davidson). While there has been a slight decrease in wages for non-high school this does not necessarily mean that they are taking our jobs. There have been many studies looking into whether or not the jobs that a majority of

According to Flow Psychology “Even if amnesty were to be implemented, immigrants still require assistance from the government’s welfare programs, adding up to trillions of dollars over the course of their life”(8 Pros and Cons of Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants). The more illegal immigrants join the U.S the more U.S funds are going to be drained. Immigrants need to come legally and have some sort of education to help stop the U.S spending. The law clearly states that if you didn't come legally you would be sent back. According to Crystal Lombardo “ They base their opinion solidly on the fact these people entered illegally, thus violating the law, and should therefore be not allowed to stay longer“(VisionLauch). Illegal immigrants don’t have the right to stay because they chose to break the law. The U.S made it a law for a reason and it is to control the population and keep Americans safe. This point of view sounds persuasive at first because it talks about key problems with illegal immigration. They failed to consider the pros to illegal immigration such as diversity in certain areas, and forgot to mention that they only take low paying jobs that Americans don’t want and aren't here to steal American jobs. They are here for the same reason that everyone else is here for a new life, freedom, and to become an American. Illegal immigrants deserve the same thing as Americans do equal

Security is a big problem to many people, they will be happy to know that immigrants aren’t criminals, in fact they are less likely to commit a crime than someone born in the United States. Research shows that immigrant men around the ages 18-49 are one fifth to one half as likely to be imprisoned than Americans (Pérez-Peña). This illustrates how twisted our view is on immigrants, media has pinned immigrants as dirty criminals. With President Trump in office, his single sided view on immigrants only makes things worse. Not only are immigrants law-abiding, they also take up arms and protect our nation; around 8,000 noncitizens join the military each year (Powers). These patriots will lay down their life for America and Americans still persecute them, this is unacceptable. Lastly, the logistics of coming to the United States after a long journey and a fruitless life only to be incarcerated doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, study shows that even illegal immigrants pay their taxes when they could easily get away with it. "Undocumented immigrants are trying to abide by the law and are fulfilling their civic and financial responsibilities." Say’s Magaña-Salgado, filing their taxes and abiding the law helps them in judicial cases (Blanco). The

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

In summary, data shows that immigrants are not out to steal jobs from American workers or lower wages. Immigrants come into America to fill jobs that are available, or attempt to establish their own businesses. By maintaining strict immigration policies the United States is also preventing its growth. We should be aware that immigrants do provide many benefits to our country, and that our immigration policies are in need of improvements that will allow immigrants and our country to reap the full benefits of our immigration system.

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.

Illegal immigration is a major problem which most of the developed countries face in the current economy, and it has been major political problem for the political parties in America (republicans and democrats) and over years each party has a different agenda to discuss the problem. Illegal immigration can be defined as a movement of people from a source country to the destination country without any legal documents and violates destination countries immigration laws. People have moved across lands over years to escape a war situation or to get better facilities in a different country. Countries have defined immigration laws to restrict people to enter their land without proper documentation as illegal immigration social and time