Economic Impacts of Immigrants in the United States

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Steven Camarota, a senior researcher at Center for Immigration studies, might question my claim and argue that Americans are losing jobs within the labor market because incoming immigrants are taking jobs that American-born citizens should have. The research of Rakesh Kochlar from Guardian has found that 33% of incoming immigrants are uneducated, or high school dropouts that do not have any skills to work (Kochlar). Since immigrants do not have much qualified skills, they are likely to work in the field that does not require any educational background such as agriculture, construction, and etc. Because immigrants with poor background are starting to concentrate in low skill sectors, American born citizens with little education looking for jobs in the low skill now have to compete with immigrants for jobs in the labor market.

However, both Kochlar and Camarota are not interpreting the data in the bigger picture. During panel discussion, Shika Dalmia stated that jobs that immigrants have are unwanted jobs that American-born citizens do not want. Contrast to the claim that immigrants are taking jobs of American natives, most immigrants are working in the field that unemployed American citizens do not desire because of its intense physical work and lower pay. Immigrants in the low skill sector are willing to work in the field that offers lower earning, which Americans are not interested. For example, in the report of Congressional Budget Office, it has been found that 60.8% of the workers on the agricultural field are immigrants (CBO 18). Report stated that field like agriculture has high percentage of immigrant workers because it is not paying enough that American would work for. Stating that immigrants are taking jobs of American born citizen is irrelevant since each of them desire jobs in different field.

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According to U.S census (Figure 2), Immigrants are making up 13% of the population in the United States, but serve 16% of the labor force. If all immigrant workers are removed from the workforce, a number of industries would face substantial shortages of workers, and Americans would have to be induced into the labor pool or provided incentives to take jobs far below their current education and skill levels. It is critical to acknowledge that immigrant workers are taking big roles in our economy. Thus, immigrants are boosting the economy of the U.S through adding productivity in the consumer market and contributing in the labor market.

Conclusion

Immigration is a bittersweet issue in terms of economic issues. Immigrants benefit U.S economy through supplying unfulfilled productivity and adding innovations and new thoughts to educated field. Immigrants may hurt the economy through exploiting government aid and taking away job opportunities for uneducated natives.

In this age of globalization, The United States has a distinct advantage over other developed countries in that adaptable labor markets and creativity and influx of ideas and innovation that migration of worker bring. Amount of benefit that synergy of American natives and immigrants bring is so immense that it cannot be statistically shown. It is evident that benefits of having immigrants working in our country are more than the cost of having them in this country, as shown through statistical data shown above. This nation was able to become an individual country by integration of immigrants from different country. Now, United States has faced another obstacle debating whether this country should have newcomers from foreign countries. Allowing immigrants who are willing to work hard for a better life to work in the United States will revitalize the idea of American Dream, while promoting national and economic interest of the United States at the same time.

Work Cited

Boudreaux, Ronald J. “Immigration Benefits the Economy.” Immigration. Ed. David M. Haugen, Susan Musser, and Kacy Lovelace. Farmington Hills: Opposing ViewPoints, 2009. 22-29. Print.

Camarota, Steven A. “The Fiscal and Economic Impact of Immigration on the

United States.” Center for Immigration Studies. N.p., 13 May 2013. Web.

Dalmia, Shika. “Taking our jobs” or “Building our economy?” University of

Rochester. Rochester, NY. March 18 2015. Panel Discussion.

“Estimates of the Contribution to U.S GDP” BBVA CPS Research. 2011.

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“Immigrants are growing part of the labor force.” U.S decennial Census. 2010.

JPEG File.

Kochlar, Rakesh. “Does Immigration Hurt U.S Workers? Guardian U.K

(2006):n.d. page. Print.

Lawrence, Natasha. “The Economics of Commonsense Immigration Reform.”

The Economic Report of the President 2013 (n.d): n. pag. White House, Sept.

2013. Web.

Murray, Bruce. “Examining the Economic Impacts of

Immigration.”Analysisonline. The Communication Institution. n.d. Web.

Thompson, Art. “Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy.” Immigration. Ed. David M. Haugen, Susan Musser, and Kacy Lovelace. Farmington Hills:

Opposing ViewPoints, 2009. 30-37. Print.

"The Role of Immigrants in the U.S Labor Market." CBO (2005): 1-14.

Congressional Budget Office, Nov. 2005. Web.

Final Self-Assessment

I have to say that the major strength of this paper is the representation of ongoing debate on immigration issue. I demonstrated my views clearly that immigrant workers are helping the growth of the economy through two reasoning with the response of the counterargument. The weakness of this paper is the broadness of this topic. No matter how many times I specify which immigrants I am talking about, readers can possibly question about broadness of this topic. Reading examples of other research paper really helped me, since it gave me the sense of idea of how I should construct the structure of my research paper. Reading scholarly sources