Immigration

A dark skinned man is sitting in a restaurant reading a menu. His son is sitting across from him and begins telling the waitress what he would like to order. After he completed his order, the waitress asked the dad what he would like as well. After the waitress realized the dad is not fluent in English, she begins talking slower and louder like he’s too stupid to understand. Just because someone comes from a different place and cannot understand the language perfectly clear, doesn't make them stupid. The Immigration to the United States spreads different cultures and ideas such as economics, science, and other contributions against the notion that immigrants are below the native citizens.

In discussion of immigration, one controversial issue has been that illegal immigration is ruining the United States of America. On one hand, travism argues that illegal immigrants are destroying the economy because they are willing to work for a lower pay which puts many legal Americans out of a job causing high employment. However, he also argues that legal immigrants ruin our economy because they still need jobs meaning there will be less jobs for Americans to have in the future. Others even maintain this mindset because there is very little room to argue because evidence of this happening can be found anywhere and it is basically common sense. The illegal immigrants have no guilty conscious shared among them about taking jobs to honest working citizens because if they are caught in this country, employed or unemployed, they are being arrested and deported. 

On the other hand however, this image that people get of illegal immigrants through media and by other means grows very tiresome and cliche. People take the characteristics that the media uses to describe the illegal immigrants in the United States and use them in their interpersonal communication with anybody who was born outside of the United States. Of course the media doesn't call illegal immigrants stupid and mindless, but since they tell the public of how they’re destroying their country, it gives the people an angry reason to hate illegal immigrants. This gets mixed up somewhere along the line and people take that hate and anger against legal immigrants. People need to realize that people who come from different countries are all made equal and that they are just in pursuit of a better way of life for themselves and their family.

       John W.Schoen, a senior producer and economic reporter for NBC News, takes his time to explain immigration and its effects on the United States. Although he admits that the immigration policies need a major overhaul, he does make it clear that unless a person in the US can trace their ancestral roots to the Native Americans, they too are immigrants because they can trace their roots back to Europe because of the European colonists that immigrated to North America looking for better life, which is known to everybody in the United States but they don’t put themselves in the Native Americans’ shoes. His argument also defends all kinds of immigrants, legal or illegal, because he also states that American jobs are at risk either way because the failure of the educational system. The American people will lose their jobs to other immigrants here in the United States, or somewhere else across the seas wherever the company decides to move its location in order to find a work force with the same education for a lower wage. He finishes that argument by saying if that’s the case, aren't we better of by having those illegal immigrant work here so they can pay their taxes to the government. His theories are supported by Jeanne Batalova, a reporter for the Migration Policy Institute. She reveals that in 2009, out of all foreign born residents, roughly 47% of them admitted to be from Hispanic or Latino ancestry. Since such a high percentage of immigrants come from countries with low educational systems, it decreases the productivity of the American workforce overall. this give even more incentives to the big corporations to move across seas to find new labor. My own view is that immigrants are people like everybody else who shouldn’t be treated better or worse. We all pursue happiness in our lives and we have the right to; people shouldn’t be looked down upon because they were born in another country. Immigrants try to escape from a worse way of life to a better one in the United States. Due to this, they have more to work for and more incentives to live up to now that the opportunity presents itself and they realize they shouldn’t waste it. I saw this first hand because the last 4 doctors I visited all happened to be born in an Asian country.

          Now that the negative aspects have been revealed, Daniel Griswold, the director of the Cato Insitutue’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, wrote an article called “Immigrantshave enriched American Culture and Enchances our influence in the world” in which he explains all of the benefits of immigrants immigrating to the United States. He states that immigrants do not push Americans out of jobs because they take the jobs that no American is willing to work which is usually a low end job such as dishwasher, landscaping, garbage man, and many more. Since the United States is a dream place to live for many people, that also attracts the well educated immigrants. The well educated immigrants push the United States further into progression as they represent human capital and make our entire economy more productive. Believe it or not, the American work force would shrink in 20 years if no form of immigration existed meaning that the US economy would face an extreme recession. One of the reasons that Americans do not like immigrants, according to Griswold, is because of September 11, 2001. People fear that it will happen again if we allow immigrants from the Middle East to move into our country. However, the 19 men that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks were not legal immigrants, so why should the honest people be punished because of terrorists, its illogical. However, there are other things that stop immigrants from coming into our nation and also from revealing themselves as immigrants completely. According to “Impact of Alabama’sImmigrations Law on Access to Health Care Among Latina Immigrants and Children:Implications for National Reform,” domestic policies concerning the use of health care for immigrants requires them to show proof of legal residency. However, this frightens certain immigrants because they might be mistaken for illegal and be deported and because it is such a long process, it basically made it extremely hard for immigrants to have any access to health care.

          Every person wishes the best for their loved ones and is willing to move to a different country in search of the best way of life. Due to this, immigrants all over the world come together and share their cultural aspects with one another that we all benefit from. The low skilled immigrants do jobs that people are usually not willing to do and the highly skilled and educated immigrants contribute their knowledge to improve our everyday use of technology and more. Their mere presence in this country keeps the workforce in sufficient numbers to operate properly. If we closed our borders to immigrants completely and treated them like pieces of trash, it would backfire on us as we would only be hurting our nation and showing the rest of the world of how highly we think of ourselves and how selfish we really are. Although our foreign policies need major overhaul, we should not think of immigrants any different than we do of any natural born citizen, except of course certain privileges such as voting and running for president which are only available to citizens and natural born citizens, respectively. They are still people of equal characteristics whose potential is as great as anybody’s. Nobody is born perfect and exactly the same, we would rather live by each other’s happiness than each other’s misery; therefore we need to accept each other’s differences so that we can all benefit from each other and the place we call home will be a better place.