EOC 1B Essay: Immigration does/does not cause poverty.
Both articles, Immigration is Increasing Poverty in the United States, and Immigration is Not Increasing Poverty in the United States, have very strong arguments. However, they also both present limitations and a lack of properly applied evidence in their debates.
First, in Immigration is Increasing Poverty in the United States, the article states “The immigrant population reflects the system’s lack of emphasis on skill… Illegal immigrants are the least-educated group, with nearly 75 percent having at most a high school diploma. Overall, 55 percent of the foreign-born population has no education past high school, compared to 42 percent of the natives.” This could have been great evidence
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Even though the number of legal and illegal immigrants has risen strongly since the early 1990s, the size of the economic underclass has not. The inflow of low-skilled immigrants may even be playing a positive role in pushing native-born Americans up the skills and income ladder.” I think this argument, while better than the one in the other article, is missing some important stuff too. It does have some great data, stating that the influx of immigrants has not affected the size of the economic underclass, however, this evidence may be an illusory correlation, as it is not directly connected to the argument of poverty. Nobody is disputing that immigrants have entered our country, and most people will accept that the size of the economic underclass hasn’t grown, but these may be completely independent from one another. If the article had clearly shown that immigrants were not entering poverty or causing natives to, then the author’s line of reasoning would have been more effective because their well-selected data would apply directly to their
Both the early-exiters and college-goers share these environmental realities, often times living in unsafe neighborhoods, dealing with multiple relocations, cramped living conditions, and overworked parents. The spatial segregation that perpetuates these realities is executed on class lines, where predominantly immigrant neighborhoods generally have more poverty, and as a result have a higher-crime rate. Gonzales explains how this process is cyclical, poorer people have a higher propensity to resort to criminal activity, subsequently the crime rate is higher, this makes less wealthy people want to live in predominantly Latina/o communities, keeping property values low. If the K-12 education largely bases its funding off of property taxes, Latina/os are more likely to receive a subpar education - thus the masquerade of education as the “great equalizer” comes plummeting down, both the college-goers and the early-exiters are subject to systemic failures. Furthermore, the groups not only share similar economic/financial constraints but they both are partially paralyzed by a sense of paranoia, of fear about the consequences of their undocumented status and the status of their family
How could immigrants, legal or illegal, generate any sort of positive economic prosperity within the United States if these people aren’t even from the country. Well the fact of the matter doesn’t lie in “these people,” it lies in we the people, the people of the working middle and lower class. . “But of course, its rich business guys like me are not the real job creators, it’s actually our customers who are the real job creators. We are not the center of the economic universe, they are” (Hanauer). The previous quote comes from an entrepreneur and venture capitalist named Nicholas Hanauer, the CEO of Pacific Coast Feather Company. Hanauer takes a role as an experienced business owner in the brief documentary called “Inequality for All,” created by Robert Reich, the previous head of the Department of Labor during president Clinton’s term. Hanauer discusses “We need to replace trickledown economics with middle out economics. And indeed every place you look at on Earth where you find prosperity, you find massive amounts of investment into the middle class and the poor. Because at the end of the day, they are the true job creators. The most [big] business thing you can do is help middle class people thrive.” This quote assumes the focus of exactly where immigrants meet within the classing structure of the United States economy. As previously mentioned within the research, immigrants are filling the void of jobs and careers that many Americans choose not to undertake. This could be anything from landscaping to construction and ultimately, this is how they fill the gap into the working lower classes of the United States. But as with the colonists coming into America for prosperity by the tens of thousands, we would need a large number of immigrants to come into this enormous country to fill the job voids of the said middle
Illegal immigration has been a problem that has plagued the United States for many years. This problem is not new to the country because thousands of immigrants have crossed over the oceans and Mexican border since our country was founded. The underlying problem is the lack of assimilation to the American ways of life and the acceptance of existing rules and laws. With the already fragile economy and the largely growing unemployment rate Americans must make every effort to close its borders to undocumented workers to ease the strain and retain any available jobs for unemployed Americans and legal workers. Aviva Chomsky writes “immigration plays a much more complex role in the employment picture, and many different factors affecting employment and unemployment.”(4). Chomsky so on to say, “it indeed seems to be the case that immigrants and low-skilled citizens are competing for the same jobs”(11). Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants enter the country and start working either under illegal names or take agricultural jobs in which they are paid under the table. Chomsky solidifies this fact when she say “some immigrants work in the informal economy, and are paid under the table in-cash, so they don’t have federal and state income taxes, or social security taxes, deducted from their paychecks”(36).Which a lot of employers are catching on to because on doing this they don’t have to pay taxes and can turn more of a profit This also hurts the country’s economy because no one is paying their taxes and so there is no money flowing to pull the country out of the current recession. This burden indefinitely falls on the shoulders of the rest of the legal citizens of America who are inevitable paying the way for this one sided labor for...
In “The Worker Next Door” by Barry R. Chiswick, he writes to inform his reader about immigrants and low-skilled jobs in America. Chiswick throughout his paper tries to inform his readers that if illegal immigrants were not to obtain low skilled jobs it would benefit the American people. Chiswicks paper was a pretty decent, but could have been improved in some areas and some stuff could have been left out of his paper.
First, immigrants come to the U.S. to work and bring valuable skills which help grow the economy despite the negative views surrounding their part in the U.S. economy. Since the 2008-2009 recession the view on immigration and its effects on the economy has been more negative than positive (Peri, 2012). A study done by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government found that about 50 percent of American adults believe that immigrants burden the country because they, “take jobs, housing, and healthcare”, while the other 50 percent believe that, “immigrants strengthen the country due to their hard work and talents” (Delener & Ventilato, 2008). Over the past decade, “over half of the increase in the U.S. labor force,… was the result of immigration-l...
Many immigrants come to United States to achieve their America Dreams as my family did a few years ago. They think that they can get high-paying jobs easily, but the reality is not. According to an article, The Land of Opportunity? (Los Angeles business Journal, 1999), immigrants cannot get opportunities for high-paying jobs because: “The limited number of manufacturing jobs that they might have moved into in previous generations”; “ The need for specialized training in many of jobs”; and “The lack of union-style apprentice program.” The article also says that many Los Angeles’ poor families are concentrated among recently arrived immigrant groups, most of them Latino, 600,000 or so
Ruark, Eric A., and Matthew Graham. "Immigration Is Increasing Poverty in the United States." Poverty. Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Immigration, Poverty and Low-Wage Earners: The Harmful Effect of Unskilled Immigrants on American Workers." FairUS.org. 2011. 3-17. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.
Throughout the course of my life, I have always encountered individuals wanting to better their economic situation especially those within my community. Those who come from impoverished communities in other countries risk their lives and lifetime savings to come to the United States hoping that one day they will regain everything that they lost. Their only motivation to come to this country is to be able to provide their family with basic necessities and in order to do this, they must work two or more jobs that pay at minimum wage and are taken for granted. However, many individuals do not see this side of the story and categorize immigrants as unambitious people. In order to be completely aware of what immigrants truly go through and how they succeed in life, one must be willing to place themselves in their shoes and hear his/her story. We must acknowledge that the hands of these people work in back breaking jobs in order to sustain their families. While some Americans may be against immigrants arriving to the United States in search of a better life and the American Dream, in The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse further reveals that immigrants are exploited as cheap labor, and although they contribute greatly to the everyday function of American industry, they are quite invisible.
... American Congress during the last few decades, millions of people are still coming to this country. Although these people are native of many different countries, each natural group is comparatively small. We see, immigrants come from different countries, speak different languages, have different religious beliefs. But what is different is not necessarily worse, and probably the main thing that distinguishes immigrants is their attitude towards their future. Recent immigrants generally earn less than native Americans. There are many obvious reasons for this reduced income, including language difficulties, short American work experience, lack of funds and credit history to start their own businesses, and discrimination in employment!.
This lack of education stems off of the majority of Mexican immigrants, when first coming into the United States, having an inability to speak the English language proficiently and to have a simple understanding of the idiosyncrasies of American English. According to the Pew Research Center, only __ have a high school diploma with __ having less than that (out of the ______ surveyed). This general lack of education is stunning when compared to the United States citizens as a whole (__) and is a major detriment when it comes to Mexican immigrants assimilating into society. The United States society has ever increasingly put a value on attaining education, from the public school system to the large amount of colleges throughout the country, and a general lack of education for the incoming immigrant class in an overly competitive private sector based off of education Mexican immigrants are greatly hampered in assimilating into that society without a high school diploma or a GED equivalent. While some will say that these immigrants are just immigrants and should have received that education back home, or that they should not receive it in the United States because they are not contributing enough to society to warrant it, that is simply not true. Documented Mexican immigrants pay taxes and while they did not receive an education back home that was not because they did not want a higher education. In Mexico corruption and poverty are high and there is no public school system so those who cannot afford to send their children or themselves to some form of higher education work so that they can support their families. Immigrants coming over from Mexico to the United States come because Mexico is full of political corruption and its people are impoverished with no real opportunity for upward mobility. The United States, from the lore is a land of opportunity, but
Those who support immigrants being protected by the law believe that immigrants help the economy by creating lower wages which enables companies to make better profits. According to Becky Akers and Donald J. Boudreaux, immigrants “should be allowed to contribute to the United States economy in the Constitutional and legal precepts that guarantee all immigrants the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in the United States” (22). If immigrants were not here in the United States, the jobs they do might not even get done by anyone else (Isidore 103). Immigrants fill up the jobs that many Americans do not want. “Specialization deepens. Workers’ productivity soars, forcing employers to compete for their time by offering higher pay” (Akers and Boudreaux 25). As researcher Ethan Lewis said, “Economics professor, Patricia Cortes, studied the way immigrants impact prices in 25 large United States metropolitan areas. She discovered that a 10-percent increase in immigration lowered the price...
About 12 percent of the nation's native-born population lives in poverty, a figure that has hardly changed in 20 years. "Each successive wave of immigrants is doing worse and worse," said Steven A. Camarota, the report's author. "Each wave of immigrants has a higher poverty rate, and a much larger share of their children will grow up in poverty." The report by the center, a Washington-based research group that advocates reduced immigration, uses information compiled in the 1980 and 1990 censuses, as well as information contained in the March 1998 Current Population Survey, to make its case that poverty in the United States is increasingly being driven by the nation's immigration policy. The report says immigrants are more likely to be poor because they have higher levels of unemployment, have lower education levels and have larger families than native-born families. And much of their economic slide has come despite the fact that the nation's economy has been in good shape for much of the past 20 years, the report notes.
Education is a concept that is synonymous with anyone one that is living a good life. It is believed that in order to live a prosperous life that members of this society must first obtain a good college education. But how can education be considered a founding block of success when only the privileged enjoy the benefit of a proper education? A large percentage of undocumented immigrants arrive to this country because they want their kids to be able to attend a good school and receive a proper education but that is not always the case. Undocumented people arrive to this country with no money; therefore they are forced to live in low-income communities. As we have discussed in class, the schools in neighborhoods with low economic status are not as good
Illegal Immigrants take the low-paying jobs that most Americans don't want because of low wages. In the article Open Borders Improve the US Economy Gordon H Hanson, the director of the Center on emerging and Pacific Economies says that “Open border policies that encourage immigration promote economic growth. ... Low-skilled immigrants also contribute to productivity by performing domestic jobs that free up American workers to occupy high-skilled positions. The mobility of low-skilled immigrant workers also smoothes economic fluctuations in struggling communities. In truth, efforts to reduce illegal immigration are costly. Since the impact on public services remains unclear, making it easier for immigrants to participate in the American economy will lead to more economic benefits than costs.” (Gale). Low skilled immigrants provide higher skilled workers to have more time for work than doing chore related jobs. They help the economy by allowing the High skilled workers have more time for their job and increasing the productivity in High skilled jobs. Some people say that Illegal immigrants harm low wage workers, “High levels of immigration hurt U.S. citizens in the job market. Because the number of jobs available in this country is finite, every immigrant who takes a job is technically either throwing a native-born American out of work or blocking the hiring of an unemployed citizen. The effect of this is seen at all levels of American society, but most clearly among the poor. “(Currie 34). Illegal immigrants are taking jobs that a poor Americans could have. Americans are not applying for Low w...
According to the data released by the Census Bureau, “... the overall poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent...This represents 46.5 million people living in poverty” (“Poverty Guidelines”). The millions of people in poverty could be lessened if children were required to stay in school past the age of sixteen. The difference between someone being in poverty could be having a diploma, “The average annual pay gain between someone who has a high school diploma and someone who does not is $9, 425” (Doland). This nine thousand dollar difference in pay is because the person that is employed has a high school diploma. The difference between someone being in poverty or being prosperous could very well be having a high school diploma.