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This is a free essay sample about positive and negative effects of legal immigrants on the social life and economy of the United States of America. The most widespread myths about negative effects are scattered: that immigrants take jobs from native Americans, that immigrants receive more welfare and benefits than they contribute into the economy of the country and so on.

  Immigrants and the economy of the United States of America

Immigration in the modern conception means movement of people from one nation-state to another, where they are not citizens and thus they do not have the same rights and privileges as citizens do but for some reasons they feel better and more comfortable in a foreign country. Immigration implies long-term permanent residence by the immigrants in foreign country with the purpose of obtaining a citizenship, social status, job and other benefits.

Immigrants are people from any country who freely decide to come to another country for the number of reasons, including the wish to find a better life. Other reasons are economic (labor migration, escape from poverty), natural disasters, education, persecution (religious, political, sexual and so on), oppression, or even genocide, or some personal reasons based on relationship. According to the Report of the Secretary-General on International migration and development, most international migrants prefer to settle in developed countries, because these countries give lots of opportunities for better life, self-realization and freedom. Such people can not earn enough money to survive in their native countries as a rule, but in developed countries they earn much more (in comparison, of course) and have the possibility to live like as others do.

It is not a surprise to anybody that the United States is the most attractive but “inaccessible” country for immigrants. The country where “the dreams may come true”, but the main problem is to get a permission to enter the country, get permission for residence and employment.

Of course native Americans often discuss the impact of immigrants on the economy and social aspects of the country: some people state that immigrants affect the above aspects negatively, others claim – positively and some do not think about this issue at all. This paper researches how legal immigrants affect the American society and the economy, and scatters the myth that immigrants are the drain on the economy of United States.

Why people consider that legal immigrants are the drain on the economy of America? They consider immigrants do not pay taxes, use national welfare and make no contribution to the US economy, in other words they are a burden to US, and they take jobs from Americans and in general negatively affect the economy.

But indeed it all is a myth because of a number of reasons. First of all, the taxes, immigrants have to pay are more than the same of native Americans. As for the immigrants, they generally earn more than two hundred billion dollars a year and pay almost a third part of this sum in taxes while they receive only $5 billion in welfare. In addition overall immigrants’ earnings are substantial contribution to country’s GDP, budget and economic growth. Moreover, immigrants do not receive the same welfare as Americans do: let’s remember that immigrants come from other countries and as a rule they have all the necessary vaccinations, medical examinations, education and other elements of social welfare programs were paid by their native states; but it does not make immigrants pay less than Americans for the welfare.

The second wrong idea is that immigrants make no contribution to the US economy. Obviously, immigrants contribute a lot to the country’s GDP and consume lots of goods and services in America. Immigrants as a rule offer cheaper goods and services (their labor costs cheaper) and thus they contribute to the overall market price (they simply decrease it because under the conditions of free market economy excess of supply causes prices to go down) and benefit final consumers directly.

Finally, people consider that immigrants take jobs from Americans and it is not true also. Mostly, immigrants can not occupy good job-positions because they lack of language, essential skills and so on. Thus they can create a competition only in such jobs which are not desired (not popular) by the native citizens because of many reasons including low salaries, hard manual labor, intensive and inconvenient work schedule etc.

Among other things, before being allowed to enter the US, new immigrants must demonstrate that they won’t be a burden on the economy or society by providing bank statements or other documents, which can guarantee their ability to support themselves after they are allowed into the country. In addition most legal immigrants have secondary education at least and the government allows entering the country only those people who have such degrees which are in short supply. For example when there is a shortage of surgeons the government takes certain steps to attract them from abroad and vice versa when there are too much dentists the government will try to restrict access for them from abroad and support national specialists in that way.

Immigrants are eager to become self employed and to start some new business - thus they directly contribute to the US economics by increasing the GDP and paying even more taxes. For example, 1/5th part of all small businesses, operating in the United States were started by immigrants and thus immigrants create lots of jobs for all the citizens of US. It is an undeniable fact that they prefer to employ their “countrymen” but often native Americans are employed by the immigrants also.

Taking into consideration all these facts, we can conclude that legal immigrants are not burden to the US economy, on the contrary, they bring certain benefits to the country and make for its future development, because they pay taxes to the state and federal budgets, they consume the goods which are made in the US and produce lots of inexpensive goods and services, they support themselves, i.e. earn their living without governmental help, they don’t occupy the jobs of the native born Americans, but create new ones and work for the welfare of the country.

Immigrants are an important part of American society and economy. If we appreciate how much positively immigrants can influent our country’s economy, we shall treat them more amicably, learn a lot from them and offer them learn from us. In the appraisal of overall influence of the immigrants on the economy of the United States of America we should take into consideration only facts and make corresponding conclusions, and we should not be guided by our own emotions and prejudices. The facts say that America needs qualified employees more and more, and the domestic labor-market can not offer enough qualified and highly-motivated workers. The shortage of labor-force grows each year and thus the US has to attract foreign workforce in order to satisfy the need of specialists. The next fact is that immigrants actively search for jobs, start their own businesses, create new jobs, contribute significantly into the country’s GDP and budget. Immigrants are also one of the primary sources of foreign currency flow into the money-market and thus help to fulfill the foreign currency reserves of the national bank.