goshxmm:

citizens4immigrants:

The Fiscal Policy Institute says that immigrants add to the economy in a number of ways:

• They increase the overall number of workers, which makes the economy larger and increases gross domestic product (GDP).

• They complement the U.S. workforce which today is older and more educated than ever before.  Immigrant workers tend to be concentrated at the top and the bottom of the educational scale, while most Americans fall somewhere in the middle.  In other words, immigrants and native-born workers have different levels of education, work in different occupations, and live in different areas of the country.
• Immigrant workers spend their wages in U.S. businesses—buying food, clothes, appliances, cars, etc.—which sustains the jobs of the workers employed by those businesses. Moreover, businesses respond to the presence of new workers and consumers by investing in new restaurants, stores, and production facilities.  The end result is more jobs for more workers.
• Finally, immigrants are entrepreneurial and more likely than natives to start their own businesses.  According to a report from the Kauffman Foundation, “immigrants were more than twice as likely to start businesses each month than were the native-born in 2010.”

Immigrants have the power to save the economy of this country. I’ve seen statistics like these before, and not only are they true, they’re self evident. Young and eager immigrants are willing to work, and they live here, so it’s only obvious they’ll be spending their wages on American goods. Both of my parents are immigrants. They’ve also both in the past been self-employed business owners. Like them, I know many other immigrants. 

I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of young Americans who are more than willing to work, after all I am one of them, but honestly, I won’t be applying for the jobs first generation immigrants typically seek. 

Besides, immigrants are already working these jobs, but now it’s time for fair wages, safe working conditions, and above all, the respect of their humanity not being branded “illegal”.

One of the traditional rallying cries and argument points against immigration is “They’re taking our jobs.” 

This really is a reactionary argument. On the whole, jobs are given to people who are better or cheaper than the alternatives. Americans feeling threatened by immigrants are therefore more expensive or not as good at those jobs. The benefit of being able to pay people less is to reduce the price of the product or service that the business offers, which benefits society as a whole. 

Of course the hope is also that Americans will either compete better on either front. More efficient and more effective Americans also benefit society as a whole. They can also go into jobs that they feel they can do better in than immigrants can. 

All in all, fresh immigrants offer competition. And by the market economics Americans say they love, it should be a good thing. They just don’t like being on the receiving end.