Impacts of immigration

Migration is a driver of social and economic well-being in many countries, but the profile of an immigrant varies, as does the rate of migration. Because of its financial clout and the provision of a wide range of jobs, the United States is considered to have the world's highest number of refugees. The economic influence of these migrations, in particular, has been hotly debated. There are also aspects of its socio-economic structure and criminal consequences. There are things such as work markets where they pick up jobs that natives would usually ignore, such as a factory or domestic jobs. Therefore it can be said that over the past couple of centuries, immigrants have maintained the status quo of the United States seen by the rest of the world if not making it better.
Although the impacts of migration are still debated, many studies have been conducted to really verify its effect. There are many aspects that are looked into; that is, the economic, social system, education, crimes, healthcare services, welfare systems among many others. Most of the findings from these studies show that immigration actually positively impacts the country in many ways (Snel & Leerkes, 2007).. Additionally, the country gets to enjoy status of improving the lives of people who are fleeing their countries from wars, discrimination, natural calamities, persecution, and lack of opportunities and job. In this regard, the country is highly esteemed.

Economy

Most asked question on effect of immigration is on economic aspect. Shall immigration lead to fewer opportunities for a natives and slower wage growth? Evidence often shows that immigration enhances the supply of labor. To survive in a new country, migrants often take any job available more so those shun by the natives such as farm work or domestic work. This implies that they are not competing with the natives with the same occupations. New migrants, however, might affect the wages of the older migrants. Research shows that immigration increased the remuneration of the natives. Migrants actually manage to also offer cheap labor even though they are normally exploited (Snel & Leerkes, 2007). Knowing that it is very difficult to land a job, many migrants actually work very hard and their productivity is very high compared to the natives. The fear of losing that one job causes them to do a diligent job.
Additionally, immigrants are in the front position at innovation and cleverness in the US, therefore they account for many science and technology graduates in the universities and hold senior positions in major firms. Furthermore, their existence forces the low skilled native to improve their skills as they face competition hence enhancing their productivity (Scott, Coomes & Izyumov 2005). Immigration additionally enhances the State’s financial situation because the migrant pay huge taxes than they use government services. In the labor market, even though the migrants improve the supply of labor, they also use their salaries on food, entertainments among other commodities, therefore enlarge domestic economic demand. The high demand, in return, creates extra jobs through home buildings, making and selling foods and others services consumed by the immigrants (Sampson, 2015). The standard economic hypothesis is that whereas huge labor supply from immigrants might first decrease the remuneration, with time companies improve investment to re-establish the amount of capital per employee, in turn restoring the remuneration.
Immigrants are of two categories, those who never attended high school and those who have graduated from the university. In this regard, they supply labor from every angle. They additionally complement the native employees instead of substituting them. Since uneducated migrants struggle with language needed for many jobs, they go into the manual jobs in industries like agriculture and construction (Sampson, 2015). Even for the natives in these low skilled industries, the competition from migrants is negligible as majority capitalizes on their good communication skills and move to jobs where their abilities are helpful like sales. Educated migrants disadvantaged in communication focused jobs and therefore often go to the scientific and technical sector (Scott, Coomes & Izyumov 2005). In fact a majority of the Americans actually shun the technical or scientific field, most affected being girls, therefore, the migrants can be seen as filling the deficit market.
Highly skilled residents in many areas often do not compete with the highly skilled migrants. Thus, the supply of workforce tend to concentrate on occupations that favor migrants, therefore, it is the early immigrants that face competition not the natives.

Productivity

Immigrant brings about talent, skills and knowledge. In the areas such as engineering, in university, majority of the graduate are from foreign countries. They also have skills in management, with many being in top management or research. States with migrant workers often have a fast productivity growth (Reitz, 2001). With low income than the natives, immigrants are likely to use government welfare programs such as Medicaid, SNAP among other services than the nationals. However, they are less likely top get public aid compared to citizens. Additionally, if they get public aid, their value is less than average meaning that it is only a small cost to the government compared to low income residents.
Migrants are in almost all fields. They are in engineering, construction, manufacturing, medicine, technical, business and other areas (Reitz, 2001). There are doctor migrants who graduated to high honors and go on to be the best practicing surgeons, ER doctors, physicians, nurses, nutritionists and other medical practitioners. Others have also joined the police force, armed forces, navy and even fire department. Looking at the US health care report, about a quarter of practicing doctors are foreign born while they also constitute almost half of the all medical scientists. The Institute for Immigration Research shows that migrants become top leaders in scientific, biological medical or technical research are esteemed for the resilience, intelligent, commitment and hard work.
When it comes to companies, actually about 40% of the fortune 500 companies were established by the immigrants or the generations of immigrants. This of course leads to more employment opportunities and contribute revenue to the government. Google is an example of a company founded by immigrant. The founder is Russian Sergey Brin. Brin ran away from the Soviet Union in 1979 and sought asylum in the US. Elon Musk who is the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX is an immigrant whose roots are from South Africa (Cain, 2017). Musk’s companies have made major contributions to the space exploration. AT&T is a company founded by Alexander Graham Bell who was an immigrant from Scotland. He came to united stated as a teacher of the deaf which caused him to invent the microphone and telephone. EBay is a company founded by French Pierre Omidyar. He and his wife donate a major contributor in fighting against human trafficking. Theodore and Milton from England founded Radioshack. Pfizer was founded by Charles Pfizer who is a German (Cain, 2017). Tech firm Intel was founded by Hungarian Andrew Grove. Jerry yang from Taiwan founded Yahoo. Colgate was established by Willan Colgate, an immigrant from England. Steve jobs the CEO of largest tech company Apple Inc. was a son of immigrant from Syria. Kraft Foods founder JAMES l. Kraft is from Canada (Cain, 2017). He was struggling to get money to start this company that has become quite a player in the food industry. These and other companies have been impacted the many lives of Americans. So if Immigrants have negative impacts on economy, how can so many immigrants establish some of the most important companies in the world such as Google that have created employment for the natives.

Social Dimension

Many countries have different cultures, therefore immigration enhances cultural diversity. There are intermarriages between the immigrants and the natives. Most migrants from from Africa come from continent or countries who value family system and ties. They value stronger, long lasting marriages. They thus impact positively the ever increasing family breakdown in the US. The intermarriages often last long compared to the native ones. For the natives, their minds are opened about other people culture’s. People get fascinated by the different culture and they are very optimistic to learn other people cultures (Peguero, 2011). Therefore, natives learn to view other cultures in positive way and even apply them to their lives. They do not feel that their culture is better than that of the migrants. Immigration adds diversity to life. This breaks the stereotypes and facilitates learning new things. There are different foods, festivals, practices as well as music. The natives get to learn the new culture so that if they go to the migrants’ country for other commitment like work, they can fit in easily and are not shocked by that culture. Natives can learn culture like karate or martial art from the Asian continent which can be used for self defense (Duleep & Regets, 2014). The families share their experience with their social networks; therefore, all natives learn to accept different culture.
Intermarriages prevent social segregation as they the two cultures meet in family gathering or social networks and allow the natives to appreciate different cultures. They comfort one another during times of sorrows. There is often a misconception that immigrants are responsible for increase in crimes, more so in the wake of terrorist threat (Stacey, Carbone-López, & Rosenfeld, 2011). Research over the last 30 years actually shows the opposite, there are no increases in crime; in contrast, immigration leads to decrease in crime (Zatz & Smith, 2008).. Immigration minimizes crime rates by reviving neighborhoods, establishing dynamic communities and causing economic expansion (Zatz & Smith, 2008). Immigrants are hard workers therefore they force the natives to enhance their skills and work hard as well. Given a chance to go to school, they are able to perform well and observe utmost discipline in school (Peguero, 2011). Immigrants from poor nations often do not have the opportunity for education, therefore when given the chance, they manage to perform extremely well and utilize that opportunity. Therefore in return they cause the natives to work hard as well.

Challenges Immigrants Face

Whereas the immigrants are happy to get any job present when they come to the country, getting that job can be a challenge in the initial stages. Being promoted is even harder. In addition to this difficulty, they also have language challenge. Uneducated migrants, who had good jobs, find it hard to obtain the similar jobs in the new country. Companies often favor work experience from the US rather than outside the country. It is not surprising to find a former engineer working in a different field. They often start at low level to get experience before obtaining jobs that befit their qualifications (Mermin, 2006). The children of the immigrants actually have an advantage since they are educated and work in the US.
There is also the issue of racial; discrimination. Employers exploit the desperation of these people and give them low wages in harsh working conditions. There is also [prejudice I many areas such as government services, health care and school institutions. The undocumented migrants often feel they do not have any privileges. United States is not a multilingual country, therefore immigrants who do not speak English have difficulty carrying out tasks such as buying commodities, in school, communicating at work or even making applications. They might become subject to exploitation (Mermin, 2006). To tackle this they might have to take classes with is tiresome remembering they still have to work. It is even harder for those not coherent in their own mother tongue.
Another difficulty is the culture. It can be stressful for migrant parents to bring up children in a totally different culture (Mermin, 2006). They are practices may be they want their children to learn from their countries. The children learn English first and therefore parents are afraid they shall forget their roots. Older children might have to struggle to keep with native children in a new education system and environment. There have been reports of bullying and racial discrimination due to cultural diversity.
Another issue immigrant face is housing. Safe housing is very costly, so with low wages, they are not able to afford decent housing. Therefore large families are forced to live together and homes with deplorable conditions. Public housing is focused on helping people own homes at subsidized costs. Although it targets low income earners, the immigrant even those born in the country are often discriminated against. Undocumented migrants have difficulty in access of services, since they do not want to be deported (Mermin, 2006). They avoid seeking services such as healthcare, public assistance or legal issues even when it is very necessary. Mental issues are key issues as migrants were violated, abused or even raped in their countries, they might not have knowledge on seeking help. Those who have obtained services, their experiences are not good.
There is also the issue of transportation. It is hard to obtain driver’s license in America even if they were a shrewd drivers in their home country. The ones who do not know English, a translator is required and it is difficult to get one. Furthermore one ought to be literate write exam. Food is also different and might not be easy to consume new ones. The migrants face a variety of issue in the new country, but they manage to overcome them and survive.

Reasons for Immigration

Immigrants come to America for a variety of reasons; however, to disrupt the American system or do criminal activities is not one of them. They are just looking for better activities. N the immigrant host countries, there are normally less employment and business opportunities, therefore most people migrate to the US to seek better opportunities. It is actually true because even the low wage jobs the migrants get compared to wages in their countries, they are much better. United states have some of the leading universities in the world; there are those who move here to seek high quality education (Gent, 2002). They are certain to acquire skills and become experts in their fields. This gives them higher chance of securing better job opportunities. Parents migrate to US because they want their children to have better education than the one they had and get good jobs.
Other migrants come to the US to run away from persecution from their countries. Some are discriminated against based on their views on politics or religion. It is even harder when the leader of a country is a dictator and cannot stand diverse views. He or she normally arrests those criticizing him and persecute or even kill them. In many nations and even in the US, individual fleeing persecutions, war or violence are are often granted asylum (Gent, 2002). Another reason why immigrants flee their country is to seek refuge after displacement from natural calamities. Disasters such as floods, droughts or other climate changes are dangers that have an effect on those living already in abject poverty.
With the significant changes in the climate with even more changes anticipated in the coming years, there bound to be even more displacements. This is a concern that many migrant countries are trying to tackle as it has become a troubling issue. Others might migrate to well-established nations to seek better healthcare when suffering from a serious ailments (Gent, 2002). Standard of Healthcare in third world countries is very low and it might not be able to handle serious ailments like cancer, open heart surgeries, and transplants among others. Therefore people come seeking better health care and might even decide to be permanent residents.
Some people get into interracial relationship and therefore when they get married the spouse is obligated to move to another country and establish citizenship there. Finally there are those who migrate to another country to reunite with their families while others seek freedom. United States is a democratic country and many come here to enjoy political and social freedom. In some countries, women have regarded as inferior gender (Gent, 2002). They are subject to abuse from their husbands which the society approves, not allowed to go to school, have no freedom to make decisions or choose their husbands. Other issues are wife inheritance which puts wife at risks from health concerns and other still practice female genital mutilation. Society especially in African country often treats women unfairly. Therefore they are forced to flee the country and seek better opportunities like education and employment.

Conclusion

Immigrants most certainly have positive impacts in the United States in many fronts. Socially it can be seen how they have change the way Americans view others, taught them to value family units. They have enhanced the American culture and enabled people to have have unbiased views and break stereotypes. Immigration has led to availability of human skills in areas of medical research, biomedicine, engineering, aerospace well as scientific research. Immigrants have provided their skills also in the about market and forced the natives to improve their skills. Although they face many obstacles in the country, immigrants are much better off in the US even with discrimination than their native countries.
 
References

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