Shipler's The Working Poor

Improved Essays
The subject of illegal immigration has been hotly debated for many years. Do illegal immigrants take honest jobs away from United States citizens? Should there be stricter laws governing illegal immigrants? Should illegal immigrants have rights? All these questions are asked but rarely answered objectively. Shipler attempts to do just that and shed more light on illegal immigration as well as the questions that come with it in The Working Poor. He shows that, not only are they important, but they are also people with lives just like normal citizens. Shipler digs into the depths and paints a striking picture of what these migrant workers mean to the United States economy and how their cheap labor has helped provide United Sates citizens with a bounty of the things we need every day. Illegal immigrants play a much larger role in the United States economy than most fail to realize and most importantly to agriculture. They are the hands behind the harvest of many of the fruits and vegetables we find in all our grocery stores. While referring to the large part undocumented workers play in the agricultural sector, an excerpt from The Working Poor says, “You can hardly go through a day, much less observe a holiday, without the fruit of their labor in your life.” That …show more content…
Many of the stories and information are very similar to events you hear about today. They are perfect for supporting arguments that conditions have not changed for undocumented workers. They still work in squalid conditions for very low pay. A large problem lies in the fact that many of the positions they work in are crucial to certain areas of industry. Without them, especially in the fashion and agriculture, there would be a large whole left if they were to be regulated more strictly or removed from the country entirely. They have inevitably come to play a major role in the United States that many fail to

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