Illegal Aliens

Superior Essays
America has always been a country of immigrants, whether it was in the late 19th century with a mass migration of Germans, or the 1880s when over 10 million Catholic and Jewish immigrants traveled over sea from Italy and Russia. Every time, these waves of immigrants were met with criticism (Wiki). The modern immigrant is now from central and South America, and they are coming into the country illegally. I’m here to argue, that although it is important to properly enforce the illegal migration of populations, the stigma behind their presence here should be reconsidered. America, in the grand scheme of things, benefits from the illegal population. To properly support my argument, I need to investigate three of the main arguments against illegal …show more content…
The first issue we will look into is whether the presence of illegal immigrants affect the employment rate as well as the wages of citizens. Taking a look at the numbers, between 1980 and 2000, there was a large increase in the amount of workers in the United States, which in turn reduced the average wage by $1,700 dollars or about 4 percent (Nadadur 1037). It is important to note that these numbers are based on an increase of workers, whether they are legal or not. If we take a closer look, we see that the ones taking the largest impact are residents that did not graduate from high school, and are roughly the poorest tenth of the work force, having a reduced wage of almost 7.5% ; this is likely because of a large percent of the migrant population does not have a formal education and tend to work in construction and agriculture (Esses 133). When it comes to US citizens, we see the largest impact on minorities, instead of white Americans, because they tend to be in direct competition with the illegal labor force. Looking at some of the benefits in wage and employment, it is noticed that because of the lower wages in the back bone of the US market, the average American ends up paying less for products and services (Esses 135). While it can be argued on both fronts that aliens are beneficial or detrimental, Harvard economist George Borjas says “…the …show more content…
Social disorganization theory, a theory originally created in the University of Chicago, suggest that certain characteristics such as race, gender, and age could indicate whether a group will be predisposed to crime (Wiky). According to this theory, one can assume that a large number of recent immigrants are likely to contribute to crime because of the high population turnover and increasing population heterogeneity that accompanies the immigration process (Bankston, 1998). When looking at the actual numbers we actually see a 2% decrease in crime rate in neighborhoods with new Latino immigrants; these are neighborhoods that tend to have a larger percent of illegal migrants. This seems to contradict social theories that say because of the difficulties new immigrants face adapting to new social dynamics, they would be more prone to crime. When looking at the overall statistics in the United States, a study made in 2001, by the Pew Research center, compared the relationship between immigration and crime across 150 large cities in the United states. This study found that cities with a higher rate than average of immigrants tended to have significantly lower homicide rates, and Hispanics were less likely to be involved in robbery (MacDonald 191) . This leads one to a firm stance that while it is easy to theorize illegal immigrants lead to a higher crime

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