Immigration

Immigration

Immigration

Illegal immigration has brought much debate within United States society for the past 40 years. Some citizens of the United States believe not only are illegal immigrants destroying culture, but also destroying the United States economic system as well. Illegal immigrants don’t pay income taxes, but have access to government services. It cost United States’ citizens billions of dollars in taxes to provide illegal immigrants with government services such as public schools. Immigrants are portrayed as a drain on government spending and taxpayers money. Some citizens would go as far as saying illegal immigrants only contribute positively towards the health of the United States economy. Other people believe that illegal immigrants have done nothing wrong and are only trying to make a living. Illegal immigrants are necessary to fill economic needs such accepting lower income occupations and contributing to the growth of the United States economic market.

 Millions of illegal immigrants have obtained occupations within the United States’ workforce (Camarota, 2005). Most of these jobs have low paying salaries and require no education. United States citizens are known to pass on these lower paying- hardworking jobs. A few of these jobs consist of farming, food preparations, cleaning, construction, and landscaping. Jobs are often ignored by United States citizen’s and accepted by illegal immigrants with no question. In 2004, illegal immigrants accounted for 4.3 percent of the labor force (Bureau of Labor Statistics Census Bureau). Illegal immigrants accounted for 19% of farming occupations, 17 % of cleaning occupations, 20% of construction labor occupations, and 27% of the drywall occupation (Bureau of Labor Statistics Census Bureau). In 2004, 20% of construction workers are illegal immigrants, and that number is magnified when there are 147,692 people within the workforce (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). If every illegal construction worker were to quit, business for construction would drop severely losing a lot of money. When one deals with farming it’s the same idea. If every illegal immigrant quit the occupation of producing agriculture, it would hit the economy negatively almost instantly. FOR EXAMPLE