Immigration. Summary, Essay Example

If the four articles in question reveal anything, it is that immigration is an immensely complex issue, and particularly so when it is assessed in terms of labor impacts. Moreover, opinions vary as greatly as do presentations of facts; one report notes a marginal impact on the actual U.S. workforce from immigrants, while others disclose high percentages of immigrant workers, legal and illegal. Linked to the attitudes are perspectives regarding causes of immigration, which of themselves generate controversy. Is the Mexican immigrant desirous of earning more, for example, more entitled to emigrate than the Russian driven from their country due to political unrest? In this vast arena, commerce, labor, politics, and social concerns invariably have exponential relationships, and facts fly to substantiate views generally resistant or favorable to immigration.

When all the information is considered, however, certain realities seem to dominate and, in my view, eclipse thinking likely based on a visceral dislike of immigrants within the country. Opponents claim, for instance, that immigrant labor takes jobs away from more deserving natives, which ignores how immigrant labor essentially complements the native workforce. As Furgoccht-Roth’s article reveals, immigrants do not replace American skill levels; rather, they provide a workforce presence in the unskilled and highly skilled arenas often not addressed by natives. This in turn reflects the important consideration often overlooked by opposition; namely, the jobs taken by immigrants are given to them, and not necessarily because U.S. businesses seek cheap labor. Then, and if in fact the businesses require the cheaper labor, the immigrant is not the core issue, but a solution. To oppose immigration because immigrants will work for less is to fail to address a more central, economic problem.

Then, and in my estimation, the most profoundly disturbing element of Steven Malanga’s argument against immigrant labor is the emphasis made on the essential novelty of the immigration process itself. For example, Malanga stresses that immigrants do not negatively impact U.S. commerce by virtue of lack of skills and the encouragement of lower wages as standardized; he is fundamentally opposed to the reality of immigrants entering the nation with cultures and ideas of their own. Such a process, it is felt, drains inestimable native resources and generates social conflict. This being the case, Malanga and those similarly inclined believe the U.S. must institute a policy of discriminating, in which valuable immigrants are welcomed and the unskilled, likely to be a burden on welfare resources, are not. In a very real sense, this is a viewpoint disturbingly elitist and utterly unmindful of the history of the U.S. as largely immigrant-based itself. It is reasonable, certainly, to ensure that immigrants are not universally able to draw on public resources in place to support development, training, and assistance for native populations. Clearly, any society that blindly offers financial aid to all immigrants is on an ultimately self-destructive course, in that it is likely to attract immigrants unwilling to contribute.

At the same time, the Malanga view that it is wrong to welcome immigrants who will struggle for years before they may be productive citizens is, in a word, unconscionable.

It also blatantly ignores the realities of the country’s development in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, when tides of millions of unskilled, uneducated, and non-English speaking immigrants entered the U.S. The parallels may be seemingly obvious, but they are completely relevant and based on fact. These immigrants were people who, like the populations opposed by Malanga, came with ideas and cultures inevitably clashing with the mainstream, and who were likely viewed as intrusive. It is then all the more ironic that these European immigrants would eventually become the mainstream which, today, seeks to deny immigration to those very much like their grandparents and great-grandparents. Malanga is correct in one sense; labor and culture are inextricably connected. To assess immigrants, however, by what they may immediately “bring to the table” or take from it is an ideology that contradicts both American history and the guiding principles of the nation. No one, in plain terms, ever said that immigrant assimilation is easy. It must be a difficult and multifaceted process, as the immigrant gradually becomes a contributing citizen and the native culture comes to understand, and incorporate, the alien culture. Then, the mere fact of the immigrant as typically willing to work for less highlights important issues within the entire American labor force, and issues not created by the immigrants. Immigration is an extended and difficult process, certainly. However, and as the U.S. has always emphatically said, it is as well a moral and social necessity.