The Value Of Immigrants By Danielle Muhammad - 1579 Words

Final Project: The Value of Immigrants Danielle Muhammad ENG325 Intermediate Composition Donald Olsen August 14, 2017 Final Project: The Value of Immigrants Immigration has, and continues to be, one of the most contentious issues in the United States (U.S.). While some see immigrants as opportunistic thieves, others view them as enormous economy boosters. Immigrants—foreign-born individuals—often have to deal with the negative outcomes of anti-immigrant policies. These exclusionary laws not only increase racial prejudice but also make foreign-born individuals feel less valuable than their native-born counterparts. The laws to some extent also justify the unequal treatment of immigrants (Almeida et al., 2016). Immigrants also†¦show more content†¦In 2007, 5.9 million individuals worked in immigrant-owned organizations. Almost every state had over a hundred thousand natives employed in immigrant-owned firms with California recording 1.5 million workers (New American Economy, 2016). These firms have created revenues of over $4.8 trillion and provided work for 18.9 million people worldwide in 2014 alone. Resear chers have often claimed that were American Fortune 500 companies to make up a country, their revenues would make rank them as the third-highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world. As consumers, immigrants create jobs by spending their salaries on products and services provided by companies in the U.S. Consequently, this helps in sustaining the jobs of employees in those firms. Also, whenever immigrant workers increase in a particular region, investors build new stores and restaurants, thus increasing job opportunities. In the past, an increase in the population of immigrants resulted in reduced wages for native-born workers in the U.S. Studies carried out by scholars indicate that a one percent rise in foreign-born individuals led to reduction in the earnings of artisans and unskilled workers (Abramitzky Boustan, 2016). However, recent studies have shown that the immigrant population brings more value to the native-born worker wage than harm. The foreign-born workers typically possess a variety of skills and levels of