The Immigration Debate: Analyzing Diverse Arguments

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2024/12/27
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Introduction

Immigration is the movement of people across borders, usually because they desire to work or live in another country. History testifies that humans have always moved from one place to another in search of a better life, but the scale of these movements over time has varied. Debate around immigration in contemporary times is rooted in a historical context. Colonial and imperial conquests have brought slaves and laborers to conquered territories. In the present globalized economy, people move in search of jobs, and, resulting from technological advances, there is a marked increase in demand for skilled labor throughout the developed world.

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Immigration can result in significant social, economic, and cultural changes in destination communities and countries. Essentially, the participants in the debate form six categories based on the respective position they hold toward immigration. These include enthusiasts, supporters, alarmists, withdrawers, critics, and antagonists.

On the one hand, immigration has traditionally been perceived as a challenge for the natives, as immigrants are seen as job seekers who take away jobs from them. On the other hand, the opposing view perceives it as an opportunity that serves both the immigrants and the host country. Proponents of this view argue that all the work that the natives do not want to do is done by the immigrants. In the educational sector, cooks, maids, cleaners, hotel and restaurant industry workers, and bus and taxi drivers are being recruited from abroad due to certain reasons such as the refusal to do low-paid jobs and escalating mass vacancies in these sectors. Arguably, it is also true that immigrants have had a significant impact on the economy, employment, and politics of the industrialized world and society since the late 1990s. Immigration provides cheap labor that benefits employers and leads to the production of inexpensive goods. The reduction in the cost of production leads international businesses to invest in countries with relatively lower labor wages.

Arguments Supporting Increased Immigration

One perspective on immigration is that its benefits far outweigh its costs and that larger inflows of immigrants would improve the United States for current citizens in various ways. Immigration raises the income of natives who complete high school, citizens who complete college, employed citizens generally, and more specialized groups like the elderly. It has been found that doubling the number of immigrants in the United States would boost its economy significantly. Immigrants help businesses expand because they are more likely to start their own. The number of immigrant entrepreneurs is growing twice as fast as the native-born rate. Immigrants also ease labor shortages. They are more likely than native-born Americans to work in construction, maintenance, janitorial work, and home health care. Many will do jobs Americans simply will not do. One more benefit: Legal immigrants usually pay more in taxes than they receive in government services.

Immigration has also increased the country’s racial and ethnic diversity, which most Americans see as a good thing. A significant percentage of U.S. adults say having people from multiple cultures living and working in the United States enriches American society, and many believe that America’s diversity is one of the country’s biggest strengths. Immigration also helps reunite families. Some immigrants get permission to bring over spouses, kids under 21, or parents. Critics, though, say that is dependent on a "broken" immigration system and that many who apply never receive that permission. Recent studies suggest that immigration, both high-skilled and low-skilled, has been a boon to state and local budgets, cutting the overall burden on local taxpayers. It has been estimated that if rates of immigration had been unchanged since 1990, more of the U.S. population would receive Medicaid services. But those rates of use are still lower among non-citizens than among U.S. citizens. Additionally, non-citizens receive food assistance at a lower rate than overall rates among U.S. citizens. Furthermore, it has been found that immigrants to the U.S. pay more into the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund than they use.

Arguments Against Increased Immigration

Critics of increased immigration levels raise a number of concerns about the policy. These arguments are considered in detail below.

Job displacement and wage depression

There is evidence to suggest that low-skilled workers are more likely to suffer displacement when new workers from countries of lower productivity move into the economy. In other words, natives may be forced to compete for jobs or suffer reduced labor market opportunities. Moreover, as a result of the increased supply of low-skilled labor, the price of such labor is driven down. Various studies have demonstrated this inverse relationship for certain subsets of employment, although the exact nature and magnitude of this effect is the subject of some dispute. Many working-class citizens across the developed world are apprehensive about new sources of low-skilled labor, and this fear has been aggravated by negative personal experiences. In the UK, this has taken the form of a decrease in the bargaining power of the low-skilled, leading to public outrage about the slowing or even decreases in wage levels.

Strain on public services and public infrastructure

Another important factor contributing to the fear of increased immigration is the possible burden on domestic public services. The large and rapid increase in the foreign-born population can put a severe strain on the public services of the country involved, such as hospitals and schools. Given that it is they who bear the large majority of the burden of this additional demand, the public in countries such as the UK and Germany is becoming increasingly fearful that immigrants are a drain on the public sector. For many, this aspect of immigration goes hand in hand with fears about national security, in particular the need for up-to-date, complete databases of all immigrants, to reduce crime and better track suspected criminals. Many developed countries are now moving to fingerprint all those who wish to enter, register, and forge automatic checks on all foreigners seeking employment, welfare, or access to the health service, in an attempt to make it harder for people to work or settle without the correct documentation. With the tragic rise in acts of terrorism, the issue of who is permitted to cross a nation's borders is becoming an ever more urgent issue.

Immigration Policies and Their Effectiveness

Various types of immigration policies are followed in different countries. Several nations have chosen to liberalize their immigration policies and accept large numbers of immigrants. They have framed generous asylum and refugee policies. Still others are open to temporary low-skilled immigrant workers. The effectiveness of different types of immigration policies is also debated. Many argue the need for an earned amnesty because of the negative societal impacts of a large undocumented immigrant population. A few countries do not have a stand-alone refugee policy, collectively absorbing refugees into their large annual immigration programs. A few others maintain high quotas for accepting refugees but bring them into the country as part of their larger skill-based immigration system.

Many types of immigration policies are considered to be "better" than others. A guest-worker program in the 1970s is often highlighted as an example of a well-designed guest-worker program. Other countries have been accused of pursuing international recruitment policies that amount to large-scale guest-worker programs, to society's and to the immigrants' detriment. Several temporary worker programs are accused of slavery and human trafficking practices. One could safely say that irrespective of the policy pursued, immigration is often reverted to in many ways—a lesson that can be profitably learned from the experiences of different countries. Occasionally, the debates surrounding one's own country can be polarizing and difficult to resolve. Immigrants moving from common-law Canada to the civil-law province of Quebec have needed to sue for the recognition of their qualifications within Quebec. This has made retention of Quebec-choosing immigrants a difficult policy task in Canada. Tracer data about immigrants are essential in any establishment of policy responses that are realistic and appropriate in real-life situations.

Conclusion: Finding Common Ground and Moving Forward

This essay has explored the complex arguments for and against immigration, showing that there are multiple sides to this contentious issue. There are both strong ethical and economic arguments in favor of increased Western immigration, but also ethical and economic arguments against it. While some people would agree with some perspectives, others would agree with different viewpoints. Few people take into account both sides of the issue, likely because very few of us ever really stop to think about it deeply. Some would argue that we should shift our focus away from the current migrant crisis and towards dialogue and policy reform in an effort to stop politicizing the immigrant and drawing hard lines around who can and cannot stay in the United States or other European societies. Some things tend to prevent us from effectively discussing how we might go about repairing and revising immigration in these nations. The following proposed options for improving immigration policy offer mutually exclusive points to provide starting points for dialogue and policy reform in European countries. It is up to the reader to identify an approach that fits in with his or her worldview. Solutions to immigration policy can be complex, and some possible policies may not be appropriate in countries with different cultural or economic conditions. Nonetheless, the currently unproductive conversations about immigration, in which one side is expected to congeal only on specific policies favored by the other side, must change if there is to be constructive solving of this problem. These initial steps are at the least expected to move towards a more moderate centrist immigration policy.

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The Immigration Debate: Analyzing Diverse Arguments. (2024, Dec 27). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-immigration-debate-analyzing-diverse-arguments/