Professor Rohrer
ENG 1010
December 4, 2018
Benefits of Immigration to the US economy
As of 2018, immigrants make up to about 15 percent of the US population. Many americans still believe that immigrants steal their jobs and accuse immigrants for high crime rates. These Americans do not understand the benefits of immigrants to the US, as immigrants help improve the US economy. There are three main benefits of immigrants on the US economy: Immigrants increase the number of jobs, immigrants increase business profits, and immigrants improve dependency ratio.
Immigrants are a powerhouse when it comes to providing jobs in the US economy. According to the famous economic analyst, Kimberly Amadeo,” Immigrants have driven two-thirds of US economic growth since 2011. They founded 30% of US firms, including 50% of startups valued at over $1 billion”. This information proves that immigrants even bring more jobs than they occupy. An example of this is how many schools like Allied Health Institute and CAN institute are opened by Nigerians, which in turn employ native Americans. All in all, immigrants bring more jobs than they occupy.
Also, immigrants reduce the job competition, in such a way that American natives benefit from immigrants’ work but would not have to compete with immigrants for work. According to the famous analyst, Kimberly Amadeo, “29% of immigrants have a college degree. But that is similar to the 30% of native-born counterparts… In 1970, only 12% of immigrants had a graduate degree”. This means native Americans would not have to compete with immigrants for white collar jobs as many immigrants do not have degrees. This is mostly the case with illegal immigrants. To conclude, native Americans do not have to worry about jobs, as illegal immigrants hardly have any college degrees.
Second, immigrants also improve business profits, by reducing wage competition and providing low cost labor. Immigrants improve local business profits in the US by working more for less pay. An article on budgetmodel.com, on How Immigration Improves the US Economy, shows that, while higher labor supply from immigration depress wages, overtime, increases investment to restore the amount of capital per worker, which then restores wages. this proves that immigrants would not have to compete with natives when it comes to wages, as most immigrants are happy to work for less. Also, another article from budgetmodel.com on How Immigration Improves the US Economy, states,” More often than not, immigrants ate less educated, and their incomes are lower at all ages than those of natives”. Working m...
