The modern world is a place where different people meet, communicate, and integrate into each other's society. The phenomena, which has already become an integral part of the U.S. culture, is immigration. Starting from the 1860s and by the end of the 1920s, the foreign-born population in the country composed around fourteen percent. In the 20th century, the average number increased by about 10 percent; today, it is about 13 percent (Llosa, 2013). The main objective of the following research paper is to discuss some issue related to the policy of immigration.
It is no longer the secret that U.S. immigration policy is a subject of many debates and contra versions that is why the following paper continues to talk about specific examples. Arizona passed the most aggressive immigration enforcement law, also known as "show-me-your-paper" law. The main provisions of Arizona SB 1070According state that the law enforcement officials can criminalize all undocumented immigrants while demanding papers. It proved an opportunity to Arizonans to sue enforcement agencies if a suspicion that some provisions of the law "are not enforced" has risen. More importantly, all Latinos in Arizona are suspected as being illegal immigrants in their own communities, even if it is not so. It happens irrespective of their immigration status (NCLR). The law initiated "by state, but without authorization by Congress or the Executive", and ended in hands of Supreme Court, where some main provisions were discussed and reviewed. This is a legislative-initiated policy, as it was initially supported by Arizona's government and finally signed off by the governor (Song, 2012).
Because of the big amount of immigrants in the U.S., at current level of nearly one million per year, the economy (GDP) is bigger. However, an average American worker would see immigration as redistributive policy. It is so, as the labor market will develop in the following scenario: competing American workers wages will be lowered and complimentary American workers wages and the profit of those who hire an immigrant for work for their businesses will increase. The empirical research states that same fact - a number of workers increase results in lower wages. Immigrant pay taxes plus they create costs for the government and this is the pillar of fiscal impact.
The main findings show that American economy is getting larger by 11 percent (GDP) each year, while almost 98 percent of that increase is paid to immigrants in the form of benefits and wages. The estimated immigration surplus on market labor yields is approximately 35 billion a year, which means that nearly 0.2 percent of the total GDP is obtained from both illegal and legal immigration. This number is achieved by reducing wages of natives. The standard economic model is applicable at this stage of research, as wage losses cause immigration surplus; the latter mention is much lower than the redistribution of income; and, net benefits size is smaller to GDP.
One of the most contentious and aggressive issues in the debate over immigration policy, both abroad and in the United States, is the question of what is happening to the employment possibilities of native-born workers after legal and illegal immigrants enter the labor market. However, it turns out that the effect of immigration wage is significantly different when natives and immigrants are complements in production, or when high school graduates and high school dropouts are interchangeable in such as production (Borjas, 2013).
Bill Aulet and Matt Marx in their article published in Forbes talk about immigration policy and its negative impact on entrepreneurship.
Bill Aulet works at the MIT Sloan School of Management as a senior lecturer. Every year about 75 percent of graduates are expected to start their own business but most of them lack the main thing to accomplish this goal – permission to say and work in the USA. Neither of those students can also stay in some company within America, leaving them with the only hope of "optional practical training" type of visa extension with slight hope of further application to H-1B type. The path is long and challenging, but even if it is successful, those ex-students are not fully entitled to become majority shareholders in startup made by them personally.
It is really important that immigration policy focuses not only on skilled immigrants that could fill in positions in companies but on those immigrants with the potential to create their own companies, which will increase the number of jobs. A good suggestion is to create a new EB-1 (priority worker) visa category designated for entrepreneurs, the same as the United Kingdom's government has done. It is also important to change the attitude to those students who are immigrants as other countries are becoming more welcoming and get results that are more beneficial by such friendly policies (Aulet, Marx, 2013).
To conclude, it is important to mention that there are both pluses and minus related to the topic of immigration and policies around it. A thing might get very strict and aggressive and a good example to that might be Arizona SB 1070constitutional issue that is not very successful and rather disputable. However, more researches give reasonable proof that America has many benefits from both legal and illegal immigrants. It is important to say that immigration is inevitable and it is for the country to decide how to turn its effects to become beneficial for the country. The good example to that is immigration issues related to students.
Works Cited
Borjas, G. "Immigration and the American Worker". Center for Immigration Studies. 2013. Web. 24 October 2013.
Llosa, A. V. "Addressing and discrediting 7 major myths about immigration". Forbes.com. Web. 2013. 24 October 2013.
The National Council of La Raza. Arizona's SB 1070. n.d. Web. 25 October 2013.
Song, Y. The Federal, the State, the Court's Perspectives on Arizona SB1070.2012. Web. 2013. 26 October 2013.
Aulet B., Marx M. U.S. Immigration Policy Is Killing Entrepreneurship. Here's What to Do About It. Forbes.com LLC. 2013.Web. 26 October 2013.