Immigration an Open or Closed Door
Essay title: Immigration an Open or Closed Door
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breath free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore; send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This quote was written by Emma Lazarus and is the most famous one on the statue of liberty today. This quote represents what America was founded on, immigration. Even with this, immigration today is a growing topic of controversy for many American’s. Opinions range from open-door to closed-door advocates of immigration and many undecided, but when reviewing the statistics the open-door policy clearly benefits our country.
Some American citizens believe that immigrants will be willing to work for less, resulting in lower wages for American workers and a lower standard of living. However, this is not the case. Immigrants that work for less lower the costs of production for employers. With the cost of production lowered the employer can now lower the cost of the products they sell. This is then advantageous to the consumer since he or she can now buy more goods at less of an expense.
As a result of all of this the consumer’s standard of living obviously does not decrease but increases because their dollar income now allows them to buy more goods than before. “For instance, hiring immigrants willing to work in a steel mill for $8 instead of $15 dramatically lowers the cost of producing the steel. As competitive pressures drive the price of steel lower, auto companies spend less purchasing steel to make automobiles, which in turn may lead to a decrease in the cost of automobiles. Simply put, less expensive labor means lower production costs, which in turn means lower prices.” (Ebeling, 1997, paragraph 24). With the costs of buying goods at a low people then have the ability to save more resulting in a lower cost of borrowing. This is a stimulus for capital investment. The productivity of labor will rise because the immigrants will undoubtedly bring more laborers to manufacture the goods and services.
Eventually, this results in more valuable and productive labor which brings a positive impact on the market (Ebeling, 1997).
American citizens are also concerned that America’s unique cultural qualities will be undermined because of immigration, but from the beginning America has always been a mixture of cultures and people. Ebeling states that if one were to look back he or she would find that American colonies were not only Englishmen, but also Dutchmen, Germans and Frenchmen as well as Irishmen and Spaniards (1997). In the 19th and 20th century, millions of people in the United States came from all over the globe and for over two hundred years now the cultural mixing of these people has made American culture what it is today (Ebeling,1997). Many immigrants come and work hard to learn English despite what American’s may believe this clearly shows the immigrants are assimilating into America’s culture. Another obvious way immigrants are assimilating is that many of the immigrants from different countries everywhere are marrying American citizens and learning American culture the same way they have been for decades.
I personally have a few members in my family who are immigrants, and they came here
the legal way and have worked hard for many years to learn the English language and culture. My family members do not try to make this country like their own as some American citizens would like to have one believe, but they work to be treated as equally as an American citizen that
was born in this country is treated. My uncle came from Mexico as a laborer and he worked for years to get his citizenship and is now a proud American citizen. This does not mean he has forgotten his culture completely, but he has blended it into America’s culture like so many other immigrants have been doing for years.
It is not true to say that immigrants are undermining the cultural qualities of America (Miller,1994). “The familial and cultural mixing of these peoples for over two hundred years now is what has made the American culture. It is what has made us a unique people, a blending of many backgrounds and contributions into a distinct “one” among the family of nations” (Ebeling, 1997, paragraph 7).
Some American citizens argue that there is not enough work for all these new people and immigrants will steal jobs away from them. Immigrants however do not steal jobs away they take the jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. Many Americans are unwilling to take the lower waged jobs so, who will? Who will drive the taxi’s in New York? Who will pave the roads? Well, some Americans claim that they would do these jobs if immigrants were not here to take them all. However, the majority of them do not take the lower paying jobs because they prefer the higher paying