Essay Example on Immigration: Pros and Cons in the Modern World

We live in an era of controversial topics that frequently cover the news headlines. They result in taking sides with the liberals fighting the conservatives. One such argument is supporting or disregarding immigration. While there are various reasons raised against immigration, the vice has its associated benefits that cannot be foregone. Some of the pros for immigration include expansion of a country's culture, a fuel for the economy, funding of government activities, and adjustment of factor prices in an economy.

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Immigrants expand a country's culture for the better. They do this by introducing new ideas, customs, expertise, art, and cuisines. In the process, they change the fabrics of a society's culture and expand it, other than erasing the existing culture. This is very evident in the United States, a country that is viewed to have been formed by immigrants. The US has hundreds of ethnic groups who live in harmony under the American flag hence building a collective culture (McCarthy).

Immigrants fuel the economy. As they enter the labor force, they increase an economy's productive capacity and raise its gross domestic product (GDP). This increases their incomes, including that of the natives. Immigrants grease the wheels of the labor market by getting into areas and industries that have a relative need for workers especially in those where shortages or bottlenecks would damp their growth. They relieve the bottlenecks and result in expansion since they are more likely to move compared to the natives. Growth reduces slack resulting in a desirable scenario that would ensure proper allocation of resources in the economy (Orrenius.

Immigration funds the government activities, hence benefiting all the citizens. Immigrants pay taxes and expand the economy. The increased tax contributions help the government in building roads, running courthouses, and modernizing water systems among others. They are also less likely to utilize welfare that an average citizen yet they pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits (McCarthy).

Immigration adjusts factor prices by lowering the wages of competing workers and increasing the return to capital and the wages of complementary workers. The demand for complementary workers also increases with more immigration. They lead to an increase in supervisors, translators, immigration lawyers, and pharmaceutical reps. In the end, consumers benefit from reduced prices of goods and services that are also provided by the immigrant personnel.

Among the misconceptions that indicate the negative aspects of immigration is that the immigrants steal jobs from native-born citizens. This may not be the case since the US-born workers and immigrants do not always compete for the same jobs. Normally, many immigrants complement the work done by US employees thereby increasing their productivity. Moreover, in countries like the US, immigrants focus on highly skilled SREM fields that include medicine and software development, while the undocumented immigrants concentrate on low-wage labor jobs that would have otherwise gone unfilled.

Conclusion

To conclude, immigration results in more pros than cons. They expand a country's culture by introducing new customs and ideas, they expand and fuel the economy by increasing its GDP, they help fund the government projects by increasing tax contributions and contribute to the adjustment of factor prices by lowering the prices of products and services offered. Immigration has its net benefits and the fact that it comes along with some costs or few setbacks is not a reason to prevent it, but rather to control it. Mechanisms can be established to benefit from the immigration gains while making up for any of its associated losses.

Works Cited

McCarthy, Joe. Five ways immigration enhances a country's culture. Globalcitizen.org, 2018.

Orrenius, Pia. The benefits of immigration outweigh the costs. Bushcenter.org, 2016.