Essay Sample on Mexicans Scapegoated in US: Unjust Blame for US Issues

The term scapegoat refers to a person or a group of individuals who are held responsible for the mistakes and offenses of others, particularly due to convenience reasons. One such group is the Mexican Immigrants in the US, who have often been blamed for some ordeals that American citizens face. A good instance is during the 2016 presidential election campaigns when Donald Trump faulted Mexicans for being overdependent on American taxpayers, the rising crime and unemployment rates, and the poor wages paid to Americans ("Blame Mexico!" par 2). Trump further insisted that the Mexican government was exporting poverty and crime to the US, which hurt American workers and cost the country billions in taxes due to the huge amounts of money that immigrants sent back to Mexico. With that in mind, this paper evaluates the effect of Mexican immigrants on America's economy and employment situation since I want to focus on how these immigrants have been condemned and faulted for the unemployment and poor wages that are hurting Americans. My argument is that Mexican immigrants are not to blame for taking up American jobs. Instead, my argument aims at convincing Americans that their lack of jobs should be blamed on their employers who constantly recruit immigrants for their cheap labor.

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Over the years, many people globally have perceived the US as a country full of opportunities. Potential immigrants view the US as a place that is highly likely to support their upward mobility and increase their chances of financial prosperity. However, Native Americans continue to raise concerns that the immigrants secure most of the available jobs at their expense and lower the respective wages. Politicians have also fueled these concerns thereby sparking intense debates on whether immigration policies should be reviewed.

These concerns are unfounded for several reasons. First, economic reviews invalidate the idea that Mexican immigrants appear to lower wages for the American people and affect the country's economy negatively. Essentially, immigrants stimulate capital investment by accelerating the creation of new industries that provide more employment opportunities and facilitate mass production. Secondly, the media and political uproar that Mexican immigrants are taking up jobs meant for Native Americans cannot be justified by study findings on the impact of immigration on the natives' employment and economic recessions. Rather, the unemployment of Americans is due to company bosses hiring immigrants to increase the company profits since immigrants offer cheap labor.

The current job market is dynamic with employers and employees having to readapt regularly to varying conditions (Shih par. 11). This dynamism compels natives to adapt to the market forces caused by immigrants in a manner that benefits both the natives and the immigrants. Abramitzky and Leah studied immigration trends to unravel historical evidence on how these trends relate to economic conditions in the US. This source further advances the argument that scapegoating Mexican immigrants for taking American jobs is unjustified due to the positive effects of immigration on industrialization in the US.

Abramitzky and Leah (2) argued that instead of damaging the entire employment industry for Native Americans, immigrants only lower the salaries of low-skilled Americans and encourage some Americans to migrate from the immigrant gateway towns to areas where they can build new industries. Empirical researches have revealed insignificant negative impacts of immigrants on the employment of Native Americans. These findings invalidate the projections of a simple model that immigrants reduce the short-term capital-to-labor ratio, thereby reducing the wages paid to American workforces (Abramitzky & Leah 19).

To understand this argument better, Abramitzky and Leah (19) compared the past immigration trends to the current trends to identify the changes that have occurred. On one hand, they observed that historically, immigrants from sending countries such as Mexico, and European countries would seamlessly interchange with Native Americans with regards to their legal status and skills. As such, earlier immigrants and Native Americans occupied similar job positions. However, currently, immigrants are more likely to be positioned at the extreme ends of the academic and income distribution compared to Native Americans. Therefore, immigrants cannot be subjected to similar job market conditions, such as minimum wages, compared to natives. On another hand, unlike in the past where the economy largely depended on manufacturing and agriculture, the service industry dictates the present-day economy. The service sector requires teamwork and communication, which are not affected negatively by Mexican immigrants.

Due to the interchangeability between Native Americans and immigrants in the past, there was a significant effect of immigration on the job opportunities and salaries of American employees in the past than in the present-day scenario. Presently, their interchangeability is also observed in the skilled labor categories. Cities and towns that witness significant arrivals of unskilled immigrants implement labor-saving mechanisms more slowly, thus maintaining the demand for lowly-skilled employees. Furthermore, immigration improves the total factor productivity by enabling specialization across various jobs. Ultimately, Abramitzky and Leah (20) maintained that the effect of immigration on American people, though insignificant, is offset by the speed of new capital investments. Mexican and other immigrants have spurred the development of small-scale American factories to huge industries capable of mass production of goods and creating numerous job opportunities for Americans. Low-skilled immigrants boost investments in assembly-line technology. For these reasons, industries located in State that have a high Mexican immigrant population are seemingly more organized and productive.

On another note, the idea that Mexican immigrants are taking American jobs can be critiqued by first understanding the key political and economic dynamics that instigated the modern-day globalized US economy. Elizabeth Vammen explored civic discourses and the experiences of Latino immigrants in the US to demystify the economic narratives on the effect of these immigrants on American workers, and the economic and political circumstances that led to these immigrants being blamed for employment problems facing Native Americans. Her claim that these narratives are parochial further supports the argument that concerns about Mexican immigrants taking American jobs are unfounded. With regards to the political and economic dynamics that catalyzed the globalization of the US economy, Vammen (28) mentioned deindustrialization and deregulation as the main factors.

The deregulation of key economic sectors and the reduction in federal social expenditure resulted in industries moving production and employees globally. American industries opted to source workers from Mexico and other Latin American nations that were not subject to the US laws. These industries considered Mexicans as potential business associates in future and sources of cheap labor. Although the United States stressed the benefits of economic growth and foreign direct investment for Latin American nations through treaties, these nations were unable to compete on an equal economic level to the US. This economic situation invalidates the myth that Mexican immigrants are taking employment opportunities for Americans, which have made them be scapegoated for the labor and economic challenges plaguing Americans (Vammen 29).

This myth fails to consider the trade pacts that assist US businesses to improve their proceeds by using Mexican workers, who cannot raise queries over their terms of employment. Reviews of immigration trends and their correlation with financial recessions depict that when the Mexican immigrants attempt to boost their working and living conditions in America, their efforts are resisted and faulted by the saying that immigrants are taking jobs from Americans (Vammen 29). In essence, this saying only diverts attention from the real cause of the employment and economic challenges hurting Americans. Rather than facilitating the immigrants' growth in the job market, Americans continue exploiting them by denying them equal rights with American workers.

If most of the Mexican immigrants were to be granted legal documentation to work in the US, they would enjoy certain rights such as unionization. In return, their organization into unions would also benefit American workers since it would eliminate the need for competition for cheap labor. Ultimately, the reduced competition can partly mitigate the employment disparity between Mexican immigrants and Native Americans that is evident in their unequal working standards and conditions (Vammen 30).

In addition to economic myths, political dialogues have also been used to further scapegoat Mexican immigrants as being culpable for the unemployment issue among Americans. Vammen (31) mentioned the example of Dana Rohrabacher, a Congressman from California, who faults illegal Mexican immigrants for the financial challenges facing American workers rather than faulting company bosses who constantly recruit the immigrants for their low-cost labor to increase the companies' proceeds. The Congressman further condemns the use of taxes to reassure immigrants of equal working standards to those of American workers as an insult to Americans as they work hard for their earnings. The irony in this criticism is that it endorses and rebuffs cheap labor from the Mexican immigrants. However, it lacks moral and economic justification since the Congressman does not realize that if the Mexican immigrants and American workers were to be treated equally by being paid equal wages, companies would stop recruiting immigrants, which would ultimately spare more jobs for Americans.

Despite the above arguments maintaining that Mexican immigrants boost the American workforce and facilitate economic growth, they do not entirely imply that no American has lost his job or had to endure low wages due to immigrants. One economic research revealed that a huge number of immigrants reduce wages for American workers with high school diploma qualification and teenage workers ("It's reform, not scapegoating" par 9). The overall impact of these immigrants on America's economy is marginal. Insufficient farm labor plagues local growers. The proposed solution to this problem is the push for illegal immigrants to be documented to bridge the insufficiency. With that in mind, this argument seems to support the idea that the influx of illegal immigrants creates an employment problem for Americans due to a shortage of lawful workers. The only way to resolve this problem based on this argument would be to implement comprehensive immigration reforms that would address the illegal immigrants' issue that has been plaguing America's labor market.

To an extent, I agree with the above claim that a large number of immigrants from Mexico and Latin America is problematic to America's job market. Since most of these immigrants lack legal documentation to work in the US, they settle for working terms and conditions that companies would only impose on the immigrants and not Native Americans. For instance, some immigrants lack qualifications for certain jobs that an American worker would be required to have. Companies may still hire these immigrants but pay them lesser wages than an American worker would ideally be paid. Since companies have recognized that hiring immigrants reduce their labor costs, they hire fewer Americans thereby creati...