So, is immigration good or bad?
Here’s some insight will help you make up your mind
The answer is “neither”.
Let’s start by explaining why is this subject so polarizing among people.
In the last few decades, and more specifically in the last few years, The concept of Immigration has been used to drive people to one side or the other in the political world. The tactics nowadays are to fire you up with a certain point of view to win your unconditional approval. Politicians and news outlets touch on subjects in such a way that makes your blood boil just by reading the headlines or by listening the speeches, forcing you to feel you have to take a hard stand one way or the other. After you are all fired up, you’ll find yourself in a position of not only being convinced you have the ultimate truth(no matter what stand you are taking), but also you’ll find yourself with the overwhelming feeling of needing to disapprove or to invalidate the other side’s point of view at all cost. And then, division happens. Your specific arguments to defend your position will be challenged by other specific arguments going against it, and then you’ll challenge those ones with another specific argument and so on and on. Have you find yourself in this position?
Truth is, Immigration can’t be labeled as something “good” or “bad” just for the simple fact that it affects everyone in a different way. It is not an isolated phenomenon.
The perspective on immigration that you would get, would be very different if you interview a person whom has been victim of a criminal immigrant or a person who was able to bring their family from a country at war to a country of peace and opportunity. Both will have extremely different opinions, yet both perspectives would be correct in their own context. We can then confidently say, Immigration will have a positive or negative impact on you that entirely depends on your own context and perspective, but that specific context of perspective can’t be used to label Immigration as a whole as something good or bad.
So the first and most important thing we need to do in order to form ourselves an informed opinion about immigration, is to realize that you don’t have to take a hard stand for or against it. We have been forced to believe we not only have to, but also to believe you have to actively disapprove the others. This is the root cause of polarization and divide.
So the first and most important thing we need to do in order to form ourselves an informed opinion about immigration, is to realize that you don’t have to take a hard stand for or against it
What we need to do is to reflect on how immigration affects us (positively or negatively), and then react to that proactively. Taking a hard stand and making decisions that affects Immigration in its entirety, based on specific isolated Immigration issues, is a guarantee for failure. Making general decisions based on isolated issues is not a smart thing to do.
Among the different aspects of Immigration, I believe some of the most polarizing subjects are “Illegal Immigration” and “the effect of immigrants on jobs”. In hopes to bring some more light to this, and to expand your criteria about it, I’d like to touch a bit on those two.
First, the term “Illegal”, implies a criminal action. For the vast majority of people, doing something illegal is unthinkable. It is inadmissible and despicable. Good people don’t do illegal things. While I agree a hundred percent with that, I believe we all need a better understanding on the root causes of illegal immigration in order to properly make good decisions about it.
An American citizen will have a hard time believing a person incurring in illegal activities is a good person. The “good” and “illegal” terms can’t be used on the same sentence. It so contradictory. This is part of the reason why many Americans will see Illegal immigration as something negative, and Illegal Immigrants as bad people. There are in here a few things we would need to think more in depth. Instead of trying to analyze each one, I’d like to define each side’s perspective, in hopes to provide more context.
While there are many types of immigrants, good and bad, I’d like to use the perspective of the by far most common type of immigrant. The one who comes to the US looking for a job.
Why would a good person incur on an illegal activity? Why not using the proper channels? If they are coming here illegally… what are they trying to hide? Why not doing it legally?.
All those are great questions, and I see many people having them on their back of their minds, and others actually use this questions (even without knowing the answers) as an argument to reject Immigration or Immigrants.
The thing is (and this will be shocking to many), many times there are no legal ways to do it. Many times the legal processes for somebody wanting to work in here simply don’t exist. Many other times, when they do, people can’t afford them.
People crossing the border illegally with hopes of finding a job, are most of the times people living in poverty, with no access to education, in a country that hasn’t been able to generate enough jobs for them. This people may be low in skills or professional training, but they are high in drive and motivation. They want to offer their labor and sweat in exchange of a better life for their families. On the other side of the border, there are companies looking for that kind of labor, and there seems to be enough job offering otherwise migrating would make no sense. So both sides need each other, but the problem is there are no sufficient or efficient legal ways to make it happen. And like I said, the ones that do exist, are unaffordable for the immigrants and for the employers. On the dark side of this, many employers will actually take advantage of this and offer lower wages to them, generating two problems. One, leaving the locals without a job, and two, condemning the immigrants to a life of poverty.
So if you are in that situation, and your truly only option to afford food for your family, is to cross the border illegally, to work for a wage that’s not enough but at least is something, wouldn’t you just do it? Always keep in mind this person is looking to provide for the most basic thing to their family: Food.
Long story short, that person will risk his life to cross the border. They will live hiding, knowing they are leaving their families behind. Knowing they may not hug their children again in years, or maybe never. In their minds there is only one thought: “Whatever it takes to provide for my family”. They will often cross the border and work two or three jobs because the pay is not good enough (remember they are “illegals” so they can’t demand fair wages). Their worst crime will be to work eighty hours a week, without a voice, or vote. Unable to demand better work compensations or conditions, and yet, their worst curse will be to be labeled as criminals. Because it doesn’t matter if you are a good person. It doesn’t matter if you are the most hard working individual. It doesn’t matter that you only want to provide to your family with your work. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never even had a parking ticket. At the end of the day that person is called an “Illegal Immigrant”, and therefore millions will label him as a criminal.
Now, many will jump and say: “it’s not our country’s problem that those people can’t find a job in their own countries”. And they would be right. To this immigrant, his country failed him. Their leaders were unable to provide or generate jobs for their people. This however doesn’t change his immediate reality and his need for taking action. Hardly anybody will sit and wait while watching their families die in hunger.
So we’ve thought about immigrants from their own perspective. But what about the perspective of the person losing his job because of the immigrant that was willing to do the same for half the salary?. This is where it gets interesting, because you’ll realize, when there are no legal paths and well defined rules, Immigration can negatively affect citizens of both countries involved. Here, a light bulb for many has turned on. Thinking this thru enough, will lead you to the realization that there are other factors playing in this situation, and one of the most powerful is, the employer. Immigration without jobs would hardly exist. So you must assume, there are companies and/or individuals willing to hire immigrants. So lets dig a little deeper on that perspective.
If you are an individual or a company that is hiring, you’ll hire an immigrant because one, you could not find anybody locally who’d do the job, or two, you would hire an immigrant because you can’t afford paying a local a higher wage. Or a sad third option, you know an undocumented person will not ask for much and will never demand more.
Companies or individuals hiring immigrants at a lower wage are incurring in something more morally questionable than crossing a border. They are taking advantage of one (the immigrant) and not caring about the other one (locals). Yet they are not labeled as criminals, and hardly somebody talks about them like companies incurring in illegal activities.
Sure there are a lot of good companies, and a lot of good individuals, and sure you could likely find a legal path to do all right. But when you think about offering jobs paying around 30k a year or less, it is very difficult to think a company would be able to afford about 10k in legal fees just to bring somebody legally.
For each undocumented immigrant with a job, there is an employer who hired him.
In many cases, this employers will rather employ an immigrant at a lower rate than a local (just to have the financial benefit or the competitive advantage). Companies or individuals are taking advantage of immigrants with cheap labor, while they leave locals unemployed and immigrants condemned to poverty. And yet they are not labeled as criminals.
Sometimes I find myself go against my own advice I try to generalize and tell people: Do you want to end Illegal Immigration? Don’t build a wall, offer them fare wages!. Yes, because if as an employer, you are obligated by law, to offer a competitive wage to an immigrant, they would never offer that job to them unless the employer can’t really find their resources locally.
Work visas such as the H visa program addresses this specific issue. An employer hiring an immigrant legally, is forced by law to offer that employee at least the same wage they would offer a local. Even more, the employer is forced to prove they could not find anybody locally able to fill the position. Add to that the legal fees the employer has to incur in order to sponsor an immigrant. Unfortunately this program is limited to highly trained, prepared and skilled people. I really believe this should exist in all kinds of jobs. The H visa program is good in all its terms, however it’s been around now for a few years and people have found loopholes and had taken advantage of it. Instead of thinking on new programs I think it would be better to close those loopholes and reinforce the law.
While I feel I am just scratching the surface of all this, I also know if I write an article five miles long, nobody will read it. So I’ll be posting more about this topic and others in future articles, but I’d like to invite you to do the following: If you feel the need of supporting this article or to disapprove it, please don’t. Instead, read more about it, and more importantly, talk to an immigrant about it, talk amount your friends about it, and make your own conclusions. When I mean read, I don’t mean google all the headlines you can. When I say talk, what I really mean is do more of the listening than the talking. I do ask you to share this, to invite more people to do this exercise.
