CA term paper

[Bryant 1st MRB]

Andrew Bryant

Mrs. Restivo

APCAIII

02/06/2012

Illegal immigration is a topic that at this time cannot be avoided due to the fact that it is now coming prevalent in every bodies lives. It is one of the most pressing issues for our government and people to handle, but people are taking this to extremes by protesting the immigrants and passing new laws to stop them from coming over. Most of these people are not criminals; most of these people are here because they need jobs, because their family back home in Mexico is making less than $2 per day (White). These people are coming to the United States for safety and for their families, the same reason we came over here, and we are stopping them. The illegals are actually good for our economies because they keep labor costs low for businesses and pays taxes for services that they will not use. We also should take them in because America is the nation founded on the principal of "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.” so why are we not following this now.

Illegal immigrants are good for our economy and our business because they put in money that they won’t take out. These illegal immigrants come in and work for sometimes less than $7.25 an hour. Off of this wage they make, they give part of it back to social security and sales tax, but then these people will never file for their social securities, which gives our government over 7 billion dollars a year (White). Also, because they are cheap labor for the businesses, it creates a higher profit margin which will boost our economy. In the state of Alabama a new law, HB-56, was put into effect in 2011, and due to that many migrant workers fled the state. This hurts the agriculture industry because no US citizen is willing to fill the job. The situation is so bad that officials are considering using work-release prisoners to fill up these jobs (Reyes). The Immigration Policy Center calculates that the illegal work force in Alabama pays around $130 million dollars a year in state and local taxes (Reyes). This is a major issue in more than one area, it’s not just that the state and schools are not getting this money anymore, but also, these local businesses are not getting the original clientele that they were getting before and this is causing many stores to close down because of that. Economically, these undocumented workers are great for our nation.

Another reason these people should be allowed into our country is because of what they have to live through back home in Mexico. According to the World Bank, 53% of Mexico’s 104 million people live in poverty, what would be defined as making less than $2 dollars a day (White). The reason so many people are in poverty down there is actually Americans faults in the first place. During the 1980’s the peso suffered from heavy inflation which caused many US factories to start building up in Mexico. But just a few years after that, all of the factories in Mexico closed down and moved to Asia because the labor costs in Asia were far lower than in Mexico. This quick movement of labor left hundreds of thousands of Mexicans out of jobs. Another cause of unemployment occurred in the years 1994 and 1995 when the banks and telecommunication industries were privatized and thrust millions more into poverty. This also caused the amount of millionaires to rise in Mexico. As of 2002, Mexico ranked 4th in the worlds billionaires (White). These people were left in heart wrenching conditions.