Migration process takes its origins from the ancient times when people moved from one area to another when natural resources of their habitations became exhausted. Nowadays people migrate because of many reasons such as religious and economical, safety and political issues and some others. Mostly, people migrate from undeveloped countries to democratic and economically developed countries such as United States of America, Canada, France, Italy, Germany etc searching for stability and freedom; and it is not a secret to anybody that immigrants significantly affect economies of the countries they abandon and move to. United States of America is the most attractive country for immigrants (that is why it is called a nation of immigrants also) and thus its economy is exposed to immigrants’ effects more than that of other countries. Did you ever think how much immigrants live in the USA and how do they affect economy of the country? Or did you ever count how much jobs do immigrants take from native Americans? The purpose of this paper is to shed light on these issues and prove the negative effects of immigrants on the economy and wealth of the American taxpayers.

The population of USA reached more than 295 million people this year and in accordance to the recent research of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2004, more than 21.4 million workers – one in seven workers in the United States – were foreign born, and half had arrived since 1990 (2005). This is 7% of total US population and as it is stated this number had doubled within a decade. But if to compare this number not with a total population, which includes children, pensioners and people unable to work, but with labor force the situation becomes more serious. According to the CBO research 2005, total US labor force in 2004 makes up 147.4 million people and it can be easily calculated that 126 million are native born and the rest 21.4 million are foreign born – immigrants (this number in 1994 was 12.9 million), which equals to 14% of total US wok force (Congress of the United States. Congressional Budget Office. “The Role of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market”). Of course it is not true that increasing amount of immigrants is a straight national safety threat but it is an undeniable fact that immigrants do take jobs from native Americans despite some experts state that immigrants fill in only free cells in the US labor market which can not be filled by citizens because of unpleasantness and low wages. Another undeniable fact is that immigrants mostly perform unskilled tasks as dishwashing, extraction, construction and others related to manual labor – which is not desirable one by Americans. But manual labor and unskilled labor are imprescriptible components of labor market and there are always can be found people which need such job, e.g. students or people who can not afford themselves expensive colleges and universities. However that may be, it is obvious that immigrants take American jobs and thus reduce to zero chances of unskilled American work force to find tolerable job (Congress of the United States. Congressional Budget Office. “The Role of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market”). How do you like the following statistics – the number of employed foreign born increased by 491,000 over the year, while the number of employed native born declined by 897,000.

Presented by John MacAuley (Minnesota Star Tribune. John MacAuley. “Immigrants Keep U.S. Economy Supple”)?

Another negative affect of immigrants is that their large amount decreases average wages in the country. Let’s imagine there is a vacant maid place and salary is quite low so average American will not take this job, but Mexican or Chinese will take this job. If there would not be such Mexican or Chinese worker than the employer would have to increase salary for this job in order to attract American worker. Thus average wages in the United States are decreased. Moreover, native born people which like to have unskilled job as a rule need money to earn their living because they may live below the poverty line and the point is that immigrants create strong competition for unskilled labor and take jobs that some US citizens need actually. In addition, immigrants receive social transfers as native born people do. Immigrants receive dole, they receive all necessary vaccinations, medical examinations and other services. But US citizens need all this too and if there would be less immigrants all social transfers could be increased and benefit more Americans. Dr. Steven A. Camarota, director of research from the Center for Immigration Studies, reports that the poverty rate for immigrants is 50 percent higher than that of natives, with immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under age 21) accounting for 22 percent of all persons living in poverty (2001). So all these people are subject to US welfare programs and the federal government has to support this people for at the expenses of American taxpayers. Dr. Camarota mentions another interesting fact also - the proportion of immigrant households using welfare programs is 30 to 50 percent higher than that of native households (Center for Immigration Studies. Dr. Steven A. Camarota. “Immigrants in the United States – 2000. A Snapshot of America’s Foreign-Born Population”). Both these facts illustrate why immigrants prefer United States to other countries – because the federal government supports them a lot from the moment they obtain citizenship. Federal government helps many immigrants that live below the poverty line and this is humanly, and all people can understand that. But many immigrants do not even look for a job because they receive financial aids which give them an opportunity to live better than in their countries of origin – this concerns mostly children of immigrants which do not have education and do not strive to obtain it along with obtaining a job.

Many immigrants establish their own businesses and thus contribute directly in country’s GDP and create workplaces. But as a rule immigrants offer jobs to their nationals only and establish networks like Chinese cook-house chains etc. Thus existing immigrants attract even more new immigrants (both legal and illegal) from their native countries by supporting them with workplaces and cutting average wages in the USA even more. Although foreign born workers are considered to be cheap work force and produce cheaper products and services, American consumers do not receive much benefit from this. Because when immigrants take part in manufacture of certain product its cost price decreases but producers do not decrease the sale price as a rule in order to make products more affordable for consumers. Thus final consumers do not benefit in any way from lower cost price caused by the cheap work force but producers benefit directly from increased profit margins.

If we say about the quality of services rendered by immigrants for whom English is a second language, primarily, it is important to note that the above indicator is quite smaller than the same of rendered by native born Americans. This can be explained by linguistic, cultural, religious and other diversities that cause misunderstandings. For instance, many immigrants work as operators of toll-free phone numbers and there are cases when they are not able to understand the customer’s questions or complaints, and thus they are not able to provide high quality services. In such cases immigrants are the direct cause of reduced quality of services while the prices of these services do not decrease. In addition, most immigrants do not have even high school diploma which is essential in order to provide customers with the proper quality of goods and services – for example which mother would like to entrust her child to a nurse which is lack of language and basic education? This may be perilous in a case when some accident occur like hurricane or thunderstorm and uneducated nurse will not take proper care of a child and will try to save her own life knowingly or thoughtlessly neglecting the peril of child’s life. Dr.’s Camarota research states that the percentage of immigrants without a high school diploma is 30 percent, more than three times the rate of natives (Center for Immigration Studies. Dr. Steven A. Camarota. “Immigrants in the United States – 2000. A Snapshot of America’s Foreign-Born Population”).

Summarizing the main points concerning the issue of this paper it is necessary to emphasize that immigrants play important role in the economy of the country they populate. Immigrants cause both positive and negative effects on the economy and specialists can not get to the consensus of opinion considering which effect is dominating one – positive or negative. In order to support the point that immigrants cause more negative effects than positive there are the following reasons were given above:

• 14 percent of total work force in the United States consists of immigrants (7% of total population) this number has tendency to increase rapidly each year;

• 21 million immigrants take jobs from native born Americans – in most cases it is unskilled jobs but unskilled Americans do need these jobs also;

• enormous amount of unskilled workers which do not demand high salary decreases the average wages within the United States and this, in turn, does not allow many people to live above the poverty line;

• most immigrants live below the poverty line and thus receive financial and social aids which are needed by native born people too; moreover immigrants receive aids more than US citizens according to the statistics; immigrants that are subject to welfare programs receive aids at the cost of tax payers; important note is that some immigrants deliberately do not look for a job or work illegally in order to receive financial aid from the federal government;

• self-employed immigrants do attract even more of their nationals by supporting them with a job, including legal and illegal immigrants;

• cheap work force do not benefit consumers in the form of low prices but do benefit the producers by decreased cost price and increased profit margins;

• many services offered by immigrants are lack of quality because of language problems and lack of education.

Finally, negative effects on the US economy from the large flow of immigrants are quite obvious while positive are need to be proved yet.