Illegal immigrants are detrimental to our society because they hurt our economy and take jobs. They cost the federal government a lot of money each year. They also take jobs away from American workers.
Because of their sheer numbers illegal immigrants put a great strain on the American economy. It costs the government billions of dollars a year to house these illegal immigrants, and because they don't pay taxes we never get a single cent of that money returned to our government. They also cost around 200 billion dollars a year in depressed wages. Another thing is that many illegal immigrants end up in prisons, around 30% of all the inmates in prisons are illegal immigrants. Because of those reasons and others illegal immigrants are hurtful to the U.S. economy.
Illegal immigrants take jobs away from low skilled American workers. They will work for less pay and little to no benefits which incentives employers to hire them since it will save the company money; employers want the cheaper employee so they will have a net increase in income. They take away jobs in the agriculture, construction, restaurants, and hotels that jobless Americans would gladly fill. Also American high school dropouts would earn as much as 8% more if illegal immigrants didn't take those jobs for less. Isn't it a responsibility of America to care for its own people first? If that is true we must crack down on illegal immigrants so our low skilled citizens can have the best quality of life possible
Congress is considering major immigration reform, in large part to enable employers to bring more immigrant workers into the country to fill critical positions. Rather than present the reasons why this is necessary, below is a perfectly articulated rendition of why immigration is good for the U.S. economy. Leon Sequeira is the current Assistant Secretary for Policy for the U.S. Department of Labor. He testified before the House of Representatives on May 3, 2007 about the impact of immigration on our economy, and said in part:
"While the number of immigrants as a percentage of the population might seem large, it is in fact far lower than other periods of heavy immigration in our history. Over the past ten years, 8.8 million immigrants added about 3.4 percent to the population. In contrast, throughout the 19th century, immigration added 6.2 percent to the population each decade, rising above 9 percent during the 1850s and 1880s, and immigration peaked at 10.4 percent of the population during the decade between 1901 and 1910. After 1910, immigration rates fell dramatically, merely adding 5.7 percent to the population during the 1911-1919 decade, further falling to 0.4 percent in the 1930s, and then slowly rising to a still low 2.0 percent in the 1970s. Immigration rates rose in the 1980s (3 percent) and 1990s (3.4 percent) and have since remained stable.
The growth of the foreign-born workforce has not produced significant adverse effects on native-born workers. During the last ten years, the unemployment rate for native-born workers fell from 5.4 percent to 4.7 percent. The unemployment rate for African-Americans has declined from 10.5 percent in 1996 to 8.3 percent today. While unemployment has gone down, wages have gone up. Over the last decade, as the foreign born workforce increased, average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers increased 8.7 percent after adjustment for inflation. In 2006, the median usual weekly earnings of foreign-born full-time wage and salary workers were $532, compared with $698 for the native-born.
There are three fundamental reasons why immigrants are important to our economy. First, the U.S. workforce is aging. Second, continued immigration will allow us to maintain a higher ratio of workers to retirees than other major economies such as China, Japan and Germany. Third, immigrants contribute significantly to innovation and entrepreneurship in our economy.