1) Isaac Hourwich’s purpose in writing this book is to oppose the claims of the Immigration Commission as there are also many stereotypes of Immigrants created by Native born Americans and also challenge the findings of the Immigration Commission. Hourwich uses his economic aspects to explain that Immigrants do not cause the labor market to decline, decreases wages, and increase unemployment in the United States. Most of the native-born Americans fear that as the rate of Immigration increases, it might hurt the American wage-earners. Therefore, there is an assumption that most American workers made was that “undesirable” Immigrants should be out of the country and keep the American workers busy. (82) To elaborate, Hourwich uses Malthusian …show more content…
Hourwich also mentioned that if there are supplies of cheap labor available, replacing the unskilled workers with machines would be pointless. Thus, the factor that decreases the wage is based on whether employers think if it is worth spending their money on cheap labor from Immigrants or replacing them with machinery. If the wage increases, most likely the employers will be replacing the workers with machines. If not, employers will take advantage of cheap labors where huge amount of investments are not necessary. Native-born Americans from the society at that time also assumes that as the rate of Immigration increases, the employers are replacing native-born Americans with Immigrants because of the willingness of Immigrants working for low-wages. Native-born Americans think that if the rate of Immigration is increasing, most Americans might face unemployment. Hourwich again explains that Immigrants are not the cause of jobs competition nor unemployment because there are other factors that influence to cause the situation such as seasonal variation, lack of labor demands, and lack of labor