Statistics from the 2009 Community Survey show that immigrants make up 12.5 percent of the population in the United States (Batalova and Terrazas, “Frequently Requested Statistics”). This staggering amount shows that one eighth of living people in the US were born in a different country. With such a large influence on the size of the population, foreign born people greatly impact this country’s commerce. Furthermore, all people in this country aside from Native Americans are descended from immigrants that revolutionized the United States. This country is built on people from different places coming together, and boundaries aren’t about to stop what has been happening for years. Because immigrants are a remarkable benefit to the United States, …show more content…
If there are less jobs, the people deserving of these openings are the people born and raised in the United States. Immigrants and natives competing for the same jobs have put natives at a disadvantage because they aren’t as willing to work for low-wages (Ruark and Graham, “Immigration, Poverty, and Low-Wage”). Despite this claim, unauthorized immigration slows whenever there is a lack for job opportunities. As refuted by Alex Nowrasteh, when there are times of prosperity in the US economy, immigrants come to the US, which ends up helping the economy by not having a decline in workers. Also, in the US it is said to be a record period of immigration for the last 40 years. Considering that most are descended from immigrants, this isn’t a viable claim. To further negate this, the US is still below the OECD average for immigrants in different countries. Another worry that plagues taxpayers of this country is that legalized immigrants will immediately access welfare and take advantage of it. Still, it takes 13 years for anyone to have access to welfare upon first entering the country as stated by the Senate version of reform (Nowrasteh, “Rebuttal of Senator”). Without people to join the work force with manual effort, this country would crumble. When work is needed to be completed and said jobs are applied for, complaints as to where the effort comes from are