Running Head: IMPACTS OF IMMIGRATION

Impacts of Immigration in the United States: A Review of Literature

Jose G. Lopez-Salazar

University of Texas at El Paso

IMPACTS OF IMMIGRATION

Abstract

Immigration has always been a big factor in disagreements and discussions about

whether is immigration good or bad. The purpose of this literary review is mainly to see the

different aspects of immigration and in what ways does this movement affect and benefit our

community, and how have this changes been changing the way we are as a society.
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Impacts of Immigration: A Review of Literature

Since the formation of the country, there have been various factors that have

contributed to the formation of it and have helped to the development in on its different

aspects. One of the factors that have been helping the country since a long time ago is

Immigration. Immigration which is the flow of people that go from one place and stays in

another mainly to get a better opportunity to grow financially and/or culturally. Even though

immigration has brought a lot of benefits to the country in general, many people have

managed to make immigration look like something bad. For these reasons we should totally

consider and answer these questions:

 How immigration affects the economy in a country?

 What is the impact of immigration in the US?

 Immigration policies in the U.S.

Having these questions in mind we will be able to identify each of the factors of

immigration, how and why it is so helpful in our society and how it benefits us as a

community.

How immigration affects the economy in a country?

There have been a lot of research on this topic and a lot of people will agree that on

the majority of the people coming to the United States do it with just one purpose in mind,
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get a better quality of life. According to Kerr and Turner “High-skilled immigrants represent

an increasing share of the US workforce, particularly in science and engineering S&E elds."

(2015) Consequently, immigrants want to get to The United States not to get benefits from

the government but to help them to grow, these people are hungry to learn and to be better, to

help their family and their new country. The growing of the economy of the United States

has always been something that people want to increase because as the economy gets better

our whole country does. Schwartz (2017) says that "any hopes for economic growth will be

undercut by his deportation plans.” By saying this he means that having a good considerable

growth in the economy per year and deporting immigrants is very difficult to do because

immigrants report a lot of the income that the country has. Deporting immigrants would

impact negatively the country in many considerable ways. Having people from another

country coming change a lot the economy, even though these people may come to work for

another person, over the time they may also start their own business, something that

increases a lot the economy in the country. Ivanova (2017) shows us in the following table

what the impact of immigrants in owning a business is;

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Image#1

As Ivanova is showing in the table above, is very clearly noticeable that a lot of

people non-native from the United States, with these said, it's not hard to say that having

immigrants go out of the country would mean a huge loss of money for everyone.

What is the impact of immigration in the US?

There are so many factors that may be able to change the way of how the economy

flows, at this point in time immigration has been getting the power to be able to influence the
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economy. Immigration has change lot of aspects of a country and mainly in the United States

since there is a huge flow of people coming in and out so this changes a lot of aspects in our

way of life. One of the main and the most noticeable changes in the U.S. is mainly

geographically. To start off is the population "The 70 million immigrants who have arrived

since the founding of the Republic (formal records have only been kept since 1820) are

responsible for the majority of the contemporary American population." (Hirschman, 2013).

Compared to the total population of the whole country this number is still very large and this

amount of people means a lot of opinions, a lot of different positions, but in general, they all

came here for the same reason, to get a better life. As an effect of the demographical change,

the level of different cultures, and different ethnicities also grow. Having a lot of different

cultures in the same place is a good thing to do because like this every one learns from

everyone. Is very hard to see someone feeling on top of someone else because everyone

shares something in common and also something that they can share with people they

interact because they are not from the same place. Griswold (2002) states "Immigration is not

undermining the American experiment; it is an integral part of it. We are a nation of

immigrants." Following what the author said we can just restate that having a long number of

people coming in as immigrants to this country doesn't do other than benefit us and having

more things to do and/or enjoy. Overall, immigration has been happening and unless a huge

change was to be made it is going to keep happening because is very beneficial for the

country in a lot of aspects. So you can have an idea of how many immigrants there are in the

U.S. here is a graph with all the statistics;

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Image #2

As you can see in Image#2, there is a complete change in the chart, since the starting

of immigration from about the 1860's until now 2018 there has been a lot of increase and this

is because of various factors such as better opportunity of work and more freedom to live.

Immigration policies in the U.S.

On the contrary of what a lot of people think, having a bigger flow of people coming

into the U.S. could be very beneficial to us in various ways. Even though this cannot be done

just this easy following some steps and been careful with who do enter the country would
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make a huge difference on whether the country goes to the better or bad. One of the many

policies from the United States that is preventing even more people to cross the border is that

the U.S. government is only allowed to give "a limited number of visas are available every

year under the family preference system" ("How the United States Immigration System

Works," 2018). This is one of the main reasons why even though the country is growing fast,

is not growing to its maximum potential because this is the way the government wants it to

be. Very recently a very polemic decision has been gaining a lot of support and also a lot of

hate from other people. This is the worrying idea of making a wall and getting all immigrants

out from the United States. These actions would require a lot of effort and economic

resources to get this done. The only thing this would end up doing is waste a lot of money

and having less economic income. Overall this policy that is trying to be applied "calls for a

20 percent to 60 percent cut in green cards and a huge increase in immigration enforcement."

Nowrasteh (2016). This basically means that having this policy working in the United States

would end up losing close to 35% of the total population so a lot of the people on the

workforce would be out of the country too.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this literature review has analyzed several amounts of data and have

got to the conclusion that immigration has been a factor for the country that has prevailed

from a long time ago and is still something that nowadays has a lot of power on the society.

Just as any other popular topic it has its highs and lows and also the points where people
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differ and others where they agree but at the end of the day immigration happens everywhere

and it is always something that lives a mark wherever it happens.

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