The Cost of Immigration

Until the twentieth century, the United States economy needed unskilled laborers for agriculture and other labor intensive jobs such as working on in construction, and assembly lines. The more the country became industrialized, the more the more factories needed workers. Data suggests that today there is approximately twelve million illegal immigrants living in the United States and that about 60% of them are from Mexico. Often, illegal immigrants who work do not pay taxes. Most of them use false identification and stolen social securities to obtain jobs, while others are simply hired and paid off the payroll. Undocumented workers and their employers do not pay payroll taxes, as illegal workers are hidden from taxing authorities. Furthermore, some employers know that they are hiring undocumented people, so they pay wages that are much lower than they would pay a citizen for the same job.  

It’s estimated that there are about 5 million children of illegal immigrants that attend school in the United States. The Federation for American immigration reform reported that the cost of educating these children is as high as 26 billion each year, and the parents of these children don’t pay the taxes for the education of these children. There is also concern about illegal immigrants and law enforcement. According to the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 more than 220,000 illegal immigrants were imprisoned for committed crimes such as burglary and assault.

 Public aid and health care have also being taken advantage by illegal immigrants. Once a child is born in the United States to illegal immigrants, the child is eligible for welfare since people born in the United States are American citizens. Illegal resident who have a citizen child can apply for welfare, thus adding more strain to the total bill that tax payers pick up for illegal immigration. In Los Angeles, County officials believe that by the end of 2013 illegal immigrant parents will have received more than $680 million in welfare benefits for their American citizen born children. According to the Center for Immigration Studies in 2010, 38 percent of immigrant headed households used at least one major welfare program, compared to 23 percent of native households. The problem is also serious for hospitals around the country. By law anyone coming to the emergency room cannot be denied treatment. The majority of illegal workers are not covered by insurance companies, so the hospital’s emergency room is one of their only sources to seek treatment. When the federal government proposed to spend billions to reimburse some of these hospitals, most of legal residents thought it was very unfair that they would have to be the ones playing the medical bills of undocumented immigrants. Illegal immigrants sending money back to Mexico each year also removes billions of dollars from circulation within the American economy. According to economists, illegal immigration is costing the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in lost taxes, money that if collected would wipe out most of the budget deficit.

NAFTA: A Broken Promise

One of the most heated topics in news and debate shows across the country today is immigration law. The question is should Congress pass or reject an immigration reform that would grant citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants? After focusing on the history of immigration and the contrasting effects NAFTA has had in Mexico and the United States, it is clear that the debate in Congress on whether or not to pass an immigration reform is long overdue.

NAFTA is short for the North American Free Trade Agreement and covers Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. NAFTA was launched 20 years ago and was supposed to reduce trading costs, increase business investment, and help North America be more competitive in the global marketplace. However, NAFTA has only resulted in the exploitation of Mexican workers, the loss of jobs in the U.S. and the only ones who have benefited are multinational corporations that are engaged in the exploitation.

American corporations have moved out of America, gone across the border to build a factory, exploit Mexican workers, and have shipped back into the U.S. to sell their products. In the United States you got workers who are being paid ten times, at least, more than workers on the other side of the border for the same job. This is why American companies decide to cross the border so that they can pay people a non-living wage. We've seen American jobs go to Mexico, but we haven’t seen the life of the Mexican worker improve. In fact, the standard of living for the average worker in Mexico has decreased. Because of this decrease in the standard of living in Mexico we see millions of immigrants come to the U.S. illegally. These U.S. corporations have eliminated so many family farms in Mexico along with jobs that used to be labor intensive jobs that these people come north looking for a way to survive. But we never talk about the way in which our trade agreements contribute to immigration.

The corrupt Mexican government is also to blame. Carlos Salinas, president of Mexico at the time NAFTA was signed, promised that free trade and foreign investors would make Mexico a rich and prosperous nation. Unfortunately, this never happened for the citizens of Mexico. Domestic industries were dismantled as multinational’s imported parts from their own suppliers. Multinational corporations have the ability to buy out anybody who opposes their views and can place officials that lean their way.

The people proposing these trade agreements could care less about the average American or about the poor people in Mexico. All these people care about is increasing the profits for their company. These CEO’s and business people are the ones in Washington D.C. with their lobbyist’s trying to push for further trade agreements, so that they can make even more money from cheap labor in other countries in Central America, South America, and Asia. We have to create trade policies that work for the workers of America and Mexico and not just for the large corporations. People need to get active and become involve in the public debate over trade deals, so that their vote is taken into account.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/business/worldbusiness/24peso.html?pagewanted=all

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/did-nafta-actually-help-mexico/

http://useconomy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=useconomy&cdn=newsissues&tm=12&f=00&tt=11&bt=8&bts=8&zu=http%3A//www.ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta

Illegal Immigrants: Do they hurt or help the economy

 

Take a look around, what do you see? Most likely you’ll see a Latin American restaurant on almost every corner. Why? Well, over the past half century, there has been an increasing amount of immigrants both legal and illegal coming from Latin America to the United States. Their origin may vary but, there purpose is the same. Almost all immigrants come to the United States to work towards a better life.

 

 

There has been an ongoing debate whether or not illegal immigration helps the economy. My opinion on this topic is pro illegal immigrants because they have a positive effect on the economy. Though, don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s wrong that they come illegally to our country. But, look at the outcome because they do. Once these immigrants get into the country their first thought is to look for a job and begin working to better their life. Think how many Americans are on our welfare or not currently employed though they could be. Of course these illegal immigrants are not capable of taking jobs we see as being average, such as: an office position, a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer. Instead they find one’s at the bottom of the pyramid that no one else wants. Which usually involve manual labor, long hours, and crappy pay. You learn fast when you come to this country you have to take what you can get. Most of the time, illegal immigrants work in the industries field, agriculture, landscaping, and even textile production. Illegal immigrants account for 5 percent of the total labor force. If you think about it, if we shipped out all the illegal immigrants not only would it affect the workforce by leaving giant holes for an employers to fill. All of the money they spend in the housing, food industry and everything in general, the economy would take a turn for the worst. Without all that cash being pumped back in the country’s economy which, is 5 percent of our work force we would experience higher fluxes in the food prices, gas prices, and the cost of living would drastically go up. Yes, it is illegal. I understand that but if you take a caterpillar a little, ugly, annoying bug and you give it time, eventually, it will grow and blossom into a beautiful butterfly. I believe there should be laws and regulations to entering this country but, if we didn’t have people illegally crossing the border the negatives of fixing this problem and taking away hard working people who do jobs no one wants to with a smile on their face, it would far out weight the positives.

 

(http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/upfront/debate/index.asp?article=d090108)
(http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/01/news/economy/immigration_economy/)

Americans will do a job for $15 an hour not $8!

Trabajo en IBP!

       Many companies abused the use of immigrants for their own benefit. A lot of companies, mainly within the food industry such as Smithsville, IBP and Purdue, have really pushed the envelope of use of illegal immigrants to do all the dirty work that other people wouldn't to do for the pay rate. Many companies work together aside ICE or Immigration and Customs Enforcement to set a quota of how many immigrants are allowed to work for the company and then deported according to the law since they are illegal. This proves that money is power and that large corporations are able to have a their way with the government when it comes to having cheap labor to do the work. Since these companies do this, a lot of them don't necessarily care about what may happen to the immigrant workers because there is more than one immigrant that is waiting outside to be employed. Having this upper hand, many of the companies don't necessarily have too much cost behind every person lost to the immigration law, because the task that needs to be completed anyone can do. That is why if anyone were to get hurt on the job, these immigrants working for the company may very well not collect workers compensation because they are illegal. (http://colorlines.com/archives/2009/07/food_inc_shines_a_light_on_immigrant_labor.html)

       Another thing that these large companies don't have fear of is being sued by the immigrant workers, this is because since they are illegal they have no rights in the country and therefore cannot do anything to defend themselves from the constant corruption that these companies are involved with. Thus since the companies can't extract anything else out of the worker, they simply let he or she go and may even have them deported or the immigrant family may either move back to their respective country or move to a different state in which they have hopes of finding a new job. In the movie, Food Inc. there is a scene where ICE goes into a trailer park and burst into the homes early in the morning of the illegal employees of IBP; arrest them all, and one by one sit them in the police trucks and send them away.

       There are also times when the workers may complain about the immigrants working within the same company. There were instances when black workers didn't want immigrant workers to be in the same place of work as them. This kind of thing is what companies try to avoid is by sending the workers to different areas of work such as setting them apart and sending them to different departments where the conflict will be minimized. There were workers that complained that they didn't want to work with the immigrant workers because it led to wages staying at a plateau rather than receiving an increase in pay. A black worker said, "We don't want to do it for $8. Pay $15 and we'll do it." The immigrant workers wanted to work, and they didn't necessarily care for what wage; many of them may not even care to work for five dollars an hour as long as they worked and received pay.(http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=449_0_2_0)

       These major companies play a major part when immigration is brought into the United States. Many of these immigrants just want to work and get ahead of life. Large corporations having money keep immigrants in the company for cheap labor, and care nothing about the immigrant. These kind of people keep the companies afloat and keep the family tables around the country full of food. 

http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=449_0_2_0

http://colorlines.com/archives/2009/07/food_inc_shines_a_light_on_immigrant_labor.html

Never Held Water

Over 2 million Mexican migrants and immigrants to the United States come from the campesino communities within the state of Guanajuato, with almost 250,000 living in Illinois.  These guanajuatenses generally come from rural areas that still practice subsistence-farming to work in the agriculture industry.  In order to continue the traditional subsistence-farming lifestyle, some guanajuatenses migrate for the farming season to the US, and migrants and immigrants together send millions of dollars in remittances to Guanajuato, Mexico.  (http://www.jsri.msu.edu/upload/working-papers/wp47.pdf )

NAFTA continues to add to the plight of the compesinos in Guanajuato and Mexico.  The guanajuatenses that depend on farming for income cannot compete with the large US-funded corporations, primarily agri-businesses, which have moved into the area post-NAFTA.  In addition, NAFTA-related liberalizing reforms in Mexico during the economic crisis of the 1980s have resulted in a reduction in government support of small farmers and low income families.  CONASUPO, the National Company of Popular Substistence that was formed in 1965 with aims to “a) regulating the markets of staples (or popular subsistence crops) through the creation of more efficient and rational relationship between producer and consumer and the elimination of inefficient and dishonest intermediaries, and b) protecting low-income consumers, by granting them access to basic foods, and low-income producers, by allowing them to obtain a livelihood from their production activities”, was dismantled in 1999.  Unfortunately, many benefits for the lower class were not replaced by other government organizations and disappeared along with it (http://reap.ucdavis.edu/research/CONASUPO.pdf).  Sadly, the value of the compesinos’ crops is declining and government assistance has been taken away; subsequently, many are left with the choice between emigration and immigration.

Another issue affecting the guanajuatenese immigration that I am personally aware of, but can’t seem to find much literature discussing, is the depletion of the Independence Aquifer.  The Independence Aquifer is the main source of ground water for Guanajuato.  Since large agri-businesses have been farming so heavily in the region, the aquifer has been depleting at an alarming rate of over a foot per year.  This causes the contaminant levels from natural (volcanic) and anthropomorphic (farming) sources to increase to toxic levels.  In the rural areas of Guanajuato, the people are supplied by wells for water; the government has not developed municipal water supplies.  In one small town that we visited, with a population of less than 100, 6 people had died the previous year of fluoride-related bone cancer. 

The NIU Engineers Without Borders group is currently involved in Guanajuato, Mexico.  In a project being completed with the International Centers for Appropriate Technology and Indigenous Sustainability (www.icatis.org), we are designing point of use (POU) water filtration systems that remove some regional contaminants. 

Campesinos and their families told us about how the younger generations are leaving the communities to find greater opportunities in the cities or because they are worried about their health.  Subsequently, the older citizens are left behind and the communities are dying off.  Many are worried about the loss of their land, their values, and their traditions. 

I imagine that not many of my classmates have thought about water and how it can affect immigration.  Even if NAFTA was revoked tomorrow and the Mexican government started pumping millions of pesos into reestablishing and supporting its lower classes, without the government also finding a way to supply healthy water, the rural classes will have to move anyway. 

(I took the picture of this article myself while traveling in Guanajuato.)

Three Different Immigration Policies

The United States has been always seemed as the land of the opportunity, where anyone could achieve the American dream and live a happy life. This is one of the reason why people see the United States as the country to go and find opportunity for jobs and a second chance in life. Over the years, the United States has had four major immigration waves to the country. The first wave was when the colonist arrived to the Americas and settle what it is now the United States.

The first wave lasted about one hundred and seventy five years were the first colonist settle. Most of them come from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden,Wales, Denmark, Finland, and what is now Ukraine. It brought around 450,000 to 500,000 immigrants. The second wave lasted from 1820 to 1870 and almost seven million immigrants entered the United States and where most of them came from northern and western Europe. The third wave of immigrants lasted from 1881 to 1920 and approximately twenty three million immigrants came to the United States where most of them came from eastern and southern parts of Europe. And lastly the last wave of immigrants started from 1965 until the present. The last wave of immigrants are mostly from  Latin America, mostly from México, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. As most of the immigrants that came to the United States, they came to the United States to get a second chance in life in the land of the opportunity. In the first three waves of immigration, most of the immigrants came from Europe. Very few came from other parts of the world but the most recent and current wave of immigration are coming from Latin America. That is why most of the immigrants from the current wave of immigration are mostly from Latin America.

Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans are in a total different positions of legal status and policies towards them when it comes to immigration policies. While Mexicans are automatically deported once they are taken by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Puerto Ricans are citizens as soon as they are born like any person born in the United States, and Cubans have the dry feet vs. wet feet policy which is saying if a person from Cuba makes it to dry land in the United States, they could apply for legal status in the United States as a political refugee. However, if they are found in water they would face deportation back to Cuba. As one can see, within these three Latino groups there are major differences when it comes to immigration policies. According to Marisa, she states that at first these groups did not voluntary came to the United States because they wanted to, it was because they had to since the United States had more opportunities than their own countries. However, that has changed over the years.

In the beginning, the first wave of Cubans was because of economical status. Because many people own companies in Cuba and were scared of socialism that the Cuban government was implementing, they fled to other countries to continue their companies, which they the United States as an opportunity. The second wave of Cuban immigration was because of political reasons, which this is the most current. Compare to Puerto Ricans, Puerto Ricans have the benefit of being a common wealth to the United States which they automatically become citizens of the United States. When you compare Cubans and Puerto Ricans with Mexicans, Mexicans have no loopholes to the immigration policies in the United States. For those who are undocumented and if they are captured by ICE, they are automatically deported to México with no ways to stay in the United States.

The way that I see the immigration policies between Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans is that Puerto Ricans and Cubans have more chance to stay in the United States than Mexicans because either they are automatically become United States citizens because they are common wealth, Puerto Ricans, or because they could file asylum from their home country, Cubans, while Mexicans have no chance to stay in the United States unless they are born or they become citizens which takes years. The reason why Mexicans have no mercy to stay in the United States is because the United States sees no political problems in México, that concerns the United States, that will allowed Mexicans to file asylum. Which personally, I think that the United States is right when it comes not allowing Mexicans to file asylum since there is no political reasons that will concern the United States, however I believe that they should really pass an immigration law that would benefit those immigrants who do not have documents in the United States of America.  

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/3/99.03.01.x.html#top

http://immigrationinamerica.org/603-immigration-waves.html

https://webcourses.niu.edu/bbcswebdav/library/eReserves/20138-ILAS-100-----1/alicealie.pdf

Corruption, NAFTA, and Cheap Labor: the story of Latin America

Illegal Immigration has been the most heated debate in the United States during the last decade. An anti-Immigrant sentiment has been spreading throughout the United States in a country that was once built on immigrants. 

What a lot of people do not know is that illegal immigration is such a big problem because the United States made it this big of a problem in Latin America. Before 1994 (the year NAFTA was passed) there was only 3.9 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Today there are over 12 million undocumented workers here in the United States, a tremendous increase of 300 percent. More than half of those illegal immigrants are from our neighbor south of the border: Mexico. 

But Illegal immigration comes from every single corner of Latin America. Immigrants come from every single corner of Latin America, looking for the promises that were made to them when all their home companies were privatized in the name of progress. People in Latin were promised a better life now that all electricity, water, and meat companies were privatized, but the result became quite the opposite. Many of those things became an unaffordable luxury for people in Latin America. Creating a huge amount of unemployment because now Mexican butchers that had their own small business could not compete with the cheap prices created by the cheap pork being imported from the United States

The United States took the time to set up puppet democracies in Latin America to benefit them, not the people of the country. Those puppet democracies made the people believe that Nationalizing companies was a bad thing because it limited the competition in the country making it less efficient for the people of their country. The people who now owned all the land and companies knew nothing about their culture and did not care about the people what so ever, they only had one thing in their mind which was making money at any cost.  This ended up creating inflation problems in countries all over Latin America. Wages kept going down, but the standard of living and unemployment were skyrocketing until the only solution became migrating to the United States.

Aside from the economic factors, many Latinos are here to escape the fake democracies that were set up throughout Latin America, they are here to escape those presidents that allow American imperialism in their home countries, and they are here to escape countries that have all the resources to feed their people dying of hunger but don’t do anything to help them, which is the result of privatizing all of their companies, meaning they export the majority of their goods only to buy them back at a ridiculous price, creating inflation.  

This was the main effect that NAFTA had in Mexico. It displaced many workers that had a steady job in home companies into unemployment, forcing them to look elsewhere for jobs. Some were granted to come and work in the United States, thanks to NAFTA, by being granted a work visa. They were only being used as cheap labor and justified slavery. 

Mexican Farmers were forced to leave their land, thanks to American companies that flooded the Mexican economy with cheap corn, causing the price to drop 70 percent. Corn producing was Mexico’s main product, but in the last decade over one million farmers have lost their jobs thanks to cheap corn. Another 142,00 cultivating jobs have also disappeared.

It is all not the United States's fault, but they are the main antagonist of this story. Countries like Mexico have a lot to do with all of this with their corrupt governments, but at the end of the day, the only reason that corrupt government is there is because the United States placed them there

                                                 References: 

• http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextchannel=bac00b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextoid=bac00b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD
• http://economyincrisis.org/content/illegal-immigration-and-nafta