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How Do Illegal Immigrants Affect The Economy

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The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double by 2060. And as our country’s workforce demographic changes, the economy is being affected. More and more high school students are enrolling in higher education, and unemployment rates have dipped as low as 4.8 percent. These seem like causes for celebration, but there is one unique problem caused by the changing workforce. Low skill jobs essential to our economy are now going unfilled by US citizens. But that does not mean that these jobs are not being taken. Rather, illegal immigrants now hold many low skill labor jobs, as they are abandoned by both citizens and legal immigrants alike. As much debate as there is surrounding illegal immigrants, they are becoming increasingly important to our economy. Illegal immigrants affect our economy in both positive and negative ways, but they are essential to our economy now and in the future.

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One very interesting example of this is the relationship between skilled and unskilled workers salaries. Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, reached an interesting conclusion about this. He said, “Undocumented workers do not compete with skilled laborers-instead, they complement them. Economies… work best when workers become specialized and divide up tasks among themselves.” Low skilled illegal immigrants allow this specialization to happen. By doing their tasks, such as cleaning a construction site, they allow more skilled workers to solely focus on doing their own, more complex work. This allows everyone in the work environment to be much more productive, working more hours and making more money. From 1990 to 2007, illegal immigrants increased legal workers’ salaries in complementary jobs, such as those mentioned above, by as much as 10

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