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Should the United States Allow More People to Immigrate Here Legally?

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Submitted By liberty260
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Between the years of 2005-2010 6,721,3701 people were granted legal permanent residency in the United States, on top of that another 6,706,8931* people were admitted here as temporary workers or trainees. With the U.S. experiencing such a large surge in immigration many are concerned about what type of affects such an influx of immigrants will have on our economy and if should we continue to allow so many foreign born people to settle or work here? In an effort to counter these concerns some will argue that immigration actually benefits our economy and therefore we should treat immigration the same as we do international free trade and not limit it. Nevertheless, research has shown that on average when immigration levels are too high the average wage of workers is lowered. Considering the high current unemployment rate not only does this negatively affect native born Americans but also incoming immigrants, thus immigration levels should be reduced.

A study done by Harvard Economist George J. Borjas shows that, “immigration lowers the wage of competing workers: a 10 percent increase in supply reduces wages by 3 to 4 percent.”2 According to Borjas this wage decrease can be primarily explained by applying the basic economic theory of supply and demand. This theory states that if the supply of a product increases and demand does not, then the price for that product must decrease as a result. This principle also holds true for labor market as well, if the amount of people able to compete for the same job increases, yet the number of jobs remains the same then the amount a company will have to pay for that job decreases because there are more people to fill the void. On top of that immigrants usually come from countries that have a lower standard of living and which are less

economically stable, therefore they are usually willing to do the same job Americans do but

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