Immigrants and Opportunity: American Lessons

Immigration in the United States is a controversial topic. Some want the doors kept open while man others would prefer to dead bolt them and throw away the key. Despite its controversial nature immigration has an interesting effect on the economy. Despite coming off the ship, plan or raft in rags many of these immigrants have lives of success.

Nearly 40% of Americans can trace their roots back to the 12 million Europeans who passed through Ellis Island somewhere between 1892 and 1953. These immigrants were poor and were forced to live in the urban ghettos like many of our fellow Americans do today. Through great efforts, hard work, and focusing on their goals they have made their way into mainstream American life and the middle class.

The Director of Corporate Governance at Stanford University, Dan Siciliano, states that a record of immigrants between 1990 and 2004 show that these populations contributed to the overall increase in wages of U.S. workers (Jaffe, 2007). This appears to be contradictory to the concept that these immigrants are taking away work from Americans.

Siciliano states that immigrants "increased wages by as much as 3.4 percent among native-born workers with at least a high school education." He makes this bold statement because many of these immigrants have also created jobs as well as filled them. The lowest level and uneducated workers of the U.S. have been advantaged while working with immigrants.

It is believed that even more new immigrants will be needed to offset the overall affects of the retiring of the Baby Boomers. There will be a huge void in the workforce for labor and without these immigrants it is unlikely that all the positions will be filled. However, the positive side is that wages will likely rise and unemployment will go down.

The overall fear is that many Americans will be displaced by these new immigrants and not get their fair share of the American dream. The hard reality is that these low-skilled workers were never really part of that dream. Their household and community problems have forced them into an unproductive state of existence.