How Immigration Reform Will Help Everyone

Everyone in this country will benefit if immigration reform is enacted and illegal immigrants are legalized. This even includes the people who insist they should all be deported. Almost every aspect of our lives will be affected positively.

We all agree that people should not be in this country illegally. We agree that we have to document the people entering and leaving our country. But the people who are against reform should consider that legalizing these people will benefit the whole country; the military, Social Security, our economy, education, even our national security.

The most immediate benefit would be to business. Our unemployment rate is below 4.5% -- and 10% of our work force is undocumented. With so few people out of work now, there would not be enough available workers to replace these people if they were suddenly deported. Our birthrate is low, our population is aging and the workforce is shrinking.

If farmers can't hire enough workers to plant or harvest, they would close, more of our food would be imported along with safety concerns and it would be more expensive. Hotels, motels, restaurants and landscape companies would close. Even with the slowdown in the construction industry, there wouldn't be enough workers left to build and repair houses. The factories that could outsource their work overseas would do that, rather than close, but many would have to close. This would lead to unemployment of the legal workers in those companies. Besides these work force problems, there would be a smaller tax base for those towns and the country.