FIVE MYTHS ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Five Myths about Immigration

 

Throughout history, immigrants in the United States have been perceived by U.S citizens negatively and these perceptions have obscured reason and fairness. The five myths about immigration explain the misinformation of people regarding the immigrants in America who they blame for the problems in the society. These preconceived notions do not have clear basis and are often unfounded.

 explained the five common myths regarding immigrants who enter the United States. These myths distort public debate and government policies related to immigrants. Immigrants overrun America, take available jobs and drain the resources of the country. Aside from this, immigrants are alleged of taking away the cultural and political unity of America and that they are not entitled of constitutional rights.

            These myths are proven untrue by  in his article. First is the myth that America is being overrun with immigrants. At some point, this is true. Aside from real Native Americans, America has been a nation of immigrants. However the myth about the growing population of the first generation immigrant is untrue.  In 1990, eight percent of the population constitutes the immigrants. Most of these proportions are refugees or immediate relatives of U.S citizens. Contrary to popular beliefs, these immigrants do not enter the country illegally and remains in the country until their visa expires.

            The second myth about the immigrants is that they take the jobs from the U.S citizens. Such view is not supported by evidences and it probably emerged as a wide spread misunderstanding of the immigrants. In fact, numerous studies have shown that immigrants actually create more jobs than those they fill. While they take jobs, they are also highly productive with running their own businesses and employ both immigrants and citizens.

            Studies have shown consistently that immigrant workers do not hurt the U.S born workers instead they stimulate the growth of the economy by spending in consumer goods, starting their own businesses and investing capital. The idea that immigrants take jobs away from U.S citizens is a persistent fallacy about immigration. This thought is based form the belief that there is a limited number of jobs in the economy.

            Third is the myth that immigrants drain the society’s resources. This claim ahs led to the effort of the government to cut off some of the benefits of immigrants. Although some studies showed that the immigrants are net benefits to the economy because they generate significant taxes paid than the cost of the services they received. In addition to this, immigrants are found to have favorable effects on the overall standard of living. Anti immigrant advocates cite studies that focus only on the taxes and services at the local and state levels.  They fail to explain that most of the taxes generated actually go to the federal government.

            In addition to this, the U.S has plenty of wealth to spend. As of 2001, it has the third largest per capita Gross domestic Product in the world. It is also relatively uncrowded and constitutes only 4.9% of the world’s population in 2003. Aside from this, most of the population growth occurs in less developed countries while the growth in developed countries is relatively low.

            Fourth is the refusal of the immigrants to assimilate and the deprivation of cultural and political unity. This claim has emerged with the arrival of the new group of immigrants in the U.S. Even so, this may be proven untrue. Take for example the Chinese immigrants who remained in the country as separate people. They retain their distinctiveness in dressing, manners, habits and modes of living marked by their complexion and language.  The same claim is made with Catholics, Jews, Italians, Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans.

            According to , these claims are simply unfounded since the American Culture has been shaped by people who descended from immigrants that are once regarded as anti-assimilationist. Today, it has been accepted that these people are important players in defining the country’s culture. American culture has been created and influenced by the diversity of people that came form different backgrounds and traditions.

            The last myth is that non citizen immigrants are not entitled to constitutional rights.  argued that the Bills of Rights protect all people only reserving the right to vote and run federal positions to citizens. He pointed out that in 1983, the executive branch defended a statute requiring Chinese laborers to establish their prior residency with the testimony of at least one credible white witness. This law was ruled as constitutional by the Supreme Court because it presumed that nonwhite witnesses cannot be trusted. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that every person in the country irrespective of their immigrant status is entitled to fundamental rights although the federal government sometimes fails to uphold such principles.

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