Aparna Mandapaka
Immigration is considered as one of the major and important topics in the United States. As Donald Trump got elected as the president of the United States the immigration became severe and terrifying. He nearly deported half a million people back to their homeland last year. Most people support President Donald Trump’s ideas because they believe that allowing more immigrants into the United States would put their jobs at risk and they think that as we hire high skilled and high experienced people from different countries the natives would lose job opportunities and lose demand in the market. But allowing more immigrants into the United States would have a huge benefit because they help in creating more workspace and also help in boosting up the economy. Immigrants contribute to the economy and GDP by paying taxes, immigrants pay more taxes than Americans. According to the National Immigration Forum, “Immigrants pay taxes and spend money in local economies. Without these important economic contributions from immigrants, the U.S. economy would be smaller, and government at all levels would see revenues decline without the taxes paid by immigrants.” Immigration brings benefits to the U.S. economy through the help of their taxes, immigrants taxes benefit retired people and other Americans like college students by the government providing them scholarships.
Immigrants also help in increasing the GDP by impacting on the labor market. As we hire more immigrants they work more hours, which means they worked more hours in the economy. Working more hours would help the economy because if you are in a job and working it means less unemployment when the government calculates the unemployment rate. When you are working for government doesn’t check if you are a citizen or immigrant(but you have to have legal working permit) they just want to know do you work or not and how many hours you worked because if there is less unemployment it means that the country is doing good and has a good economic condition. According to ProPublica, Adam Ozimek and Mark Zandi at Moody’s Analytics, “an independent economics firm, estimated that for every 1 percent increase in U.S. population made of immigrants, GDP rises 1.15 percent. So a simple way to get to Trump’s 4 percent GDP bump? Take in about 8 million net immigrants per year. To show you what that really looks like, we’ve charted the effect below. You can see for yourself what might happen to the economy if we increased immigration to the highest rates in history or dropped it to zero – and everything in between.” In recent interviews, President Donald Trump stated that he would increase GDP at least 3.5 - 4%, but he might not reach his goal if he stops legal immigrants from entering into the United States and deporting them. If there are fewer immigrants in the United States means that they are fewer taxes being paid, when there are fewer taxes being paid it means that the economic growth is decreasing
If we compare these two graphs, you can see that one million immigrants would maintain GDP at 2%, because as the immigrants come into America they pay local taxes which is 8% of their salary. If we compare the graph that has five million immigrants we can see that the GDP increased between 3 to 4 percent. They are receiving at least eight percent from each individuals salary, and more taxes are being paid so the GDP increases..
In conclusion, another way immigrants boost up GDP and economy by paying their kid's college fees. Most immigrant children are considered as international students in college, which means that they pay double amount than the out state fee. Since they are the international student they are not eligible or receive any type of government fundings like scholarships. Since they pay double amount this would go towards government spending, which is eventually used for boosting up the economy and would go as pension for retired people.
Works Cited
Groeger, Lena. “The Immigration Effect: There's a Way for President Trump to Boost the Economy by Four Percent, But He Probably Won't Like It.” ProPublica, 19 July 2017, projects.propublica.org/graphics/gdp.
“Immigrants as Economic Contributors: Immigrant Tax Contributions and Spending Power.” National Immigration Forum, immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-immigrant-tax-contributions-and-spending-power/.
“Immigrants as Economic Contributors: Immigrant Tax Contributions and Spending Power.” National Immigration Forum, immigrationforum.org/article/immigrants-as-economic-contributors-immigrant-tax-contributions-and-spending-power/.
I found this post quite interesting because I've never really looked at immigration from the perspective of what it would do for the economy. The boost to our economy through improving the GDP would be quite beneficial. Like you said, immigrants do pay their taxes fairly, and the work they do in America within the labor force would be advantageous as well. Not to mention, the immigrants would experience incredible benefits as well seeing as they'd be able to live out their dreams and work in the US, all the while contributing to the economy. This article you wrote seems to highlight one of the various reasons as to why immigration is not a bad thing, and I enjoyed seeing it from a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteImporting immigrants into the United States could be a good or bad thing. On the positive side immigrants would contribute to our GDP because they would have to pay for taxes too. Immigrants would lead to less unemployment and their hours would go towards our economy. But on the negative side immigrants could be taking away jobs from those in the US who need a job. Also it could be expensive to get them over here. With importing immigrants there is always the risk of crime. So the crime rate could increase in our country and that would make people feel uneasy and not as safe in the country. It could also lead to people not having as much trust in the government if their life is not safe.
ReplyDeleteI agree that many citizens in the United States were worried that immigrants were taking there jobs, therefore they were in favor of sending them back to there original country. However I do feel that immigration is a huge part of our country’s GDP. In the US there's a numerous amount of immigrants, and mostly all of them work so our labor market is strengthened. I believe that immigrants also help boost economic growth. This was a very interesting article because many people have different viewpoints on this topic, many do not realize that immigration affects the economy.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that immigration is a controversial issue that many consider to actually be hurting the economy with jobs being stolen from Americans. However, this is not true as you said. If we have more immigrants coming over, they can bring with them new ideas and innovations that may actually create more jobs. As well, for every final product produced, the U.S. GDP increases. As well with more people in the U.S., aggregate demand increases as the consumer base increases and spends more. With the rightward shift of the AD curve, yes, inflation will occur but more jobs are also created. Again, this contradicts the anti-immigration argument and shows that immigrants actually create more jobs.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that immigration helps with GDP because a lot of times immigrants come to America because they want better jobs and better living conditions. Therefore immigrants are going to want to work more hours than typical American's do because of the fact that they came to America for a reason. People think that having immigrants in our country is a bad thing, but if they are making our GDP increase and they are helping to better our economy than what's the issue?
ReplyDeleteThe only Americans who are truly scared of immigrants are the structurally unemployed, but not only are those Americans NEVER getting their jobs back because our economy is advancing, but if that is the case, then immigrants won't be taking those jobs either, therefore, it's really not true that immigrants are stealing jobs from working class Americans. Another claim that needs debunking is the idea that allowing an influx of immigration into the United States would make America less safe. This is a xenophobic myth that allows Trump to keep immigrants of color out of the United States. No one would have this issue if we had an immigration crisis from Ireland or England. The truth is that we have an EXTREMELY timely and difficult vetting process and if the Trump administration and border patrol spent nearly half the time they spend finding and deporting immigrants as they did simply doing their do diligence and vetting them, we could much more easily turn away those not fit to be in our country and still accept those immigrants that would give us a GDP bump and be beneficial to our economy who want to be here. I'm so glad that you wrote about this because it is very clear that we are regressing in terms of a country and an economy and we will lose what we worked so hard for if we block out all immigrants. I'm not saying we have to take everybody in, but with the examples of the small European countries that are struggling to hold the influx of refugees, America is approximately 2-4 times larger than those countries and has the capacity to take in a couple million refugees who pass their vetting process and contribute to the economy. All in all, the myth that immigration destroys America and American jobs is simply that--a myth--and it founded by fear not fact.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that immigrants are huge and key component to boosting the economy. However, those who come in illegally are hurting the economy because they are getting paid far less than those who are legal. This means that if these illegal immigrants are taking jobs, then the employers have to pay less for their "employee" (even though they technically don't exist), which ultimately hurts the economy.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the integration of immigrants into the United states would not only improve local economies. It would simultaneously help improve the overall economy as well. This is shown with the taxes that are placed on to immigrants when they enter the society. Also with the integration of more immigrants it would than strive for more cultural influence in the society. Which would in turn provide new resources and social benefits in society as a whole. Also with the integration of more immigrants, it would result in a more diverse and balanced society. Which in would turn provide more ideas and people with diverse backgrounds to help amplify the economy. This could be shown with the integration of immigrants from germany in the beginning of the USA’s history. Which resulted in introduction of alcohol and cuisine to Wisconsin. Which helped to contribute to the local economies influence in alcohol which provides for most of the local economy.
ReplyDeleteI think an important factor to consider when thinking about how immigrants impact the economy is what types of work they are able to do. With most of American products being produced outside of the country due to cheaper costs, there aren’t as many factory and manufacturing jobs that immigrants are able to work. Instead, the fear comes from whether or not legal immigrants are going to “take” career-building jobs from Americans. Instead of worrying about how exactly immigration would boost the economy with the influx of new workers, it is more important to consider where exactly all of this work would come from, and whether or not the unemployment rate would actually be worse off than it was before immigration was opened up.
ReplyDeleteI think that immigration is a huge part of American culture and economy. I think that the main concern is not immigrants as a whole, but more so on illegal immigrants. This leads to a missaccount for the number of workers that are actually working and paying taxes. The growth of the workforce does lead to the growth of the economy and I definitely think that production rates have a lot to do with the immigrants that are working in the U.S. I also believe that the reason for most native citizens who are worried or do not have jobs in the U.S. is because of their lack of education or motivation to do well in a labor setting.
ReplyDeleteTo add on, immigrants also tend to work the jobs that most Americans aren't willing to do. The meat packing industry is a prime example of this. Many of the packing plants in America rely on illegal immigrants who on average make up 50% or more of the work force for these plants. This is significant not only because of the scale of illegal workers, but also because meat packing is a grueling job that doesn't pay well to anyone, natural citizen or immigrant. To say that immigrants are "stealing our jobs" is greatly ignorant to the fact that their taking the jobs that average Americans aren't willing to do. A potential way to solve this problem is to offer a more direct path to citizenship and making it easier for workers in low-income fields in general to unionize so that companies can't exploit illegal immigrants and low-income families in the work force, instead of deporting hard working people who are trust trying to get by.
ReplyDeleteMeat industry dependent on illegal immigrants: https://www.hpj.com/archives/official-meat-industry-dependent-upon-illegal-immigrant-workers/article_5b23a59c-f554-51a8-8edb-3f6d0c04a12b.html
I never thought about college tuition being that much more for an international student and how that would contribute to the economy. For a long time, especially recently, immigration has been a widely talked about topic with many different opinions willing to offer their input, but the statistics are interesting to look at because not many people realize that with the increase of immigrants comes the increase of GDP by 3-4 %. Some more statistics to consider would be the demographics of where the majority of immigrants are living and where the majority of immigrants come from.
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