The Melting Pot is Melting Down

Immigration in the U.S. is a hot topic right now. The truth is that immigration has been a subject of concern and controversy for over 200 years and that will not likely change soon.

I am not going to include those who enter the country simply to reap the benefits of our welfare or social system. In fact, I agree that something must be done to control the immigrants who enter the country. It is stupid to have millions of people wandering about the country illegally and not know their whereabouts or intentions. But I believe that is a large issue that requires another post altogether.

So, for the purpose of this post, let’s deal only with the job factor. You know, the complaint you hear about how these immigrants are coming in and taking good jobs from American citizens.

I have to admit that I can see why people would want to cut or slow immigration to the States to keep the jobs to themselves. I mean, Americans are currently sitting on the largest pile of wealth ever assembled in human history. Why share it? For every Mexican that crosses the border and for every Indian programmer who is hired by big software firms, Americans see jobs lost and money disappearing. On the surface, it is logical to assume that if you have a pie and you split it with 10 people you will get a piece that is bigger than if you split it with 11. So I get it, I really do.

However, these folks who are railing against immigration are up to their necks in hypocrisy and faulty logic.

Let’s start with the hypocrisy. There are roughly 300 million people in the U.S. today. About 3 million of these are Native Americans. So unless you are a Native American, you have no right to be “against” immigration. Most people living in the U.S. right now probably have at least one or two great-grandparents who were immigrants. Please, tone down the, “We were here first,” bullshit because your forefathers came here and took someone else’s job or money away first.

Now for the logic problem in this scenario of cutting off immigration…

I was a small business owner in college. We hired out cleaning and kitchen labor to hotels and restaurants. We soon saw that very few people wanted to be dishwashers and kitchen cleaners. At the time, we were paying more than twice the minimum wage and still had trouble hanging on to staff. Then we started hiring illegal immigrants. Suddenly our labor problems got much better. Sure, we still had some problems finding the right people, but the number of choices we had were suddenly much higher. So the argument that immigrants take away jobs is mostly crap because most of the jobs they fill are not even wanted by Americans.

For another take on this, let’s look at a more educated immigrant. Now this guy could take a high-paying job away, right? Of course he could. But he would not if we were properly educating and training our young people. Trying to mask the failings of our educational system by banning highly-skilled foreign labor is a big mistake. Not only can we improve our companies by bringing in the best the world has to offer, we can also improve our cultural awareness. If we just worked on truly preparing young people for the work force, we would not be afraid of immigrants “taking” our jobs.

So here is the hook: when you look at the whole picture from top to bottom, immigrants are making the U.S a richer country, not a poorer one. And if you just do the math, you will see that it is much better to have 1/11 of a big pie than 1/10 of a smaller pie.