Public Policy: Undocumented Immigrants

Research writing Public Policy

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Do our immigration policies still honor the words written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 on the base of the Statue of Liberty, and if so, what impact do they have on our economy? The issue of whether our economy is impacted negativity or positively by undocumented workers and what should be done about it is a widely debated topic in this country right now and reported about on every form of media (news, print, social) available on a daily basis. The issue of undocumented immigration is
An article written by Steven Malaga, published in the City Journal summer 2006, supports the belief : “unskilled, undocumented workers benefit a handful of industries by getting low cost labor, and the taxpayers foot the bill.” In other words, undocumented workers and their illegal families are a drain on our economy. It is claimed that they send every penny they earn to their country of origin, use public services they are not entitled to, perform menial labor, do not pay taxes and their children abuse the right to public services and education. However, as the pamphlet by Neighborhood center states: “ in fact there is no question as to the importance of the buying power of undocumented immigrants. the real predictor of wage disparity is not whether someone is an immigrant (regardless of status), it is lack of education. Foreign-born entrepreneurs with startups businesses have been behind 25 percent of these businesses in this country. Three quarters of the undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes and they contribute $7 billion in Social Security funds annually without the ability to collect Social Security. While the majority of the children of undocumented immigrants are born here legally and are eligible to public services and education, their parents for fear of deportation are reluctant to seek assistance. Moreover, the
Our long economic history in America has been shaped by the groups of immigrants that have settled here, what contributions to the economy they brought with them and how the immigration policy changed in response to the influx of each group of immigrants. We will start our review looking at a few immigration groups, the changes made to our immigration policies starting with the English Settlers with traders and their contributions to the economy to present day influx of Middle Eastern and Latin origin immigrants benefitting our economy with access to low cost and back breaking labor. In the 1600 hundreds the traders that were brought by the English settlers not only brought the spices and hard goods to trade, they brought slave labor for trading as well. This group, African slaves would grow quickly to 20 percent of the population providing cheap labor, and since they were considered property, they were not allowed to be naturalized till 1870. Many different groups came and made contributions to the economy of cheap labor with their meat processing skills, work ethic and willingness to take on highly dangerous back breaking jobs. With each new group the policy changed; the first immigration law enacted in 1790 (after nearly a century of unregulated immigration and massive