Taken by Monica Garcia. Imperial Valley
In the article “The 4 Big Lies About Immigrants - And The Truth” by Robert B. Reich, it informs us the real truth about four lies about immigrants that you may have heard of. For instance, one lie that Mr. Reich explains is how immigrants are taking away the American jobs. He states that immigrants are not taking away the American jobs, but instead they are adding to the “economic demand and thereby push firms to create new jobs” (Reich, 2015). One big impact with immigration was the Bracero Program which occurred in 1942 through 1964. The Bracero Program was an agreement between The United States of America and Mexico to allow millions of Mexicans to come to the United States with a temporary permit to work in the agricultural labor industry. This is the a time in which World War II was happening and the Mexican workers would fill in the spot for those who left to war. Although the war ended, the United States still continued to with this program because it was a way to obtain cheap labor. Why complain about immigrants taking away American jobs when Americans themselves didn’t go back to their agriculture jobs?
Another lie that he explains is how immigration of illegal immigrants are increasing but in reality he states “the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. has declined from 12.2 million in 2007 to 11.3 million now, according to Pew Research Center” (Reich, 2015). Yes, it may be outdated but in the article “The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the U.S. Has Dropped, a Study Says. Here Are 5 Takeaways” by Jose A. Del Real still backs this up. It explains how the Pew Research Center published that in 2016 the number of undocumented immigrants went down to 10.7 million (Del Real, 2018). I remember that Donald Trump suggested in his presidential campaign that the number of undocumented immigrants “could exceed to 30 million” (Del Real, 2018). The accurate percentage is less than 40% of undocumented immigrants but people like Donald Trump and others love to exaggerate and lie to scare people with a “problem” that is not even a “big” problem to begin with.
Another lie that Robert B. Reich explains is that the drain in public budgets are the immigrants. He argues that its a lie since immigrants do pay taxes and undocumented immigrants paid “$11.8 billions in state and local taxes in 2012” (Reich, 2015). Immigrants have to pay taxes too, and they contribute to the labor force and tax system so if anything they are helping out as well.
The forth lie is that United States doesn’t need any more immigrants, but he states the population is aging. He gives the example of how “twenty-five years ago, each retiree in America was matched by 5 workers. Now for each retiree there are only 3 workers. Without more immigration, in 15 years the ratio will fall to 2 workers for every retiree, not nearly enough to sustain our retiree population” (Reich 2015). I take this as immigrants help those who retire because they are taking over their jobs and adding more to the economic demands. Immigrants come for a better life, and a place to work to provide for themselves and their family.
References:
Reich, B. Robert. “The 4 Big Lies About Immigrants - The Truth”https://robertreich.org/post/131585289045
Del Real, A. Jose. “The Number of Undocumented Immigrants in the U.S. Has Dropped, a Study Says. Here Are 5 Takeaways” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-population-study.html
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