Many Immigrants Contribute to Our Country

I married a legal immigrant. I am descended from legal immigrants. Legal immigrants and some who are illegal have contributed much to our country. But there is also a dark side to illegal immigration. It drains resources such as public education. Not all of those illegal immigrants are productive members of society. Some of them do commit crimes, MS-13 being a prime example. I believe we should speed up screening of those who are in line to come here legally and that we should stop illegal immigration. It's important to be able to screen those who enter the country for diseases we are no longer prepared to fight that we eradicated with vaccinations many years ago. When my husband's family immigrated they had to have a sponsor who helped them find work and a place to live. The sponsor also helped them assimilate to the new culture. When people come illegally, that doesn't happen and many never do assimilate into the culture but try to force our culture to conform to theirs. People who come here should come because they love our Constitution and the liberty it provides to all citizens. People who only come to better themselves financially and send most of their earnings home often often don't want to assimilate or become Americans in their hearts. And that dilutes American culture and values. A country without shared cultural values will not survive as a country.

Individual immigrants are not a problem as most of them just want to earn a decent living and better themselves just like everyone else. The problems arise when you have a free market economy and mass immigration from economically disadvantaged countries is encouraged. When some of the former Soviet Union countries joined the European Union it meant that their citizens could legally live and work in any European Union member country. The UK, in particular, had an influx of people from poorer countries who were willing and able to work in the UK for much lower wages than the indigenous population. It's the stuff that big business could only dream of 20 years ago. A ready supply of cheap labour. The consequences of this in the UK is that we have a population increasing by the size of a small city every 3 years and a lot of the money earned by these immigrants is shipped back to their native country and isn't recycled back into the UK economy. A lot of the jobs the immigrants are doing are the low paid jobs. Now, if you consider that to be a net contributor to the public purse you have to be earning round about the average UK wage, many immigrants, as well as shipping money out of the UK are also costing the taxpayer in terms of public services. I think Australia and New Zealand have it right. Encourage immigration for people with the skills the country needs but don't just allow mass, uncontrolled immigration!

Yes, migrants, legal or not, are needed in Western countries. In France they do jobs French would not like to do and they help to pay the pensions of older people (in our pension system, the pensions are paid by people working). On Monday our President received an undocumented migrant who risked his life to save a baby, and offered him the French citizenship. The problem is that we cannot welcome all the misery in this world...

Many in the states are immigrants or children of immigrants, yet we hear hateful things said about us and our family members or others. Do people really not know that we are not all originally FROM the USA?

We need to control immigrants, this is a fact, but we must not hate them. Too many immigrants may become a problem and cause a problem to the people who originally lived in a country. Look at "Native Americans", they were unable to control immigration.

Yes, immigrants, illegal or not have done good things for the US, including the grunt work that Americans won't do for the pay offered.

Immigration has it's negatives and positives and is an issue in many countries. My parents immigrated to Canada by using the legal channels at the time.

Many times we forget that in the Americas, most of our grandparents came from other places.

I have read through many a comment here, and absorbed the pros and cons of what is immigration as per their view. I am going to present my views, which may seem a bit longer than the rest, but then I do face constraints in expressing in language I am not familiar with. For starters let us think at micro level. You own a house. Your neighbor 's house is gutted in forest fire. They come to you for help, you allow them to stay over, helping you with small and big tasks. Mind you - you were getting those done before they appeared on scene. But you are enabling them to make themselves useful, and slowly letting go of the tasks that are not pleasant to you. At first, they have no issues. They are grateful for the opportunity. As days go by, they find their bearing, they find a well paying job, and now the same chores seem below them. You have spared your outhouse for them, even helped them get a job, which would otherwise have gone to your distant cousin's son. But now, you feel they are ungrateful, they feel you are exploiting their situation. Who is right and who is wrong? Is it a win win situation? You now want them to leave your home, but they are not happy to be doing so. You see there adverse possession laws. They have lived long enough in your outhouse to claim it through that law. Now extrapolate the same on macro level, you would know why people resent the immigrant. That said, you do have valid points, especially when replacement rate is low. I would still put a premium to citizenship of my country. My country with all its roads, railways, bus routes, hospitals, airlines, etc., is made from tax collected across a long period. The taxes were paid by my grandparents and their grandparents. Those taxes could have been my inheritance, but the government took them from me, for required infrastructure and administration costs. Not everybody paid taxes, my people paid their taxes allowing the government to accumulate decent sum on hand to build those bridges, railways, etc. Should I just let it go and then be troubled by some folks who are bad with me or my children? I would say accept the immigrants provided five generations work for at least 5 years in farms doing the unpleasant tasks, and there are five members from each family joining the armed forces. Just some conditions. Of course the modalities need to be thought of. But I should get what me and my country needs, not what others are thrusting on me, for sharing my wealth.

I personally think it is all based off hate. I am actually one of the few that think its good people are having less kids. Just for the simple fact we do a crappy job of taking care of the people who are here now to me California is way to crowed as is. I get what you are saying about needing the youth to take care of the elderly and that is true. The now elderly took care of us for a long time and now its time to give back to them. The jobs aspect of no Americans want those jobs may be true in certain aspects, but in the end think many more Americans would take those jobs if they did not pay so crappy. I know many are physically demanding, but all they have to do is cut the work day down to six hours and pay people a living wage and I think many Americans would take those jobs, but we to greedy for that. Bottom line as I always say, if people do not want Immigrants of the illegal kind to come here. They need to stop hiring them and they only do it because its much cheaper to hire them than Americans.

Thanks for this great story!

All Americans and Canadians are immigrants. They were not the original inhabitants as their ancestors all immigrated from somewhere, except of course the original native North Americans. I think we tend to forget this historical fact when we refer to new immigrants in a derogatory way.

I not only agree with what you just said in your post here, but I support your efforts to promote fair and decent immigration to the US to take the jobs nobody else wants and if they want to become a citizen and abide by the laws of the USA and pay taxes and work hard and are law abiding, that is a plus for the US economy and a positive aspect of immigration laws.

I think it's the same all over the Western world. Immigrants are usually just trying to make a decent living.

You are right there are a lot of the immigrants that have come here and a very useful to society. A lot of them are ones that were brought here illegally by their parents when they were babies or children. And some of them people have been deported, which is not right. But then there are ones that have been jailed for rape, murder or another crime and then released back in OUR society instead of being deported.

It is not a problem unless they go on welfare and take money from our economy instead of helping the economy.

I know this story. I am not sure if in fb or yourube that I watched this. I think having migrants are helpful.

All Americans and Canadians are immigrants. They were not the original inhabitants as their ancestors all immigrated from somewhere, except of course the original native North Americans. I think we tend to forget this historical fact when we refer to new immigrants in a derogatory way.

Wouldn't it be so much better if the ones who rule these poorer countries stepped up and did a better job so their citizens wanted to stay?

It is true that the US is a land of immigrants. But history has shown that whenever there is a new wave of migration, xenophobia occurs and the new arrivals are resented by those who have arrived earlier. Polls taken show a drastic change of long held opinions, from the belief that immigrants were a burden to the opposite view that they strengthened and have a positive impact on society. But do those survey really reflect the feelings of the "silent majority" that elected a presidential candidate promising tougher immigration laws and policies?