We live in one of the greatest countries in the entire world: the United States of America. Being the best comes with side effects, like everyone in the world wants to live here. That’s perfectly okay! Everyone should be allowed the opportunity to live in the greatest country in the world. In his article “The Case Against Immigration,” Dr. Stephen Camarota from the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., like many other people in this country, argues against immigrants coming into the country for various reasons, including the monetary cost and the loss of jobs for the people already here. Dr. Camarota primarily argues against immigration because of the cost to the United States citizens, along with issues in the American government that keep immigrants from succeeding here. He says that they are too much of a cost to the American people. He wrote this article for all of the U.S. citizens, so that he could pass on what he knows about immigration to them in order to tell them about just how much of a cost immigration is to this country.
Dr. Camarota is not necessarily arguing against immigration as a whole, he is primarily arguing that the U.S. government is just not set up and not good at handling immigrants. However, it seems like he wouldn’t be talking about all of the negatives of immigration into the United States if he wasn’t at least somewhat against it in some way, shape, or form. If someone isn’t against something, they aren’t going to talk about the downsides of whatever it is they’re against, like immigration, without giving any ideas or strategies to fix it. Dr. Camarota talks about all of the negatives of immigration and how bad the United States is at it, but he doesn’t discuss any strategies to fix or improve the American government to better accept immigrants into the country. Dr. Camarota merely gives facts and numbers, doing a very good job of telling us about the issues with the United States’ immigration system, all without bringing up ways to make the system better. An example of this is when he talks about the scale of the world that’s in poverty, saying, “More than three billion people in the world live in poverty…” Then goes on to say that, “Even if legal immigration was tripled to three million people per year, the United States would only admit about one percent of the world’s poor each decade.” Dr. Camarota does a whole lot of fact-telling with not a whole lot of ideas or strategies on how to fix this country’s issues with its system of immigration. Another example of him giving facts with no solutions is when he’s talking about the number of immigrants in different jobs in the U.S., he says, “The country needs to give more consideration to the impact of immigration on the poorest and least-educated Americans.” First off, his argument is that not all Americans can afford to go to school to get a higher-skilled and higher-paying job. So when the immigrants who also aren’t educated come into the country, they go for those same jobs. Dr. Camarota is saying that we need to look out for our people first and give them the opportunity to get those jobs before the immigrants entering the country do. He also adds no ideas or strategies as to how the government would go about doing this. The primary reason as to why the immigrants are taking these jobs is because the jobs are there. If the lower-class, uneducated Americans really wanted any of those jobs, then they should have taken them while they had the chance. I understand that some Americans don’t have the funds or means to go to college or other higher education, but there are always jobs available. It seems to me that sometimes Americans are just too picky, and don’t want to really put in effort to find a job. Now that is most definitely not the case for every single lower-class American citizen, but if it wasn’t an issue, we wouldn’t be hearing about it. Dr. Camarota makes it seem like the immigrants come in and just steal the jobs right out from under American noses, but it sure seems like the Americans would have the opportunity to get those jobs and they’re just not taking the opportunity. “The losers from immigration are less-educated Americans, many of them black and Hispanic, who work in these high-immigrant occupations.” Dr. Camarota, along with a large handful of the country’s citizens, consistently makes it seem like these immigrants entering the country are only out to get jobs already filled, and only want to take the jobs that mean kicking an American citizen out of that job. However, I believe that if an immigrant needs a job, and there’s a job that isn’t filled that they could benefit from, they should get that job.
Dr. Camarota discusses different reasons as to why immigration is a good thing. For one example, he says, “…[an] argument in favor of immigration centers on the benefits to immigrants themselves, especially the poorest ones, who see their wages rise dramatically upon moving to the First World.” This argument claims that a benefit to immigrants moving to the United States could see a drastic improvement on their wages and earnings. However, Dr. Camarota says that, as mentioned earlier, “even if legal immigration was tripled to three million people a year, the United States would still only admit about one percent of the world’s poor each decade.” According to Dr. Camarota, this country can’t work fast enough or take in large enough numbers to help the entire world. Another argument Dr. Camarota brings up is that “it will solve Western countries’ main demographic problem – that of an aging population,” as in the more immigrants that come in, the more younger people there will be in the country. The immigrants will “provide the next generation of workers to pay into welfare-state programs.”
Dr. Camarota talks about the difficulties of immigrants assimilating into the American society. He states, “…circumstances that helped Great Wave immigrants assimilate are not present today.” The Great Wave immigrants were immigrants who came into America in a massive immigration flow between 1880 and 1920. These immigrants had “World War 1 and legislation in the 1920s” that helped them assimilate into American culture and society. “By 1970, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born, down from 14.7 percent in 1910.” Dr. Camarota states that this helped the Great Wave immigrants assimilate because they “were no longer continually refreshed by new arrivals from the old country.” He claims that immigrants today and in recent years don’t have the same utilities to help them assimilate into our society and culture. Because the current flow of immigrants is so large and so constant, it has “likely slowed the pace of assimilation.”
Another issue that Dr. Camarota brings up is that there’s just not enough room for all of them. “In 2015, data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that 43.3 million immigrants lived in the country – double the number from 1990.” There are already 350 million people living in this country, so obviously there’s no way we can fit any more than that! Now, that number doesn’t include the large group of illegal immigrants that are already here, along with the large number that are still making their way into the country. Dr. Camarota also states, “The Census Bureau projects that by 2025, the immigrant share of the population will reach 15 percent, surpassing the United States’ all-time high of 14.8 percent.” In simpler terms, he’s saying that the percent of immigrants in the overall population of the United States will be record-breaking by 2025.
Being one of the greatest countries in the world, the United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. This is what makes the United States the “melting pot” of a country that it’s always been called. Everyone will always have different opinions on immigration. Some Americans will always be okay with it, others will always not be very happy about it. However, the fact of this matter is that the only reason we’re in this country at all is because of our ancestors immigrating to this country at one point or another. If America is really the “land of equal opportunities” or the “land of milk and honey” that it’s always been made out to be, then I don’t believe it’s right to be against immigration, even if you can make a case against it. Dr. Camarota’s article gave many reasons as to why the American government isn’t perfect when it comes to handling immigration, but what the government needs is a way to improve their immigration system, whether that’s improving job availability, room for the immigrants coming into the country, or any of the other issues that are mentioned in the article. If America can solve some of the issues in its system, then the incoming immigrants might fare better, and it might not affect the American people quite as much as Dr. Camarota describes.