Immigration – Good or Bad?

When we think about immigrants, often the first idea is that they are “stealing” our jobs. When we think of illegal immigrants, we go one step further, not only are they stealing our jobs, they aren’t paying taxes. I question which jobs these illegals are taking, the high paying job in your firm, or picking oranges when harvest time comes & digging ditches the rest of the year.

Let’s put that aside for today, and look at it from another perspective: What do immigrants, legal or not, do with that initial money they earn? I assume they eat food on a daily basis, or at least that should be their primary goal. I think we can agree that eating daily should be a priority. So where do they get this food? Do they travel all the way back to where they came from daily to eat, or buy from a local grocery store? Hopefully the answer you came to is something local to where they currently are. That means that local stores need to have employees to serve them, have more product on hand to sell them, and thus have local suppliers for regular supply.

The local grocery store is now selling more because these immigrants, legal or not, are eating daily. What do they eat? Let’s assume these immigrants are just starting off and don’t have much, or don’t make much because the jobs they can get as illegals doesn’t pay well. Does milk, bread, chicken, beef, potatoes and lettuce sound fair? If so, most of these products can be grown locally, and that means more product is being bought from local farmers. Local farmers, for the most part, have been here a while, it takes substantial funding to buy land and farm equipment, so I’ll assume most are not immigrants, especially not illegal immigrants as they can’t buy property (they’re illegal).

I’m sure that once the legal immigrants work regularly, they buys cars and maybe houses. Well that means the local dealership gets business, the local sales agent gets her commission, and the local plumber and electrician will be on hand when there’s an issue.

It seems to me that the more immigrants we have, the more the local economy grows. Is this a bad thing? There is much I have left out, but this should be enough to get people thinking. I hope you think about it, and not just take the Nay Sayers at their word.