With regards to Cait Jacob's column on Monday, Illegal Immigration burdens economy
I believe that such comments are unfounded.
Travel to many locations around this country and you'll notice that many of the people responsible for serving you at the fast food counter or tidying up your hotel room are immigrants. The service sector dominates our economy. Think about the burden on our economy if all of a sudden, one day, all of these illegal immigrants were deported. California would turn into a ghost state!
There are not enough legal inhabitants of the United States to take up the jobs that immigrants, especially from South of our border, embrace. I would even venture to say that even many of the homeless and jobless would be reluctant to fill in the gaps. What's wrong if immigrants want to support their families? At least they have guts to go out and take the risk to do so. Many live very modestly just to be able to send money to their families who live in abject poverty.
Now the government wants to build a fence between the United States and Mexico. Think about the costs involved in the construction. Couldn't that money be put to better use? I'll bet a majority of the workers putting up the fence will be the very migrants the U.S. seeks to keep out. The big contractors, who get the bid to build the fence, are going to use the same migrant workers to keep their cost down.
Another excuse for putting up this fence is to curb the possibility of terrorist infiltration across our open borders. I seem to remember a very long and widely unprotected border that runs across the northern United States? It seems that pretty soon the United States will resemble a huge prison.
One last thing about these migrant workers we condemn. Many of these people work extremely hard to survive and take care of their families.
As an example, in the restaurant industry, I had the opportunity to work alongside many of these immigrants. They had the papers claiming to be eligible to work, but I was not supposed to ask. I guarantee that I could rely more on the immigrants to be at work on time and ready than some Americans. Most immigrants didn't complain even after finishing a shift at a previous job. Unlike many of us (myself included), they did not take their jobs for granted regardless of the perverse sub par wages.
These immigrants come to the U.S. to offer their services. I'll bet they contribute more to the economy than they take from it. I'm sure that illegal immigrants do not constitute the majority of freeloaders of the welfare state either.
We need to be careful before we condemn immigration. It is definitely an emotional issue especially at a time of job cuts and cries against globalization. There are too many factors involved, but I propose that this wouldn't be such a big issue if there were not a bunch of greedy CEO's running many of the large corporations based in the U.S.
I know that conditions here in Athens County and surrounding areas are very bleak, but it's not the fault of legal or illegal immigration.
Just a final thought: A child wrote, Dear God who draws the lines around the countries?
- Jebin Zachariah, a senior specialized studies major
W. Union Street
17
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