Journal entry

Immigration and Productivity

Immigration has in the recent years pointedly augmented the existence of foreign workers within the United States. The influences of immigration on the state’s economy is one that has fiercely been debated with some people arguing that immigration is not good for the economy because it diminishes the job opportunities of the U.S natives (Peri, 2010). Others argue that Immigration is good because immigrants get to fill the essential job opportunities that are always turned down by the native workers and this improves the economy.

Immigrants are always associated with provision of cheap non-skilled labour. These are people who come in search of job opportunities and they are always willing to do any job without much argument on the wages they are given. This affects the job opportunities for the skilled native workers who understand their rights as workers and are not willing to be exploited (Florence et al., 2017). There are many job opportunities within the U.S most of which are perceived inappropriate for the native workers and most of the times they are left with no one to do. The immigrants come into the U.S in search of any job opportunities and they are the people who fill in these neglected job vacancies. Businesses within the U.S are able to take advantage of the labour supplied by the new immigrants and hence expand their businesses by adjusting their physical capital that includes equipment and structures (Peri, 2010). The economy hence gets to absorb these immigrants by expanding the job opportunities rather than displacing the natives which increases productivity.

I believe that immigration has a positive impact on productivity; migrants take jobs in the sectors where the natives are in short supply for instance in housekeeping, agriculture and landscaping. Without the immigrants, the natives will have to be incentivised in order to provide for these essential services and this would mean lower supply at a higher cost (Florence et al., 2017). When the immigrants take up the manual routine jobs, the natives get the chance to get the more complex tasks and this promotes their skill upgrading and it also means more revenues for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Peri, G. (2010, August 30). The Effect of Immigrants on U.S. Employment and Productivity.

Retrieved from https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2010/august/effect-immigrants-us-employment-productivity/

 

Florence. J., Ksenia. K., & Sweta. S. (2017, January 13). This is The Impact of Migration on

Productivity. Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/this-is-the-impact-of-migration-on-productivity