THE CHANGING FACE OF IMMIGRATION

The Changing Face of Immigration

Table of Contents

Introduction2

Immigration benefits4

Problems in The Past4

Immigrants and Criminal Activities5

The Immigration Problem on Public Safety in Communities with High Crime Rate6

References8

The Changing Face of Immigration

Introduction

The movement of individuals who are citizens of one country to residency within some other country is known as Immigration. The array of response from host countries can vary from a chauvinistic rejection to accept immigrants (e.g., Japan and China) to being a country that makes immigrants part of its national identity (e.g., Canada, the United States). Immigration on the whole has performed a significant part in molding the culture and population of the United States ever since its foundation. The United States has gone through four substantial immigration waves starting from the first influx of Europeans. This essay studies the immigration history and looks into the past as well as current policies administrating the influx of individuals from different nations.

Since individuals have a strong need to survive living in the economy, earning a living opens up different avenues and platforms where people work and identify their skills in the light of making way for a better household and economically surviving in the country.

As Canadian economy begins and pertains to grow with respect to today's modern world of rapid development and expansion, immigrants become an added weight to the overall economic progress of the country (Alaniz et al. 1998). Immigration has both good and bad effects on the economy and the workers of the host country that can be difficult to separate out. On one hand, immigration adds to labor resources and thus to the capacity for economic growth. Growth increases national income and potentially raises living standards. Immigrants “take jobs that Americans do not want” (as it is commonly said) and produce goods and services that otherwise would not be produced; that generates income for Americans as well as for immigrants (Bui et al. 2005). The capacity for immigration to increase the incomes of natives will be especially strong for the employers who hire the immigrants and for the more highly educated native workers whose skills complement the immigrants (in effect, the two groups establish a division of labor that benefits both). This is one basis for the claim that immigration is beneficial for the host country (Alaniz et al. 1998).

Literature on the determinants of international migration suggests that life cycle considerations (e.g., age, education, family structure) and distance are key predictors of internal migrant flows. A complication to the unitary model of migration is that family units often migrate together, and therefore migration decision making may occur at the family level as opposed to the individual. Specifically, families may maximize family welfare as opposed to individual welfare with some family members suffering losses as the result of migration and others realizing offsetting gains (Sampson et al. 2008).

Still, given the complexity of interrelationships between host and sending countries, many questions of migration dynamics and of the causes and effects of internal and international migration are empirical ones ...