Jobs and Immigration in America

Jobs and Immigration in America Inquiry
When I learned I had to choose a topic to write about the whole semester, I immediately knew it had to be about immigration. The hard decision came down to choosing what to write about in specific, being that that topic is very broad. In the first few assignments I tried different focuses on the issue and once I tried out ‘Jobs and Immigration in America’ I knew that was the one I wanted to go further in dept with. That is where my writing and research began.
I knew I wanted to stay away from the issues you mostly hear on T.V. such as: whether immigrants should receive benefits, DACA recipients or about the wall being built. I wanted to bring my focus to something problematic but that has been overlooked a little, and what better than immigration and its impacts of American jobs, as it affects everyone. When researching this topic, I found a lot of articles, videos and interviews on the subject, most of them leading to all the same questions but the million dollar one seemed to be: Are immigrants taking job opportunities from Americans? Along with most questions I had some of my own that I needed to find credible answers to.
My research, like most, started on Google. I found many great articles that I could have used to focus on but the one that really caught my attention was “Unskilled Workers Lost Out to Immirgrants” written by Steven A, Camarota for The New York Times. His article overall was organized pretty well, but his supporting details and statistics were not credible. When I finished reading his article I decided to do some research and fact check his statistics. Once giving his writing a closer look, I realized he would say “researchers conducted studies” but never clarified what researchers did what. He would also say according to the bureau but also failed to clear up which one. When I looked him up to see if he was credible at all, or how could a magazine as important as The New York Times include an article by Camarota with a lot of credible proof missing I was shocked!
When I researched and found out that Steven A. Camarota currently serves as the Director of Research for the national CIS, Center of Immigration Services, it made no sense why he did not have exact statistics and quotes. Someone that important should have either quoted better or done better research. Other sources that I found where the authors, like myself, were in favor of immigrants having American job opportunities, I was able to prove some of the ‘facts’ that Camarota had stated in his article.

So, the main question that everyone was asking was do immigrants truly steal jobs and opportunities from Americans? My question along with that one is if they do how can they possibly steal the jobs if they don’t even have the equal opportunity and requirements that are necessary!? In Steven Camarota’s article he states that immigration affects mostly the lower class of Americans and in specific targets African Americans. He states that work authorization given to immigrants that come each year is a harm to the nation because this gives immigrants the job to get benefits and social security numbers. But how? And if this was really true than why is most of his writing focused on the illegal ones? How is this a harm? And are immigrants taking advantage of this? In another source I found on Google, “Do immigrants steal jobs from American workers?” by Brenan Hoban, he also believes that these jobs are opportunities being taken right out of American hands. His solution to this however is, “Trumps proposal on building a wall along the U.S. Mexico border is to prevent immigration to the U.S. and by preventing immigration it will also prevent them from taking jobs.” My question as I kept reading over many of these articles was if immigrants really are taking jobs from Americans, and as stated by Steve Camarota that we are getting two million a year, if they keep stealing jobs why don’t Americans take the jobs that the next two million will be taking next year?
When I learned in our outline for the inquiry that we had to get some sources from the school, I thought the best way would be to go visit the school library. I typed in the key word ‘immigration’ and got a list of books and ebooks! It took me a minute to find good ones but I did find “Immigration Examining the Facts”. When reading that book I went to chapter two-‘Labor, Employment, and Economics of Immigration’ and found a lot of useful imformation. Most of this was research put together by author, Carli Eastmen. She was not trying to make a point, like the articles on the web, but was stating facts. She states how legal immigrants may possibly take some opportunities from Americans because they are the ones that could get benefits, illegal immigrants take low paying jobs that are left. And that immigrants play a huge role in this country’s economy, that without them it could possible crash! Had Camarota even thought about this when writing his article? Was he aware of the strong impact that immigrants played in the American economic system?
Camarota opened his article with an estimation of how many immigrants live in the United States illegally and stating the country permits over a million legal immigrants a year. When I was reading this, I was okay with all of it so far, not agreeing or disagreeing. My only questions at this point were, where was Camarota getting this information from? He never stated in any of his article where he gathered his citations from. Camarota goes on to speak negatively on how bad it is that immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. He states that there were one and a half million fewer native born Americans working versus two million more immigrants working in that same year of 2007. In the same google search I had found another article written also for The New York Times by Eduardo Porter, on the same subject but with the opposing perspective than Camarota. In “Immigrants and American Jobs” written by Eduardo Porter he talks about how it is not that immigrants are taking the jobs, but unlike Americans how refuse low income, immigrants take any opportunity no matter what the pay is. Therefore, that is one of the main reasons why more immigrants get employed quickly versus native born Americans.
Steven Camarota’s short article concludes with how all these immigrants working here is actually a harm to the nation although right now it may not seem like it. I did like how he brought his conclusion straight to the point and had used his supporting details. His writing was confident and strong. However, the sources are still missing to backup his facts. Whether or not immigrants are really taking jobs from Americans is all about perspectives because there are facts to back up each side. People like myself or my parents would say that the jobs we have are not stolen. We have worked hard like any American citizen to get to where we are and are truly blessed to be here.