Migration Brings Economic Gains vs Migration Reduces Cultural Cohesion

MIGRATION BRINGS ECONOMIC GAINS VS. MIGRATION REDUCES CULTURAL COHESION NAME INSTRUCTOR COURSE DATE Migration Brings Economic Gains vs. Migration Reduces Cultural Cohesion Introduction If you have ever been an immigrant, you would be well familiar with the issues surrounding immigration. Immigration is one of the hotly contested topics in the current political arena. The number of people that support immigration is almost the same as those who oppose it. Some people argue that migration has brings economic gains while others believe that it reduces cultural cohesion. In this paper, I argue that the economic benefits of immigration such as labor force growth, human capital, and entrepreneurship outweigh the negative impact impacts on social cohesion. Economic Benefits of Migration Migration has been a hot topic politically, however when it comes to economics, it is said to have positive effects such as economic gains for the host country. Even though migration is costly on the short term, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in the long run (Kancs and Lecca 2016). Migration contributes to labor force growth as immigrants play an important role in the workforce of a country. In the U.S, almost 17% of the workforce is foreign-born. The immigrants in the labor force, whether skilled or unskilled, make contributions to the GDP of a country. The best case scenarios are the U.S and Japan. Japan is known to have little immigration. Today, most of the workforce in the country is aging and their economy has remained stagnant. Due to the lack of strong immigration, Japan’s workforce has been shrinking as opposed to the U.S that has maintained favorable immigration policies. With active participation in the labor force, migration “increases income per person and living standards” (Jaumotte et al. 2016, 1) as workers, whether they are skilled on unskilled, take part in a country’s economy.[Peri, Giovanni. "Immigrants, productivity, and labor markets." Journal of Economic Perspectives 30, no. 4 (2016): 3-30.] Additionally, immigrants come with new skills to the workforce and this brings a diversity that if well embraced can spur innovation and creativity and contribute to better economic growth. Most of the immigrants are self-driven and they know that their survival depends on their labor participation. In fact, in certain industries in the U.S such as manufacturing, immigrants are the leading workforce. With the increase in the number of people prepared to participate in the workforce, economies are driven to create more jobs and at different skill levels to utilize the available skills. This is what drives innovation and inventions and can be used to explain why the U.S and most European countries are the leading forces in technological advancement.[Noe, Raymond A., John R. Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart, and Patrick M. Wright. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.] Also, immigration contributes to human capital. Was noted earlier, immigration increases the labor force supply. However, even more important is the contribution of highly-skilled immigrants that help to boost the capacity of a country to make technological advancements. While some immigrants are unskilled,...