Does U.S. Immigration Policy Harm Domestic Workers

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Does U.S. Immigration Policy Harm Domestic Workers
The United States of America is a country that is known to be large and has many different races. Over the past few years, those people who are not born in the country have relatively increased. For example in 2010, there were approximately forty million people who were both legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. Immigration is a critical issue in the United States. There are people who believe that immigrants harm the country while others believe they contribute to the benefit of the country. Immigration policy is a set of federal government policies that determine those individuals who can migrate to the United States and what numbers can migrate. Immigration involves three important sets of laws, regulations, policies, and institutions. Immigration increases the supply of labor which results in low wages. However, immigration can also turn the American market more competitive due to increased efficiency. Economists believe that there are short-term effects of immigration policies but in the long-run, these policies benefit the country at a greater level.
Immigration policies have an effect on wages. Immigration policies are related to microeconomics, thus immigration has different effects on the country. However, it is important to focus on the effects of immigration policies on market forces. As discussed, many opponents of immigration policies state that immigration cause decrease in wages. It is indisputable that immigrants increase the supply of labor forces in the country. What is confusing is that people only see one side of the coin and cannot consider other additional aspects. Immigration policies allow both legal and illegal workers to work in the United States and this means that the labor force will increase, hence the supply of labor will shift from S1 to S2. As a result, these immigrants will receive their income which they will later use to consume goods and services in the nations. This means that the demand for goods and services will increases in the United States (Borjas 30).
The demand for productivity increases and additional labor is needed in the country. Therefore the curve for the demand of labor will shift upwards that is from D1 to D2. In this case, both the demand and the supply curves will increase at the same amount although the effects on wages will be null. The effects on wages might differ across various labor markets. For instance, in a basic scenario where workers produce one good only (GDP) and immigrants join the labor force of the country, the supply labor force curve of United States will increase (Borjas 90). This means that more goods and services will be produced in the country and the GDP will increase as well. Consequently, wages will decrease and there will be a shift from W0 to W1. The decrease in wages will affect all the workers on the condition that all workers are the same although it is evident that workers cannot be the same.
Immigration will result in increased competition in the economy. Unskilled domestic workers who compete with the immigrants are considered as substitutes for the immigrants. This is because both groups have the same skills and they will ...