The Contribution of Immigrants (Full Article)

For as long as I remember, America symbolizes freedom and tolerance. People of this country inherit—when compared with other countries—special services. Incentives include retirement benefits, Medicare, etc., and rights that are inconspicuous to natives. By “native” I’m referring to residences that have proper status or citizenship that saturate the tax payers, but what about non-immigrants? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the foreign born or immigrant population stood at 36 million ending 2005. Although some are not represented politically, all of them contribute and are a part the American society.

The United States is currently experiencing the largest wave of immigration in its history, with over 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each year. Immigration has long been a topic devoted to controversies, politically and economically. Immigration has been the troubling hot issue, because sustaining them can be troubling at times. A local realtor might complain that immigrants are devaluing the houses or the neighborhood; a construction worker would say the immigrants are taking away jobs by working for less; just like them, the government having a budget deficit would say that the immigrants are not paying taxes. It all comes down to having too many immigrants in this country, having too much competition with the natives.

Is it true that even natives of this country have not been paying taxes? From the recent discovery of the former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle and his unfolding story about his failure to pay $140,000 in taxes and interest; to Corporations such as Wall Mart who owes $17.7 million in taxes for the years 1998 to 2000. On the contrary, the illegal immigrants of this country have been paying taxes on their own. According to a 2008 article on MSNBC, experts agree that illegal immigrants have been paying taxes to the government; “even though the federal government doesn’t fully tally the amount of these taxes, latest figures available indicates amounts to billions of dollars in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2008.” One rough estimate for the amount of Social Security taxes alone is around $9 billion per year. The illegal workers pay just as much as legal workers.

Tolerance has always been one of the biggest attributes when speaking about the U.S. But sometimes it can be seen as something awful. Immigrants have worked in some of the most underpaid jobs and it has become normal in our society. If a maid who cooks, cleans and watches over the children, often she will only get paid for only one of those activities.  It is accepted in this country, more or less, that an immigrant is always cheaper and an illegal immigrant works for next to nothing. It is this kind of tolerance that causes salary and employer abuses that lead into the sweatshop effect.