Illegal Immigration Issue Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Illegal Immigration Issue - Research Paper Example To support my argument, the adverse effects brought about by illegal immigration, particularly in terms of employment displacement of citizens and incurring of additional social security expenditures of the government, are highlighted. Through the media, the concept of illegal immigration has been highly romanticized. Illegal aliens, as illegal immigrants are commonly referred to, are portrayed as the hardworking border-crossers who strive to provide for their families left behind (Weissinger). Many feel sympathy for the plight of these people who risk their own lives in search of greener pastures. This is the same emotion elicited in me during an interview with Mr. Diaz, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who has been working in a local retail store for a year now. Barely able to speak vocational English, he narrated how extreme poverty in their homeland has impelled him to look for a decent job across the border. With his job, he is able to send money to his family with the salary he currently earns, a far cry from how much he would have gotten in Mexico. In the perception of US-based employers, illegal immigrants are viewed as a cheap source of unskilled labor, which they could easily tap (Hanson). Note that illegal aliens, given their desperation to immediately land jobs, willingly accept relatively lower wages as compared to the local labor force ("Costs of Immigration"). Others believe that illegal immigration is actually a win-win situation, wherein the poor country from where the illegal alien originated obtains dollars from remittances, while the host nation takes advantage of lower labor cost with the large worker pool made available (Hanson).   Given these perceptions, the true issues directly related to illegal immigration are obscured. The subsequent sections reveal what lies beneath the common belief and shed lights on the effects of immigration on government expenditure, population growth and on other economic factors (Siew-Ean).