Reasons For Reducing Immigration
Reasons for favoring immigration reduction given by supporters include:
- Overpopulation and other environmental issues.
- Continued strong population growth through immigration drives up demand for housing. Although various factors impact housing prices, high population growth conflicts with goals for "affordable housing."
- High levels of immigration may be seen as providing a steady source of cheap or low-wage labor to corporations. This can be seen as detrimental to wage levels in the U.S., and as a threat to the ability of labor unions to organize workplaces, with the threat always present that if workers organize they can easily be replaced by cheaper legal or illegal labor.
- Some believe the high levels of immigration into the US, whether legal or illegal, are at rates too high to allow recent immigrants to assimilate into US culture and discourages recent immigrants from learning the English language.
- Illegal immigration is often seen as symptomatic of widespread lawbreaking by employers, who hire workers illegally in the country in order to escape wage, workplace safety, and labor laws. This is especially a problem in the agriculture sector, where it is estimated that over 80% of workers are in the country illegally. Supporters and critics of the movement debate over whether these workers could easily be replaced by legal workers being paid in accordance with wage laws.
- Temporary work visas are often used to replace high-wage workers in industries such as computer programming, biotechnology and engineering with lower-wage workers imported from other countries. This is seen by many as closely related to the practices of outsourcing and offshoring of jobs. The over all erosion of wages has been claimed to have resulted in many fewer Americans opting to pursue scientific majors in college and careers, and an over all decrease in the scientific ability of America's citizenry.
Read more about this topic: Immigration Reduction In The United States
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