Immigrants Make America

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough on Unsplash
  
​By Ashley Cozayatl

“Predators, aliens, criminals, and animals” are all words former President Trump used to discuss immigration in the US. They supposedly “ruin our nation” or “come to invade our country” however what he and his supporters don’t know is that we need and should appreciate immigrants as they help us grow as a nation. 

But we don’t need them. All they do is take our jobs and go to Taco Bell! According to an article in The New York Times, immigrants actually create more jobs than they take. For example, they create a higher demand for food, homes, and services that produce more jobs. Without immigrants, America “shrinks as a nation.” They contribute to the American population while Americans every year are having fewer and fewer babies. Why is a higher population important? The consequences Ms. Cohen (writer of NY Times article) helps us understand is that there would be fewer goods, fewer homes, fewer cars, and fewer services to sell to the American people.

Award-winning artist and writer, first-generation Chinese and Cuban woman, Katarina Wong explores an article by PBS in 2018 that shows that “immigrants contribute more taxes than they use in government benefits, improves employment sectors, and shows that their children are more productive students/citizens.” Evidence of this is an article by the Times, showing how “even though immigrants make up 14% of the American population, they started a quarter of new American businesses, earned a third of Nobel Peace Prizes in the science department, and 60% out 25 of the biggest tech companies were founded by immigrants or their children.”

Personally, coming from a first-generation daughter of immigrants, I am here to tell you that we aren’t coming to your country to “ruin it” or to take your jobs. Just like my family did, immigrants want to migrate here for a better life, for better opportunities, and a better future for their families. I will tell you I don’t know where I’d be now had my mom not come to America. 

The life of an immigrant is hard, coming into a foreign country without knowing the language, no pocket money, and most of the time, no family to go to. Then when you get settled in and make something out of yourself, you decide to apply for a green card with a clean background and taxes paid. Next thing you know you are back in the country you wanted to get away from, leaving everything you had behind. Being betrayed by the country that is supposed to be the greatest in the world, the land of opportunity, the home of the “free”.  

Immigrants are the core of our nation, they make us great, and once we all learn to accept it, we can actually be one united nation again. 

CITED ARTICLES: 
https://time.com/5594365/america-immigration-future-economic-growth/ 
https://www.thebalance.com/donald-trump-immigration-impact-on-economy-4151107 
https://www.katarinawong.com/about 
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article233365297.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/opinion/sunday/to-be-great-again-america-needs-immigrants.html 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/business/economy/trump-immigration-employers.html