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Why is immigration an important issue?
Today the United States is facing a paradox, a society once built on immigrants is now turning against them. To a culture of xenophobia, walls, fences, and closed doors. America along with much of Europe is become quick to blame the outsider for their problems and spout fear that immigrants come to cause more problems. From Muslims to Mexicans, they are made the target of political rhetoric. They are blamed for causing crime, bringing terrorism, stealing jobs, and freeloading off the system. But do any of these accusations actually hold water, most of these arguments are based on anecdotal evidence with little ever substantiated with facts and statistics.
The question of this website is immigration something we as nations, we as people, should be afraid of, or is it something we should be embracing? The news media is constantly focused stories about terror attacks and talks about the threat it has to our society. Trump calls illegal Mexican immigrants criminals. But statistically do these fears hold up? Are immigrants really a threat to peaceful American life or is the fear and loathing just something to sell TV ads and win votes of the easily frightened.
Immigrants are not here to cause trouble
Speaking generally a immigrants are in fact less likely to cause harm and be criminals than the native population. Cities with large populations tend to have higher crime rates, but those same cities that have a larger immigrant population are actually less likely to commit crimes than the native population. The crime rate for those immigrants children does even out after a few generations, so if anything, the native population makes immigrants worse.
Immigrants are some of the fastest to integrate into a new culture, they integrate, they learn the language, and in a generation they are completely integrated into their new life. So a fear of loosing a so called American culture is fallacy. Immigrants start new businesses and are often some of the most productive members of society and contribute more to the social systems than they take out. Immigration, migrant workers, taking in refugees does have its own short term strains, but in long term societial and economic benifits.
