Immigration of a Country

        Immigration of a country

Immigration, which can be defined as an action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country (Oxford dictionary, 2015) is becoming more and more common in modern times. Worldwide, there were 232 million international migrants in 2013 (United Nations, 2013). Recently, an increasing number of person choose to live in another countries for enhanced public utilities, higher quality of education or more advanced social benefits. Sometimes, immigration can lead to some problems in a country, such as crime (Martinez and Valenzuela, 2006), income inequality (Chang, 2008) and social resources shortages. However, it also could bring some benefits, for example, improve on labor force, improve on demography, improve on society, new skills and talents (Coleman and Rowthorn, 2004), economic growth (Borjas, 1994; Coleman and Rowthorn, 2004) and improved urban infrastructure. For these reasons, immigration can be viewed as being either advantageous to a country or not. This essay will discuss the influences of immigration on a country, discussing both the advantages and disadvantages in economic and social perspectives. After that, reasonable conclusion will be reached supported by objective examples.

Initially, the immigration can lead an increasing number of crimes to a country. Recently, the one of the most contentious in current society is the connection between the immigration and crimes. Historically, due to schooling, income level and cultural difference, the public view always links immigration and crimes together by stereotypes more than reliable data (Espenshade and Belanger 1998; Simon 1985), which cause this topic becoming more and more debatable. However, there is a research from Martinez and Valenzuela (2006) based on Theoretical Perspectives, Opportunity structure and Cultural approaches illustrates that sometimes immigration is truly connected with crimes. Secondly, immigration can cause income inequalities to the labor market of a country. The labors from low-wage countries move to high-wage countries in pursuit of advanced income (Chang, 2008). However, the most of these immigrant labors from low-wage countries has lower schooling and skills which cause the lower income expectations. As the result, a certain amount of these labors will lower the whole income level which with the higher original value of a certain industry in a country. According to reason, some countries even designed some politics to protect native workers. Finally, the immigration causes the shortages of the social resources. As mentioned earlier, a great number of migrants move to another country towards enhanced public utilities, higher quality of education, higher income jobs or more advanced social benefits. Nevertheless, the social resources in the big cities are always limited, such as medical treatment, infrastructure construction, employment and education. An excess of immigration to a specific region will create the population explosion which could lower the living standards of the whole region.