Low Income Immigrants: A Case Study

The complementary relationship between low-wage immigrants and high-wage natives seems to hold even as the encounter between them becomes more distant and abstract. Middle class Americans are capable of buying a fast food meal and picking up a veggie tray at a grocery store or even having presents prewrapped before they are sent to their door all because of immigrants. Low income immigrants make the lives of higher income natives easier and more efficient.

The promise is, however, that even if one cannot afford to use day care services, even if one does their own landscaping, even if one cannot afford to buy fast food meals or veggie trays, even if one shops at a dollar store rather than using the services of Amazon, one will still be better

Excluding any costs involving children, an immigrant without a high school diploma typically creates a lifetime fiscal drain of $89,000. The average lifetime fiscal drain is $31,000 for an immigrant with only a high school diploma. More educated immigrants, however, are capable of creating a lifetime fiscal surplus of $105,000. The ordinary illegal immigrant possesses only ten years of schooling and uses nearly $14,400 more is services than it paid in taxes. Illegal immigrants produce a total fiscal drain of $55 billion (Camarota,

Immigration as a whole, however, has no significant effect on the overall wealth of the nation. Rather, immigration tends to act as a redistribution program, with the people who use immigrants gaining the wealth lost by those who compete with them. This fact is clearly evident by the fact that businesses usually spend a tremendous amount of resources in an effort to keep high levels of immigration. Sure enough, all of the new jobs the past several years have gone to immigrants. One should also keep in mind that although immigration does make the economy larger, a larger economy by itself is not a benefit to native