Burden Or Wealth

As the largest immigrant country in the world, America has been for centuries absorbing waves of immigrants to fill in its workforce. The scale of immigration reaches its record high in the 1990s, a time of economic expansion and a labor force deficit. New immigrants mainly from Latin America and Asian countries pour in the U.S., many bringing with them advanced skills and techniques. Although higher unemployment and poverty, together with heavier welfare burden can be found, to some extent, arising from immigration, still the growing anti-immigrant sentiment today among native-born Americans cannot be fully justified. With an objective and exhaustive study of the impacts of immigrants on the U.S. labor market, wages, taxes and welfare, immigrants since 1990 have proved positive and indispensable to the U.S. economic well-being.To be addressed are questions being in heated discussion in the community over more than a decade, including: (1) Do immigrants push native-born American workers out of jobs? (2) Do immigrants cause a negative impact on the earnings of the native-born? (3) Is there a decline of entrepreneurship among new immigrants? (4) Do immigrants pay more taxes than what they receive for welfare? (5) And are they more likely to be on welfare than natives?Across the U.S., immigrants have been unequally allocated with their impact on state economy varying noticeably. The case in California, out of seven states thickly populated with immigrants, is therefore examined as a proof of immigrants being economically more of wealth than burden.