Migration Brings Economic Gains vs Migration Reduces Cultural Cohesion

MIGRATION BRINGS ECONOMIC GAINS VS. MIGRATION REDUCES CULTURAL COHESION NAME INSTRUCTOR COURSE DATE Migration Brings Economic Gains vs. Migration Reduces Cultural Cohesion Introduction If you have ever been an immigrant, you would be well familiar with the issues surrounding immigration. Immigration is one of the hotly contested topics in the current political arena. The number of people that support immigration is almost the same as those who oppose it. Some people argue that migration has brings economic gains while others believe that it reduces cultural cohesion. In this paper, I argue that the economic benefits of immigration such as labor force growth, human capital, and entrepreneurship outweigh the negative impact impacts on social cohesion. Economic Benefits of Migration Migration has been a hot topic politically, however when it comes to economics, it is said to have positive effects such as economic gains for the host country. Even though migration is costly on the short term, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages in the long run (Kancs and Lecca 2016). Migration contributes to labor force growth as immigrants play an important role in the workforce of a country. In the U.S, almost 17% of the workforce is foreign-born. The immigrants in the labor force, whether skilled or unskilled, make contributions to the GDP of a country. The best case scenarios are the U.S and Japan. Japan is known to have little immigration. Today, most of the workforce in the country is aging and their economy has remained stagnant. Due to the lack of strong immigration, Japan’s workforce has been shrinking as opposed to the U.S that has maintained favorable immigration policies. With active participation in the labor force, migration “increases income per person and living standards” (Jaumotte et al. 2016, 1) as workers, whether they are skilled on unskilled, take part in a country’s economy.[Peri, Giovanni. "Immigrants, productivity, and labor markets." Journal of Economic Perspectives 30, no. 4 (2016): 3-30.] Additionally, immigrants come with new skills to the workforce and this brings a diversity that if well embraced can spur innovation and creativity and contribute to better economic growth. Most of the immigrants are self-driven and they know that their survival depends on their labor participation. In fact, in certain industries in the U.S such as manufacturing, immigrants are the leading workforce. With the increase in the number of people prepared to participate in the workforce, economies are driven to create more jobs and at different skill levels to utilize the available skills. This is what drives innovation and inventions and can be used to explain why the U.S and most European countries are the leading forces in technological advancement.[Noe, Raymond A., John R. Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart, and Patrick M. Wright. Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.] Also, immigration contributes to human capital. Was noted earlier, immigration increases the labor force supply. However, even more important is the contribution of highly-skilled immigrants that help to boost the capacity of a country to make technological advancements. While some immigrants are unskilled, others come with the knowledge that can help to increase the productivity of the native and this can help to improve the “economic growth per capita” of these natives. Therefore, the contributions of highly-skilled immigrants can help to improve innovations in different industries. This can help them to achieve differentiation which is important to their sustainability strategies. Even immigrant students can help in the diffusion of knowledge which can also help to build human capital. The human capital level among immigrants can determine the level of impact on the outcomes of the labour market of the natives. In fact, the level of the industriousness of the immigrant workers brings a human capital difference between them and the native workers that can best be explained by the fact that most immigrant workers get higher wages compared to the native workers. For most countries, immigration is essential to the future of their industries. For most developing countries, immigration can help to enrich their human capital and ensure that they can address their skill shortage in a manner that allows them to improve their production structures, hence moving up in the global value chains. How much immigrants contribute to the human capital in the destination countries depends on how well they are able to integrate. Most of the immigrants face significant barriers such as speaking a language that’s not the same as that of the locals. These make it difficult for them to find placement in their areas of expertise. Issues of racism and integration also make it difficult for immigrants to integrate well.[Fairlie, Robert W., and Magnus Lofstrom. "Immigration and entrepreneurship." In Handbook of the economics of international migration, vol. 1, pp. 877-911. North-Holland, 2015.] [Brittain, Carmina. "On learning English: The importance of school context, immigrant communities, and the racial symbolism of the English Language in understanding the challenge for immigrant adolescents." (2017).] The third contribution that immigrants make is on entrepreneurship. Immigrants are generally good for business because in most of their destination countries, they establish more businesses compared to the native-born entrepreneurs. Additionally, their commitment to their course makes it more likely for their business start-ups to succeed. In a study conducted by “Harvard Business School study” to compare how new U.S startups grew over a six-year period. The results established that startups started by immigrants were more liked to survive into the foreseeable future and grew at a faster rate when compared to the startups by the natives. But the business startups by immigrants never perform those of the locals financially. The startups by immigrants are likely to generate lower wages compared to those startups by the natives. With their entrepreneurial activities, immigrants act as job creators, giving other people, natives and other immigrants, the opportunity to work for them. Additionally, their tax contributions from their business are important sources of income for the government. These can help to spur economic growth and improve the lives of all people living within a country. Some of the immigrant entrepreneurs come entrepreneurial ideas that the natives could never have thought of. These ideas form the backbone of innovations that are needed by countries that want to make the step forward in their quest for growth. They come with new cultures and new ways of doing things including new business ideas that even the locals can embrace. Immigrant entrepreneurs can contribute to changes in the way business is done. This can help to make businesses more competitive yet productive and the lives of people can dramatically change. Therefor...