2013-3 Do countries benefit from immigration?
Plan: Yes, bc immigration increases working force. But then only good working force matter bc otherwise
conflicts would take place -> damage the country.
Yes, bc immigration improve the diversity in the country -> people are likely to become more tolerant.
But if large multitude of immigrants moved in during a short period of time -> not enough time to settle
down & get use to the original culture -> they may form their own culture groups -> bc different culture
background and interest -> there will be discrimination amongst people. Populism nativists defending
their own culture.
Yes, if the country is experiencing lack of working force.
To engage with this question, we must first address the implication of immigration. Immigration is a
movement of population from one country to another. We need to realise from this definition that the
characteristic of immigrants are various thus it is difficult to give a certain answer without analysing
situations with different types of immigrants entering the country. Similarly, the situation of the countries
itself differs greatly that one may be lacking of working force and the other saturated.
Immigration is most likely to be beneficial to countries that experiences a lack of working force. The
movement of high-quality population into the country will greatly supply working force to the market.
Thus, immigration as a production resource, is likely to increase the country’s production potential and
raise living standard. But as mentioned, this depends on the quality of the immigrants and what type of
working force is the country looking for. For example, if the country lacks white-tie workers and is
saturated of the blue-tie immigrants; the case of blue-tie immigrants entering may not benefit this country
and will even lower the wage and living standard for native blue-tie workers since there will be more
competition.
Culture-wise, immigration could also be beneficial as it introduces different ideas and ways of living into
the country. This is because immigrants come from different backgrounds and stand in a different point of
view than the native people. If both sides could communicate and exchange different ideas, new ideas
could be formed and the creativity can be improved.
However, if the immigrants use a very different language than the natives, there may be
miscommunication and misunderstanding amongst people. Misunderstanding often leads to conflicts
amongst people thus this kind of immigrants may not benefits the country. Yet this may not be a problem
if immigrants are introduced into the country slowly. This is because they have the opportunity to take
time to learn the language of the country, so that the communication would go more fluently and less
misunderstanding and conflicts would occur.
In addition, immigrants coming in large groups may not develop such interest to adopt the native culture
because their community is already strong that there is no need to incorporate with natives; on the
opposite, if small chunks of immigrants are introduced into the country by time, it is very likely that there
will be an interest to actively interact with native residents and get use to their culture for living in an
exotic environment.
In all, depending on the characteristics of the immigrants, countries do benefit from immigration if there
is a lack of working force that is possessed by the immigrants; a good environment for communication;
and a gradual immigration process.