Literature #2

Ramanujan Nadadur (2009): Illegal Immigration: A Positive Economic Contribution to

 the United States, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35:6, 1037-1052

Summary

Nadadur acknowledges the financial burden that illegal immigrants place on the US economy, but ultimately he asserts that illegal immigration aids the US economy overall. Nadadur dives deep into the effect that illegal immigration has on wages, jobs and the labor market. Nadadur primarily explores how the job market can be divided into primary and secondary labor markets. The secondary sector consists of low-skill, short term service jobs with lower wages and the primary sector consists of skilled jobs with employment stability. Nadadur asserts that illegal immigrants only have an effect on the secondary market.

Author

No internet information could be found on the author.

Quotes

 “90 percent of the wages that the undocumented population earns are currently spent inside the US. As a result, “The total consumptive capacity of illegal immigrants remaining in the US is around $450 billion.” (1044)

"immigrants also positively benefit the economy by increasing demand, spurring investment, and keeping receiving-country industries competitive through enhancing capital productivity" (1040).

"illegal immigrants are more temporary than legal immigrants and fit the profile of labor needed by secondary sector jobs" (1042)

key terms

Primary sector-skilled, permanent, service jobs (blue collar)

secondary sector-unskilled, low wage, temporary jobs (white collar)

Value
This article is a huge assert to my piece, it is my argument to show that illegal immigration is a positive benefit to our economy and students are not overall threatened in the job market by illegal immigration. Furthermore, I can also use it to present the counter argument that illegal immigration does create cost for tax payers, which is furthered by the DREAM Act, since the host country is now assuming more cost for educating these non-citizens.

Research Proposal +Bibliography

Samantha Iellimo

201- College

Professor Goeller

October 15, 2013

Working Title: The DREAM Act and American College Students

Topic

The DREAM Act is a piece of immigration reform legislation first introduced in 2001 that aims to aid illegal minors in achieving legal status through higher education. The DREAM Act, which stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors offers a path to American citizenship for students who were most likely brought to the United States as children and have known no other home. The United States is the only country they have ever known, and sometimes they are unaware of their illegal status until they attempt to apply for a college education. The DREAM Act allows these minors to be eligible for federal and state financial aid, and if two years of higher education or military service is completed, they are eligible for American citizenship.  This piece of legislation has been talked about for many years in the political arena, but it has not been passed yet because of the many who oppose it based on its’ unfairness to American college students. The goal of my research paper is to prove how the DREAM Act will not negatively impact American college students economically and will even offer positive consequences.  I will offer counter-arguments that include the use of privatization facts for the possible negative impacts of the Act, as well as positive impacts that will result from alien minors receiving higher education.

Research Question

How will the DREAM Act negatively and positively impact American college students’ economic futures?

The Opposition

When Alabama’s unemployment rate soared above the National Average to ten percent, Republican Governor Robert Bentley signed a law that would attack this problem and essentially aim to create more jobs for legal Alabama residents. According to Amanda Beadle at ThinkProgress.org, the law, passed in June of 2011 and deemed “the nation’s harshest immigration law” makes it  “illegal to even live as an undocumented immigrant in Alabama” by announcing it unlawful for illegal immigrants to participate in a business transaction with the state (Beadle 2).For those like Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, whose law “has become a point of pride of some Alabama Republicans” (Beadle 1), it seems that the general opinion of his supporters is that illegal immigration has a negative impact on the United States’ job market and ultimately harms citizen workers. According to Jennifer D. Williams, “U.S. jobs continue to be viewed as the chief attraction for illegal aliens” (Williams 29). In her 1990 article, “Illegal Immigration: the Effects on Native Born Workers”, Linda Levine introduces the “displacement effect”, which is used to describe a negative consequence of illegal immigration on American, or “native” workers. The “displacement effect” illustrates that because illegals accept less money for lower skilled jobs, workers wages become lower, and therefore “native-born workers will find other activities to be more attractive”. Levine explains that as a result, “they leave the labor force and employment among the native-born population, as noted above, declines”.  As American workers leave and lose their jobs to workers that accept lower pay and therefore cost the employer less money, “the initial employment of foreign-born workers expands as they assume a portion of the jobs formerly held by native-born workers” (Levine 51). The theory affirms that American workers are therefore “displaced” and thereby explains why Republicans believe that illegal aliens in our job market are a negative influence.

In Support of the DREAM Act

In her article, Linda Levine plainly states that, “immigrants affect the private economy in their role as workers” (Levine 50), and as I uncovered more information it became clear that illegals actually do have a positive effect on the job market by causing job growth, which will actually aid American college students. To explain this belief, Ramanujan Nadadur utilizes his 2009 article titled, “Illegal Immigration: A positive Economic Contribution to the United States”, to assert the idea that “illegal immigrants perform jobs that no US worker will fill” and he expands on this notion by introducing the “dual labor market theory” (Nadadur 1041-1042). According to Nadadur, the theory suggests that the United States labor market consists of two parts: the skilled primary sector and the unskilled secondary sector. The former is characterized by “skilled work, employment stability, the presence of job ladders, effective trade unions and efficient management”. As for the second sector, it contrarily consists of  “low or unskilled work or service jobs, linked by the fact that they are characterized by low earnings, job impermanence and low returns on education” (Nadadur 1041).  Since most Native American workers seek jobs in the first sector where the conditions are more favorable, it seems obvious that a shortage is created in the secondary sector. Illegal immigrants, who employers are forced to turn to, then fill this shortage of lower waged manual jobs. Nadadur summarizes that “in short, there are more jobs in the secondary sector than there are native workers to fill those jobs”, and therefore by taking them, illegal immigrants benefit the job market.

Conclusion

In my research paper, I will explore these topics further and provide further arguments to support the passing of the DREAM Act. I believe that the law will actually benefit college students in the long run and is not an unfair law. I believe that any arguments against the DREAM Act, stating negative impact, can be disputed. Though there is the argument that it could cause an increase in costs for American students, privatization is creating more of a negative impact on the wallets of students. The DREAM Act is a piece of legislation that will keep us moving forward.

Bibliography

Conlan, Mark Gabrish. "The Effects of Illegal Immigration: An Overview." Print. Rpt. in

            Illegal Immigration. Ed. William Barbour. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1994. 67-71.

            Print.

 "Governor Brown Signs Second Half Of California Dream Act.” Fox News – Breaking

 News Updates | Latest News Headlines | Photos & News Videos. 08 Oct. 2011.

Web. 21 Oct. 2011

Horwedel, Dina M. "For Illegal Students, an Uncertain Future." Diverse: Issues in Higher

            Education 23.6 (2006): 22-26. Academic OneFile. Web. 05 Nov. 2011.

Levine, Linda. "Immigration: The Effects on Native-Born Workers." Print. Rpt. in

            Politics of Immigration. Ed. A.M.      Babkina. New York: Nova Science. Print.
Motomura, Hiroshi, Making Legal: The Dream Act, Birthright Citizenship, and Broad-Scale
            Legalization (January 15, 2013). 16 Lewis & Clark Law Review 1127-48 (2012); UCLA
            School of Law Research Paper No. 13-01.

Ramanujan Nadadur (2009): Illegal Immigration: A Positive Economic Contribution to

 the United States, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35:6, 1037-1052

Williams, Jennifer D. "Immigration: Recent Estimates of the U.S. Illegal Alien

            Population." Print. Rpt. in Politics of Immigration. Ed. A.M. Babkina. New York:

            Nova Science. 

Literature Review Blog#1

Source Citation:

Motomura, Hiroshi, Making Legal: The Dream Act, Birthright Citizenship, and Broad-Scale Legalization (January 15, 2013). 16 Lewis & Clark Law Review 1127-48 (2012); UCLA School of Law Research Paper No. 13-01. 

Summary:

In his article "Making Legal: The DREAM Act, Birthright Citizenship and Broad-Scale Legalization", Hiroshi Motomura explores both arguments, for and against the DREAM Act. He uncovers the morality and fairness behind the law's supporters and those who feel strongly against it. He also uncovers supreme court cases that directly influence the application of the DREAM Act. This article leans toward supporting the DREAM Act and gives counter-arguments for the opponents of the law. 

Author Information:

http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/all-faculty-profiles/professors/Pages/hiroshi-motomura.aspx

According to UCLA, where he has been a professor since 2007, "Hiroshi Motomura is an influential scholar and teacher of immigration and citizenship law. He is a co-author of two immigration-related casebooks: Immigration and Citizenship: Process and Policy (7th ed. West, 2012), and Forced Migration: Law and Policy (2d ed. West, 2013).  His book, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford, 2006) won the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award from the Association of American Publishers as the year’s best book in Law and Legal Studies, and was chosen by the U.S. Department of State for its Suggested Reading List for Foreign Service Officers.  A companion volume, Immigration Outside the Law, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2014. In addition, he has published many significant articles and essays on immigration and citizenship." 

Key Terms:

DREAM Act- Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, which gives legal status to alien minors who came to the US as children, only if they attend college or serve in the military. (1128)

Plyler vs. Doe- (1128)- Supreme court decision of 1982 that decided that a state cannot limit a child's access to public elementary and second education based on his/her immigration status. It also emphasized that education prevents alien children from being disadvantaged permanently as they grew older and their education must be supported in our equality-centered culture.

Quotes:

1."The pragmatic objections to the DREAM Act draw on the same two Plyler themes. Focusing on unlawful presence, individuals who are illegally in the United States pose a straightforward problem that the government can solve by apprehending and deporting them, or by making life for them hard enough that they will leave. Such enforcement policies in the United States are needed, this argument continues, to support border enforcement and the system for lawful admission to the United States" (1133). 

 2. "This broadening is part of the integration of immigrants into American society. Children in immigrant families are typically much more likely than their parents to become integrated linguistically, socially, and in other dimensions. This is true regardless of a child’s legal status, but is even more true for children who have lawful immigration status or citizenship, which allows them to serve more effectively as cultural brokers between their parents and mainstream society outside immigrant enclaves" (1136).

 3. "To focus discussion, I start with a brief sketch of Plyler v. Doe, a landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Plyler held that no state can limit a child’s access to public elementary and secondary education based on his or her immigration status.3 The Court struck down a Texas state statute that allowed local school districts to prevent children from attending public schools if they were not lawfully in the United States" (1128).

4. "The DREAM Act would establish several conditions for lawful status. According to the proposal as introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2011, the noncitizen individual must have been under sixteen when she arrived in the United States.11 She must have resided in the United States continuously for the five years preceding enactment of the law.12 She must have earned a high school diploma or the equivalent in the United States, or have been admitted to a U.S. college or university.13 A noncitizen meeting these requirements would be eligible to be a conditional permanent resident.14 If she is under thirty-five at the time the act passed, and attends college or serves in the U.S. military for two years, she would become a lawful permanent resident" (1130). 

Value:

This material gives me a more in depth look at how the DREAM Act functions and it gives me a lot of information on arguments for and against the Act. It gives me a look into immigration in general and how the DREAM Act relates to it overall. Furthermore, the article gives me information from a supreme court point of view and how legally it should be passed to support a supreme court decision, Plyler vs. Doe. 

BLOG #3

How does the DREAM Act relate to privatization?

While researching the DREAM Act, I came to a huge realization. Though privatization is making higher education more accessible for some, it is making it completely unobtainable financially for others. With rising tuition costs and a large sum of loan debt as a possibility, a college education is just not financially possible for some students who do not qualify for Federal, State or school financial aid. Students who desire to further their knowledge after high school might just not be able to take advantage of the many educational opportunities present in our country. This feeling must be a frustrating one, and I can directly relate it to the feeling that many alien minors have after they graduate high school. Though they are fully capable to attend college, they simply cannot afford it because they are not eligible for Federal financial aid. Due to privatization, and college essentially becoming more of a business endeavor with the increase of for-profit universities, many American high-school graduates are feeling helpless toward their futures, just like alien minors feel without the passage of the DREAM Act.

Blog #2 REVISED

My topic is still the DREAM Act, however I have developed in into two sides of it: the moral argument and the economic argument. Both of those sub-topics have the ability to be argued both for and against the DREAM Act. After doing further research, I see the two opposing viewpoints and understand why it is still a prominent point of discussion for politicians and has not been passed although it was introduced in 2001. My research also provided me with a lot more information on how the DREAM Act is economically beneficial to our country and how it can improve not just the economic standing of alien minors but also of American citizens. The following link gave me a lot of information on that: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2012/10/01/39746/passing-the-dream-act-for-our-economy/.  I also discovered that this argument can be countered by the fact that allowing alien students accessed to Federal Financial Aid does cost the American taxpayer money, which is a core reason why many oppose this law. This biggest controversy over this bill is that it is morally unsound, which I did not quite understand. After further searching I found four main arguments against the DREAM Act, here: http://www.utsa.edu/twp/spring12/0103spring2012.pdf, and understood why certain Americans oppose the legislation. All and all, while researching for the DREAM Act I have found a plethora of information, both scholarly articles and news articles that give a lot of factual and statistical information about alien minors and the economic impact of the law. I found it most interesting that I can easily demonstrate two completely different opinions on one topic and I would be interested to find out how other college students feel about this piece of legislation.

Blog #1 REVISED

The topic I am mainly considering for my research project is on the topic of the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act, or the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors aims to provide higher education for those students are undocumented residents of the United States. I find this topic especially interesting because it is not something that many college students think about often. We may not think about how there are students who are striving to better their education and job potential however they hit a road block after high school. Many of these students have lived their entire lives in the United States, however because their parents brought them here when they were children and were unable to obtain citizenship for them, become stuck in economic hardship. The DREAM Act serves to allow these students the opportunity to participate in higher education and gives them a path to lawful American Citizenship. I believe the DREAM Act serves as a reminder to college students to appreciate the education easily available to us while alien minors struggle for the ability to attend college.