Welcome to Rye Country Day's Economic Blog. Here you will find perspectives by students taking Economics at Rye Country Day School. It is meant to be a forum where students can openly express their ideas and take positions on relevant economic issues. I urge everyone to participate in presenting their own ideas in an open manner so that we can all learn from each other. Regardless of whether you are currently taking Economics, everyone is invited and encouraged to comment on articles and get involved. Feel free to e-mail me, Alex Osborne at alexander_osborne@rcds.rye.ny.us , with comments or suggestions.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Featured Entry - Border with Mexico; Economic Pros and Cons


The issue concerning illegal immigration over the border with Mexico is one that directly relates to the economy of the United States. Although President Bush has created a plan to build a wall across a vast majority of the Mexican border, there are many economic advantages of having undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. I do not believe that the economy of the United States would function the way that it does without Mexican immigrants. These people provide cheap labor that many Americans are not willing to do at such a low price. However, I feel that accepting illegal immigrants does nothing to help Mexico’s economy, which is the main source of the problem. Also, undocumented immigrants are often subjected to exremely low wages and poor working conditions that are a virtual form of slavery. Another negative is that the Mexican immigrants drain resources such as hospital funds from the US. In the end, I believe that a larger amount of border patrol is needed.

-Omar Zamir

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

But doesn't the emigration of Mexicans from Mexico help the economy, or at least the workers. With a lesser suply of wokers, with an equal demand, wages must rise. Mexicans staying in mexico must take advantage of the fact that people are leaving, and get whatever job they can, because pretty soon they'll wages will have to rise as no one is left to do there job.

Anonymous said...

Socrates once said the indicator of a good government is when people flock to be governed by it. i don't think we can not let people into the country and the influx of workers is obviosly helping the economy and providing workers for the less than desirable jobs. if you we kept immigrants out, not onyl would it cost plenty of money to do the task but its would render a scarcity of low skill low wages job labor and it would hurt the US economy.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if our economy could function the way it does without immigrants. A lot of people agree that immigrants do the jobs that Americans aren't willing to do. Yet if all the immigrants suddenly disappeared, those jobs WOULD need to be filled, right? Those jobs might offer incentives, or the government might step in in some way. It's true that the economy wouldn't function "the same" without immigrants, but it would still function.