Sociology: Immigration - Essay Example

Sociology: Immigration1 Immigration can be understood as a migration (especially permanent) into a place or country one is not native to, the introduction of new people into a habitat or population, entrance of a person into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence, someone coming to live in a different country or the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country2. Due to immigration, there comes a change in population of a place, rather change in population fragments of that place.

Economic and cultural transition is also seemed as one of the major change due to immigration. In California, about 50% of the population is comprised of immigrants. In fact, any change takes place decades ago in California than in any other part in America. Political fear was at a great high in 1980s and 1990s due to immigrants. People, native, were more concerned about their economic, cultural and environmental assets. There was a conception that immigrants are responsible for ‘shooting’ the middle class economy, culture and environmental resources3 (Beck, 1996).

But it was not true. Immigrants were, mostly, employed in lower paid jobs like nursing and healthcare, which were of no interest to the most of the born-natives; moreover, these services were very much needed by born-natives, too. It is another matter of fact that all immigrants used to pay all sorts of taxes including medicare and social security taxes, though most of the immigrants did not avail the facility back, due to migration to native place in old age. While immigrants were adding to the economy and resources, the depression in proportion of native-born workers was causing less ‘pay-in’ to the system and elevated elderly native-born proportion were ‘drawing out’ more resources from the system.

Later, immigrants decreased due to shifting the choice of younger immigrants to the other countries. There was an upward mobility of the older immigrants. As far as culture and skills of immigrants are concerned, the younger children of immigrants are more fluent in English, culturally sound towards the American culture and more skillful as compared to their elders. So, it can be the inference, that, born-younger immigrants are as good as born-natives with respect to economy, culture and other concerns, than the older generation, and, the fear of economy, culture and other aspects are not worthy.

Younger immigrants learn better, mingle better, adapt the culture and better fit in the society of born-natives. The mutual interests of older home sellers and younger home buyers, too, can play a better basic role for sharing American dream. Hence, in spite of fearing of the false, non-empirical and invalid impact of immigration and looking the immigration as a threat to culture and economy of the country, government should endeavor to educate the immigrants, equipping them with skills, provide to them more opportunities, which, in turn, will increase the taxpayer base of the country.

Government and political stakeholders, in this way, may step forward in the direction towards building a shared destiny and creating a novel social contract for a more aspiring future. References Used 1. Myers, Dowell. Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. 2. ‘Immigration’. http://www.memidex.com/immigration Last browsed in May, 2011. 3. Beck, Roy Howard. The Case Against Immigration: The Moral, Economic, Social, and Environmental Reasons for Reducing U.S. Immigration Back to Traditional Levels.

New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.