The Benefits of Transmigration

The general causes of migration are poverty, unemployment, economic stagnation and overpopulation. Accepting immigrants has become a humane cause along with foreign investment in these poor countries with the hope that less people will have to migrate. U.S. investment in the global economy has had the reverse affect though, encouraging people to move along with the flow of capital, goods, and services. Saskia Sassen’s article, Why Migration, points out that the “open nature of the U.S. labor market, epitomized by the notion that government should stay out of the marketplace, provides a necessary condition for immigration to occur.”(Why Migration, p.15). The new immigrants from Asian and Caribbean countries have different reasons for migrating. Many of these new migrants do not come from poor countries as previously thought. Many migrant-sending countries had been experiencing increasing economic growth. South Korea had one of the highest gross national products in the 1970's and also was sending a record amount of migrants to the U.S. at the time. These people were migrating towards the promise of freedom and prosperity. In the 1980's the U.N. reported that the U.S. was receiving 19% of all global emigration.(Why Migration, p.15). The U.S.’ foreign investment in export production has disturbed the traditional systems of many countries, displacing subsistence farmers so that commercial agriculture can thrive and produce more exports. Sassen says that the results are that “people first uprooted from traditional ways of life, then left unemployed and unemployable as export firms hire younger workers or move production to other countries, may see few options but emigration.”(Why Migration, p.17). Another cause for migration to the U.S. was the attractive prospect of an abundance of low wage jobs which U.S. citizens were not very interested in. Even educated and skilled immigrants have filled these low wage jobs when they first get to the U.S. These immigrants provide crucial and necessary services for the U.S. citizens and therefore should be welcomed by everyone.

America now has 23 million foreign-born residents which is 8.4 percent of the population. Los Angeles, California alone has a foreign born population that makes up 40 percent of its total population. Charles S. Clark in his article, The New Immigrants, reports that “Over the past three decades, Asians, Latinos and Caribbean immigrants have outpaced the numbers of Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants.