Arguing Against Nativist Theory: The Positive Impact of Immigration in the United States‪.‬

America is a nation composed almost entirely of immigrants. Immigrants began arriving in the Americas since at least 1492 and in what is today the United States since the early 1500s, immigrants continue to arrive five hundred and fifteen years later. After a process of genocide, displacement, pacification and relative assimilation of indigenous peoples, Anglos, Dutch, French and Spanish immigrants began formulating and instituting public and government policies that would sanction the importation and exploitation of other minorities whose labor would develop the vast resources of America, generate incredible wealth, build its infrastructure and establish cities, towns and industries that would be administered by the dominant Anglo-groups. Immigrant groups have been exploited for their labor while often being used politically as a scapegoat by politicians to avoid addressing the need for reform in the political, economic and social institutions of America and maintain the subordinate positions of minority groups. While conducting this preliminary research it becomes evident that in addition to illuminating the many fallacies of anti-immigrant arguments that exist it is at the same time necessary to reveal the assumptions of anti-immigrant arguments of which include an explicitly racial component and intertwined the belief or practice deeming some groups as outsiders undeserving and with no rights in integrating into the United States and others who belong, apparently, by virtue of them absent in anti-immigrant arguments and in the presence of much of the studies and statistics available. For example, an explicitly racial component today include Mexican and Latino immigrants who are targeted with anti-immigrant arguments and harassed by the legal and policing institutions of America while the other two thirds of the majority immigrating groups, English and Asian, who are virtually absent from the arguments or claims. Furthermore, the studies available seem limited to unskilled, semi-skilled and low wage industrial labor and do little to address the impact of immigration on technical and professional labor. Traditional anti-immigrant arguments within the United States include the detrimental impact of immigrants on social services, educational systems and labor force. These anti-immigrant arguments have historically been nativist or racist in that they ignore simple statistical analysis of population characteristics and the overwhelming contributions of immigrant labor to the wealth and productivity of America, the tax base and welfare programs and the educational system.