Abstract
According to a study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) in 2007, both legal, and illegal immigration comprised 37.9 million people living in the United States. One out of every eight U.S. residents was an immigrant, and nearly one out of every three was here illegally (Camarota 2007). Based on this study, the CIS predicted the United States would continue to experience record levels of immigration in the future (Camarota 2007).
While immigration, both legal and illegal, fulfills an important role in the United States economy, immigrants have adversely affected the U.S. health care system; a system which is already flawed and in need of reform. This paper is not a statement on whether immigration is right or wrong; it simply demonstrates how immigration has impacted the health care delivery system in the United States.
As aforementioned, immigration is essential to the function of the U.S. economy. Immigrants fulfill jobs that native workers prefer not to do, and for a lower wage. This in turn keeps low-wage manufacturing jobs within the borders of the United States, as opposed to outsourcing these jobs to countries with lower labor wages (Muller 240).
This makes business more competitive by reducing production costs. Moving these jobs to other countries would have the adverse effect of "higher imports and larger balance-of-payment deficits" (Muller 240). With primarily lower paying jobs, most immigrants do not make a large income; consequently, they cannot save very much money. What money they do earn they spend on basic commodities, revitalizing business in that area (Muste 10/19/11, Class notes). However, some scholars contend that this flow of money is confined to the ethnic enclaves in which these immigrants often live in, rather than the economy as a whole.
