Immigrants from nations that do not have an automatic visa agreements, or who would not otherwise qualify for a visa, often cross the borders illegally. In some areas like the U.S.-Mexico border, the Strait of Gibraltar, Fuerteventura and the Strait of Otranto. Because these methods must be extralegal, they are often dangerous.
Most countries have laws requiring workers to have proper documentation, often intended to prevent the employment of illegal immigrants. However the penalties against employers are not always enforced consistently and fairly, which means that employers can easily use illegal labor. Agriculture, construction, domestic service, restaurants, resorts, and prostitution are the leading legal and illegal jobs that illegal workers are most likely to fill. For example, it is estimated that 80% of U.S. crop workers are without valid legal status. Illegal immigrants are especially popular with employers because they can violate minimum wage laws secure in the knowledge that illegal workers dare not report their employers to the police. The local people, fear that the illegal immigrants will increas the rate of criminality and also the unemployment.
The main question is: Does the economy benefits from the work of the illegal immigrants?
Economically speaking, the impact of illgal immigrants has its consequences. For example liberal opinions sustain the business interests and the economic criteria, also trying to control the excess of capitalism. Business intrests howevere, are short-term. Easy immediate access to labour will always be preferred to the costs of training and capital investment for the longer term. In the nature of economic cycles, yesterday's essential labour can often become, as the defunct factories and mills of Europe have shown, today's unemployed. Employers who demanded immigrant labour are not held to account for this or required to contribute to subsequent costs of their unemployed former workers. Few things are more permanent that temporary worker from a poor country. If business were made responsible for the lifetime costs of their migrant labour in the same way as they must now deal with the lifetime environmental costs of their products, perhaps enthusiasm for labour migration might be moderated and make way for longer-term investment in capital-intensive restructuring. According to elementary economic theory, uncontrolled migration is always beneficial because labour is then enabled to flow from countries with abundant cheap labour and little capital to high wage areas where labour is scarce but capital abundant. Free migration is expected to equalize the ratio of capital to labour everywhere, until equilibrium is reached where wages have equalized and capital efficiency is maximized. Net migration then ceases. In the process wage inflation has been checked and output maximized and global average income, raised.
The advantages of illegal migration tend mostly to be on the side of the employer. An employer will benefit from the illegal status of a migrant who is desperate for work and therefore prepared to accept poor pay, usually below local norms. Hiring an illegal worker also brings the employer the advantage of paying less in the way of welfare contributions and other non-wage costs. The "welfare magnet" of illegal immigration is much stronger for the employer than for the worker, whose precarious situation and low bargaining power makes him highly vulnerable to discriminatory practices in the form of longer hours and non-payment of various bonuses, or even of wages. For many undocumented immigrants, the underground economy is the only means of finding a job. But that does not mean that unauthorized foreign workers are the reason why the underground economy exists. The question of competition in the labour market has to be linked with the social cost of illegal immigration. In the fiscal context, undocumented foreign workers and their families cannot be said to be a drain on national budgets, on the contrary. The only true cost associated with illegality is that of services provided regardless of status, such as schooling.
The "segmented labour market" provides another escape clause; that some jobs will not be done by locals and must be done by immigrants. However one of the reasons why locals will find some jobs unattractive is because it is mostly immigrants who perform them. If employers can pay immigrant, not local wages, they thereby become dependent on perpetual immigrant labour, in some cases illegal. The concept of segmented labour markets finds little empirical support on a large scale. Where such segmented markets do exist they tend to be a function of excessively low wages, insufficient capitalization of the function in question or excessive levels of employment protection in the regular economy running hand in hand with...
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