With the current controversy over the Trump Administration's passing of new immigration laws, it is important to look at the benefits of immigration. Many criticize immigration saying that it leads to higher crime rates and that it hurts our culture. However these are all false. These myths should be dispelled as soon as possible; and we should look at the pure positives of immigration.

The first myth that immigrants increase crime rates is downright false. A study done by Butcher and Piehl examined the incarceration rate for men 18-40 in the 1980, 1990, and 2000 census and found that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives. The gap is also widening every decade. The same guys studied crime rates in cities in California and found that all the cities that had experienced an influx of immigrants had lower violent crime rates. Ewing, Martinez, and Rumbaut also studied incarceration rates. Among males without a high school diploma, 10.7 percent of native borns without high school diplomas are incarcerated, but only 2.8 of Mexican immigrants and 1.7 of Guatemalan and Salvadorian without a diploma are incarcerated.

They also found that an increase in immigration has no statistically significant effects on crime rates. The only difficulty in using these studies is that it is hard to distinguish between illegal and legal immigrants when studying these statistics and that examining census data on incarceration is difficult due to poor methods of execution. This, however, doesn't change the fact that there is significant data pointing to the conclusion that immigrants don't commit as much crime as the media likes to suggest.

Another claim made by far right pundits is that immigration will hurt our culture. This argument is hard to counter because the claim is so broad. What part of our culture? Our political culture? No one really specifies, which makes it hard to tackle the argument. Many like to suggest that immigrants will hurt our democracy because they tend to be more left-leaning. But many illegal immigrants can't vote and are just as moderate as most native-borns are. Many tend to lean more liberal due to the issue of illegal immigration, Democrats tend to be easier on immigrants and more inclusive, while conservatives are tougher on the issue. Others say that immigrants don't assimilate to our culture, but that is also wrong. Research from the National Academics of Sciences suggests that this generation of immigrants is assimilating just as well as previous generations, and perhaps even better.

The benefits of immigrants manifest in many different ways, most notably, in that they boost our economy. This should be the biggest part of the argument moving forward primarily because if the United States wants to continue to grow it's economy it should make becoming legal easier. As is, immigrants make up 15 percent of out workforce, but 25 percent of immigrants are entrepreneurs and are investors in the United States. In fact, over one third of new start ups have an immigrant in their initial leadership and immigrants are twice as more likely to start a business as non-immigrants.

These statistics illustrate how important they are in our robust our economy; our economy needs entrepreneurs, start-ups, and investors to continue to grow, to innovate, and to make everyone better off. The idea that they push wages down isn't supported by research. Brookings Institution senior fellow, Danny Bahar, says "If anything negative impacts occur for the most part on wages of prior immigrants with similar set of skills." In 2007, immigrant owned small businesses employed 4.7 million people and generated over 776 billion dollars of revenue. Studies have also shown that the immigrants living within the United States support about 1.8 million manufacturing jobs and that nationally immigrants raise home values by communities they move to by an average of 92,800 dollars.

If given a pathway to citizenship, it is estimated that 159,000 jobs could be added annually; they could add 1.4 trillion dollars to the national economy over the next ten years; increase their incomes by 25 percent over 5 years; pay an estimated 116 billion in federal taxes and 68 billion in state and local taxes over ten years; and see an increase in wages for everybody. This would be huge for our economy which has been rather stagnant as of late. The inevitable increase in government revenues could be used to increase our education budget, to increase research and development, to invest in infrastructure, to increase social benefits. These things would help our economy even more. The increase in GDP would also create more jobs in the long run for everybody in the United States.

The research should determine immigration policy, not fear or discrimination or propaganda, and the research shows that immigrants are not harmful to our society. If given an easier pathway to citizenship, the United States would benefit both economically and socially. Legal immigrants commit less crime and bring immense economic benefits, and it is imperative that the United States moves towards a more immigrant friendly society if we want to see continued economic innovation and growth.