Immigration: Pros and Cons

Immigration is the act of coming to a foreign country to live. A long term immigrant usually resides in a new land for at least a year while a short term migrant is a person who moves to a country for a period of at least 3 months. Like everything else immigration has its pros and cons.

Immigration leads to an exchange of cultural values, knowledge and expertise between two nations. It serves as a platform to interact with people of other countries and brings in new opportunities for the people of different countries. Immigration has resulted in the creation of new fields of education and new career options. It has resulted in an open global market and gives a global perspective to the social and economic growth of society, thus widening the horizons of the development. On the flip side, crowding is one of the basic disadvantages of immigration with the nation’s resources, jobs and wealth being consumed by non- natives. Immigrants may bring in diseases that prevailed in their country. Less educated immigrants are believed to increase theft, violence and other malpractices in a nation. Illegal immigration has emerged in some parts of the world and has proven to be a curse to the nations’ economy and social welfare. Last of all, comes the aspect of brain drain with a poor country donating its educated minority to other richer countries.

Immigration is done for many reasons some of which are unavoidable. As long as it is not illegal and as long as one can contribute reasonably to the Nation one lives in, immigration pros might outdo the cons.