TBHT: The US Government ought to increase the numbers of immigrants allowed into America

Certain resources are all but fixed, and thus competition for them is necessarily zero-sum. Admissions into top colleges. Housing stock in areas with lots of jobs. Land. The physical environment itself.

• My opponent's core claim is that an increase of immigrant's allowed into America would screw over native born Americans, taking their houses or causing more to be constructed, negatively impacting the environment. 
  

"When millions of people come to America, they must live somewhere. If they are not driving up competition for the limited existing housing supply new housing is being made, transforming forests and fields into the concrete jungle.  Increasing the population means paving over more and more green space."

"My opponent’s source for taxes paid by immigrants draws its information from a paper by the “New American Economy” group[1]. This very paper, which lauds the impact of immigration, notes that between 2000 and 2010 immigrants caused housing prices in major metro areas all across the country to increase by tens of thousands of dollars. The paper portrays this as somehow being a good thing, but I hardly see how pricing the youth out of homeownership is supposed to be a positive"

"Regardless of their immigration status, immigrants settling in American towns and cities contribute to their communities in countless ways. They increase demand for housing, often in areas that would be in decline without them, raising the value of local homes and the wealth of American homeowners and families. They become new customers at local businesses like restaurants and hair salons. These new Americans also create and preserve jobs in the U.S.: they start businesses at higher-than-average rates and fill critical labor needs in sectors like manufacturing, adding new skills to allow manufacturing to grow and remain here in America." [1]

"caused housing prices in major metro areas all across the country to increase by tens of thousands of dollars"

"1. As price increases, more firms decide to enter the market—that is, these firms produce some positive quantity rather than zero.

  2. As price increases, firms increase the quantity that they wish to produce." [4]

"When millions of people come to America, they must live somewhere. If they are not driving up competition for the limited existing housing supply"

"When millions of people come to America, they must live somewhere. If they are not driving up competition for the limited existing housing supply new housing is being made, transforming forests and fields into the concrete jungle.  Increasing the population means paving over more and more green space"

• Sustainable construction saves money, as they are more cost efficient [7]
  
• Sustainable construction improves life quality, due to generally safer materials [8]
  
• Sustainable construction promotes innovation, the influx of nontraditional construction provides new opportunities for innovation [9]
  

"In the Analysis of the Life Cycle Impacts and Potential for Avoided Impacts Associated with Single-Family Homes, EPA first fully uncovered this burden and then suggested changes to counteract it. This “life-cycle” analysis of a national scale considers goods used during “pre-occupancy”, “occupancy” and “post-occupancy” stages of single-family homes and highlights the most significant ones. EPA shows that if we grow the recovery and reuse of just a handful of building materials from single-family homes, we could notably counteract their full environmental burden" [10]

• Inner Guide
  
• 2A - REVIEWING CON'S CASE
  
• 2B- VISA'S AND TRUMP
  

"The most fundamental concept in economics is the idea of supply and demand. Immigration increases the amount of labor available for purchase, which without a corresponding spike in demand, necessarily lowers the value of labor. "

"My opponent has argued that immigration creates more jobs, because immigrants are more likely to start businesses. I have a few responses that I believe greatly mitigate this argument:"

• Hiring immigrants lowers wages, apparently in the meat packing industry specifically
  
• Companies abuse Immigrant VISAs for cheap labor 
  
• Trump's stricter immigration policy could only be coincided with increasing financial situations IF immigrants don't net-benefit to the economy
  

"Starting in the 1980’s, corporations went on a recruitment drive to bring in immigrant workers to break the unions, and as a result wages in the industry are now down around 75%"

"More than a century ago, when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, the workers in American meatpacking plants were recent immigrants, largely from eastern Europe. Sinclair eloquently depicted the routine mistreatment of these poor workers. They were employed for long hours at low wages, exposed to dangerous working conditions, sexually abused, injured on the job, and fired after getting hurt. In the novel, the slaughterhouses of Chicago serve as a metaphor for the ruthless greed of America in the age of the robber barons, of a society ruled by the law of the jungle. During the following decades, the lives of meatpacking workers greatly improved, thanks to the growing strength of labor unions. And by the early 1970s, a job at a meatpacking plant offered stable employment, high wages, good benefits, and the promise of a middle-class life." [11] 

" Far from being a drain on the American economy, immigrants have become an essential component of it. According to a recent study by the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, “The industrial produce and animal production and processing systems in the U.S. would collapse without the immigrant and migratory workforce.” The handful of multinational companies that dominate our food system are hardly being forced to employ immigrant workers. These firms have for many years embraced the opportunity to exploit them for profit." [11]

"Even visas for high-skilled immigrants are often abused"

"Companies are going through the motions of fulfilling the requirement to advertise the job to Americans, but what they really want is to hire a cheap immigrant worker."

"The growth in income was particularly outsized among those without college degrees, who most directly compete with low-skilled immigrant workers. In times of tight immigration policies, the poor get richer and the rich get poorer."

1. Existing and Legal Immigrants
   
2. The Depression of 2008-2009
   

"The Great Recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, the longest contraction since the Great Depression. The subprime mortgage crisis triggered a global bank credit crisis in 2007. By 2008, the damage had spread to the general economy through the widespread use of derivatives. GDP in 2008 shrank in three quarters, including an 8.4% drop in Q4. The unemployment rate rose to 10% in October 2009, lagging behind the recession that caused it. The recession ended in Q3 2009, when GDP turned positive, thanks to an economic stimulus package." [13]

"In each of these cases, an economic recession can lead to “scarring”—that is, long-lasting damage to individuals’ economic situations and the economy more broadly. This report examines some of the evidence demonstrating the long-run consequences of recessions. Findings include:

• Educational achievement: Unemployment and income losses can reduce educational achievement by threatening early childhood nutrition; reducing families’ abilities to provide a supportive learning environment (including adequate health care, summer activities, and stable housing); and by forcing a delay or abandonment of college plans.
  
• Opportunity: Recession-induced job and income losses can have lasting consequences on individuals and families. The increase in poverty that will occur as a result of the recession, for example, will have lasting consequences for kids, and will impose long-lasting costs on the economy.
  
• Private investment: Total non-residential investment is down by 20% from peak levels through the second quarter of 2009. The reduction in investment will lead to reduced production capacity for years to come. Furthermore, since technology is often embedded in new capital equipment, the investment slowdown can also be expected to reduce the adoption of new innovations.
  
• Entrepreneurial activity and business formation: New and small businesses are often at the forefront of technological advancement. With the credit crunch and the reduction in consumer demand, small businesses are seeing a double squeeze. For example, in 2008, 43,500 businesses filed for bankruptcy, up from 28,300 businesses in 2007 and more than double the 19,700 filings in 2006. Only 21 active firms had an initial public offering in 2008, down from an average of 163 in the four years prior.
  

There is also substantial evidence that economic outcomes are passed across generations. As such, economic hardships for parents will mean more economic hurdles for their children. While it is often said that deficits can cause transfers of wealth from future generations of taxpayers to the present, this cost must also be compared with the economic consequences of recessions that are also passed to future generations." [14]

• Inner Guide
  
• 3A - REVIEWING CON'S CASE
  
• 3B -  CON'S OBJECTIONS
  

If immigration is so good for the worker, none of this makes sense. If we take the commonsense approach that immigrants represent competition for jobs, it all adds up. My opponent has argued that immigration creates more jobs, because immigrants are more likely to start businesses. I have a few responses that I believe greatly mitigate this argument:

"The statement that “immigrants create more jobs than they take” concedes that they do, in fact, take some jobs. If we cut immigration to exclude those who are highly unlikely to start businesses, we can have our cake and eat it to. ... Only 7% of immigrants are doing the heavy lifting."

"Pro has not presented a plan for what he wants our immigration system to look like. This argument supports allowing in highly intelligent, skilled, and motivated immigrants with startup capital. By contrast, the only change he advocates is letting in more unskilled laborers because we have “excess funds to care for [them]."

"Immigrants tend to hire within their own social and ethnic networks, meaning that the jobs created disproportionately go to other immigrants, rather than native-born workers.  A global study conducted for The Institute for the Study of Labor[9]  found that immigrant managers are more likely to hire other immigrants, especially in small businesses."

"The Federal Government provides significant financial incentives for minority owned business, which encompasses the vast majority of immigrant owned businesses. Minority owned businesses were awarded $30billion in preferential contracts in 2019[10] Some of disparity in business creation is due not to differences in ingenuity but due to large financial incentives provided to minorities (most immigrants)and denied to non-hispanic whites (most native-born)"

"Immigrants are disproportionately represented in certain types of businesses with consistent, long term demand. For example, 53% of gas stations and 54% of dry cleaning businesses were owned by immigrants[11]. While laudable, it is not credible to argue that without immigration the US would not have gas stations. A market demand exists and would be filled."

"Pro presents the total amount of taxes paid by immigrants without contrasting this with the accompanying outflows to immigrants. Since the US has a budget deficit and immigrants both have lower household incomes than natives[12] and consume welfare programs at a higher rate (51% vs. 30%)[13] it is not mathematically possible that the median immigrant household is a net contributor to the federal budget."

"Immigrants paid in 2014 an estimated $223.6 billion in federal taxes. This includes $123.7 billion in Social Security tax and $32.9 billion in Medicare tax. On the state and local level, immigrants paid $104.6 billion in taxes. The combined contribution of immigrants in 2014 was $328.2 billion in taxes. In California, immigrants pay 28 percent of the total taxes in the state." [20] 

• Given the situation of two 20 year old adults, both with bachelor degrees, the native worker will have always taken more money from the government
  
• The immigrant is more likely to have arrived in America as an adult, thereby not spending between 16 and 18 years taking from the government in the form of healthcare, education, without any give back. 
  
• In contrast, the native-born worker will always take these 16 and 18 years unproductively taking from the government, whereas immigrant workers will come and more likely to immediately benefit to the economy.