Economics essay

Introduction

When discussing the impact of immigrants on labor wages in any country, it is important that we acquaint ourselves with some background information which sets out the scope of what this impact is about and exactly the type of immigrants we are talking about since they come in different categories and their effects on the labor market vary depending on each category. Migration from a country of origin to a new one will be based on factors which may be economic or non economic and both of these will in a way affect the labor market of the new country. Economic migration is a situation whereby people leave their country of origin purely for economic reasons; in search of jobs for sustainability whereby their home economies have collapsed.

Zimbabwe in Africa is such a case whereby the citizens have been forced to migrate to South Africa purely for economic survival. Non economic migration is a case of natural disasters or political instability whereby the citizens of the home country are escaping the effects of a particular disaster or the political environment forces them to flee (Dustmann 325-6). Floods, volcanoes are some examples of natural disasters which may force people to flee whereas political persecutions like in communist states have forced people to look for other countries to settle.

In the job market of the new country, labor wages will be affected by the nature of immigrants which fall into two different categories and each of them affects the labor markets in a different way. There are legal immigrants who have genuine papers and the destination country will have officially allowed them to resettle and their impact o the labor market will be different from that of the illegal ones. Illegal immigrants are those who are smuggled in and once settled, they survive through ‘hiding’ from the law enforcement agencies and again their impact on the labor market is different.