Before we look at a question like this, we must make a distinction between the different types of immigrants...
immigrants can be categorized in four distinct categories:
1) "legal immigrants"
these are the people who come here via some sort of visa or something. Although they may come for a variety of reasons, the two most dominant ones are tourists and students. They aid in the improvement of our economy by bringing foreign money to the United States.
2) "undocumented workers"
these are the people who come to this country undetected. they may come across either one of our four borders (Mexico, Canada, Pacific, Atlantic). their main purpose is either to improve their own lives or those of their families. these are the people who actually come here to work honestly and in such a way help our economy.
3) "illegal aliens"
these are the people who come here into the United States to do illegal actions. these may include killing, selling drugs, terrorism, etc. these people (if they can be called people) may come here under the border from Mexico (which is why a fence wouldn't work) or legally.
4) "freeloading welfarers"
these are the people who come to this country to freeload off of our welfare system. they come here via a variety of ways, and the best way to stop them is to strengthen our welfare requirements.
now that were done with that, we may look at the question...
anti-immigrant groups (such as the minutemen, etc.) have used a series of reasons as to why we should stop and kick out the "i****************s".
here are their most commonly used reasons (along with a rebuttal):
1) "i****************s come here to take the jobs from REAL AMERICANS who would work for fairer wages."
*Undocumented workers do not take anyone's job. Even with immigrants in this country, the job market is pretty large. there is really no reason why there should be any unemployment in this country. Anyone can easily to to <
<http://www.caljobs.ca.gov/> or the equivalent in their state and find a job that it suitable for him / her. Anyone can also walk, drive, or commute to any local employer and apply for a job. The odds are extremely good that anyone can find a job within 20 miles from where he / she lives. The claim that undocumented workers work for less is true only for those who get paid "under the table", which means that they get paid in cash instead of with a check. These are basically those who work in the farms or in some factories. This is the stereotypical undocumented worker. Some undocumented workers DO get paid with check, which by the way, also means that they do pay income taxes.
2) "i****************s do not pay taxes."
*Undocumented workers do pay taxes. Stores do not discrimitate between documented and undocumented, so undocumented people also pay sales tax. They pay gas tax, property tax (those who own property, which by the way some do), and all those taxes that our government has imposed. Some (those that get payed with checks) even pay income taxes.
3) "immigrants freeload off of our welfare and public health systems."
*as stated before, undocumented workers do pay taxes, and the vast majority work instead of freeload. anti-immigrant groups have used the media to create a false stereotype of the immigrant who is "dirty", "lazy", and likes to "freeload off of welfare".
4) "i****************s refuse to learn the culture and langueage of the United States."
*some immigrants, due to labor or other constraints, are left with little time to actually learn English. However, it is important to realize that foreign cultures are impossible to practice in this country. Therefore, most immigrants and their families experience a form of "Americanization" of their culture. If you notice, people here do not behave the same as their counterparts in their native lands. Evidently, they have assimilated into the culture of the United States. The only issue is that there the United States is so diverse that their isn't a very clear definition of what the culture of the United States is.
Those are the anti-immigrant points that I can think of so far. Now let's look at some other impacts of how immigrants have improved our country.
If you really look at it, you won't find many company presidents, CEOs, engineers, lawyers, doctors, or other professionals that are passionate about the anti-immigrant cause. Now why is that? Because they are all graduates from our fine universities and they all have nice careers and are not affected in any form of way by the immigrants. Immigrants are surely not competing for their jobs.
Now look at those who do hate immigrants. Let's focus on the minutemen, for example. These minutemen sure seem to have a lot of time on their hands in order to be out there "securing our borders". Let's also remember that there are only 24 hours in a day. These minutemen cannot fit their stuff with an actual full-time job (some can't even fit it with a part-time job). What do they live off of? Only until recently did they begin to receive donations, and even these can't sustain all of them.
Evidently, some of these people live either off of Welfare or Social Security. Oh, but aren't they against those who freeload off of our welfare system?
They claim that they are there to "secure our borders". If they really wanted to do that, they would join our Border Patrol! What they want is to spend some time under the sun while they freeload off of the donations and our public aid systems.
Once again they claim that they are "securing our borders". From what? Undocumented workers that would otherwise help our economy. Even with their guns, they surely wouldn't want to come face-to-face with a drug lord or any of his henchmen. Therefore, they surely aren't protecting us from them. All their doing is popping up on TV and using the valuable time that would otherwise be used for better purposes.
Many propose building a fence on our Mexican border. For what? Immigrants don't come only from Mexico, even though that may be where the majority come from. Let's look at the expected cost of building the fence. I don't have the exact numbers, but it is surely among the millions, maybe billions of dollars (and that's a cheap piece of s*** fence they're talking about). That thing wouldn't last for more than ten years! They we would have to reconstruct it. What's worst, it doesn't extend the whole length of the border. It only covers a few sections here and there. What's worse is that it wouldn't work, since drug lords use underground tunnels and terrorists come here legally!
Sorry for making this too long, but this is only PART of my argument. As can be seen, there really isn't any positive aspect with "kicking out the immigrants".