Immigration has existed during the whole history of humankind. At distant times tribes roamed in search for new pastures for their livestock, new places for hunting and fishery. Later people started to migrate in search for more fertile lands and foundation of new settlements. Today migration still takes place in the world, people are forced to change their places of living due to different natural and man-made calamities. So migration is the process which takes place when an individual or a group live one country for another with the intention to settle permanently down in that country.

There are many reasons which make people leave their homes and move to other places. Economic reasons have always been among the main reasons for migration. Life in poverty and despair often forces people to search a better life. The gap between the developed countries and the third world countries increases year by year, as a result people move to industrialized countries in order to have stable earnings, better employment opportunities and higher standards of living. Many people migrate because of natural catastrophes; here it is possible to mention current situation in Japan – natural disasters have forced thousands of people leave their native country in search for security. Some people change their place of living in search for political freedom; it can be migration towards political liberty and political rights or escape from government persecution. It also makes sense to name ethnic and religious reasons. Ethnic conflicts in some countries and religious intolerance often force people to look for refuge in other countries. Wars and high rate of criminality also induce people to change the countries they live in for more ones.

However I don’t want to say that only negative reasons make people migrate, positive reasons make up small percentage of annual migrations but nevertheless they exist. There are cases when people migrate to reunite families, to marry and build up new families or to start business in another country.

What do people acquire after immigration? Psychologists say that those who migrate usually are young or middle-aged, work-oriented people who strive for higher achievements and better life. So such people receive more opportunities for education and self-realization at work, better life standards, security and confidence in their future, more social benefits, etc. As for receiving country it also benefits from immigrants. If qualified specialists move to the country, it receives skilled workers who are usually eager to work for salaries that are considered to be not very high for native livers; if labourers come to the country, this country benefits from cheap labour force and receives people who will be employed on jobs that are unpopular among citizens of the country. Even citizens of the country benefit from immigration because goods and services produced by efforts of immigrant workers can be sold at lower price. Immigrants also bring variety to the country: products diversity increases owing to immigrants (I mean specific products available only in definite countries), they open new ethnic restaurants, cultural centers, etc. Besides, people can study from each other and therefore broaden their outlook.

But we shouldn’t forget about reverse of the coin. Immigration has its negative consequences as well. Pretty often immigration causes dissatisfaction of native citizens: it leads to racism, increased antagonism and other social problems. Take for instance the situation with Spanish speaking people in the USA. Many of them do not speak English at all, they are illegal immigrants, so they cannot reckon on social benefits or support from the government. More often they do rough work and receive paltry wages for their backbreaking labour. It seems to me that such people can be called “modern slaves”; because of fear to lose even these low-paid jobs they are ready to work extra hours and receive almost nothing for work. These people live in poverty, they settle in poor districts, where rate of criminality is high and insanitary conditions prevail in the majority of houses, it is often occurs that people from these districts sell or take drugs, become involved into prostitution, etc. As the result native citizens are dissatisfied with afflux of such immigrants, it deepens such social problems as racism, antagonism and chauvinism.

As you see immigration, like any other process, has its advantages and disadvantages. In general it seems to me that migration is endless process. People will change their places of living as long as there will be economic gap between developed and undeveloped countries, as long as wars and ethnic conflicts will exist, as long as people will suffer from famine and starvation, as long as religious persecution will take place in the world. I’m definitely sure that if the humankind wants to solve the problem of illegal immigration, we first of all need to apply all the efforts on solution of the problems which cause migration. I’m definitely sure that as soon as we do it, percentage of illegal immigration will decline by itself.