I am asking in terms of economics rather than cultural changes, I would also appreciate if you explore hypotheticals in which the country in question already has a stable/ unstable economy.
Edit: im not from the US, nor am i talking about immigration to the US. I live in the middle east and as you probably know most middle eastern countries have fucked up economies. I was arguing with someone a couple of days ago and they were heavily against illegal immigrants, i could dismiss most of their arguments, except that “a country with an unstable economy shouldn’t accept immigration of any kind”, and i realized i dont really know how mass immigration affects an unstable economy, negatively or otherwise. Hope this helps.
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I don’t think you’ll be able to get good answers to this question from strangers on the internet. It’s highly politically charged, and even people that study this question professionally have significant disagreement with one another, largely along political lines.
The least controversial answer is “it depends”. The culture, politics, language, demographics, education, and wealth levels of both the illegal population and the host population all have a significant impact. Is there work they can perform, legally or illegally? Do they possess useful skills? Can they speak the local language? Are they primarily families or individuals?
How do you define the economy? Do you just want to know whether the GDP goes up or down? If illegal immigrants are employed without displacing existing jobs, that will always have a positive effect on the GDP- more labor is being utilized, and thereby more goods and services are being generated. But that’s a simplistic answer that doesn’t really capture the questions people debate over.
At that point the next question is, even if the effect is a net positive, who are the winners and losers? In the US, winners are typically the companies that benefit from cheap unskilled labor- agriculture, domestic services, etc. They capture a significant portion of the economic benefit that exists from illegal immigration. The existing citizens (particularly unskilled workers) are losers, to an extent; they benefit from the trickle-down effects of goods and services made possible by illegal immigration, but they’re also bearing costs that “should” be borne both by the immigrants and the companies that benefit.
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