A growing wave of immigrants has flooded into the United States to escape poverty at home. Taking low-wage menial jobs, these new arrivals have caused ripple effects in the U.S. economy, culture and society.

The state of California, whose agriculture depends almost entirely on the work of migrant labor, has received much of this influx.

According to a report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office last year, one out of every four California residents is foreign born. Nationwide the ratio is one in 10.

The day labor pickup site on Cesar Chavez Street in San Francisco is a local example of this wave effect.

“Many of the problems we face cannot be addressed without addressing immigration growth,” said Yeh Ling-Ling, an immigration activist and executive director of Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America. She spoke to us in a telephone interview from her Oakland-based office.

While this influx has been a boon to employers, the effects have been far from positive on native-born unskilled laborers. There is evidence immigrants have lowered wages and pushed them out of some jobs.

A study released last year by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, said, “In a period of higher unemployment and little net job growth, increased employment of immigrants appears to be displacing some native born workers, including teens, young adults without colleges degrees, and black men in the nation’s central cities.”

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a subdivision of the Pew Research Center, most of the new jobs created in the economic recovery have gone to Latinos. The Pew Research Center is a national nonpartisan research firm that conducts independent research and polling.

“Hispanics, mostly recently arrived immigrants, accounted for over one million of the 2.5 million new jobs created in 2004,” according to a report released in May. Nevertheless, the report found that “Hispanics are the only major group of workers to have suffered a two-year decline in wages and they now earn five percent less than (they did) two years ago.”

Migrant labor represents a significant, but often-undocumented segment of the U.S. economy.

According to a Time Magazine investigation published last September, an estimated 3 million illegal immigrants will have entered the United States in 2004. Beyond the security and labor problems that are posed, the question becomes why they come and how.

Based on research in the book "Reefer Madness," by Eric Schlosser, “the average migrant is a twenty-nine-year-old male, born in Mexico, who earns less than $7,500 a year for twenty-five weeks of farm work.” A section of the book explores migrant workers and California agriculture from a historical, personal and economic perspective.

People of Mexican origin are by far the highest number of foreign-born participants in the labor force. And when they arrive, they typically encounter an elevated amount of exploitation, hard labor, and poor living conditions.

Still, the pay is higher than most of what would be available in Mexico.

“By relying on poor migrants from Mexico, California growers established a wage structure that discouraged American citizens from seeking farm work,” wrote Schlosser. “The wages offered at harvest were too low to sustain a family in the United States, but they were up to 10 times as high as any wages Mexican peasants could earn in their native villages.”

When immigrants stayed, raised families, children became U.S. citizens, and they entered the public health and education systems, they disrupted the intent for their amalgamation into the labor force.

In November 1994, California voters passed the "Save Our State Initiative," or Proposition 187, to actively deny illegal immigrants all manners of social service, especially some of the most expensive, such as health care and public education. Supported by then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, the initiative passed with 59 percent of the vote.

When the constitutionality of the law was challenged in courts, it was initially struck down. Then-California Gov. Gray Davis denied the case an appeal.

Nonetheless, the vexation that caused the law to be passed in the first place remains. “Why are we spending billions to educate illegal immigrants?” asked Ling-Ling rhetorically.

In many cases, young male Latino labor has forced other demographics out of the running for jobs. By working proficiently and for lower wages, other demographics are increasingly vulnerable to unemployment and less likely to attain the newest jobs offered.

The economic recession of 2001 has been corrected by a more steady growth in gross domestic product more recently, especially in 2003. But the growth has not been coupled with a commensurate increase in jobs, and decreased unemployment tends to reflect a decrease in the amount of people looking for a job as well as the jobs that have gone to foreign-born residents.

For some activists, like Ling-Ling, the answer lies in adding border control agents and reducing the amount of legal immigration allowed annually.

But for others, such as the George W. Bush administration, a more welcoming tact should be taken to address the immigration situation. Amnesty for illegal aliens and a dialogue about their contributions to the labor force would be considered.

The immigrant population has forever been a significant influence on the American consciousness, a fundamental element of our melting pot, and has even more assuredly been a topic of debate.

And now the battle over immigration is of even greater importance.