Economic experts and business owners in the United States say immigrant workers have helped keep the country from falling into a recession.

Economists predicted the United States economy would suffer when the country's central bank started raising the baseline rate for lending money about two years ago.

Instead, businesses have hired more workers.

The unemployment rate has gone down.

But rates have continued to rise.

The reason, experts say?

People like Luisana Silva and Mariel Marrero, immigrants from Venezuela.

Silva, who is 25, lives in South Carolina and works for a rug company.

She loads heavy carpets onto trucks for delivery.

Silva, her husband and their 7-year-old daughter left Venezuela, walked through dangerous lands before arriving at the United States border city of Brownsville, Texas.