Reihan Salam articulates his case for limiting the number of new immigrants who come into the United States:
So if we want the Mexican and Bangladeshi immigrants of our time to fare as well as the Italian and Polish immigrants of yesteryear, we need to do two things. First, we need to spend a considerable amount of money to upgrade their skills and those of their children, as the world has grown less kind to those who make a living by the sweat of their brow. Because public money is scarce, this is a good reason to limit the influx of people who will need this kind of expensive, extensive support to become full participants in American society. Second, we need to recognize that a continual stream of immigration tends to keep minority ethnic groups culturally isolated, which is yet another reason to slow things down. No, this won’t suddenly mean that poor immigrants will become rich, and that well-heeled insiders will stop hoarding opportunities. But it will give us the time we need to knit America’s newcomers into our national community.
As regular readers here may recall I’m something of a geneaology buff. I’ve traced my ancestry back as far as I can for all lines including in the European countries from which my ancestors emigrated.
My most recent immigrant ancestors arrived in the United States just after the American Civil War 150 years ago. That may be why I don’t tend to romanticize the immigrant experience as is so common among the children and grandchildren of immigrants. To my eye our immigration policy is dominated by two conflicting strains: romanticism, as evidenced by the agonistic stories of the hardships faced by immigrants, and emotionless green eyeshade accounting which explains the Wall Street Journal’s open borders editorial policy. As long as those two factors dominate the national discourse on immigration I’m skeptical we’ll see a change for the better.
My sympathies lie more with those who are struggling to survive and whose great-grandfathers were born here, especially when their first immigrant ancestors were transported here unwillingly in the holds of ships.
One of the realities over which Mr. Salam carefully elides is something I’ve written about before. There are real differences among cultures. When immigrants arrive here, either legally or illegally, they tend not to bring their material possessions with them but they are equipped with their cultural, religious, and political beliefs and they will tend to maintain those in their new home. The express purpose of the public educational system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to attenuate or eradicate those beliefs, replacing them with what has been called the “American civil religion”. That purpose is no more.
I would also suggest that the larger a segregated community of immigrants from a single country is the more stable that community is likely to be.
The overwhelming preponderance of our most recent wave of immigrants is from Mexico. The foreign-born comprise about 15% of the U. S. population and Mexican are more than a quarter of those. It will be interesting to see what aspects of Mexico’s political culture our new Mexican-American citizens will wish to preserve. Have no doubt, like the Irish, Swedish, and Eastern European Jews before them, there are aspects of the political culture of the Old Country they will wish to preserve.
How about the big advantage to increasing immigration of young foreigners: they come potty trained and don’t need to be subjected to 13 years of mis-education in USSA public schools, saving us some $12000 per pupil over 13 years,or $156,000 each. And now that we have Obamacare, each young adult immigrant saves us $30,000+ for perinatal care and thousands per year in EITC, Medicaid, foodstamps and other expenditures we waste in trying to rear the Amerikan kid.
I’m not at all afraid of Hispanic wave immigration, that is unless they murder me or a loved one. My own grandmother came in 1885 from Sweden at the age of 16, all I know is that it was because a man in New York city advertised a job as a maid. Things must have been tough for her to do that. She kept in touch with family who had previously immigrated and those back in Sweden. Moved to Illinois, and then to Stromsburg Ne., where family members already had moved to. She really never learned English that well, but her five children hardly spoke it at all. I suspect it will be a lot like that with the Spanish. I’ve met a lot, and I can’t figure out how LAZY ever became a stereotype for these people. You need to remember, that in Latin American countries there is no purpose in work because the corrupt government will steal your gains from you anyway. HERE, they will be fine, and we will all benefit. Yes we need to pay for their children’s schooling, healthcare, ect., all good investments. B T W, Are we not skimming the cream of their most ambitious youth to our economy at the expense of theirs?
Shambler, you don’t know s**t, shut up!