The truth about immigration
The big lie about immigration, promoted by the GOP and its right-wing propaganda outlets, is that under Biden the US has had “open borders.” LOL! Nowhere close. And the US hasn’t had open borders at least since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. The law remained in force until the passage of the Magnuson Act in 1943.
So is immigration good or bad for America? In his new book, “The truth about immigration: Why successful societies welcome newcomers,” Zeke Hernandez argues that immigrants bring huge investment:
“They are either magnets of investment from their home country or because immigrants disproportionately start businesses in the US. J. Daniel Kim, assistant professor of management at the Wharton School found that immigrants are 80% more likely to start firms than native-born individuals. This pattern does not affect the size of the business. Also, firms founded by immigrants create jobs at a higher rate than ones founded by natives. Hernandez notes that immigrants are job creators and play outsized roles in US high growth entrepreneurship. The Society for Human Resource Management discovered that 101 of the year’s Fortune 500 companies were established by first generation immigrants. Hernandez remarks that the “triangle of immigration, investment, and jobs” is one of the greatest untold stories of immigration.”
Contrary to Trump’s repeated lies, immigrants commit *fewer* crimes than natives. Between 1870 and 2020, immigrants in the US have always had a lower rate of imprisonment compared to natives.
Immigrants have been good for the American economy and good for American society. Americans should reject the vilifying of immigrants practiced by Trump and his supporters and support reasonable and rational policies. A bipartisan bill was crafted in Congress to do just that, but Trump convinced his cronies to tank the bill because it would give the Biden Administration a win and hurt his election chances in November. Here’s hoping for a Harris/Walz administration in January 2025 and the beginning of progress in sensible, humane and economically healthy immigration policies.
Successful societies welcome immigrants
Christian people welcome immigrants!
paddy:
The Christian people needed slave labor too.
Horse hocky. Bull biscuits. Phony baloney
Check the book bub, lying is a top ten sin …
I am weak, penance is good!
paddy:
I appreciate your vigor on the subject. I do read other places. If I wanted it at AB? I would post it here separately. I believe Prof. Joel has the topic of immigration well covered.
This is true, immigrants have always improved their host country – a prime reason we should be encouraging Israel to absorb at least 40% of its base population in refugees from neighbouring countries while providing them access to all services and facilities as equal citizens, including the immediate right to vote in elections at all levels.
Xiang:
I am sure that will go over big with the present population. I do agree with you. There is always silent contempt which will still be in play until this generation passes on in the world.
Trump’s plan to deport undocumented immigrants would indeed temporarily cut back on housing demand, but would also cut into the construction work force, the real work, and would eventually limit the new housing supply
Real interesting circle there, makes one wonder if there’s some kind of conspiracy, some collusion going on: tightening supply in the face of increasing demand
The government is borrowing $4 trillion a year…. maybe that is keeping mortgage rates up?
Take time (3 or 4 hours) to read the link I put above.
@paddy,
Or sun spots.
What do government borrowing and mortgage rates have to do with the topic of this thread?
It is true that, technically, the U.S. does not have open borders. What is really being complained about is the large number of undocumented people allowed to enter and remain in the U.S. through the devices of “pardons”, and applications for asylum, many, if not most, of which are unjustified but allow the applicants to remain in the country during long processing delays that can last many years. The fact that they, along with many undocumented residents, fill labor needs of agriculture, construction and food processing such as slaughter houses also has the effect of competing for wages with citizen and legal resident workers in jobs which do not have a shortage of potential employees. This is the subject of many union complaints, particularly in construction. Denying that we have open borders does not, in my opinion, adequately respond to complaints about the numbers of “immigrants”.
@Jack,
It is true that, objectively and factually, the U.S. does not have open borders.
Fixed it for you.
You have nothing to teach me about the emotional feelings that underpin the lie of “open borders.” But this lie is being used to distract workers from the real issue–that the undocumented are exploited, just as slavery was, to make labor cheap. Undocumented workers also subsidize the Social Security system.
If people were serious about undocumented labor, they would insist that employers who hire undocumented workers get real prison time, and that others who benefit from undocumented labor at restaurants, grocery stores, country clubs, etc, be fined. All employers should be required to use eVerify (or its equivalent).
But it’s much easier to blame the overworked and underfunded immigration system and lie about “open borders.” My intention is not to mislead about the *reasons* we don’t have open borders and still have undocumented workers, just be honest about the reality. We don’t have open borders and haven’t for about 150 years.
I don’t think I denied any of that. As for “people” being serious about “undocumented labor, I can’t help observing that government often doesn’t respond to what people want, but rather to what donors want. I don’t think the refusal to require use of e-verify is the result of what “the people” demand. It’s the result of what employers demand.
I should add that restricting legal immigration assures that large numbers of undocumented migrants will continue to illegally cross the border and overstay visas to provide a pool of exploitable workers just as you assert occurs.
@Jack,
I should add that implementing the measures that I suggested will prevent the pool of exploitable workers from being exploited, just as I asserted.
@Jack,
“I don’t think the refusal to require use of e-verify is the result of what “the people” demand. It’s the result of what employers demand.”
Of course. That’s exactly my point. And the corollary point is that the “open borders” lie is to misdirect “the people” from what the working class really needs–good jobs at good wages. I don’t consider that a technicality. YMMV.
Is all moot in both the generally accepted vernacular and long run. The atmosphere, the thin layer of no longer potentially toxic gasses we live in enveloping the only world we know of we can live on DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE BOUNDARIES OF “NATION/STATES”
As the equatorial and middle latitudes continue to become uninhabitable those people ~ birds, fish, insects; weeds ~ are going to leave, and the only logical direction for them to leave is north. You’re not going to stop the migrations. You will not stop the migrations. They can’t be stopped. Ask the Neanderthal
The problem is people can’t see past the ends of their noses …
With respect to being unable to stop migrations, I think that is out of date thinking. My belief is that the single biggest factor in the enormous contention around a wall at the southern border was that it was likely to prove very effective. The “Iron Curtain” was highly effective for decades and finally fell only when the builders stopped protecting it, and even then the motivations for breaching it was more liberty than a desire to occupy lands to the west. Consider that Russia’s barriers in southern Ukraine also proved perfectly adequate to prevent even highly trained, heavily armed battalions from advancing through them. Neanderthals lived in a very different time with very low populations, no significant construction technology, no modern detection or communications technology and force projection radius of a spear throw. Is a wall a good idea? Possibly not, but not because it would prove ineffective.
@Eric,
Actually, the single biggest factor in the contention around the Southern border wall is that it was widely acknowledged to be ineffective. There were going to be gaps, and the ladders necessary to scale the walls between those gaps were far cheaper than the wall. Not to mention all the people who come in through the front door legally and then overstay their visas. How does a border wall prevent that?
The “Iron Curtain” was a figure of speech, not an actual wall or curtain running from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic (as Churchill defined it). Many people escaped, but the reason many stayed was because the countries on the Soviet side were massive police states that spied on their people. Mexico is no GDR.
Russia’s “barriers” in Southern/Eastern Ukraine are only as effective as the Russian troops deployed there, who are mostly poorly trained and being slaughtered. The Russian Navy has mostly pulled out of Crimea because their ships keep getting sunk by Ukrainian missiles and drones. Not much of a “barrier” there. Are you suggesting that the US military deploy tens of thousands of troops, missiles, tanks, rocket launchers, etc on the Mexican border continuously for decades?
Ask the Neanderthal is a metaphor, do you know what that is?
Some say they were assimilated (do you know what that is?), some say they were wiped out. Either way they were replaced by an unrelenting migrating population
What part of THOSE PLACES ARE BECOMING UNINHABITABLE AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE MIGRATING TO SOMEWHERE THAT IS don’t you understand?
@ Ten Bears: that and the awful social situations in the places they are leaving, some of which are exacerbated by U.S. behavior in the past and some of which seem to be endemic whether reinforced or introduced by the Spanish conquest. Whatever the causes, floods of uninvited immigrants are likely to result in repressive action here just as has occurred in Europe.
When I feel charitable ~ looked at in as long a run as humanly possible: we are fleas; planet lice. Cosmic crotch crabs agitating the hide of a far greater organism. An infestation, an infection said far greater organism is merely shrugging off …