Enjoying US Economic Exceptionalism? Thank Immigration
This scarcely needs reiterating, but just in case: It's tragically ironic that America, a nation of settlers from across a vast ocean, has turned so inward and in the process, so outwardly hostile to immigrants.
Sometimes I'm genuinely unsure as to whether a majority of Americans understand that none of us are actually "from" this country. If you're white, you're a descendant of European colonists. If you're African American, your ancestors were, quite unfortunately, brought here against their
Funny how I do not hear the” originalist”
argument that anybody could come and go as they pleased. Some argument can be made for who becomes naturalized.
At a red light this morning behind two pick up trucks and two next to me, I wondered what kind of stagflationary economy we would have without immigration.
The alien and sedition act was generally agreed to be an overreach based on very little information in the federalist papers.
The battle with the anti-immigration crowd started right in the beginning.
Given that the immigrants are willing to work the undesirable jobs (meat packing, agriculture, fast food, cleaning , driving, etc.) that many existing Americans (including those who are against immigration) do not want to do, we should be welcoming and helping to assimilate!
Rational – but they are dark skinned. We are witnessing the GOP “Southern Strategy” play out to its conclusion.
Back in the early days of the century business groups could put a stop to this GOP nonsense (as when the Kochs were able to call off Ted Cruz’s government shutdown.) Those days are long gone. Industries that rely on immigrants to work hard for low pay no longer have much influence on policy in DC.
Wake up folks! Nationalist populism is not always business friendly. This aint your daddy’s GOP anymore.
A flourishing market economy has to keep growing, and mass immigration is a great way to inject productive capacity and consumption, as evidenced by these charts. But also important is the demographic mix. Ideally it’s mostly (young) working age people (who are willing to work), who genuinely want to be long term American citizens and legitimately buy into American exceptionalism (which I guess is self-evident given their life choices). Absent a public safety net, which didn’t exist other than the works of churches during the first hundred years of the republic, newcomers had no choice but to grind and work to survive, and the country was better for it. Doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the tired, poor, huddled masses; any society as rich is ours will be a magnet as long as we’re thriving on a relative basis. But too much of that and you might as well import millions of retirees. So I’d think the right policy is a massive increase of legal immigration with some level of entry criteria / discernment to ensure the right balance of increasing productive capacity/consumption along with humanitarian interests, combined with an extremely secure border and a heavy hand to ensure criminals are expelled with no avenue to come back. Time will tell if whatever is happening at the southern border today will deliver the right mix in the future. Though it would seem the lack of entry criteria or discernment leaves to chance that we end up with a suboptimal mix of folks ready to work v. long term public charges, and perhaps a sprinkle of legitimately dangerous individuals.
I think it bears mentioning, if someone is going to mention that sprinkle of legitimately dangerous individuals, that statistically, it’s a much smaller proportionate sprinkle than the sprinkle that was born here. Even the Cato Institute say so: https://www.cato.org/blog/new-research-illegal-immigration-crime-0 (TLDR: In Texas, the only state that records figures, from 2012 to 2018, legal and illegal immigrants, whether individually or combined, had lower conviction and incarceration rates than natural born American citizens.) That “sprinkle” coming in is actually lowering the crime averages, not raising it.
+1 — You might even say they are “unpoisoning the blood of America.”
Regarding illegitimate colonial projects. I’m not sure what a legitimate colonial project would look like, other than when a group moves into a place that is uninhabited, which I guess for each place on earth happened once, and then never again. The American “natives” weren’t natives either. Just a group of people that displaced another group, which displaced an earlier group. Almost always with violence. So I’d think at best illegitimacy is something measured on a spectrum. But regardless, not sure what value there is in distinguishing. Calling something illegitimate I suppose then warrants the topic of whether it should be undermined or destroyed, which obviously no one with a 401k has interest in. But given none of us would exist if not for the specific sequence of illegitimate colonial projects that played out in history, I’d think that the only thing to do is hip-hip-hooray that we were born here and now. It’s also weird that the magnets for immigration are the illegitimate colonial projects. Perhaps because they are the few places in which citizens have the rights, time, and privilege to cultivate a sense of shame for how we hit the lottery.
Just a side issue. One of the root causes of the Social Security problem is a lack of workers. Legal immigration is the simplest way to shore up the system. It would be nice if there was a pathway to citizenship for holders of H1B visas.
Add this to the widely-offered economic rationales that turn out to be almost complete canards. Tax cuts that pay for themselves or promote trickle down effects instead worsen wealth disparities and budget deficits. Raising the minimum wage by even 10% (let alone doubling it) causes mass unemployment and a recession, instead of widespread shortages of labor and “trickle-up” wage growth across the economy. Cracking down on immigration protects jobs, wages and economic growth, as opposed to actually promoting them. Given these distortions, you’ll forgive me for clamping my hands over my ears amid any debate over more esoteric concepts — say R star.
Not often mentioned by current immigration opponents is the fact that for several years now several tens of thousands more people have died annually in the US, than have been born. Our “natural?” population has been shrinking for some time. The more our population shrinks, the slower our growth will be. Luckily, our nation’s tradition of accepting a continuing stream of immigrants has bolstered our growth, barely these days, but our growth continues for now. Look around and ask yourself how many new businesses do I frequent that were founded and still owned by, new immigrants. The answer is more than we think. Even today, look at firms like Nvidia. They are here because folks came and started them. Who taught our engineers? Our managers? Our physicians? For some time now more than half the doctoral students in the US came here from offshore to study and stayed to teach our children.
I, like most of us, am descended from immigrants. On my mother’s side I can trace my ancestry to the British Isles at the time of their great civil war, and specifically to Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan who started it all. His descendant, William Williams signed the Declaration of Independence and so was kin to Oliver and I both. On the other hand my father’s folks were early 20th Century illegals who walked across the Canadian border from Quebec, settled in Massachusetts and started founding restaurants and housing to serve the poor millworkers making our sheets and towels. My grandfather became rich, later made a bad investment, and lost most of his wealth. Funny thing is, my maternal grandfather also started a business, where my father worked after WWII. Even stranger, my daughter and her husband have done more research and found that one of his mother’s ancestors and my one of my wife’s ancestors married late in the 19th century so my daughter and her husband are actually related. And so it is with immigrants, from which virtually all of us are descended. We just need to relax and stop thinking our you-know-what don’t stink. It does.
My daughter just married her longtime boyfriend 2 weeks ago. He is a first generation born American of a Syrian born mother and an Egyptian born father. My daughter is of mixed European descent and all relatives back through (at least) her grandparents were born in the US.
My daughter and son-in-law were raised under different religions/cultures, but no one in their respective families cares about that because we all like each other and we love our children and the person they are marrying.
Yes, we are a melting pot and I love that about the USA. It is one of our top attributes.
I’m not the rah-rah patriotic type by any means and I generally show my love for my country by being critical of it where I see it falling short. For instance, I dislike hearing the national anthem before every/any domestic sporting event. But I love hearing the anthem in international competitions when I can look at the (comparatively) motley crew of Americans of all sentiments, shades and sizes. My technical mind drifts back to jr high biology classes and learning about genomics and hybridization, but my emotional mind just feels pride,
I’ve heard it said that a certain group of people love their country as an adult loves another adult: recognizing and loving it for what it really is like, and wanting to see it thrive, overcome its flaws and succeed. Another group loves their country as a child loves its parents: by claiming it’s perfect, never seeing its flaws, and getting defensive and knocking you down if you don’t unquestioningly agree.
Can’t argue with this article and I won’t. Nor with all the other commenters.
However I am surprised how narrow the discussion is. It seems the only thing that matters is economics. But what about over-population ? What about the growing amounts of trash and other pollutants we generate ?
So to me, I am against population growth and all for population reduction (not through hurting people in any way). But subsidizing children is a huge issue. You want a kid ? Well, assume all the costs of that. And don’t ask me, that decided to not add to this compounding problem, to pay so you can do something that goes against my principles (over-population is detrimental to life).
And then ask me to support immigration because you also have the belief that we need to grow our economy constantly.
And then ask me to not camp on public land because there are too many people that trash it.
Right now, it’s all abougt growing population and bullying those that actually don’t like that.