After I read this article from Sabrina Tavernise at the New York Times, I couldn’t help but feel encouraged. Not just for the cities in my own backyard, such as Austin, Texas, where “the recession has had less of an effect”, but because I see immigration increases into the United States to be generally positive. I can’t also help but wonder about the steady rate of unemployment despite the addition to the workforce… but that is another issue.
As a Texan, I am at the forefront of the immigration debate. Now, I firmly believe that illegal immigration is illegal immigration no matter which way one looks at it. That being said, I think one can reasonably say that young children who come with their parents illegally to the United States have little choice and are therefore largely absolved from guilt. Our legal code stipulates that human beings born in America are automatically granted American citizenship. As the logic goes, if an illegal alien comes to the United States and has a baby, that baby should not be held responsible for the acts of the parent. I would suggest, the same theory applies to children. That is the cornerstone of the new D.R.E.A.M Act that has recently been stalled in congress.
Opponents of the act cry “amnesty” regarding illegal citizens in the United States. And as we know, amnesty has become the eighth deadly sin within the immigration discussion. They also claim that this type of act encourages illegal immigrants to enter the United States, allow their children to gain membership through the act, and then have themselves sponsored by their children. This fear is unfounded given the clear application only if “the alien has been physically present in the United States for a continuous period of not less than 5 years immediately preceding the date of enactment of this Act.” I’m no fan of creating porous borders in some sort of hippy world-sharing scheme, but inspection of the bill reveals a rather fair, if not rigorous, path to citizenship for approximately 2.5 million people.
Neither are the reasons simply humanitarian. Many of these people will be able to find work anyway so the American government is simply losing millions of dollars in tax funds. Added to this is the fact that many of these candidates for citizenship have finished high school in good standing and are unable to further their education due to their illegal status. In a world where innovation clearly matters, I think most people would agree this as a horrible waste of talent and potential.
Still, I can understand how the D.R.E.A.M Act is controversial. Many would argue that these children of illegal immigrants, while surely talented, do not warrant places in state institutions in front of American citizens at a time when state schools are packed as it is. This argument certainly holds some credibility.
Even if one doesn’t agree with the D.R.E.A.M Act, I think many can agree a type of immigration reform is necessary. As trends in Japan and Europe show, populations are on the decline. In fact, following current trends, Japan will have the same population in 2050 as it did in 1950 after it was devastated by years of war. This will inevitably lead to a shrink in Japan’s economy unless the Japanese can increase their GDP to match (which most can agree is highly unlikely). This is one of the world’s worst cases of population decline, but European figures are similarly bleak.
America, on the other hand, now has a choice. We can follow the nativist path that our forefathers may have surely shunned, or we can encourage the world’s best and brightest to our nation. The British government has propsed and enacted some new immigration caps and they are now realizing:
“[The British immigration cap] is disliked by businessmen, an especially important constituency for a government trying to sustain an economic recovery while slashing the public sector. Companies complain that it hampers recruitment and growth. That argument is especially plausible because unskilled immigration from outside Europe has in effect already been stopped, meaning that the cap hits only highly skilled and skilled workers, such as bankers, accountants and scientists.”
Due to the free movement of goods and services throughout Europe, much of the unskilled labor demand is fulfilled through EU member states (such as Poland in the case of Britain). As the article states, that means Britain’s cap on immigration is targeting some of the highest skilled workers. Now, I love our brother’s across the Atlantic, but our chance to poach these skilled immigrants is only here for a short period of time.
Without talking too specifically about American immigration policy, there are a few goals I hope we can achieve. The first is easing restrictions on visa requirements and citizenship while taking a closer look at the laws that enable family members to join naturalized citizens in America. IT professionals from India are begging to come to America in droves. They work hard, they are intelligent, and they accept far lower wages and benefits than most others.
This brings me to my next point: with these droves of immigrants comes a demand for housing. It just so happens that the construction bubble has taken a key role in crippling our economy (most notably in California and Florida, hint, hint).
“The market's biggest problem is the surprisingly simple fact that we have too many houses and not enough households. Over the past 10 years, a lot of new houses were built. And, from 2000 to 2005, we had the household growth to match.
More recently, however, household growth has slowed dramatically, leaving us with as many as three million fewer new households than prior growth rates created. The main explanation for this drop in household growth, in fact, is slowing immigration. The resulting disparity left us with three million additional vacant housing units.
Where does this leave us in terms of stabilizing house prices? As anyone taking Economics 101 learns, prices are determined by supply and demand. To make house prices higher, you have to either decrease supply or increase demand.”
For decades America, and our education system in particular, has been enticing the world’s best to settle on our shores. On the other side of the immigration spectrum, Hispanic immigrants from our southern neighbors have helped build our country with their blood, sweat, and tears. Facilitating immigration of skilled labor and allowing the D.R.E.A.M Act to pass through congress would be as equally beneficial to them as it would to America.
(Links used : http://www.economist.com/ , http://www.nytimes.com/ , www.philly.com/inquirer )
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