It is a great irony that in a country built by immigrants, immigration has become one of the flash political issues, serious enough to determine election outcomes. Unfortunately, few people on either side of the debate are willing to talk about it objectively. More regrettably the mean-spirited and fearmongering language used by Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and now as president makes a level-headed debate even more improbable.
The historical fact is that the world has been shaped by large migration waves ever since the human species moved out of Africa. In his book Who We Are and How We Got Here David Reich uses results of studies of the human genome to argue that migration waves all the way to the second millennium BCE resulted in such genetic mixing of peoples that the concept of race is just a conventional construct we use to classify people on superficial traits like skin color. More recent migration waves from within Europe and Asia molded the populations of modern Europe; and likewise North and South America are the product of European migration followed by later waves of migrants from other continents. The instinct or desire to move about places may have even become an evolutionarily-acquired genetic trait that preceded the development of the human species. (To Move Is to Thrive. It’s Genetic, NYT, May 21, 2019)
It makes then pragmatic sense to accept migration as a human phenomenon that will not go away. According to UN data, 258 million people or 3.4% of the world population migrated in 2017. As expected, the bulk of migrants came from countries with depressed economies or political and civil strife, primarily located in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and even Eastern and South Europe. The top destinations were, of course, Western Europe and North America. Another thing we need to accept is that migration does not always occur under the most lawful circumstances. Desperation and desire of better living drives people to use any means to get to their destination.
Despite the dire language used to describe the severity of the immigration problem for the US, we hardly stand out in terms of numbers. Between 1960 and 2017, the US absorbed 49.8 million of immigrants or 15% of its 2017 population. During the same period, Australia took in 29%, Canada 21.5%, Germany 15%, UK 13.5%, and France 12%. (Source: The Migration Policy Center.) What sets the US apart, though, is that in the UK, Germany and France the anti-immigration nationalist pushback came from opposition, often fringe, parties, whereas in the US it came from the presidential candidate of a major governing party who later became the president and has continued to campaign on a fierce anti-immigrant agenda.
Nonetheless, just because migration is an enduring phenomenon it doesn’t mean we should ignore its consequences. Two informative articles that have appeared in The Atlantic help us understand a lot of the misconceptions carried by both sides of the political divide. In its July/August 2017 piece, Peter Beinart exposes the liberals’ bias toward emphasizing the benefits of immigration while diminishing its negatives. For example, the evidence points that Americans are likely to lose wages to immigrants when both groups compete for low-skill jobs. Political scientists at Harvard and elsewhere have also found that demographic diversity erodes social trust and cooperation among all members of a community, native and foreign. These findings echo past experience where new immigrants to the US were perceived as threats to the social and cultural cohesion of the country. Disturbing, but human nature is what it is.
In this April’s issue, David Frum presents a challenging view on the pros and cons of immigration that would make liberals uncomfortable. He points out that discomfort with unchecked immigration is equally shared by elderly and young Americans. Accepting low-skill and, thus, low-wage immigrants will, over their lives, burden the safety net more than it will help it. Those who benefit the most from immigration, especially undocumented immigration, are the employers while those bearing most of the cost are native working-class Americans. Undocumented immigrants, now numbered around 11 million, have no rights to due process making them reluctant to complain about working conditions, thus allowing employers to behave badly toward all workers, whether native or foreign. Without the right to vote, immigrants are also taken out of the equation as far as speaking out along with their native fellow workers on issues of mutual interest. He also points out that recent immigrants bring low rather high work skills. Frum does not ignore the benefits of immigration. First, it is the only reliable source of population growth given the below-replacement birth rate of white Americans. Placed strategically around the country can revitalize decaying communities. Second, no matter how low the skills and education of the first-generation immigrants are, as the country’s experience shows, fresh immigrants become the seeds for the ongoing advancement of the country as second-generation immigrants move toward higher levels of attainment.
Conservatives and liberals also seem to miscalculate the political benefits of immigration. Conservatives fear that fresh immigrants are inclined to vote Democratic once they gain citizenship. Thus, Republicans are reluctant for endorse bold plans that would put millions of undocumented immigrants on the path to citizenship. Democrats, on their part, tend to overestimate the durability of the immigrants’ loyalty to their party. They ignore that future generations of immigrants move to the middle class as professionals or entrepreneurs. At that point, they are more likely to align their interests with social and economic peers who may very well go Republican. Reihan Salam makes this point in his essay The Next Populist Revolution (Sept. 2018 The Atlantic). More troublesome for Democrats is that second-generation Latino immigrants still lag white Americans in education and, hence, their cohort political group may be the same populist group that powered Trump’s drive to the White House.
Finding a generally acceptable solution to the immigration problem requires that we strike a balance between idealism and pragmatism. My next post will explore this conundrum.
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