The Case Against Immigration

Steven Camarota:

Outlining his position on immigration in August of last year, Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate for U.S. president, made his motivating philosophy clear: “There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.” Although this nationalistic appeal may strike some readers as conservative, it is very similar to the position taken by U.S. civil rights icon and Democrat Barbara Jordan, who before her death in 1996 headed President Bill Clinton’s commission on immigration reform. “It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society,” she argued, “to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.” Trump’s rhetoric has of course been overheated and insensitive at times, but his view on immigration—that it should be designed to benefit the receiving country—is widely held.

In the United States, there is strong evidence that the national interest has not been well served by the country’s immigration policy over the last five decades. Even as levels of immigration have approached historic highs, debate on the topic has been subdued, and policymakers and opinion leaders in both parties have tended to overstate the benefits and understate or ignore the costs of immigration. It would make a great deal of sense for the country to reform its immigration policies by more vigorously enforcing existing laws, and by moving away from the current system, which primarily admits immigrants based on family relationships, toward one based on the interests of Americans.

IMMIGRANT NATION

Trump did not create the strong dissatisfaction with immigration felt by his working-class supporters, but he certainly harnessed it. Voters’ sense that he would restrict immigration may be the single most important factor that helped him win the longtime Democratic stronghold of the industrial Midwest, and thus the presidency. There are two primary reasons why immigration has become so controversial, and why Trump’s message resonated. The first is lax enforcement and the subsequently large population of immigrants living in the country illegally. But although illegal immigration grabs most of the headlines, a second factor makes many Americans uncomfortable with the current policy. It is the sheer number of immigrants, legal or otherwise. The United States currently grants one million immigrants lawful permanent residence (or a “green card”) each year, which means that they can stay as long as they wish and become citizens after five years, or three if they are married to a U.S. citizen. Roughly 700,000 long-term visitors, mostly guest workers and foreign students, come annually as well.

Such a large annual influx adds up: In 2015, data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that 43.3 million immigrants lived in the country—double the number from 1990. The census data include roughly ten million illegal immigrants, while roughly a million more go uncounted. In contrast to most countries, the United States grants citizenship to everyone born on its soil, including the children of tourists or illegal immigrants, so the above figures do not include any U.S.-born children of immigrants.

Proponents of immigration to the United States often contend that the country is a “nation of immigrants,” and certainly immigration has played an important role in American history. Nevertheless, immigrants currently represent 13.5 percent of the total U.S. population, the highest percentage in over 100 years. The Census Bureau projects that by 2025, the immigrant share of the population will reach 15 percent, surpassing the United States’ all-time high of 14.8 percent, reached in 1890. Without a change in policy, that share will continue to increase throughout the twenty-first century. Counting immigrants plus their descendants, the Pew Research Center estimates that since 1965, when the United States liberalized its laws, immigration has added 72 million people to the country—a number larger than the current population of France.

Given these numbers, it is striking that public officials in the United States have focused almost exclusively on the country’s 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, who account for only one quarter of the total immigrant population. Legal immigration has a much larger impact on the United States, yet the country’s leaders have seldom asked the big questions. What, for example, is the absorption capacity of the nation’s schools and infrastructure? How will the least-skilled Americans fare in labor market competition with immigrants? Or, perhaps most importantly, how many immigrants can the United States assimilate into its culture? Trump has not always approached these questions carefully, or with much sensitivity, but to his credit he has at least raised them.

TIMES CHANGE

Regarding cultural assimilation, advocates of open immigration policies often argue that there is no problem. During the last great wave of immigration, from roughly 1880 to 1920, Americans feared the newcomers would not blend in, but for the most part they ended up assimilating. Therefore, as this reasoning goes, all immigrants will assimilate.

Unfortunately, however, circumstances that helped Great Wave immigrants assimilate are not present today. First, World War I and then legislation in the early 1920s dramatically reduced new arrivals. By 1970 less than 5 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born, down from 14.7 percent in 1910. This reduction helped immigrant communities assimilate, as they were no longer continually refreshed by new arrivals from the old country. But in recent decades, the dramatic growth of immigrant enclaves has likely slowed the pace of assimilation. Second, many of today’s immigrants, like those of the past, have modest education levels, but unlike in the past, the modern U.S. economy has fewer good jobs for unskilled workers. Partly for this reason, immigrants do not improve their economic situation over time as much as they did in the past. Third, technology allows immigrants to preserve ties with the homeland in ways that were not possible a century ago. Calling, texting, emailing, FaceTiming, and traveling home are all relatively cheap and easy.

Fourth, the United States’ attitude toward newcomers has also changed. In the past, there was more of a consensus about the desirability of assimilation. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the son of Jewish immigrants, said in a 1915 speech on “True Americanism” that immigrants needed to do more than just learn English and native manners. Rather, he argued, they “must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations.” This was a widely held belief. In his book The Unmaking of Americans, the journalist John J. Miller has described how at the turn of the twentieth century, organizations such as the North American Civic League for Immigrants put out pamphlets celebrating the United States and helping immigrants understand and embrace the history and culture of their adopted country.

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