Ross Douthat @ The NYT’s:
THE immigration legislation percolating in the Senate has been pitched as an all-things-to-all-factions compromise. Illegal immigrants will be regularized, but most of them will have to wait at least a decade to gain citizenship. There will be more visas and new guest-worker programs, but also stiffer enforcement on the border and in workplaces.
But the bill’s real priority is to accelerate existing immigration trends. The enforcement mechanisms phase in gradually, with ambiguous prospects for success, while the legislation’s impact on migration would be immediate: more paths to residency for foreigners, instant legal status for the 11 million here illegally, and the implicit promise to future border-crossers that some kind of amnesty always comes to those who come and wait.
Today, almost 25 percent of working-age Americans are first-generation immigrants or their children. That figure is up sharply since the 1960s, and it’s projected to climb to 37 percent by 2050. A vote for the Senate legislation would be a vote for that number to climb faster still.
The bill has been written this way because America’s leadership class, Republicans as well as Democrats, assumes that continued mass immigration is exactly what our economy needs. As America struggles to adapt to an aging population, the bill’s supporters argue, immigrants offer youth, vitality and tax dollars. As we try to escape economic stagnation, mass immigration promises an extra shot of growth.
Is there any reason to be skeptical of this optimistic consensus? Actually, there are two: the assimilation patterns for descendants of Hispanic (particularly Mexican) immigrants and the socioeconomic disarray among the native-born poor and working class.
Conservatives have long worried that recent immigrants from Latin America would assimilate more slowly than previous new arrivals — because of their sheer numbers and shared language, and because the American economy has changed in ways that make it harder for less-educated workers to assimilate and rise.
As my colleague David Leonhardt wrote recently, those fears seem unfounded if you look at second-generation Hispanics, who make clear progress — economic, educational and linguistic — relative to their immigrant parents.
But there’s a substantial body of literature showing that progress stalling out, especially for Mexican-Americans, between the second generation and the third. A 2002 study, for instance, reported that despite “improvements in human capital and earnings” for second-generation Mexican immigrants, the third generation still “trails the education and earnings of the average American,” and shows little sign of catching up. In their 2009 book “Generations of Exclusion,” the sociologists Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz found similar stagnation and slippage for descendants of Mexican immigrants during the second half of the 20th century.
As National Review’s Reihan Salam points out, even a recent Pew study painting an optimistic portrait of assimilation also shows third-generation (and higher) Hispanics with lower household incomes than the second generation.
A major win for Democrats changing the political landscape for ever.Very few Assimilate,they segregate themselves to small communities.
Hispanics will be the majority in California next year even without a new immigration law.
FACT:Amnesty Costs 70 Times More Than Enforcement,someone break the news to Rubio.
Mexicans don’t vote Republican and they never will.So go ahead and grant legal status to those who have broken the law, stolen their way into the country,what have you got to lose ! just your country.
Maybe the gang of 8 should just enforce the law now …It has now come out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided the Mexican government with literature that actively encourages illegal immigrants to enroll in food stamps. One flyer contains the following statement in Spanish: “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”
This not going to end well.
It gets worse.
ObamaCare allows subsidies for all legal immigrants on Jan 2014.
And, if the immigration plan is OKed another 10 to 20 million now illegals will qualify!
Best guess is that 80% of these will need subsidies for their ObamaCare coverage.
Even if they ”go to the back of the line,” the stated plan is for ALL legals waiting in line and now illegals not in line to be brought in within 10 years!
Odd, because the ”line” only moves by 450,000 in a year!
So, What are we to do?
Speed up the line by at least double.
What will THAT cost?
The doubling of paper pushers…..billions.
The extra $9,000/year for each subsidy…..$10 billion a year and UP.
None of this was baked in the cake that the CBO scored, either!
@Nan G:
There is much truth in what you say. When protective barriers (be they economic, racial or immigration-protective) are dismantled, the result is always a net averaging effect. Lowering trade barriers gains us cheaper goods but puts downward pressure on our wages. Lowering racial barriers results in greater mixing of genes, something of a genetic averaging. And lowering immigration barriers leads to a cultural averaging – a dilution of our original founding heritage.
There is some truth in the economic benefits of immigration that are referred to in the monograph above, but they are not without complications. The problem is that the issue is political. You have pointed out very real problems with the proposed immigration reform, but you have failed to offer a solution that will convince a majority of voters. Indeed, Rubio et. al. are quite concerned that unless the Republican Party finds a way to broaden its appeal, it will cease to be a factor in national elections. Pointing out flaws isn’t enough – you have to offer a solution that at least SOUNDS better than what you oppose. “Enforce existing laws” doesn’t do that. Without a better solution, you just get labeled “the party of “NO,” and while that isn’t really fair, who said politics is?