I worry about the immigration debate we’re having. I’ve been worried since Lou Dobbs started banging the “Mexicans are scary” drum years ago. It’s only gotten worse since. The myriad of proposals all seem to change the very nature of immigration. As Fareed Zakaria says,
Compared with every other country in the world, America does immigration superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French approach?
My family is the product of the American immigration experience. My father arrived in the early 70s as a skilled civil engineer. My mother soon followed. They had me, then my sisters, and by the mid 80s owned a home. I went on to a top 20 university. My sisters went on to the top liberal arts colleges in the world. They both went on to pursue law and medical degrees. By the time we all were finished our undergrad, both of my parents were citizens. In high school, I considered joining the military after realizing that between being Indian and being American, I was American. My loyalty lies here, with the country that gave my family opportunity.
In another country, say France or Germany, my parents wouldn’t have become citizens. I would not be in a neighborhood with a bunch of Jewish families, a bunch of Christian families, and, yes, one or two Indian families. I may have been in a ethnically homogenous neighborhood, segregated but welcome there. I might have had a tougher time getting into some of the best colleges here, and I may not have pursued the career I did.
It’s not to say that we’re the same as illegal immigrants or that my family exemplifies the illegal immigrants that these laws target. My point is that these laws we’re proposing will affect those of us who come here legally. Without citizenship, my story would be different.
As a country, we are too often focused on who to blame and who to punish. At some point, we need to see what is right in front of us. These people come here because they know they can make money. They come because they want to help their families. They can make money because people want to hire them. So, why do folks hire them? More specifically, who hires them? What would happen if there were an H-1B program for laborers, meat packers, and farm hands?
I can’t believe that guest worker programs are the best that we can come up with. Nor can I believe that Lou Dobbs and the vapid rhetoric coming out of some Republicans are the best we can do talking about this debate. I also can’t believe that I’ve found an issue that I actually agree with the President (until he flip-flopped recently).
The Economist has a good overview of the larger debate and politics.
April 5th, 2006 at 7:47 AM
Sujal, we have to remember that our parents are not the ones at issue here. Your father is a trained engineer. My parents were war refugees.
I don’t know where I stand on this position yet, but I’m not ready to use my parents success and my assimilation as a point in my argument…I’m still Jewish, and enjoy being different. You may be more American than Indian (does that make you an American-Indian? Or because you were born here, a Native American?) but I definitely retain a large external identity. Not for Poland or Hungary, but for being Jewish.
A lot of this issue does come down to the second and third generation of the American Dream. New immigrants have worked so hard to get here. Their children are still affected, and are pushed so hard in school. But their kids, well, I don’t know yet. How many generations are between hard-working immigrant and lazy American with a sense of entitlement?
This reminds me of the model for Chinese bureaucracy I was taught in undergrad. In Chun-hsien (sorry about the spelling) times, people who passed the bureaucracy exam became rich. Poor people worked hard to pass this exam. Those who did, their children often passed. But their grandchildren rarely did, so the great-grandchildren were returned to poverty. Wealth derived from this labor lasted three generations. I wonder what the numbers are for America.
…and this is also why I hate macroeconomics. For every hard-working person in their twentieth generation in America, there may be ten children of immigrants who are not working hard. Averages don’t really paint a good picture, but they’re still a bit better than the representativeness bias of me and Sujal talking about our parents.
Specifically: my maternal grandparents opened a clothing store. My paternal grandparents sold meat, later branching out into owning their own plants, and became wealthy. My dad became a doctor (beats meat) and the kids are productive members of society (grant writer for a major philanthropic organization and student at a top-10 MBA program).
OK, thoughts off. I need coffee. (funny how I need it more than I used to…)
April 5th, 2006 at 9:17 AM
I do think our parents are the issue. Under the guise of illegal immigration, we’re changing the broader nature of immigration policy. That’s my point. Our parents (and you) would have a different story if immigration didn’t always have a path to “becoming American.”
I’m also not trying to use my experience to paint a broader picture about illegal immigration. Not being from the Southwest or Mexico and not having studied the issue much, I don’t think I can speak intelligently about the lives or experiences of illegal immigrants. I can speak about my experience, which is why I wrote this.
Also, I think you’ll find that having an external identity isn’t all that unusual. I’m reminded of that every time I go to the North End, Southie, or Cheektowaga (which the locals refer to as Cheekto-warsaw). Hopefully you’ll be reminded of my external identity at my wedding.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:07 AM
Ok, I’m trying to understand your argument, Dan. Are you saying that, if third-generation immigrants are “lazy American[s] with a sense of entitlement,” that’s an argument against immigration?
I guess I have a slightly different perspective on it than either of you - my familiy has been here since before the Revolutionary War (yes, if I wanted to, I could obtain the docmuents to join the DAR). My family certainly didn’t come over because they were skilled engineers, nor do I think they were war refugees (while I’m a mix, the majority of my family is from the territory that is now the U.K.). And I think that’s true for many immigrants before the last half of the 20th Century (Italians, Irish, etc. etc.).
In my opinion, the country is better for these immigrants. I really don’t see much difference between the Hispanic immigrants of today, and the Irish or Italian immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries. (And no, you can’t argue that the Irish or Italian immigrants were “white,” and thus faced fewer problems with assimilation. See How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev.)
April 5th, 2006 at 10:41 AM
I’d like to see you join DAR. That would actually be pretty damn funny.
April 5th, 2006 at 11:05 AM
My point (too poorly developed to be an argument) was that there are a large number of variables in the effect of immigration on a country. One is the imported set of skills, another is the behavior of the offspring. Each, taken on average, is then not detailed enough to make policy.
Is the country better for having immigrants? Better for whom? Macroeconomic indicators certainly improve, but who benefits?
I see this as more of an ownership/worker argument (then again, as a b-school student, I think like that a lot). The pie gets larger, and the benefits flow to
1. Business owners in country, who gain a new source of talent or low-cost labor.
2. Immigrants who are able to get something they want (more money, more stable work, safer environment, freedom)
But I don’t see how immigration helps the people who got here earlier, but do not have an ownership claim on the capital.
This leads to our conundrum: non-owners among long-standing residents are a large number of the voters, but they stand to gain the least from admitting more non-owning workers.
As a non-owning worker, I need to position myself to benefit from these changes. Fortunately, I have enough education that I can figure out how to find jobs that have a barrier to entry.
Law, medicine, and other jobs which require higher education all have significant barriers to entry. Immigrants must bring those qualifications or achieve them here.
Working at Wal-mart in LA has little barrier to entry. I can see why working non-owners here legally are concerned for their jobs.
Long term, is immigration good? Is immigration bad? Answer: depends. Depends on who is judging. Depends on what they have at stake.
The question of third-generation behavior is not a core part of the issue. The cycle I mentioned is a cycle…the fourth (or some future generation) can always start the cycle again through education and passing the exam. Likewise, the theory of America is that an enterprising and intelligent person of any birth can wrangle themselves enough education to find “success”…loosely defined as either ownership or a job with sustainable barriers to entry.
April 5th, 2006 at 2:16 PM
I think part of the issue, however, is that your examination of the benefits/costs doesn’t take into consideration all factors.
For example, converting illegal immigrants (who are already here and working) into legal immigrants increases the tax base. That’s good for everyone - it helps fund the Baby Boomers’ retirement, lifts some of the burden off of the younger generations, provides more tax dollars for local schools, etc. It also has effects on the consumer base in the country. Not to mention the fact that you get the benefit of having the people who, again, are already here, becoming better integrated into society - and along with that, lower crime rates, lower health care costs (because they’re now eligible for health insurance, and aren’t relying on emergency rooms that are under an obligation to treat them without reimbursement), etc.
Taking a long-term view, I’d argue that each wave of immigrants has added something beneficial to the society. Yes, there are short-term costs (low wage labor). There always have been (just read some of the anti-immigration tracts of the late 19th century). But I think most economists would say that the long-term benefit outweighs the short-term costs.
April 5th, 2006 at 9:13 PM
There are tremendous benefits. I’m still trying to figure out whether it’s good or bad overall. As a “have” it’s good for me: more taxes paid. But there are a lot of “have nots” who lose out.
I am certainly not addressing all factors. I’m looking for help/exploration around some items I don’t know.
Are there statistics available on the rough numbers of people who would enter the legal labor market, at what segment they’d enter, and what wages they currently have and would expect? And any statistics regarding how many of those jobs are currently available? (and theories about how many would become available?) The minimum wage in this country is not a living wage in many parts of this country…but it may still be a high enough wage that new jobs don’t appear for the newly legal workers at any legal wage.
I’m not in favor of protectionism for people lucky enough to be born here, but I’d like to know what’ll happen when a big shift hits a whole lot of poor citizens and non-citizens.
April 5th, 2006 at 11:25 PM
I’d caution against an implicit assumption that lower wage earners lose. The people that come in, assuming they survive, need to eat at a minimum. Which means they spend money. Which, in the great tradition of trickle down economics, means jobs are created.
I get what you both are trying to say. I would caution against simply writing off the macroeconomics argument. We don’t, as a country, really try to smooth over the pain of shifts caused by larger macro trends. You’re right that the pie getting bigger helps businesses, but it generally helps everyone. It might not help the guy working in a plant that gets closed or the guy replaced by an illegal immigrant who wouldn’t complain as much. So the question is, how do we help those lives disrupted by these trends?
We could, perhaps, treat transitional support as a separate policy problem that extends far beyond illegal immigration. Fears about globalization, for example, are rooted in the same concerns. Pie gets bigger, but for whom? We’ve never tried to create good long-term policies around these economic transitions except when the situation becomes dire.
But all of that, really, is irrelevant. At the end of the day, I think the problem is that these messages are all targeted at the haves, not the low wage earners. While those folks are a larger voting bloc in size, they tend not to vote. So, policy tends to pander to the lower-middle class and up. Protectionism, isolationism, and limited immigration tap into other fears that have nothing to do with basic economics. You want all those statistics (and I’m interested), but at the end of the day, what’s the demo of Dobbs’s viewers and the demo of the minutemen vigilantes?