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;void(0)) IMMIGRATION & IMMORALITY . . . IMMIGRATION see "THE HUMAN RACE" for related links If they cannot accommodate themselves to the character, moral, political, and physical, of this country, the Atlantic is always open to them to return to the land of their nativity and their fathers. To one thing they must make up their minds; or, they be disappointed in every expectation of happiness as Americans. They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors. --John Quincy Adams (17671848) 6th President of the United States. [4 June 1819] (Of German immigrants.) - At this point the immigrants' only concern was to get off Ellis Island. All of them looked in relief for the door that was marked 'Push to New York.' And they pushed. Now, after another ferry ride, they set foot on the earth of the land that was paved with gold. I once asked a successful but unfailingly cynical immigrant if the reality hadn't meant a shattering disillusion. 'But there *was* gold,' he said, 'to us. There were markets groaning with food and clothes. There were streetcars all over town. You could watch the automobiles. There was no military on horseback and no whips. The neighbors were out in the open, trading and shouting, enjoying free fights. And to a boy like me it was a ball, a friendship club.' --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] But in the wake of the immigrant flood . . . paupers became shopkeepers, and the sons and daughters of peasants bound for centuries to slivers of poor soil turned into clerks and nurses and accountants and schoolteachers and druggists and cab drivers and lawyers and doctors. Looking back on those sheepish legions, we should not pretend that they were ever rollicking characters in a musical comedy. But we should not forget, either, the millions who struggled for a decent and tidy life, and made it, and still do. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - "How U.S. Immigration Evolved As the Nation Grew and Changed" By Cynthia Crossen January 9, 2006 _The Wall Street Journal_ In the beginning, America vast, raw and sparsely populated needed every immigrant it could get. When King George III tried to stem an exodus of his subjects to the New World in the 18th century, the colonists furiously accused him of trying to "prevent the population of these states." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison declared, "That part of America that has encouraged [immigrants] has advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts." Well into the 19th century, American employers paid the passage of Europeans who were willing to come to America to work. Not until 1882, more than two centuries after the first European immigrants set foot in America, did the federal government take immigration policy away from individual states, passing a general law to filter the nation's borders. Even then, only a few classes of "undesirables" were excluded: lunatics, convicts and idiots. But in the early 20th century, when hundreds of thousands of people were immigrating each year (in the peak year of 1914, 1.2 million immigrants sought admittance), the nation stopped seeming quite so roomy. Cities were overflowing with poor, unskilled refugees whose cheap labor was believed to be undercutting wages for everyone else. Many Americans, known as nativists, decided the rising tide of immigration must be slowed, if not stopped. "The myth of the melting pot has been discredited," declared Albert Johnson, a Republican representative from Washington State who led the fight in Congress to close America's borders. "The day of unalloyed welcome to all peoples, the day of indiscriminate acceptance of all races, has definitely ended." In 1917 Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto and decreed that prospective immigrants would have to pass a literacy test. When that test barred fewer than 1,600 people from entering the U.S. the following year, legislators began considering other ways to discourage immigration. Their solution was two pronged: They would drastically lower the ceiling on total immigration, to about 180,000 a year. And the available slots would be allocated by a quota system based on a single fact: Where had each aspiring immigrant been born? Under the so-called national origins system, created first on an "emergency" basis in 1921 and renewed in a more restrictive form in 1924, the U.S. census would count the number of foreign-born immigrants already in the U.S. and determine how many came from each country. Thereafter, 2% of the total of each nationality would be admitted annually. (The 1924 law fixed no quotas for immigrants from New World countries, including Canada and Mexico, whose seasonal laborers were crucial to the nation's farmers.) To compute the number of people of each nationality living in the U.S., however, Congress used a little sleight of hand. Instead of utilizing the 1920, 1910 or 1900 censuses, it reached all the way back to the 1890 census to create its quota baselines. Why turn the clock back more than 30 years to establish current policy? Because before 1890, most immigrants came from northern and western Europe, including Britain, Scandinavia and Germany. Between 1890 and 1920, many more immigrants sailed from southern and eastern European countries like Italy, Poland and Greece. And in 1924, wrote Roger Daniels in his 1990 history of immigration, "Coming to America," the U.S. was deeply split between "an old-stock, Protestant, small-town and rural America and an immigrant-stock, Catholic and big-city America." Harvard University Prof. Robert DeCourcy Ward described the nativist position in a 1922 article in Scientific Monthly magazine: "If we want the American race to continue to be predominantly Anglo-Saxon-Germanic, of the same stock as that which originally settled the United States ; if we want our future immigration to be chiefly of more kindred peoples easily assimilable, literate, of a high-grade intelligence, then the simplest way to accomplish this purpose is to base the percentage limitation upon an earlier census than that of 1910 before southern and eastern Europe had become the controlling element in our immigration." In 1921, about 220,000 Italian-born men, women and children immigrated to the U.S.; in 1925, about 6,000 were allowed to enter the country. In 1921, some 33,000 people came to the U.S. from eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey); in 1925, fewer than 1,600 were admitted. The law had achieved exactly what it had set out to do: "America would be a nation ethnically frozen in time," as Ellis Cose wrote in his 1992 book, "A Nation of Strangers." National origin quotas would govern immigration policy for four decades before being abolished in 1965. Immigration remains a contentious issue in the U.S. today, as people from every part of the globe try to enter the country, legally and illegally, to enjoy America's opportunities and freedoms. When Chicago Mayor William Thompson was challenged in a 1931 election by a second-generation Czech immigrant, he called his opponent, Anton Cermak, a "pushcart Tony." "It's true I didn't come over on the Mayflower," Mr. Cermak replied, "but I came over as soon as I could." - I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple eloquence of his example. I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to make the world better for their children and they asked to be protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation's government did that for them. --Mario Cuomo (1932 ) American lawyer and politician. In the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention [16 July 1984]. The observation concerning the Importation of Germans in too great Numbers into Pennsylvania is, I believe, a very just one. This will in a few years become a German Colony; Instead of their Learning our Language, we must learn theirs, or live as in a foreign Country. Already the English begin to quit particular Neighborhoods surrounded by Dutch ... the Dutch under-live, and are thereby enabled to under-work and under-sell the English; who are thereby extremely incommoded, and consequently disgusted, so that there can be no cordial affection or Unity between the two Nations. How good subjects they may make, and how faithful to the British interest, is a Question worth considering. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. [20 March 1750] ^^ The immigration law of 1903 sounded the new themes; it contained a long list of undesirables, who were not to be let in the door: "idiots, insane persons, epileptics, persons who have been insane within five years previous," or had had "two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously." Prostitutes were excluded, along with "paupers; persons likely to become a public charge; professional beggars; persons afflicted with a loathesome or ... dangerous contagious disease," persons convicted of any crime "involving moral turpitude." Polygamists were also definitely unwelcome, and so were "anarchists," and those who "believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States." This was an ominous move: the first time the immigration laws had contained a political test for admission. The act specified that people who did not "believe in organized government" had no right to be naturalized. The law also forbade importing contract labor, except for actors, artists, singers, ministers of the gospel, professors, members of "any recognized learned profession," or "personal or domestic servants." Still, the act made clear that the United States no longer wanted masses of foreign bodies, masses of foreign workers. The march of legislation continued. In 1907 "imbeciles, and feeble- minded persons" were added to the list; and those whose mental or physical condition was such that they might become a burden on the welfare system, in the opinion of the examining doctor. Now, too, it was not only actual polygamists for whom the door was shut, but even "persons who admit their belief in polygamy." Not that hordes of polygamists were knocking at the doors; but here once again, ideology or belief was the basis for exclusion a fateful note. The Immigration Act of 1917 established an "Asiatic barred zone"; it covered essentially all of south Asia, including India, Burma, what is now Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Pacific islands. The countries were not named, but were defined in terms of latitude and longitude. [...] In 1921 Congress passed an emergency immigration act. It limited immigration to 3 percent of the "number of foreign-born" persons of each nationality living in the United States as of 1910. Asians were still barred. The Western Hemisphere was not subject to the ceiling. The statute aimed at keeping immigration down to about 350,000 a year, with most of the spots reserved for people from northern Europe. Then came the crucial immigration law of 1924. This was an outright rejection of the melting-pot idea. It put a cap on the numbers of immigrants, and made sure they would come from the right places. The statute continued the idea of national quotas, fixed in terms of the 1890 census: if 2 percent of the people who lived in the United States in 1890 hailed from Italy, then Italy would get 2 percent of the quota of immigrants. Why 1890? That was before the biggest flow of huddled masses from southern and eastern Europe. Under the 1924 act, more than two-thirds of the immigration spots were reserved for immigrants from Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. About 17,000 Greeks had been entering the country each year; the 1924 act gave Greece a quota of exactly 307. Italians had been flocking to the United States more than 150,000 a year; their quota was now 5,802. Not everybody, to be sure, approved of this demographic game. Industrialists did not think cheap imported labor was a bad idea, even if the unions did. Immigrant groups opposed the law, and many of them were bona fide voters. In the debates in Congress, Fiorella La Guardia, the "little flower," later to become a charismatic mayor of New York City, denounced the law, speaking out eloquently against it and in praise of his constituents, who were Italian,Jewish, and the like. But the law had the majority behind it, and it went into effect. It was basically a law about Europe and Asia. Somewhat surprisingly, it did not apply at all to immigrants from Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and any "independent country of Central or South America." As far as the law was concerned, the whole population of Guatemala or Nicaragua could simply travel north and settle down in the United States. This was certainly not because of any great love for the natives of these countries. Truly impoverished, truly traditional people do not emigrate. Hence Bolivia was not a problem; and Italy was. One country of Latin America did call for special treatment. Bolivia was far away; Mexico was on our doorstep. And Mexicans were here already. The United States had inherited quite a few when it won the Mexican War and annexed about a third of Mexico's land mass. The borderlands were mostly barren desert, inhospitable, even dangerous. Yet people moved freely across the border; Mexican laborers, for example, left home to sweat away in the mines of Arizona. By about 1910 there was a substantial railroad net in Mexico; now it was fairly easy for Mexicans from the central plateau to reach the Rio Grande. Mexicans came on the railroads, and they also worked on the railroads. Nine Western railroads in 1929 employed more than twenty-two thousand Mexican workers-almost 60 percent of their force of laborers. Then things changed. Irrigation made the desert bloom not with flowers but with crops. The Imperial Valley of California, the Salt River Valley in Arizona, and the valley of the Rio Grande turned into tremendous factories of food. The stoop labor was heavily Mexican. Revolution, hunger, and general instability drove thousands of Mexicans from their homelands, into the arms of agribusiness. The growers welcomed these Mexicans; they were better than whites at this work, the growers felt: whites, as one businessman put it, were "entirely unfitted for labor which requires bending, crouching, or elasticity." The "oriental" and the "Mexican," because of their "crouching and bending habits," could adapt to conditions which no white man could tolerate. The growers and the railroads wanted Mexican immigration. Not everybody sympathized. There was no Mexican quota; but there were restrictions if the law of 1917 barred illiterate Hungarians, it barred illiterate Mexicans as well. This rule alone would have prevented the entry of many poor Mexicans. Yet they came, illegally; or were smuggled across the border. In 1925 Congress created a Border Patrol; by 1928 there were more than seven hundred patrol inspectors on the Mexican border, fighting smugglers and illegal aliens. And from 1928 on, consular officials began to deny visas to most Mexicans who wanted to enter the United States on the grounds of illiteracy, or as "LPCS" that is, liable to become a public charge. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) _American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002] Ch. 5 "Race Relations and Civil Liberties" pp. 128-130 ^^ Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discoved that the immigrants *were* American history. --Oscar Handlin (1915 ) American historian and educator. _The Uprooted_ [1951], winner of the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History. - I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said, "Can this be? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," And he went for that heathen Chinee. --[Francis] Bret Harte (18361902) American author. "Plain Language from Truthful James" & note: Hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship. --Chinese Exclusion Act, Section 14 [6 May 1882] - As the New England characteristics are gradually superseded by those of other races, other forms of belief, and other associations, the time may come when a New Englander will feel more as if he were among his own people in London than in one of our seaboard cities. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. _One Hundred Days in Europe_ [1888] pp. 310-313. ^ If you were a member of Congress, would you vote 'yes' or 'no' on a bill to open the doors of the United States to a large number of European refugees than are now admitted under our immigration quotas? No: 83.0% Yes: 8.7% Don't Know: 8.3% --a 1938 _Fortune_ magazine poll, in Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 206. ^ I have stood near Castle Garden and seen races of far greater peril to us than the Irish. I have seen the Hungarians and the Italians and the Poles. I have seen these poor wretches trooping out, wretches physically, wretches morally, and stood there almost trembling for my country, and said, what shall we do if this keeps on? --Rev. E. J. Johnson _Baptist Congress Proceedings_ [1888] pp. 83-84, in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] pp. 638-639. Cohan & Major note: Castle Garden, on Ellis Island in New York harbor, served as America's immigration depot from 1855 to 1890, when it was superseded by the Ellis Island reception center, in business until 1954. John Quincy Adams. . . [wrote] in his diary on April 24, 1819: 'In the midst of peace and partial prosperity we are approaching a crisis which will shake the Union to its center.' The news of trouble reached Europe too late to affect the 1819 sailings, so tens of thousands of immigrants continued to arrive, to fiind no work and rising hostility. --Paul Johnson (1928 ) British historian. _A History of the American People_ [1997] - Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. --Emma Lazarus (18491887) American poet. "The New Colossus" [1883] Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans...If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description. --Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. (18501924) Republican U.S. senator [18931924]. The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers' Day), address, New England Society of Brooklyn [21 December 1888]. To be overrun by the diverse races of Europe is doubtless evil enough, but whether Celt, Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon, confraternity, if impossible, is at least approachable. But even the Dutchman and the Irishman would join in the national horror with which the prospective inundation of oriental barbarism threatens our country. --Humphrey Marshall (18121872) American politician. In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 583. Cohan & Major note: In the 1850s Chinese coolie labor began entering the United States in significant numbers, mostly to work on railway construction. Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world ... We are not a nation, so much as a world. --Herman Melville (18191891) American novelist and poet. _Redburn: His First Voyage_ [1849] *Then* our accessions by immigration were real accessions of strength from the ranks of the learned and the good, from the enlightened mechanic and artisan, and intelligent husbandman. *Now* immigration is an accession of weakness, from the ignorant and the vicious, or the priest-ridden slaves of Ireland and Germany, or the outcast tenants of the poorhouses and prisons of Europe ... They are transported in thousands, nay, *in hundreds of thousands*, to our shores, to our loss and Europe's gain. --Samuel F. B. Morse (17911872) American painter and inventor who developed an electric telegraph. _Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration_ [1835] pp.23-29. (Contrasting the immigration of the 1830s with that in the time of Jefferson's presidency.) The worst part of the refuse class which is ... thrown upon our shores, here clan together and remain in the city nor can they be persuaded to leave it. These mostly consist of imbecile and thriftless parish paupers and dependants, the former inmates of poor-houses and even of prisons, who being unwilling or unable to gain an honest subsistence anywhere, have been sent here, in order to rid the country from which they came of their support, and who become a burden and a nuisance from the moment of their arrival. Many of them are afflicted with pestilential diseases, more or less developed, which, as they wander about in search of shelter, are disseminated through the city to the manifest detriment of public health, and to the destruction of life. --Annual Report, New York Association for Improving the condition of the Poor [1852] pp. 32-33. - For what are we not indebted to foreign emigration, since we are all Europeans or their descendants? We cannot travel on one of our steamboats without remembering that Robert Fulton was the son of an Irishman. We cannot walk by St Paul's churchyard without seeing the monuments which admiration and gratitude have erected to Emmet and Montgomery. Who of the thousands who every summer pass up and down our great thoroughfare, the North River, fails to catch at least a passing glimpse of the column erected to the memory of Kosciusko? I cannot forget that only last night a portion of our citizens celebrated with joyous festivities the birthday of the son of Irish emigrants, I mean the Hero of New Orleans! --Thomas L. Nichols _Lecture on Immigration and Right of Naturalization_ [1845] p.24, in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 582. Cohan & Major explain: Fulton put his first steamboat on the Hudson in 1807. Emmet and Montgomery were Irish patriots; Kosciusko, the Polish nationalist, fought for the United States in the War of Independence. The Hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson, had defeated the British at New Orleans on 8 Jan. 1815. - Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. --Jack Paar (19182004) American radio and television talk show host. O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asian, and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylun for mankind. --Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (17371809) English-American writer and political pamphleteer. _Common Sense_ [1776] Bringing with them slavery, concubinage, prostitution, the opium vice, the disease of leprosy, the offensive and defensive organization of clans and guilds, the lowest standard of living known, and a detestation of the people with whom they live and with whom they will not even leave their bones when dead, they form a community within a city and there live the Chinese life. --Senator George C. Perkins of California [1906]; in Harvey Wish _Society and Thought in Modern America_ [1962 edn.] p.233. (George Clement Perkins (18391923) American politician; governor of California [18801883]; U.S. Senator [18931915]) As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood." --Enoch Powell (19121998) British Conservative politician. (On unrestricted immigration.) They come to France to make money, but the moment a fight is on, they hide behind the first tree. There are so many in the army because the Jew likes to parade around in fancy uniforms. Every country chases them out, there is a reason for that, and we must never allow them to occupy such a position in France. --Pierre Auguste Renoir (18411919) French painter. [15 January 1898]. Quoted by fellow artist Edouard Manet in _Journal_ p. 148. We ought to change the sign on the Statue of Liberty to read, 'This time around send us your rich.' --Felix Rohatyn (1928 ) Austrian-born American businessman. Felix Rohatyn was a governor of the New York Stock Exchange, Chairman of the New York Municipal Authority, and US Ambassador to France. Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. In an article in "Kansas City Star" [27 April 1918]. No Alexander or Caesar in the height of their conquests, ever made such acquisitions of power as immigration brings to us ... Those who are against the cause of their country ... contend that immigrations brings with it destitution, poverty and crime. Trace these bands of strong-limbed but poor foreigners until they plant themselves upon the hitherto useless land of the West, and see how wealth is evolved by their very contact with the soil. They were poor, and the fertile land was valueless, but combine these two kinds of poverty and the wealth which alchemists dreamed of, is the magical result. --Horatio Seymour (18101886) American politician; governor of New York State. [18521854] & [18631865] In Rush Welter _The Mind of America 18201860_ [1975] p.324. My opinion, with respect to emigration, is, that, except of useful Mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions, there is no need of encouragement: while the policy or advantage of its taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people. --George Washington (17321799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [17751783] and first president of the United States [17891797]. In a letter to John Adams [15 November 1794]. From all over the world, the Children of Israel are flocking to this country, and plans are on foot to move them from Europe en masse ... to empty upon our shores the very scum and dross of the Parasite Race. --Tom Watson _Watson's Magazine_ v. 2I [1915] p.296. (Thomas Edward Watson (1856-1922) American politician. - We heartily approve all legitimate efforts to prevent the United States from being used as the dumping ground for the known criminals and professional paupers of Europe. --Platform plank of the Democratic Party [1892] - "There goes the neighborhood." --Caption for old _New Yorker_ cartoon. Native American watching the first white men disembark from ships. -- TOPICAL "Mexican Wave" By Stephen Haber _The Wall Street Journal_ May 3, 2006 What policy should America adopt toward illegal immigrants from Mexico? One view is that they drive down the wages of American workers, burden taxpayers and undermine the integrity of American culture. That view is embodied in the recent immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives: It seeks to seal off the border and treat immigrants who are already here as felons. A second view is that Mexican immigrants increase the competitiveness of the U.S. economy. That view is embodied in draft legislation in the Senate that would make it possible for illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for more than five years to obtain a visa and eventually citizenship provided they learn English. The Senate bill also contains provisions for workers who have been here for less than five years to either obtain a green card or become a guest worker, after they return to Mexico and make the necessary applications. Any serious attempt at reform needs to take account of facts regarding illegal immigrants that are often given a back seat to ideology by partisans on either side of the debate. Any serious attempt at immigration reform also needs to take account of facts about Mexico's fragile economy and democracy facts that both sides in the debate have tended to miss entirely. Indeed, most discussion about immigration reform implicitly assumes that its effects stop at the border. The truth is that our immigration policy is more consequential for what happens to Mexico's political and social stability than it is for America's economy or cultural integrity. Those who favor a "soft line" on Mexican immigration often simultaneously argue that Mexican workers make American industry more internationally competitive and that Mexican workers do not reduce the wages of U.S.-born workers. Both statements could simultaneously be true if Mexican immigrants included large numbers of highly educated electrical engineers and molecular biologists who had a tremendously positive effect on American total factor productivity. But Mexican immigrants tend to have very low levels of education by U.S. standards; they also tend to cluster in industries that produce goods that do not enter into international trade, such as restaurant meals, home construction, landscaping and janitorial services. The overall effect of Mexican immigration on the U.S. economy is trivial almost certainly less than one-tenth of 1% of GDP. Moreover, to the degree that Mexican immigration makes some industries more internationally competitive, it does so by reducing the wages of the U.S.-born workers in those industries. The reduction is not trivial. Careful research done by Harvard's George Borjas indicates that Mexican immigration has caused a 7% decline in the wages of U.S.-born high school dropouts, and a 1% decline in the wages of workers with only a high school diploma. Score one for the hard-liners on immigration. Hard-liners, however, have it wrong about the social and cultural impact of immigration on the U.S. They tend to look at recent immigrants and decry their low levels of education, difficulties with the English language, and propensity to choose marriage partners from their own immigrant group. They tend to ignore that every other large-scale immigrant group in the history of the U.S. Poles, Italians, Irish, Eastern European Jews had many of the exact same social and cultural characteristics. The impact of immigration on American culture is not determined by what immigrants do, but by what their children and grandchildren do. Here the evidence is unambiguous: The children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants assimilate and move up the income ladder. Meticulous research by James Smith at Rand demonstrates that second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans quickly overcome the educational deficit faced by their immigrant parents and grandparents. As a result, they do not constitute a permanent economic underclass; they have been steadily narrowing the income gap with native-born whites. Nor do they constitute a social and cultural group independent of mainstream America. The reason is clear: 80% of third-generation Mexican-Americans cannot speak Spanish. Score one for the soft-liners on immigration. Both sides in the immigration debate have it wrong, however, when it comes to one core assumption that Mexican immigration is only a domestic policy issue. What we choose to do will have serious ramifications for Mexico. To understand why, we need to take into account that the large-scale immigration of Mexicans to the U.S. is a recent phenomenon. Until the 1980s, Mexicans migrated to the U.S. at very modest rates on the order of 50,000 people per year. In the 1980s it surged to roughly 200,000 people per year, and in the 1990s it went through the roof, averaging 500,000 people per year. The reason is that the Mexican economy collapsed in the early 1980s, and since then Mexico's per capita GDP, adjusted for inflation, has grown at a staggeringly slow 0.7% per year, less than one-third the U.S. rate. There is little reason to think that the Mexican economy will recover any time soon. Indeed, all of the fundamentals, most particularly the preference of foreign multinational companies to site new facilities in China instead of in Mexico, point toward continued slow growth. What would happen to Mexico if we were to suddenly cut off the escape valve provided by immigration to the U.S.? Unemployment and underemployment, already major problems, would increase dramatically. Remissions from immigrants, which total some $18 billion per year and are the lifeblood of many rural communities, would dry up. The widespread frustration felt by the population caught between rising crime and diminished economic expectations which fuels the populist presidential campaign of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would almost certainly become more acute. There is no scenario in which these developments would be positive for Mexican political and social stability. And there is no scenario in which a politically and socially unstable Mexico is in the interest of the U.S.. Mr. Haber, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Science, and director of the Social Science History Institute, at Stanford University. - "Keeping Book on Immigration" December 31, 2007 _The Wall Street Journal_ The Census Bureau informs us that when the clock strikes midnight, the U.S. population will exceed 303.1 million. That represents a one-year increase of 0.9% and a 22% increase since 1990, when our population stood at a mere 248.7 million souls. A lot of this growth is driven by immigration, a topic that has dominated the news for much of 2007. Talk radio hosts, cable newscasters and Presidential hopefuls insist that foreign nationals drive crime rates, swell welfare rolls and steal jobs. But the data tell a very different story. Between 1994 and 2005, the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. is estimated to have doubled to around 12 million. Yet according the Department of Justice, over that same period the violent crime rate in the U.S. declined by 34.2% and the property crime rate fell by 26.4%, reaching their lowest levels since 1973. Crime has fallen in cities with the largest immigrant populations such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami as well as border cities like San Diego and El Paso, Texas. A recent paper by the Immigration Policy Center, an advocacy group, notes that "Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100 years repeatedly and consistently have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native born." Today, immigrants on balance are five times less likely to be in prison than someone born here. It's not because law-abiding foreign professionals from India and China are compensating for criminally inclined low-skill Latinos. Immigrants from countries that comprise the bulk of our illegal alien population including Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans have lower incarceration rates than the native-born. Another popular belief is that immigrants come here to go on the dole. The data show that welfare caseloads have fallen as illegal immigration has risen. As Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin report in the December issue of Commentary magazine, "Since the high-water mark in 1994, the national welfare caseload has declined by 60%. Virtually every state in the union has reduced its caseload by at least a third, and some have achieved reductions of over 90%." Apparently immigrants don't drive welfare caseloads anymore than they drive the U.S. crime rate. The authors go on to note that, "Not only have the numbers of people on welfare plunged, but, in the wake of the 1996 welfare-reform bill, overall poverty, child poverty, black child poverty and child hunger have all decreased, while employment figures for single mothers have risen." For all the talk about the "invasion" of million upon million of job-consuming immigrants, the unemployment rate stands at 4.7%, and job growth continues apace. Immigrants aren't stealing jobs but filling them. The economic activity they create as consumers and entrepreneurs contributes to the overall economic growth. None of this is to argue that illegal immigration doesn't have costs, especially in border communities and states with large public benefits. In the post-9/11 environment, knowing who's in the country is more important than ever. That's an argument for better regulating cross-border labor flows, not ending them. The best way to reduce pressure on the border is by providing legal ways for people to come and work. With the Bracero guest-worker program of the 1950s, illegal entries from Mexico declined to a trickle. A similar program today could have much the same effect, while serving our homeland security and economic interests. On balance, the evidence shows that immigrants are still an asset to the U.S. ----- expatriate (verb) [eks-'pey-tree-eyt] To leave one's native land and live elsewhere; to renounce allegiance to one's native land.  . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: BETRAYAL CRUELTY DECEPTION DISHONESTY EVIL INDECENCY INHUMANITY LIES LYING OBSCENITY PORNOGRAPHY SIN STEALING TREACHERY VICE WICKED WRONG --- The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it. --Jean [-Marie-Lucien-Pierre] Anouilh (19101987) French playwright. If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. --John Kenneth Galbraith (19082006) American economist. ----- profligate [PROF-luh-guht; -gayt], adjective: 1. Openly and shamelessly immoral; dissipated; dissolute. 2. Recklessly wasteful. noun: A profligate person. Ex.: "Life had to be challenged, attacked every instant, with reckless speed in a Ferrari, with profligate spending, with unrestrained sexuality, with artistic ambitions as monumental as they were impractical." --Tag Gallagher, _The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini_ Synonyms: abandoned, corrupt, depraved, dissolute, wicked. turpitude (noun) Extreme immorality or wickedness (formal) end page | IDAHO - IDIOTS | IDLENESS - IMMATURITY | IMMIGRATION & IMMORALITY | IMMORTALITY - IMPOSTORS | IMPRESSIONABLE - INDECISION | INDEPENDENCE - INDIANA | INDIFFERENCE - INDIVIDUALITY | INDOCTRINATION - INFORMATION | INGRATITUDE - INNOVATION | INNUENDO - INSPIRATION | INSULTS - INTENTIONS | INTERESTED(ING) - INTUITION | INVENTIONS - ITCHING | JACKSON - JOGGING | JOHNSON (LYNDON) - JOY | JOURNALISM | JUDGE (TO) - JUSTICE | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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