Immigration

Immigration In America
(Considerations of a Novice)

Immigration, whether in the United States or in other parts of the world, is becoming an increasingly important concern. Perhaps it is because technology is shrinking the world and people are much more aware of lifestyle variances. Perhaps it is because travel is easier. Perhaps it is because world population continues to grow, creating social and environmental pressures in more locations. The United States had a population of 5.3 million in 1800. That population had grown to 321 million by 2015. There were 5.5 million Mexicans in 1800, but the number had grown to 126 million by 2015.

There has been much talk about the “immigrant problem” in the press in recent months, largely due to President Trump’s interest in building a wall between Mexico and the U.S. The hysteria and bluster about the southern U.S. border is difficult to understand. The illegal immigrant population did grow rapidly between 1990 and 2006, peaking in 2007 at 12.2 million people. The number is currently 11.9 million, so the number of undocumented immigrants has actually decreased in the U.S. by 300,000 people over the past 10 years.

It is doubtful that much would be gained from building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The cost to build the wall is considerable. Estimates vary, largely due to design options, but they seem to fall in the 15-25 billion dollar range. Ongoing maintenance costs would run about $750 million per year.

The U.S.- Mexican border is about 2000 miles long. Nearly 700 miles of border fencing is already in place, located where it is most effective, i.e., in highly populated areas. Additional fencing, while providing an additional deterrent, will affect a relatively small number of people. Furthermore, it is expected that increasing the difficulty of crossing the border will merely further professionalize the activity. In other words, illegal entry into the U.S. will become even more the province of organized smugglers. This suggests that a wall will do little to arrest illegal border crossing but will add significantly to the power and wealth of gangs in Mexico.

In a dissimilar but related issue, nearly 40% of undocumented aliens in the U.S. entered legally but have overstayed their visa authorizations. Consequently, if the wall between the U.S. and Mexico worked to perfection, it would only address 60% of the problem of new undocumented immigrants.

Should we wall up the United States? Should we expel all the undocumented aliens? Let’s back up a little.

There are two basic perspectives taken on the issue of immigrant rights. The first perspective is called the Cosmopolitan view. This view emphasizes the intrinsic value and equality of every human being. This viewpoint suggests that, while nations have borders, they should be open for anyone who wishes to cross them. (There are, in fact, some nations, such as Argentina, whose borders are completely open.) This viewpoint suggests that humans are obligated to be welcoming and kind to foreigners, that everyone should treat others as they would like to be treated. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads: 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! Lady Liberty represents the Cosmopolitan view. It would be fair to say this view is part of the American psyche.

The other perspective is called Communitarianism. This view recognizes that the world is governed by nations, which have authority to write laws and enforce them within their respective borders. Communitarianism argues that national authority is not merely a necessary evil, but that the order provided by functioning nations is critical to the well-being of their citizens. A brief look at countries lacking controlling central governments, such as Somalia or Syria, strongly supports this contention.

The recent wave of Middle Eastern refugees that flooded Europe serves as an example of the need for controlled immigration. Europe was initially very welcoming, but then reacted negatively as the number of refugees became unmanageable . Those open gates have returned to being much more restrictive. Perhaps a lifeboat is analogous. When a ship sinks, no one wants to leave survivors floating in the water, but if the lifeboats are full, bringing more onto them is recklessness, not mercy. Perhaps the analogy is merely selfish hyperbole. But countries must think in terms of mercy and of stability as they formulate immigration policies.

The universal respect for humans as presented by the Cosmopolitan perspective is clearly a Christian ideal. However, it is also true that national laws are crucial for societal wellbeing; it is a Christian principle to be respectful of governmental regulations. Nations must look to the needs and concerns of aliens but have an even greater obligation to do the same for their own citizens. These two somewhat contrary principles are both fundamental to the formulation of proper immigrant policy.

One issue that has made the news recently is the determination about how many immigrants should be allowed into the country. The number of naturalizations in the U.S. has varied from year to year, but has run at roughly 700,000 for the past decade. The lion’s share of these naturalizations are granted for the purpose of family unification. Other significant categories affecting the selection of immigrants, include employment need, federal diversity requirements, and concerns for refugees and asylum seekers.

In the world today, nearly all countries permit emigration, as this is generally considered a human right. Historically there have been some exceptions to this, most famously the Iron Curtain that separated East from West Germany. Currently, though countries have their various bureaucratic complications, it seems that only North Korea denies its citizens the opportunity to emigrate. Disallowing emigration is strong evidence of dysfunctional government.

Pop.       Country       Population     Percent       Density      Migrants          Median
Rank                             in millions     growth          p/km           (net)                  Age

1              China                1410              .43                150       – 340,000                37
2              India                1339             1.13                450          516,000                27
3              USA                   324                .71                  35         900,000                38
7            Nigeria                191              2.63                210        – 60,000                 18
9            Russia                 144                .02                   9          204,000                39
10           Mexico                129              1.27                  66         – 60,000                28
11            Japan                  127           – 0.21                350           72,000                 46
16         Germany                82                .24                236         355,000                 46
21            U.K.                     66                 .60                274         198,000                 40
23            Italy                     59            -0.12                 202           53,000                 46

The data presented above is selected from a full report prepared by the United Nations.

The United States easily welcomes more immigrants than any other country in the world. We can congratulate ourselves on two counts for this. One, it is clear that people are interested in coming to this country; we must be doing something right. The other thing is that the U.S. is demonstrating generosity and grace. Is it generous enough?

Note that Japan and Italy are losing population. Germany would probably be losing population, as well, if not for its significant immigrant population. This helps explain Germany’s generous policies towards refugees, though, of course, the issue is highly controversial there.

Note that Mexico lost only 60,000 people to emigration. This tends to confirm that the flow of Mexicans to the United States has become a small figure in recent years.

The population of the U.S. in 1950 was 152 million. This means that many Americans have seen the population double in their lifetime. Is the country becoming too densely populated? Overall environmental pressures suggest the answer is yes. However, if you look at the chart, it is clear that the U.S. is, relatively speaking, not densely populated.

Another reason (not given much public expression, except by white supremacists) for curtailing immigration is concern about racial changes, or maybe fundamentally changing the character of the nation itself. People tend to be less comfortable with races other than their own. Majority races can see racial change as threatening to their “advantages”. But power jockeying takes place between America’s minorities, as well. Whoever you may be, you will likely be uncomfortable if foreign-looking, foreign-behaving individuals begin to alter the look and feel of your neighborhood. It takes courage and grace to be welcoming in the face of upheaval.

Racism should not be tolerated in America. Both the majority race and the minority races need to accept this. Because of this, race should have little to do with immigration policy. To the degree possible, immigration should be race-neutral. It needs to be recognized, however, that other, more important factors driving immigration, are not race-neutral. Family connections, U.S. financial stability, and the plight of refugees, as examples, are more important factors for determining who should be allowed to immigrate into the U.S.

Security is a minor issue, as far as immigration is concerned. While security at the American borders is important, and we must do what we can to keep terrorists, anarchists, and criminals out, immigration has had no appreciable effect on the percentages of these sorts of individuals.

Economics is an important factor for immigration. Most immigrants who wish to come to the U.S. come in order to improve their standard of living. For some it is an expectation of moving from moderate lifestyles to living “the high life”, but for most who come here the choice has more to do with survival.

But immigrants are not the only individuals thinking about the economics of immigration. U.S. businesses are generally in favor of generous immigration policies. For example, the computer tech field is very international in nature but the U.S. cannot supply enough trained workers to fill U.S. needs. Pressures to exclude foreigners from U.S. soil have had the unintended consequence of driving tech businesses overseas.

The more well-known phenomenon of finances affecting immigration is the large number of Mexicans who have come to America to work. Current data states there are roughly 6.7 million undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. (out of a total of 11.3 million undocumented immigrants). Undocumented immigrants are made up of 59% Mexicans, 11% Asians, 11% from Central America, 7% from South America, 3% from the Caribbean, 2% from the Middle East, 4% from Europe & Canada, and 3% from Africa.

The U.S. economy is greatly influenced by the work of immigrants. While many complain about how immigrants are a drain on the social welfare system, it is also true that immigrants provide cheap labor. Undocumented immigrants make up 26% of farm workers and 15% of construction workers in this country. There are roughly 8 million undocumented workers in the American workforce. In 2007 the median income of undocumented households was $36,000; for native American households it was $50,000. There is no doubt that all Americans benefit from lower costs to goods and services because of this. On the negative side of the ledger sheet, the availability of low-cost labor tends to lower wages for American citizens who work in these same areas of service.

A huge area of concern relating to the current U.S. immigration policy is the number of undocumented immigrants in the country. As noted before, the number is stable at this time but, still, 11.3 million people is a lot of people. Let’s consider some statistics about this group.

• 73% of the children of undocumented immigrants were born in the U.S. By U.S. law, all of these children are U.S. citizens. This creates a huge quandary, in that deporting undocumented parents may result in the separation of families. Children who were born and raised in the U.S. tend to be resistant to leaving the only home they know, particularly when the change portends a diminishing of life quality, as well.
• 58% of undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years.
• While undocumented immigrants make up 4% of the country’s population, they make up 5.4% of the country’s workforce.
• Their children make up 6.8% of children in elementary and secondary schools.
• 59% of adult undocumented immigrants have no health insurance.
• The Federal government has acted to severely restrict free medical services to undocumented immigrants. While this seems appropriate, the result has been to place moral burden on hospitals, where they have found it difficult to turn their backs on people in desperate need. The unintended consequence has been to financially strain institutions in communities with high concentrations of undocumented immigrants. The financial strains on these institutions threaten, in turn, the medical infrastructure of all others in those communities.

The overall situation for undocumented immigrants is a societal shame. This is a large group of people living in the United States as second-rate citizens. They live with a patchwork social support system, inferior to that of legal residents. They live in fear of the law, which makes them easy targets for predators, whether those predators are active criminals or otherwise law-abiding citizens—employers, for example. They live in reliance on other illegal activities, such as counterfeited documents. They live in fear of having their families deported or broken apart. It is easy to point the finger and say they have come here illegally and, so, should not expect fair treatment, but the reality is that the U.S. has treated them with ambivalence, which is to say, confusion. We tell them to stay away and then we employ them at low wages because the rest of our society benefits financially. We don’t really enforce our immigration laws.

Another example of ambivalent law enforcement in the U.S. is speed limits on our roads. We have posted speed limits, and then we have standard driving behavior. Traffic tends to move 5-20 mph faster than posted speed limits. Generally speaking, driving at the speed limit in America makes the driver a traffic hazard. Everyone behind this driver is honking, getting mad, and performing dangerous maneuvers in order to get around. I would, with a clear conscience, instruct a new driver to drive 5-10 mph over the speed limit, simply because it is safer. It is kind-of a moral quandary where it’s not possible to do the right thing.

U.S. immigration law has created a similar kind of problem. Proclaiming that undocumented immigrants should all just pack up and go home is not fair thinking. In any case, it is certainly wishful thinking that will not influence many undocumented immigrants.

Next Week:
Recommendations of a Novice