Rick Perry stumbled through much of the last Republican debate, but not when speaking about immigration. He issued a clarion condemnation of critics of his state’s policy of giving the children of illegal immigrants in-state tuition to college. Such naysayers, Perry declared, lack “a heart.”
The Texas governor prides himself on his distinctness from George W. Bush, yet on this issue he sounds just like him: scolding his party for its lack of compassion for immigrants coming here to make a go of it. If Perry had wanted to avoid raising the hackles of Republicans with the imputation of heartlessness, he could have borrowed the staple Bush line: “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.”
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Neither, more relevantly, does the desire to find a job. What Perry portrays as the great American job machine in his state has mostly benefited people who aren’t Americans, according to a new study by the Center for Immigration Studies. This significant caveat to the Texas Miracle raises the larger question of why the country has continued to welcome millions of new immigrants during the past few years while shedding millions of jobs.
In Texas, the study finds, 81 percent of the jobs created since 2007 have gone to immigrants who arrived in the United States since 2007. Ninety-three percent of these immigrants aren’t citizens. An estimated 50 percent are illegal immigrants. All of this may be further testament to the status of Texas as a jobs magnet, but Perry won’t be bragging about this indication of its drawing power.
In this same period, the native-born accounted for almost 70 percent of the population growth in Texas. They didn’t experience the same gains in employment, though. “The share of working-age natives holding a job in Texas declined significantly,” the study finds, “from 71 percent in 2007 to 67 percent in 2011.” In the second quarter of this year, the unemployment rate for natives in Texas, 8.1 percent, ranked 22nd in the country, and the share of natives holding a job, 66.6 percent, ranked 29th.
If providing ready employment opportunities for non-Americans seems awfully cosmopolitan for the man who is supposed to be a famous rube from Paint Creek, it’s the Texas way. The unpleasantness of the Alamo aside, the Lone Star State has always had a close relationship with its neighbor to the south. And a wide-open attitude is good politics. In welcoming all comers, Perry can do the bidding of a business community that wants the immigrant labor and simultaneously appeal to the Hispanic vote. If anyone should think to complain that he’s soft on illegal immigration, well, now, that’s why God created the pointless gesture, isn’t it?
Perry can ostentatiously send Texas Rangers to the border and lambaste the federal government’s failures, but none of it matters if it’s relatively easy for illegals to find a job. Another border state, Arizona, implemented the E-Verify system requiring employers to check the immigration status of prospective employees. It led to a dramatic reduction in the population of illegals, many of whom have, no doubt, decamped to Texas. So long as he doesn’t implement E-Verify, Perry is shooting holes in the hull of the U.S.S. Enforcement and demanding that the feds bail faster.
It would be much too simplistic to say that every new immigrant employed in Texas took his job from a native. On the other hand, it would be much too Pollyannish to deny that there must be crowding out, especially of natives who don’t have a college degree. At least Texas has been creating jobs. The country has lost about 7 million jobs since the onset of the recession in 2007 and continued to import another 1 million new immigrant workers a year, and 200,000–300,000 illegal immigrants on top of them. In August, monthly job growth ground to halt, yet we’re welcoming some 100,000 new immigrants a month.
Is it heartless to wonder why this makes any sense?
The CIS study uses Census numbers for illegal alien employment in Texas. They are about as trustworthy as DDR (East German) economic statistics turned out to be.
In other words, our system of legal immigration is just as dysfunctional as our tolerance of the illegal variety. We need an immigration time out of at least a decade -- and then an emphasis on accepting a much smaller, higher skilled, higher educated, and wealthier group of immigrants.
One thing is certain, Rick Perry is wrong on immigration and wrong for the next GOP nominee.
And I would add one thing: we need a serious reassessment of how we evaluate America's human capital. How many more uneducated peasants from countries that have zero concept of a mature self-government do we need--before we ourselves turn into a third-world hanger-on?
This reassessment is never going to happen, but dreaming is nice.
As with Romney, sanity and humanity are apparently a disqualifying characteristics now on the New Right...guess they need somebody like Ron Paul who elicits applause for the death of a hypothetical uninsured person?
But I care much more about Americans and the struggles they face every day--getting a good education, finding a job, raising a family--than I do about foreigners who face those same struggles.
I care more about Americans than about Mexicans or Afghans or Iraqis.
Perry said that folks like me "lack a heart." I have a heart. But my heart is in the right place. With Americans, not Mexicans.
Very surprised this Center for Immigration study didn't come up during the last debate---it is dual problem for Perry. Not only does it poke holes in his job creation numbers--the biggest asset he is bringing to the race---it communicates a very liberal stance that democrats embrace where the rule of law is disregarded because Texas businesses need the labor.
An important question is who the legal immigrants are. Highly skilled (h1-b) immigrants can be a boon to the competitiveness of US businesses, and aren't necessarily taking jobs from anyone.
Unfortunately, the "highly-skilled" H-1B visa holders aren't any more skilled than the tech workers already in the United States. The only difference is that they work for less, and that's why Bill Gates loves them. See:
"H-1Bs: Still Not the Best and the Brightest" External Link
I think when the full implications of what Rich has outlined here hit most conservatives and Republican primary voters, Rick Perry's days as a viable Republican candidate will be over.
The Texas jobs miracle that Perry was going to use to ride to victory in the Republican primary and then on to the Whitehouse has now been revealed to really just be a foreign/illegal worker program primarily providing lower wage jobs to non-American immigrants and illegals aliens all for the benefit of Texas big business (i.e., campaign donors). While at the same time, lower and middle class American citizens in Texas can't find a job.
What's funny is that if Perry had just backed off his stance supporting in-state tuition for illegals, instead of doubling down by insulting the conservative base for being heartless on this issue, he might have survived these revelations about the real source of Texas jobs growth. He could have said something about how he was troubled by these findings too, and how we need to really get serious about enforcing our immigration laws. But now he's painted himself into a corner and there's no way out unless he flip-flops, which will further hurt his chances.
As a Texas conservative, I've known about these problems with Perry's conservative bona fides for years, but I was still prepared to vote for him in the primaries and the general election if I had to, just to get rid of Barack Obama. However, now I doubt I'll even need to worry about holding my nose and doing that when the primaries come to Texas, because I think Perry has screwed himself out of the nomination with these revelations and his recent statements about in-state tuition for illegals.
You assume the study is valid. No detail how they collected that data or the limits on its credibility. I'm guessing it's bull. The available jobs, by the way, are not largely minimum wage and nothing but personal choice to keep native borns from getting them. You can't hire fast food for min wage. Of course, there are those who aren't willing to take lower paying jobs - especially when they require lots of sweat. Never saw a white guy (other than me and my dad) shear sheep when I was a kid. That work sure motivated me to find something else to do. BTW - if the current administration weren't tying to kill the energy sector, we'd have a lot more high dollar jobs (and so would every other state).
A Free Market assumes that all players are following the law. And even if the immigrants are here legally, Lowry asks the common sense question as to why our nation is allowing immigrants in at all when we are in a long, deep recession.
Jeff.....you may not go outside for recess. Instead, please go to the chalkboard and write the following word 500 times.
L-E-G-A-L
Your homework for tonight is to write a 200 word essay on what the concept of legal means to you.
This is NRO.com, not Reason.com. We're conservatives, not libertarians.
We're NOT for free market competition that crosses national boundaries to the point that it erodes our national sovereignty.
We're not just advocates of free markets. We're also political nationalists.
The kind of "planetary EBay.com" favored by globalists, in which American workers are in competition with workers all over the world, may boost world economies in the long run.
But in the short run, it bids down the wages and benefits of American workers to the world equilibrium level.
Instead of devoting an entire article attacking one candidate on one issue (which so often sounds like a 'hit' piece to many of us, in this case based on one new study by the Center for Immigration Studies designed to make Perry and Texas look bad), how about a comprehensive anaylsis of each candidate? Include the good, the bad, the known and unknown?
For instance, how about analyzing Perry's time as governor and include an explanation of his entire stance on illegal/legal immigration (e-verify, jobs, in-state tuition, border security, federal responsibilities, state actions/non-actions, etc.) Nobody is talking about all the good stuff Perry has done (medical malpractice reform, tort reform-loser pays, voter id, etc.
Do the same for Romney and the others. What about all the good stuff Romney did for Mass.?
These individual articles are suspect and end up turning us against each other with limited us with limited information.
I agree! All I ever seem to hear from Rich and FOX news. All I ever hear is how great Romney is. BULL! I believe Perry is the stronger candidate to beat Obama. Perry's people are at fault for not preparing him to deliver his message. What about getting this country back to work and how are they going to change the tax laws and relax regulations for small business. We need to get to the heart of the problems in this country besides immigration. I don't see these other folks, except Paul, who has to deal with immigration right on the boarder day to day. My vote is for Perry!
Paul, you must be a newbie to NRO. They have done every hit and fluff piece for all the candidates. They even did a fluff piece on Perry's superior debating skills in the Texas Governor's races. Go figure on that one...NRO has been pretty fair.
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