Immigration has loomed larger as an issue in the Republican presidential debates than it does in the minds of most voters. Driven by a minority of activists in their party, the candidates have been drawn into an unhealthy competition to see who can sound the harshest in cracking down on low-skilled illegal immigrants from Latin America.
So far the biggest loser in the competition is the Republican party.
The party is losing out because the rhetoric brings us no closer to actually solving the problem, while driving away voters crucial to the party’s long-term success.
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In recent debates, the candidates have argued over who will build the longest and most secure fence along our border with Mexico. Mitt Romney wants it to cover all 2,000 miles, no matter what the terrain or the cost. Michele Bachmann wants to double down by making the fence two-tiered. Before he suspended his campaign, Herman Cain called for the fence to be lethally electrified. Any candidate who expresses any sympathy for immigrants or their children is quickly denounced as favoring “amnesty.”
Conservatives should be friendly to immigration, and the first to seek expanded opportunities for legal immigration. Immigration has been integral to America’s free and open economy. Immigrants embody the American spirit. They are self-starters seeking opportunity to support themselves and their families in the private sector.
Current immigration is driven largely by demand and supply. Immigrants come when there are jobs available that not enough Americans are able and willing to fill. That’s why immigration rates, legal and illegal, tend to fall when the economy is struggling, and to pick up as the economy grows. Immigrants stimulate job creation for natives by promoting investment, creating new products and services, and increasing demand for housing and other goods. Immigration keeps America demographically healthy while other, less open Western nations struggle with declining workforces.
Study after study confirms that immigrants help to boost the productivity and incomes of native-born Americans. A 2009 Cato Institute study by Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer calculated that legalizing low-skilled immigration would boost the collective income of U.S. households by $180 billion per year. A new American Enterprise Institute study by Madeline Zavodny finds that an increase in visas for both high-skilled and less-skilled foreign-born workers actually creates a net increase in jobs for native-born workers.
Contrary to fears stoked by talk radio, immigrants do not fuel an increase in crime. In fact, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native counterparts. They are too busy working and don’t want to jeopardize their residency in the United States by getting into trouble with law enforcement. That helps to explain why crime rates have been dropping for two decades in Arizona and across the country even as immigration rates have been rising.
If legal immigration were expanded, the kind of workers now sneaking across the border illegally would instead enter legally through established ports of entry. We know from the Bracero program in the 1950s that an increase in guest-worker visas led to a sharp drop in illegal traffic across the border. With far fewer workers entering illegally, the Border Patrol and local law-enforcement officers could concentrate their resources on apprehending real criminals.
Immigrants come to America to work, not to live off the welfare state. Their labor-force participation rates exceed those of native-born Americans. U.S. law bars immigrants from collecting welfare for at least five years after they arrive.
Critics of immigration routinely exaggerate the cost of emergency-room care and public education for immigrants and their families. The cost of government services used by illegal immigrants is a small fraction of what government spends on middle-class entitlement programs, corporate welfare, and farm subsidies. If conservatives are worried about social spending on immigrants, their aim should be to wall off the welfare state, not our country.
Immigrants do not undermine American culture, they enrich it. Immigrants come because they appreciate the freedom and economic opportunity that has traditionally defined our country. Like waves of immigrants in the past, today’s Hispanic and Asian immigrants are learning English, and their children and grandchildren are overwhelmingly fluent.
I love the Cato Institute, but this article is shockingly out of touch with some key 2012 political realities.
While it might be politically prudent for the GOP candidates to tone down or even mute their rhetoric when it comes to illegal immigration, it assuredly would NOT be prudent for the GOP to advocate amnesty and/or an increase in immigration, as Mr. Griswold recommends.
With real unemployment pushing 12 percent and underemployment at or near 25 percent, openly advocating amnesty and/or increased immigration would be political suicide for the GOP. Not even the Democrats — who ordinarily love to pander on immigration in election years — are hinting at such a thing, let alone proposing it outright. (At most, the Dems talk about the Dream Act and then quickly change the subject.)
"If legal immigration were expanded, the kind of workers now sneaking across the border illegally would instead enter legally through established ports of entry."
We are about 20 million jobs short of keeping our citizens and legal residents employed now. This is just more of the same old, tired propaganda from the businesses who want to artificially inflate the supply of labor so they can drives wages even lower than they are now. They have already destroyed the buying power of millions of their own customers but still want to drive wages even lower and they wonder why businesses no longer prosper.
Yes, the USA is 20 million jobs short for its citizens---cause there are 20 million illegal aliens in USA who have taken those jobs, a lot of which were well-paying construction jobs many Americans would love to have, but are now taken by illegals who still get above minimum wage.
All the college kids protesting against Wall Street were never able, or willing, to realize that.
You are right on target. And the argument that more illegal immigration reduces illegal immigration is no argument at all.
If we raise the speed limit to 100 mph, fewer people would drive faster than the speed limit. So what? The problem doesn't go away if the behavior is declared to be legal instead of illegal.
Not all illegals come here for the reasons Mr. Griswold states, but even if they did, the problems they bring along with them won't go away because we make it easier for them to live here legally. The fact that entitlement spending for illegal immigrants is significantly less than entitlement spending for middle class Americans is unpersuasive. Middle class Americans have the right to those entitlements; illegal immigrants do not. While reform is certainly necessary, blaming the GOP for being anti-immigration, which is what Griswold does, is unfair and untrue. If President Reagan's approach worked so well, why does the illegal immigrant population continue to grow?
A slick, intellectually dishonest article, using statistics regarding "immigrants" to make a case for illegal aliens. Illegal aliens - when honestly examined apart from "immigrants" - are a high-crime, massive tax-drain.
Wow. What a bunch of claptrap. Basically, Mr. Griswold contends that, since we're on our merry way to becoming a Hispanic nation, we may as well be the ones laying out the red carpet on our Southern border, grin and bear it. "It," naturally, being the USA losing its identity and becoming a third-world nation--oh, but not to worry, if we're smart, we're going to become a third-world nation with Republicans at the helm. Hey, Reagan did it, and look how peachy it all turned out, right?
This is so idiotic, I don't know if you can actually perceive the depths of its imbecility. Here we are trying to elect the right people to save our country, while you want us to let our country go to hell so we may have people with an "R" after their names rule over its ruins. To say you have your means and your ends upside-down is to put it very mildly.
Where to begin? Why do you think, Mr. Griswold, that immigration has become such a hot-button issue ? Are you sure it is talk-radio stoking the flames with an otherwise uninformed and menacingly nativist (although you stop short of saying that in your dulcet-toned column) electorate? Or could it be that we are sick and tired of seeing increasing swaths of our country turn into barrios by millions of unassimilated, self-selecting aliens who share nothing of America but a common zip code?
Do you think we need "study after study" to convince us that our politicians are NOT passing increasingly high minimum-wage laws waving in illegal immigrants that businesses can exploit for pennies an hour--with nary a wink and a nod from our elites?
Do you think that we are uninformed enough NOT to know that there are no fewer than twenty "guest-worker" programs, and that legal immigration is still wide open for those wanting to take advantage of it? That with over 300 million people and 9% unemployment our discussion should be about whether to put a moratorium on immigration altogether?
Look. There has been enough vapid sentimentality concerning this issue. Let me reduce it all to a simple fact. There are two camps in America.
One wants the USA to remain a Western nation and a nation in which laws--all laws--are passed to be obeyed, and are passed when a majority of the people overwhelmingly agree with a proposition. This is the side that when it sees its property trampled and littered, its cities riddled with gangs and drug wars, its schools flooded with foreigners and its hospitals used as free emergency care--this is the side that wants the law enforced.
The other, to which you belong, thinks that American identity is, by definition, a constantly-changing non-identity, and that by a sort of self-fulfilling reverse manifest-destiny, we are just a couple decades away from becoming a Hispanic country. Diversity is strength, and what we may otherwise call a dangerously divisive tribal culture is for you a cute rainbow tapestry, a coloring-book-like fantasy of diverse smiley faces all loving each other and reveling in each-other's exotic cuisine. This is the side that helps foreign countries sue our own states when the latter, burdened by the side-effects of your wonderful "diversity," decide to actually side with the law.
So, I'll leave you with this suggestion. Why don't you put your idea up for a binding referendum-like vote, and let the American people (while we have one) decide on the issue once and for all--with the understanding that the result is outside of the scope of judicial revision? Somehow, I think you wouldn't go for it. Because in spite of all the mealy-mouthed diversity siren songs your side has been singing for decades, the rest of us are increasingly sober about this issue.
Seconded. You took apart his claptrap beautifully, but I can't resist adding two things:
1. Immigrants aren't coming here because there are so many jobs that Americans can't fill them all (this was probably the most idiotic of Griswold's contentions when the true unemployment rate is at least 11% and is probably more like 16%) - they're coming here because they can take away jobs that would otherwise go to Americans who need them desperately. In some small minority of cases, it's possible that businesses would increase automation rather than hire Americans at higher wages than they have to pay illegal or even legal aliens, but that wouldn't hurt American employment.
2. George W. Bush took something like 41% of the "Hispanic" vote. I never thought that Bush was as dumb as his critics maintained, but on the other hand I never understood why he and John McCain (and all the other open-borders Republicans) found it so difficult to understand that when you're taking only 41% of a voting demographic, sooner or later you must start losing elections as that demographic increases in relative size. That's not just theory, it's mathematical certainty. Why do you think the Democrats are so eager to offer Amnesty and even allow illegals to vote, Mr. Griswold? Do you like what you see in California? That's the entire country's fate if we don't stop illegal immigration and strictly limit legal immigration at least for a generation or two.
This article is built on a stunning number of false premises. These are typical for the Left / Open Borders / Hispanic Supremacist crowd, and lead one to ask in what bad faith Mr. Griswold is so forcefully arguing for an amnesty -- and continuing policy of Open Borders for the world's most unskilled and least-educated people in Central America -- in what would clearly be a death blow for America as an affluent, First World country.
1) "The GOP debates care more about illegal immigration than most Americans do": NOT TRUE. Recent polls have been consistently showing that Illegal Immigration is usually the fourth-most important issue for Americans, after the economy, government spending, and debt. Immigration is a VERY IMPORTANT issue for Americans.
Moreover, it's the one issue that Americans (excluding, it seems, Mr. Griswold and other members of the political and media elite) agree on. In surveys 80% of people say we need to enforce our laws. The American people -- contra Griswold -- are speaking, and they are speaking in a clear and surprisingly unified voice. But our political masters fail to listen. There is an opportunity for Republicans to take a politically brave, and popular, position on immigration. That position, however, would be to finally listen to the people of this country and begin enforcing our laws. Mr. Griswold wants the politicians to continue running amok and without any accountability to voters' demands ... all so that law-breaking, unskilled and uneducated foreign nationals can be given some sort of reward. I'm really not sure what sort of water he's drinking.
2) "Legal and illegal are the same": NOT TRUE. Mr. Griswold employs one of the favorite tricks of the Left / Open-Borders crowd, which is to deliberately confuse legal and illegal entrants into the country.
Mr. Griswold and his allies like Chuck Schumer like to talk about the country's history of immigration, of the supposed self-reliant nature of immigrants, and the other quasi-mythical virtues of the "noble immigrant." I think that there are certainly immigrants who meet much of that idealized description.
However, immigration is, of itself, neither good nor bad. It is as good as, or as bad as, the people it consists of. When it consists of those who break the law, it is bad. When it consists of those who have, on average, attained an 8th-grade education, it is bad. When it consists of those who have no skills to improve our productivity or competitiveness, it is bad. Illegal immigrants -- who break the law and typically have no to little education or skill -- are bad.
We do need to have a robust immigration policy -- but immigration must be something that works IN citizens' interests, not against them. To that end, we need to employ a policy similar to the rest of the English-speaking world (Canada, Australia, NZ, now even the UK) and prioritize immigrants who are LEGAL, educated, skilled and entrepreneurial.
Those are not going to be the uneducated dishwashers collecting various forms of welfare -- the people Mr. Griswold most wants to have in our country insofar as he does not distinguish between legal and illegal, good and bad, and therefore leaves himself at the lowest common denominator of human capital.
3) "The GOP is anti-immigration": NOT TRUE. This talking point of Mr. Griswold's makes it sound as if he wrote this article with the help of a La Raza ("The Race") activist and/or an NYT editor. The GOP -- ideally and in its rhetoric, if not always its members' voting -- is the party of opportunity for all, including (or especially) immigrants.
The thing you fail to see, however, is that the GOP (on its good days, but that's more than can be said for the Dems!) also believes in the rule of law. Hence, the GOP is the party for legal immigrants who are squeezed out of the country and the workforce by illegal aliens. Again, Mr. Griswold's assertions flow from his failure to distinguish between legal and illegal.
4) "Citizens interests are irrelevant": NOT TRUE. As noted above, Mr. Griswold talks about the great education, skills, productivity, etc., of "immigrants." Again, this is true for high-skilled, legal immigrants. These are the immigrants that NO ONE in the GOP wants to keep out. Yet he doesn't tailor his statement, as he should, to say, "Let these people in in even greater numbers while restoring the rule of law and enforcing it vis-a-vis the law-breaking and unskilled." Instead, he pretends that illegal aliens all have Harvard PhDs.
Unfortunately, however, illegal immigration leads to dramatic increases in welfare, diversion of resources from national security and infrastructure, destruction of the rule of law, cultural division and unwanted and radical negative cultural change, unfairness to the world's legal immigrants (usually educated, skilled and America-loving people -- unlike the illegals), unemployment and/or reduced wages for Americans, and most importantly a decline in our average education level, skills base and per capita GDP (i.e., living standards).
No immigration should be destructive toward the interests of US citizens and the country at large. Mr. Griswold seems to think that "immigration for immigration's sake" is a good thing, but why on Earth should we be encouraging something that harms citizens' interests? Robust immigration, yes; but design it (just as we design any sensible policy from national security to infrastructure spending) so as to actually improve living standards and per capita. (Mr. Griswold does say that legalizing unskilled illegals will increase wealth by $180B ... which is an absolute figure. However, divide that by the number of people you've added, and you'll see that PER CAPITA wealth -- the real measure of wealth -- goes down. What's the point in having a larger overall GDP if everyone is individually poorer?!)
5) "Amnesty = votes": NOT TRUE. Finally, Mr. Griswold's overarching assumption is that the GOP needs to be pro-amnesty for law-breaking illegals in order to get their votes. However, this fool's errand will be instead the undoing of conservatism. Poverty-stricken, unskilled Central Americans with a long and tested history of voting for big government will ultimately continue to vote for the party that redistributes wealth in their favor, not one of the two parties (remember, the Dems will also vote for amnesty!) that gave them amnesty.
Voltaire has it exactly right. We're tired of you open borders types trying to castigate the right as being anti-immigrant extremists. Fact is, the majority of Americans have lived with the pros and cons of illegal immigration for the last couple of decades and now believe in strict border enforcement, e-verify and restriction of taxpayer funded benefits to illegal immigrants. That's not extremist/nativist--that's common sense!
Meanwhile, Beltway elites, the liberal media and illegal immigrant advocacy groups have been trying to convince and cajole us into believing what we know is not true. The American people, as a whole, are not the primary beneficiaries of illegal immigration. No, a select few reap the benefits of illegal immigration- namely, big and small business owners whose goods and services rely upon low skilled labor and politicians hoping that immigrants with higher birth rates than ours can help them continue their vote getting welfare gravy trains. It's all a big scam and the American people see right through it.
One of the unanticipated consequences of a president who ignores laws he doesn't like, is that others behave in the same fashion with far more confidence. We used to call illegal immigrants, well, illegal!! Against the laws of the land with respect to citizens. But just as denying that Voter IDs confirm the value of our ability to vote just once, immigration laws certify our ability to determine who and how new citizens should immigrate. Mr. Griswold uses the same trick most of the libs/Marxists use now, which is to take a word and use it contrary to what it should be with an eye toward making their illegal activity sympathetic or acceptable. The GOP still holds that we are a nation of laws, and thus, illegal immigrants are, well, illegal, no matter how the name is changed. History is quite unkind to nations who refuse to monitor those who would become citizens legally. And yes, because illegal immigrants go to clinics and put their kids into schools, they do tax the system, terribly. And yes, since they have family in the old country, they generally do NOT pay taxes, but send much of the "earned" income back to their families. This is against the law, currently. So regardless of the left's attempt to paint this as an unsympathetic blind spot in the GOP's line of vision, it is not, and for the time being, these so called "immigrants" are still coming in against the law, and are deemed illegal immigrants until the law is changed....or until we all decided that we get to pick and choose the laws we like as our president is so deftly doing.
Crazy idea-seal the border. Try real workplace enforcement. Get a handle on how big the problem is before we do anything else. But as with all amnesty advocates we get the cart before the horse again.
At a loss why such drivel found a home here. Apparently cheap labor for big business at the expense of decentj obs and wages for working and middle class is now conservative in some think tank circles. Disgraceful.
Shades of Obamaland! Now we're to call illegal immigrants "aspiring Americans"? Should we also call drug dealers, thieves and and muderers "aspiring inmates"?
