Immigration
Actually,
a) from what I know, I support the law, and
b) according to the Byron York article below,
the circumstances the cartoonist suggest could happen
certainly could not as the law is drafted.
The best general web site on immigration is, in my opinion,
Peter Brimelow’s vdare.com.
Organizations dealing with immigration include
Center for Immigration Studies and
Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The remainder of this document is
a collection of references to books and articles on immigration
which I have found informative.
1996
1996-Brimelow
Peter Brimelow,Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster
1998
1998-MacDonald
Kevin MacDonald,Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965:
A Historical Review
2002
2002-Buchanan
Patrick Buchanan,The Death of the West:
How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions
Imperil Our Country and Civilization
2002-11-18-McGrath-Somali
The Great Somali Welfare HuntBy Roger D. McGrath
The American Conservative, 2002-11-18
The Refugee Act of 1980
has turned thousands of Somali Bantu into American dependents.
Millions more “refugees”
may be eligible for resettlement in your neighborhood.
[An excerpt:]
With upwards of 130,000 Somalis in Kenyan camps
hoping to be resettled in the United States,
towns throughout America might soon have the opportunity to enjoy
the diversity that a thousand or two African Muslims will bring them.
[E.g., 2008-07-28-AP-Iowa-Kosher-Somali.]
2004
2004-Huntington
Samuel P. Huntington,Who Are We:
The Challenges to America's National Identity
2004-Summer-MacDonald-IGP
The Immigrant Gang Plagueby Heather Mac Donald
City Journal, 2004 Summer
[An excerpt; emphasis is added.]
Hispanic youths,
whether recent arrivals or birthright American citizens,
are developing an underclass culture.
(By “Hispanic” here,
I mean the population originating in Latin America—above all, in Mexico—
as distinct from America’s much smaller
Puerto Rican and Dominican communities of Caribbean descent,
which have themselves long shown elevated crime and welfare rates.)
Hispanic school dropout rates and teen birthrates
are now the highest in the nation.
Gang crime is exploding nationally—
rising 50 percent from 1999 to 2002—
driven by the march of Hispanic immigration east and north across the country.
Most worrisome,
underclass indicators like crime and single parenthood
do not improve over successive generations of Hispanics—
they worsen.
2004-06-19-MacDonald
Kevin MacDonald,Was the 1924 Immigration Cut-off “Racist”?
2004-08-05-Francis
Gangs of the New America:Heather MacDonald vs. Open Borders
By Sam Francis
VDare.com, 2004-08-05
2004-10-27-MacDonald
Immigration And The Unmentionable Question Of Ethnic Interestsby Kevin MacDonald
VDare.com, 2004-10-27
2004-11-08-McGrath
Send Us Your SickBy Roger D. McGrath
The American Conservative, 2004-11-08
Illegal immigration overwhelms California’s hospitals.
2005
2005-10-04-Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer,Immigration: The Elephant in America’s Room
When the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was passed,
the always-cocksure "Teddy" [Senator Edward Kennedy],
one of the most perfervid supporters of "new egalitarianism,"
told the Congress:
"First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.
Second, the ethnic mix will not be upset ..."
...
"We believed the bill would have negligible effects on the United States,"
[Norbert Schlei, one of the drafters of the bill] said.
"We predicted 165,000 immigrants a year.
We believed that the idea that tinkering with immigration
would make any difference was just silly."
Then he smiled -- a big, wholly unapologetic smile.
"It surely didn't turn out that way,"
he summed up.
2006
2006-03-08-Samuelson
Robert J. Samuelson,Build a Fence -- And Amnesty
[The author of this blog does not agree with Samuelson on amnesty.
As the advocates of unlimited immigration fail to note,
the 1986 bill also included an amnesty, also supposedly “for the last time.”
Why should potential immigrants take our laws seriously,
when they know that if they ignore them,
the bleeding-heart liberals will always come up with another amnesty?]
2006-03-22-Samuelson
Robert J. Samuelson,We Don’t Need ‘Guest Workers’
2006-04-06-Maxwell
Ronald F. Maxwell,What Bush fails to see at the border
2006-04-24-Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer,Dutch Grapple with Immigration Explosion and their Future
2006-05-03-Blankley
Tony Blankley,Immigration madness -- come one, come all, no ticket needed
2006-05-04-Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer,Demands of Immigrants Display a Perversion of Language
2006-05-17-Samuelson
Robert J. Samuelson,Still Dodging Immigration’s Truths
2006-05-18-Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer,Senate Bill Would Perpetuate Immigration Disasters of the Past
2006-05-23-NYT
Rachel L. Swarns,Failed Amnesty Legislation of 1986
Haunts the Current Immigration Bills in Congress,
New York Times, 2006-05-23
2006-05-24-Meese
Edwin Meese III,An Amnesty by Any Other Name ...,
New York Times, 2006-05-24
So here we are, 20 years later,
having much the same debate and
being offered much the same deal
in exchange for promises largely dependent
on the will of future Congresses and presidents.
Will history repeat itself?
I hope not.
In the post-9/11 world, secure borders are vital....
President Bush and Congress would do better to start with
securing the border and
strengthening enforcement of existing immigration laws.
2006-05-25-Rohrabacher
Dana Rohrabacher,The ‘shamnesty’ legislation,
Washington Times, 2006-05-25
I know why Teddy Kennedy and his ilk want a bill
that would bring in an estimated 60 million to 100 million people
over the next 20 years:
It is a ready source of new Democratic voters.
Unskilled immigrants depend more on government services than they pay in,
making them a natural Democrat constituency.
On the other side of the equation,
Republicans are beholden to the big-business, country club lobby.
Their need for cheap labor
trumps the need for strong enforcement and border control.
Middle-class Americans will be bowed and broken
under this burden being piled on their shoulders.
[Congressman Rohrabacher, probably deliberately, omits the religious factor.
I am sure that there are many people of great religious faith
who sincerely advocate immigration on what they view as moral grounds.
They believe that a goal of the United States should be
to give as many people in the world as possible
the opportunity to improve their lives.
I agree, that is an admirable goal.
But it omits two practical factors:
- Does the United States have the means to admit
all those who desire this opportunity?
The answer is: surely not. - What is the cost in cultural terms
of changing radically the ethnic composition of this country?
While the left-wing
(whom I regard as having become thoroughly radicalized over the last half-century)
will claim that to be concerned about such issues is “racist,”
I think that prudent concern for the national future,
for the future of our nation and of our offspring,
requires that we concern ourselves with this issue.
2006-05-31-Samuelson
Robert J. Samuelson,What You Don't Know About the Immigration Bill,
Washington Post, 2006-05-31
The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.)
hailed as "the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history."
You might think that the first question anyone would ask is
how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration.
But no.
After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36,
you could not find the answer in the news columns of
The Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
[The same bastions (or is it bastards?) of the elite who
a) talked us into the Iraq War,
b) religiously support the principles of feminism, and
c) religiously support the separation of church and state.
In short, they can be counted on to follow the lines of
AIPAC, ADL, and NOW
as well as La Raza.]
Yet the estimates do exist and are fairly startling.
By rough projections,
the Senate bill would double the legal immigration
that would occur during the next two decades
from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.
One job of journalism is
to inform the public about what our political leaders are doing.
In this case, we failed.
The Senate bill's sponsors didn't publicize its full impact on legal immigration,
and we didn't fill the void.
It's safe to say that few Americans know what the bill would do
because no one has told them.
Indeed, I suspect that many senators who voted for the legislation
don't have a clue as to the potential overall increase in immigration.
[But then,
dissembling about the true consequences of immigration measures
is nothing new.]
Democracy doesn't work well without good information.
Here is a classic case.
It is interesting to contrast these immigration projections
with a recent survey done by the Pew Research Center.
The poll asked whether the present level of legal immigration should be changed.
The response:
40 percent favored a decrease,
37 percent would hold it steady and
17 percent wanted an increase.
There seems to be scant support for a doubling.
If the large immigration projections had been in the news,
would the Senate have done what it did?
Possibly, though I doubt it.
But if it had,
senators would have had to defend what they were doing
as sound public policy.
That's the real point.
They would have had to debate whether such high levels of immigration
are good or bad for the country
rather than
adopting a measure whose largest consequences
are unintended or not understood.
What arguments would they have used?
...
On May 15 Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama
held a news conference with Heritage's Rector
to announce their immigration projections
and the estimated impact on the federal budget.
Most national media didn't report the news conference.
The next day the CBO released its budget and immigration estimates.
These, too, were largely unreported....
...
Whether or not the bias is "liberal,"
groupthink is a powerful force in journalism.
Immigration is considered noble.
People who critically examine its value or worry about its social effects
are subtly considered small-minded, stupid or bigoted.
[Well then,
call me “small-minded, stupid and bigoted”!]
2006-06-11-WP
Immigration Estimates For Region Vary Widely From Source to SourceBy Karin Brulliard and Krissah Williams,
Washington Post, 2006-06-11
2006-06-18-Sailer
A Third Pro-Immigration Poll Atrocity!By Steve Sailer
2006-06-25-Sailer
Socializing Costs, Privatizing Profits—Why America’s Rulers Don’t Want Hearings On The Senate Sellout
By Steve Sailer
2006-06-25-One-Fifth
U.S. Population To Hit 300 Million In FallAP, 2006-06-25
Latinos—immigrants and those born in this country—
are driving the population growth,
accounting for almost half the increase last year,
more than any other ethnic or racial group.
White non-Hispanics,
who make up about two-thirds of the population,
accounted for less than one-fifth of the increase.
[What that means is that the United States is headed towards
having less than one-fifth of its population being white non-Hispanics.
And the decline may be expected, barring some major social change,
to continue.
This is negative exponential growth, i.e., exponential decay.
But it’s something the MSM is systematically ignoring.
It was once said that
“The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”;
an updated, Americanized version of that comment might be
“The future of America is determined by the look of its maternity wards.”
Cf. Patrick Buchanan’s
The Death of the West:
How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions
Imperil Our Country and Civilization
and
State of Emergency:
The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.]
2006-08-04-Five-Of-Six
Data Show Minorities' Movement To MajorityBy Lyndsey Layton and Dan Keating
Washington Post,
[F]ive of six new residents in the Washington area since 2000
have been people of color,
according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
...
The population figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau today
are estimates of those living in the country on July 1, 2005.
Between decennial censuses,
the bureau releases annual population revisions that are based on
birth and death rates and migration trends.
2006-08-15-One-Million
Area Immigrants Top 1 MillionBy Lyndsey Layton and Dan Keating
Washington Post, 2006-08-15
[Another amazing WP job of cheerleading for Third World immigration.
To the WP, there can never be too much immigration.
A sample from the article (emphasis is added):]
Rising numbers of immigrants in this region have
enriched the culture and the economy
while they have challenged local governments and
triggered sharp controversies over such issues as day laborers.
[No mention in this article about how the immigration
is the most significant factor in the excessive growth of the region.
The WP saves their complaints about that issue
for articles that contain no mention of immigrants.
Thus they keep the issues of immigration and excessive growth well-seperated.]
2006-08-27-NYT
In Schools Across U.S., the Melting Pot OverflowsBy SAM DILLON
New York Times, 2006-08-27
2006-10-12-WP
America's Population Set to Top 300 MillionImmigration Fuels Much of Growth
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post, 2006-10-12
Immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about 40 percent of population growth.
Immigration is also an important reason
the "natural increase" in the population --
excess of births over deaths --
is significantly higher in the United States compared with Europe or Japan.
Hispanics from Latin America, by far the largest share of recent immigrants,
are driving the natural increase here.
On average,
Hispanic women have one more child than non-Hispanic white women.
Three hundred million is also a discomfiting reminder of a nation that,
on its east and west coasts, at least,
is running noticeably low on elbow room.
More humanity is stirring up
more traffic,
more sprawl,
more rules against growth,
more protests against anti-growth rules, and
more of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
A surging population in the arid Southwest is also straining the supply of water.
The growth is adding to a country
that represents 4 percent of the world's population
but consumes 25 percent of the planet's oil.
"We are not the wide-open spaces anymore,"
said Martha Farnsworth Riche, who headed the Census Bureau in the mid-1990s
and is now a research demographer at Cornell University.
"Our choices are constrained."
In Los Angeles, the nation's most densely populated metropolitan region
and its most heavily Latino area,
300 million will be yet another confirmation that congestion is out of control,
Myers predicted.
"I don't think people view population growth as a plus anymore,"
he said, noting that Angelenos are punished by it "every single day"
when they go out in freeway traffic.
...
Poverty rates for children have exceeded poverty rates for the elderly
for more than 40 years,
according to Linda A. Jacobsen,
director of domestic programs at the Population Reference Bureau,
a nonpartisan research group.
Hispanic and black children
are between three and four times as likely to live in poverty as whites,
so their growing numbers may not translate into growing national wealth.
In addition, the divide between aging baby boomers in retirement
and the younger workers who are supporting them with payroll taxes
will have a racial, as well as a generational, dimension.
"Unless we can reduce age, racial and ethnic disparities in poverty,"
Jacobsen warns,
"children from minority groups may be less able and less willing,
as they grow up,
to support the predominantly white elderly population."
2006-MacDonald-HFV
Hispanic Family Values?By Heather Mac Donald
City Journal, 2006 Autumn
Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass.
Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve,
the explosive growth
of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades
does not bode well for American social stability.
Hispanic immigrants bring near–Third World levels of fertility to America,
coupled with what were once thought to be First World levels of illegitimacy.
(In fact, family breakdown is higher in many Hispanic countries than here.)
Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S.
are born out of wedlock,
a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down.
Given what psychologists and sociologists now know
about the much higher likelihood of social pathology
among those who grow up in single-mother households,
the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce
more juvenile delinquents,
more school failure,
more welfare use, and
more teen pregnancy in the future.
2006-12-03-WashTimes
No silver liningWashington Times Editorial, 2006-12-03
Increases in crime and poverty and strains on public services are just a few of the social problems associated with the influx of illegal aliens over the last two decades. These are sometimes said to be analogous to the troubles of slum-filled American cities during the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century immigration waves, problems which eventually vanished as immigrant families became established, assimilated and wealthy. But there are very good reasons to think that that pattern is not repeating itself today. Look no further than the comprehensive essay “Hispanic Family Values?” by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald in the current issue of the City Journal to understand why.
People who think that conservative social values tend to predominate in this largely Hispanic population -- and therefore should augur for better communities in the long run -- might be surprised to learn that nearly half the children born to Hispanic mothers in the United States today are born out of wedlock, a rate three times that of whites and Asians and one and a half times that of blacks, in a context of a Hispanic birthrate twice as high as the national average. These factors are destined to sustain a Hispanic underclass for decades unless they begin to change dramatically. That's because out-of-wedlock births are strong predictors of social and behavioral problems, criminal activity, future unemployment and drug abuse, among others.
“[T]he Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future,” Miss MacDonald concludes.The “social-services complex,” as she terms it, will compound the problem because it considers these new arrivals clients and reasons for budgetary and programmatic expansion. So, too, will geography. The United States has never before withstood sustained mass migration from a neighboring country where assimilation is just one of many options -- and one which much of the American elite has lost interest in promoting. That means fewer incentives to learn English and develop meaningful connections to non-Hispanic communities where many opportunities for employment and advancement are found.
In short, the influx of illegals in recent years appears to be creating not just a new and temporary economic underclass, but also a social underclass whose unmarried birth rates and rapid population growth are likely to create long-term social turmoil. These are just more reminders, were any needed, that the country needs to act against illegal immigration and endeavor for better control over the borders.
2007
2007-01-31-MacDonald
MidEast Policy—Immigration Policy:Is The Other Boot About To Drop?
By Kevin MacDonald
VDare.com, 2007-01-31
[This is mainly about the neocons and the Middle East,
but part of it is about their attitudes toward and impact on immigration policy.]
2007-06-04-Pinkerton
Divide & RuleThe Republican insiders’ guide to ethnic manipulation.
by James P. Pinkerton
The American Conservative, 2007-06-04
Hidden away, secreted in the dusty stacks of the Machiavellian Library,
is the definitive how-to guide, Winning Through Ethnic Manipulation.
Observing the immigration and affirmative-action policies
favored by the current administration,
it’s one book that I am sure George W. Bush—or at least Karl Rove—
has read.
2007-06-18-Sailer
La Raza’s LapdogsWhy the elite press won’t report seriously on immigration
by Steve Sailer
The American Conservative, 2007-06-18
...
Why is respectable immigration reporting
so one-sided, inane, and downright dull?
Just as immigration is tied into every domestic issue,
the failure to examine immigration intelligently
illuminates much that is wrong with American intellectual discourse in general.
Here are some reasons for this sorry state of affairs:
...
2007-07-29-WP-Health
Bush Aide Blocked ReportBy Christopher Lee and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post, 2007-07-29
[This muckraking article is mainly about global health problems
and what the authors think
are the failures of the Bush administration to do more about them.
But one part of it does seem relevant to the all-but-unlimited immigration flows that most of the elite, certainly including the WP, favors.
In making their arguments for all but unchecked immigration,
they often make the argument:
“Arguments were made against admitting Germans, Irish, Italians, and Jews.
But they were admitted and look, no real problems occurred.”
Well, at the risk of being considered racist by some,
it is important to note that different (potential) immigrant groups
bring different problems with them.
For example, consider the health issues implicit
in this excerpt from the WP article (emphasis is added):]
The draft report itself,
in language linking public health problems with violence and other social ills,
says
“we cannot overstate . . . that problems in remote parts of the globe
can no longer be ignored.
Diseases that Americans once read about as affecting people in regions . . .
most of us would never visit are now capable of reaching us directly.
The hunger, disease, and death resulting from poor food and nutrition
create social and political instability . . .
and that instability may spread to other nations as people migrate to survive.”
[A graphic with the as-printed article
included a fragment of text from the report,
giving the example of the Hanta virus.
Needless to say, as usual the continent of Africa seems to have
more than its share of cringe-inducing health problems,
all just waiting to be brought to the U.S.,
to give the “progressives” yet more things to gripe about,
about how “the government isn’t doing enough!”.]
2007-08-28-WP
Demand for Prenatal Care for Poor Strains LocalitiesBy Delphine Schrank
Washington Post, 2007-08-28
[While the problem discussed in this article
is surely not exclusive to illegal immigrants,
it just as surely is more common among them than in the population at large.
Here is the beginning of the article:]
Glenda Ordoñez gave birth to her son on a cold night in September 2005
on a wooden bench outside her basement apartment in Leesburg.
For months,
the uninsured woman from El Salvador had sought access to prenatal care,
which studies show reduces the chances of infant mortality, low birth weight and a variety of health troubles.
She said her boyfriend’s $13-an-hour paycheck
disqualified her for care through the Loudoun County Health Department,
where patients must fall within the lowest brackets of the state poverty levels.
He had left her, Ordoñez said, but she couldn’t prove it.
The Loudoun Community Free Clinic in Leesburg didn’t offer prenatal services.
She couldn’t afford a doctor in Herndon who would charge $3,000 for several months of care.
Another doctor in Sterling refused to take her five months into her pregnancy.
...
“So many are going through pregnancy without care.
And the only option is to deliver the baby as an emergency”
...
[Not quite the vision the Post likes to emphasize
when it gives its editorial paeans to immigration,
always citing Jews, Irish, and Germans.
It seems to me that the United States has every right
to try to keep
people who have a high likelihood of having children out of wedlock,
with the proven higher probability of social dysfunction entailed thereby,
from immigrating into America.
As a matter of fact, even the frequently lauded Ellis Island entry point
had restrictions on who could enter.]
2007-11-CIS-Camarota
Immigrants in the United States, 2007by Steven A. Camarota
Center for Immigration Studies, 2007-11
A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population
Among the report’s findings (emphasis is added):
- The nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal)
reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007. - Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents,
the highest level in 80 years.
In 1970 it was one in 21;
in 1980 it was one in 16; and
in 1990 it was one in 13. - Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien.
Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and
one-third of South American immigrants are illegal. - Since 2000,
10.3 million immigrants have arrived —
the highest seven-year period of immigration in U.S. history.
More than half of post-2000 arrivals (5.6 million)
are estimated to be illegal aliens.
2007-12-13-WP
The Immigration SwampWashington Post Editorial, 2007-12-13
[The fans of all-but-unlimited immigration, and
the opponents of the past demographic balance in American,
have a seemingly limitless collection of terms of scorn
to tar
those who favor the past, indisputably highly successful, balance.
Evidently they hate success.
This editorial offers quite a collection of those terms of vituperation.
Here is a sample.]
nativist ferocity
absurd
non-starter
indelible stain
wrathful
nastier-than-thou
xenophobes
vigilantism
cravenly
cruel
immigrant-bashing
toxic
nativist zeal
venomous
pernicious
grandiose
far-fetched
paroxysms
anti-immigrant
fervor
spasms
violence
persecution
subverting
drowning out reason
uproar
see logic defeated
posturing
political cowardice
poisonous
diatribes
ferocity
demagogues
ugly
[That’s quite a mass of invective
to throw at those who prefer traditional America,
the America they grew up in,
and which became, as few dispute, the world’s number one power.
In the minds of Donald Graham, Fred Hiatt,
and the advocates of demographic revolution,
why stick with a winning team?]
2008
2008-07-28-AP-Iowa-Kosher-Somali
After raid, Iowa town deals with Somali immigrantsBy HENRY C. JACKSON,
The Associated Press, 2008-07-28 (at Washington Post)
2009
2009-04-21-WP-KHN-Barclay-health-care-language-translation
Speaking the Same LanguageMedical Providers Struggle to Communicate With Immigrant Patients
By Eliza Barclay
Kaiser Health News
Washington Post, 2009-04-21
[An excerpt.]
“All providers in this area should . . . have a mechanism to deal with language barriers,” said Isabel van Isschot, director of interpretation services at La Clinica del Pueblo in Washington, which supplies interpreters to health facilities. When patients don’t have access to an interpreter, she said, “I think that’s a form of discrimination.”
...
A 45-year-old federal civil rights law requires hospitals and doctors who accept federal funds to offer language services. Some federal funding for interpretation services is available through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, state-run programs that serve the poor and children, respectively. But to obtain the money, states have to pitch in some of their own. The District and Virginia have done so; Maryland has not.
California alone has put the funding burden on private insurers for patients who have that coverage. Some other states are considering similar legislation, but the issue is not a political priority in the Washington area, advocates say, even though about 20 percent of residents in the region are foreign-born, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Some 110 languages are spoken here, an analysis of 2000 Census data by the U.S. English Foundation found, making the Washington area the sixth most linguistically diverse urban area in the United States.
Though many immigrants speak enough English to get by in their workplace, that may not be sufficient in the doctor’s office, where medical jargon and emotional reactions can cloud their ability to communicate.
...
Other health-care organizations have been slower to invest in interpretation services.
[“Invest” hardly seems like the right word here.]
...
This article was produced through a collaboration between
The Post and Kaiser Health News.
KHN is a service of the Kaiser Family Foundation,
a nonpartisan health-care-policy research organization
unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
2009-08-24-NR-Alexiev-California-Mexico
Catching Up to MexicoIllegal immigration is depleting California’s human capital
and ravaging its economy
by ALEX ALEXIEV
National Review, 2009-08-24
California’s financial unraveling has prompted a long-overdue debate about taxes, regulation, and government spending, but the state’s media and government continue to ignore what could be an even greater problem: the irreparable damage to California’s human capital that nearly 30 years of unrestrained illegal immigration has achieved.
This is not an immigration problem, or even an illegal-immigration problem, per se. A strong case could be made that, in terms of educational achievement, industriousness, and entrepreneurial acumen, Asian immigrants to California have proven superior to white natives of the state. Therefore, if California were to experience a wave of mass immigration from Asia, its long-term economic prospects would be improved. Today’s Hispanic immigrants would probably have the same effect if they came from the top 10 to 20 percent of their society — according to those same measures of human capital — rather than from its bottom rungs. But the influx has instead been composed mainly of the poorly educated, the unskilled, and the illiterate. Such immigrants will likely soon dominate the state’s overall population and politics.
In 2005, the California K–12 school system was 48.5 percent Hispanic, compared with 30.9 percent white. By now it is above 50 percent Hispanic. Two-thirds of kindergarten students were Hispanic, most of them unable to speak English.
For a closer glimpse of what’s in store for California, look at the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California and the second largest in the country. Of its roughly 700,000 students, almost three-quarters are Hispanic, 8.9 percent are white, and 11.2 percent are black. More than half of the Latino students (about 300,000) are “English learners” and, depending on whether you believe the district or independent scholars, anywhere between a third and a half drop out of high school, following significant attrition in middle school. A recent study by UC Santa Barbara’s California Dropout Research Project estimates that high-school dropouts in 2007 alone will cost the state $24.2 billion in future economic losses.
Even those who graduate aren’t necessarily headed to success. According to one study, 69 percent of Latino high-school graduates “do not meet college requirements or satisfy prerequisites for most jobs that pay a living wage.” It is difficult to see how the majority-Hispanic labor force of the future can provide the skills that the sophisticated Los Angeles economy demands. Already studies show that as many as 700,000 Los Angeles Latinos and some 65 percent of the city’s illegal immigrants work in L.A.’s huge underground economy.
The unhappy picture in Los Angeles is replicated to one degree or another across much of California and is taking a huge toll on the state’s economic competitiveness and long-term prospects. California’s educational system, once easily the best in the country, is today mired in mediocrity — near the bottom among the 50 states as judged by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in math, science, reading, and writing. And for the first time in its history, California is experiencing an increase in adult illiteracy. In 2003, it had the highest adult illiteracy in the United States, 23 percent — nearly 50 percent higher than a decade earlier. In some counties (Imperial at 41 percent, Los Angeles at 33 percent) illiteracy approaches sub-Saharan levels.
Perhaps even more important than the collapse of educational achievement among the lower strata is a deterioration of the higher education that was for decades the basis of California’s preeminence in science and technology. California currently ranks 40th among the 50 states in college-attendance rates, and it already faces a significant shortage of college graduates. Studies have shown that the economy will need 40 percent of its workers to be college-educated by 2020, compared with today’s 32 percent. Given the aging white population (average age, 42), many of these new graduates will have to come from the burgeoning Latino immigrant population (average age, 26). By one estimate, this would require tripling of the number of college-educated immigrants, an impossibility if current trends hold. The state’s inability to improve the educational attainment of its residents will result in a “substantial decline in per capita income” and “place California last among the 50 states” by 2020, according to a study by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.
The mediocre education system, along with the unfriendly business climate and confiscatory tax regime, is driving educated, middle-class Californians out of the state. Between 2000 and 2005, more people with college degrees left California than came in, according to research by the Hewlett Foundation. Since then this trend has accelerated, and the state lost 2.2 million members of its young, educated, tax-paying middle class between 2004 and 2007. IRS data show that of recent migrants from the Golden State to places like Texas and Oklahoma, who average 29 years of age, 58 percent have received at least some college education and 53 percent own their homes.
In short, we are witnessing a highly advanced and prosperous state, long endowed with superior human capital, turning into the exact opposite in just one generation. What can be done to stop this race to the bottom? The answer is simple: California and Washington need to enforce existing immigration law. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince the public that this is necessary, so deeply entrenched are myths about illegal immigration.
One myth is that because America is a country of immigrants and has successfully absorbed waves of immigration in the past, it can absorb this wave. But the argument neglects two key differences between past waves and the current influx. First, the immigrant population is more than double today what it was following the most massive previous immigration wave (that of the late 19th century). Second, and much more important, as scholars from the Manhattan Institute have shown, earlier immigrants were much more likely to bring with them useful skills. Some Hispanic immigrants certainly do integrate, but most do not. Research has shown that even after 20 years in the country, most illegal aliens (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic) and their children remain poor, unskilled, and culturally isolated — they constitute a new permanent underclass.
Perhaps the most disingenuous myth about illegal immigrants is that they do not impose any cost on society. The reality is that even those who work — and half do not, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — cannot subsist on the wages they receive and depend on public assistance to a large degree. Research on Los Angeles immigrants by Harvard University scholar George J. Borjas shows that 40.1 percent of immigrant families with non-citizen heads of household receive welfare, compared with 12.7 percent of households with native-born heads. Illegal immigrants also increase public expenditures on health care, education, and prisons. In California today, illegal immigrants’ cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be $13 billion — half the state’s budget deficit.
The state should stop providing welfare and other social services to illegal aliens — as existing statutes demand — and severely punish employers who break the law by hiring illegal immigrants. This would immediately remove powerful economic incentives for illegal immigration, and millions of illegal aliens would return to their countries. Instead, with President Obama in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress, an amnesty for the country’s 13 million illegal immigrants may be soon to come.
Milton Friedman once said that unrestrained immigration and the welfare state do not mix. Must we wait until California catches up with Mexico to realize how right he was?
Mr. Alexiev is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
2009-08-24-NR-Richwine-Congealing-Pot
The Congealing PotToday’s immigrants are different from waves past
by JASON RICHWINE
National Review, 2009-08-24
2010
2010-01-29-WP-Editorial-Haiti
The U.S. should welcome Haitians inWashington Post Editorial, 2010-01-29
Some comment by the author of this blog on this editorial:
The news media regularly informs us of
the dire joblessness situation within the American black community.
Given that, it makes no sense
to add yet more unskilled people to the unemployment lines.
Nor adherents of voodoo.
The island of Hispaniola contains two political entities,
the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
It does seem to be in the path of more than its share of hurricanes,
but somehow these seem to have a greater detrimental impact on Haiti
than on its neighbor.
If Haitians want to more to a location less threatened by hurricanes,
there is an excellent continent where they could feel right at home:
their ancestral homeland, Africa.
The Arizona Immigration Law
2010-04-26-York-Arizona-Carefully-crafted
A carefully crafted immigration law in ArizonaBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-04-26
Has anyone actually read the law?
Contrary to the talk,
it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure
designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona.
Its authors anticipated criticism and
went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional
and will hold up in court.
It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.
...
The law requires police to check with federal authorities
on a person’s immigration status,
if officers have stopped that person for some legitimate reason
and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally.
The heart of the law is this provision:
“For any lawful contact made by
a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency…
where reasonable suspicion exists that
the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States,
a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable,
to determine the immigration status of the person…”
...
What fewer people have noticed is the phrase “lawful contact,”
which defines what must be going on
before police even think about checking immigration status.
“That means the officer
is already engaged in some detention of an individual
because he’s violated some other law,”
says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor
who helped draft the measure.
“The most likely context where this law would come into play
is a traffic stop.”
As far as “reasonable suspicion” is concerned,
there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea,
but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances
that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking.
It’s not race -- Arizona’s new law specifically says
race and ethnicity cannot be the sole factors
in determining a reasonable suspicion.
...
The law clearly says that
if someone produces a valid Arizona driver’s license,
or other state-issued identification,
they are presumed to be here legally.
There’s no reasonable suspicion.
Is having to produce a driver’s license too burdensome?
These days, natural-born U.S. citizens, and everybody else, too,
are required to show a driver’s license
to get on an airplane, to check into a hotel,
even to purchase some over-the-counter allergy medicines.
If it’s a burden, it’s a burden on everyone.
2010-04-28-York-Arizona-Gerson
What America is Michael Gerson living in?By BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-04-28
[In fact, Gerson responded to York's criticism of him,
and York responded in turn.
You can read the debate here.]
2010-04-29-Kane-Arizona
Rule of law is not for sale in AmericaBy Gregory Kane
Washington Examiner, 2010-04-29
About the documentary “Un Sueno Americano.”
2010-04-30-York-Arizona-Obama-could-lose
How Obama could lose Arizona immigration battleBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-04-30
2010-04-30-York-Arizona-tweaks
In response to critics, Arizona tweaks new immigration lawBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-04-30
2010-05-01-York-Arizona-10-dumbest-things
Top 10 dumbest things said about the Arizona immigration lawBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-05-01
2010-05-04-York-Arizona-bargain
Enforcing immigration law would be a bargainBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-05-04
2010-05-06-York-Arizona-Obama-attacks
Obama attacks again:AZ law would 'single out people because of who they look like'
By BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-05-06
2010-05-11-York-Arizona-Obama-attacks
No winners in boycott of Ariz. immigration lawBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-05-11
2010-05-20-AP-Baldor-Senators-press-for-troops-on-border
Senators press for National Guard troops on borderby Lolita C. Baldor
AP/Examiner, 2010-05-20
...
“If you’ll indulge me, we think we have another crisis on the border,”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
told Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at a hearing this week.
“I want to know about
whether you’re going to send the Guard to the border or not.”
When she tried to explain other DHS improvements along the border,
McCain cut her off.
“People’s homes are being violated,
and their families can’t take kids to the bus stop,”
the senator fumed.
“And you are very familiar with the issue,
because you yourself asked for the Guard to go to the border back in 2006.”
Napolitano, a former Arizona governor,
responded that the request involves the White House
as well as the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department,
and is still in the interagency process.
While she said she would like the decision to be made as soon as possible,
she added she could not say when she would have an answer.
“We don’t have a resolution on that yet,”
Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Renuart, who headed the U.S. Northern Command
until his retirement Wednesday after 39 years of service,
added that
while money is a point of contention,
the greater disagreement centers on
what missions the National Guard would perform.
He said the discussion between the Defense and Homeland Security departments continues,
and some of the requests “have evolved a bit in this interim period.”
He did not provide details.
First floated last June,
the idea was to use 1,500 Guard troops temporarily
to supplement border patrol agents.
The Pentagon and Homeland Security drafted a $225 million plan,
but disagreed over who would pay for it and how the troops would be utilized.
Pentagon officials,
worried about perceptions that the U.S. was militarizing the border,
argued that the Guard could only be used for particular duties.
Military leaders said
they did not want Guard troops to screen vehicles at border points
or perform any law enforcement duties,
and said the program should be temporary
and not tied to any existing program that could get extended.
Defense officials have said that
possible missions for the Guard soldiers could include
surveillance along the border, intelligence analysis,
helicopter transportation support
and aviation surveillance,
which likely would involve unmanned aircraft.
...
2010-05-21-York-Arizona-Obama-backs-Mexico
On immigration, Obama backs Mexico, not ArizonaBy BYRON YORK
Washington Examiner, 2010-05-21
2010-05-28-WP-Adams-Kirk
The truth behind Arizona's immigration lawBy Kirk Adams
Washington Post, 2010-05-28
...
Arizona has plenty to do fighting the effects of illegal immigration.
It’s a shame that
because of our efforts to protect our citizens and uphold federal law,
we now have to fight ignorance, too.
The writer, a Republican from Mesa,
is speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.
2010-06-24-NYT-French-World-Cup-team
Racial Tinge Stains World Cup Exit in FranceBy STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, 2010-06-24
[This article, of course, pertains to immigration into Europe,
not into the U.S.
For the background, see the previous day story
“Loss Completes France’s Dishonor”,
where
France’s sports minister, Roselyne Bachelot,
accused the French soccer team of tarnishing France’s image
and called their behavior a “moral disaster”.]
2010-08-09-NYT-France-Grenoble-Villeneuve
Utopian Dream Becomes Battleground in FranceBy STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, 2010-08-09
2011
011-12-21-de-Silva-Visa-policy
Visa policy insults American workersBy: Ian de Silva
Washington Examiner, 2011-12-21
2013
2013-10-31-NYT-behind-roar-of-politics-whispers-of-race-persist
Behind the Roar of Political Debates, Whispers of Race PersistBy JOHN HARWOOD
New York Times, 2013-10-31
WASHINGTON —
President Obama last week sought to turn attention from health care to immigration —
in other words, from one racially divisive issue to another.
Whites tend to hold negative views of Obamacare,
while blacks tend to like it.
Specifically,
55 percent of whites, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found this year,
consider Mr. Obama’s health care law a bad idea,
while 59 percent of blacks call it a good idea.
On immigration,
51 percent of whites oppose legal status for illegal residents, but
63 percent of blacks and 76 percent of Hispanics favor it.
The statistics mirror the core philosophical division
in Washington’s fierce battles over taxes, spending and debt.
Whites say government does too much,
while blacks and Hispanics say it should do more to meet people’s needs.
Those attitudes, and the continued growth of the nonwhite population,
have produced this sometimes-overlooked result:
American politics has grown increasingly polarized by race,
as well as by party and ideology.
That reality promises to command more attention as the day draws closer
when whites will no longer make up a majority of the population,
which the Census Bureau projects will be in 2043.
...
2013-11-09-WP-too-much-of-too-little
Too much of too littleby Eli Saslow
Washington Post, 2013-11-09
McAllen, Tex. — They were already running late for a doctor’s appointment, but first the Salas family hurried into their kitchen for another breakfast paid for by the federal government. The 4-year-old grabbed a bag of cheddar-flavored potato chips and a granola bar. The 9-year-old filled a bowl with sugary cereal and then gulped down chocolate milk. Their mother, Blanca, arrived at the refrigerator and reached into the drawer where she stored the insulin needed to treat her diabetes. She filled a needle with fluid and injected it into her stomach with a practiced jab.
“Let’s go,” she told the children, rushing them out of the kitchen and into the car. “We can stop for snacks on our way home.”
The family checkup had been scheduled at the insistence of a school nurse, who wanted the Salas family to address two concerns: They were suffering from both a shortage of nutritious food and a diet of excess — paradoxical problems that have become increasingly interconnected in the United States, and especially in South Texas.
For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp benefits ...
[I can find no mention of a husband for Ms. Salas in this article.
Who fathered the children?
In any case, Uncle Sam is the de facto husband.
And the taxpayers foot the bill.]
2014
2014-04-17-NYT-us-deportations-drop-43-percent-in-last-five-years
Court Deportations Drop 43 Percent in Last Five YearsBy JULIA PRESTON
New York Times, 2014-04-17
New deportation cases
brought by the Obama administration in the nation’s immigration courts
have been declining steadily since 2009
and judges have increasingly ruled against deportations,
leading to a 43 percent drop
in the number of deportations through the courts in the last five years,
according to Justice Department statistics released on Wednesday.
The figures show that
the administration opened 26 percent fewer deportation cases in the courts last year than in 2009.
In 2013, immigration judges ordered deportations in 105,064 cases nationwide.
The statistics present a different picture of President Obama’s enforcement policies
than the one painted by many immigrant advocates,
who have assailed the president as the “deporter in chief”
and accused him of rushing to reach a record of two million deportations.
While Mr. Obama has deported more foreigners than any other president,
the pace of deportations has recently declined.
The steepest drop in deportations filed in the courts came after 2011,
when the administration began to apply more aggressively
a policy of prosecutorial discretion
that officials said would lead to
fewer deportations of illegal immigrants who had no criminal record.
In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security opened 187,678 deportation cases,
nearly 50,000 fewer than in 2011.
At the same time, the share of cases in which judges decided against deportation
and for allowing foreigners to remain in the United States has consistently increased,
to about one-third in 2013 from about one-fifth in 2009.
...
2014-10-01-Census-Bureau-African-born-population-doubled-every-decade-since-1970
African-Born Population in U.S. Roughly Doubled Every Decade Since 1970, Census Bureau ReportsU.S. Census Bureau, 2014-10-01
The foreign-born population from Africa
has grown rapidly in the United States during the last 40 years,
increasing from about 80,000 in 1970
to about 1.6 million in the period from 2008 to 2012,
according to a U.S. Census Bureau brief released today.
The population has roughly doubled each decade since 1970,
with the largest increase happening from 2000 to 2008-2012.
...
2014-11-15-NYT-The-Big-Money-Behind-The-Push-for-More-Immigration
The Big Money Behind the Push for an Immigration OverhaulBy JULIA PRESTON
New York Times, 2014-11-15
When President Obama announces major changes to the nation’s immigration enforcement system as early as next week, his decision will partly be a result of a yearslong campaign of pressure by immigrant rights groups, which have grown from a cluster of lobbying organizations into a national force.
A vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from some of the nation’s wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally.
The philanthropies helped the groups rebound after setbacks and financed the infrastructure of a network in constant motion, with marches, rallies, vigils, fasts, bus tours and voter drives. The donors maintained their support as the immigration issue became fiercely partisan on Capitol Hill and the activists intensified their protests, engaging in civil disobedience and brash confrontations with lawmakers and the police.
The donors’ strategy arose in 2007, as immigrant groups nursed wounds from a rout after a bill pushed by President George W. Bush failed in Congress.
“For all our vaunted work, we were basically a fractious coalition that just got our butts kicked,” said Frank Sharry, a longtime advocate who is now executive director of America’s Voice, a core organization in the coalition.
Atlantic and several other philanthropies funded a series of soul-searching retreats. Days and nights of arguments produced a plan that came to be known as the four pillars. The groups agreed to redouble their local community organizing; to expand their work into mobilizing voters; to create policy research to underpin their pro-immigrant message; and to “turbocharge” their communications with the news media, as Mr. Sharry put it, a task that fell to him.
“The good news was that the funders really got the idea of building up a movement that could press for change at all levels,” Mr. Sharry said. “We were really talking about a movement that could win the grand prize: legislation that puts 11 million people on a path to citizenship.”
The philanthropies focused on a dozen regional immigrant rights organizations that make up the backbone of the movement. They also supported Latino service organizations like NCLR, also known as the National Council of La Raza, and legal groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or Maldef, and the National Immigration Law Center.
“The credit for our movement goes to immigrant leaders who had the courage to step out of the shadows,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, another core organization. “But the growth and speed of the movement was significantly aided by a small number of visionary philanthropies.”
Continue reading the main story
The Ford Foundation already had a decades-long track record of funding nonprofit organizations aiding immigrants. In 2003 Ford and Carnegie joined with several other donors to create an unusual collaborative fund to augment support for local groups. Since then, Carnegie has given about $100 million for immigration initiatives, all in conventional charitable donations, including millions to help legal immigrants become American citizens.
The Open Society Foundations of Mr. Soros, an immigrant born in Hungary, have invested about $76 million in the past decade under the rubric of immigrant rights, according to Archana Sahgal, a program officer.
The Atlantic Philanthropies were founded by Charles Feeney, an Irish-American billionaire who built his fortune with a chain of duty-free shops. Atlantic has given nearly $69 million in 72 immigration grants in the last decade. About half of those grants were made in donations that allow lobbying.
Most of the philanthropies’ funds have been tax-exempt charitable donations that cannot be used primarily to influence legislation. In 2013, when the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill and the House was weighing its options, several foundations also made multimillion-dollar “social welfare” grants that can be used for lobbying.
“Our grantees are generally working in the direction of our long-term goal of protecting the rights and dignity of immigrants and our belief that immigrants should have a voice,” said Mayra Peters-Quintero, a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation, which has donated about $80 million to immigrant groups over the past 10 years, all in charitable funds.
“The compass that drives our work is not the political cycle of the moment,” she said.
After setting their course in 2008, the advocacy groups expanded rapidly, amplifying their street actions with news conferences, Twitter feeds and texting lists.
A rally on the National Mall in March 2010 drew tens of thousands of protesters from around the country. But internecine bickering weakened the push for the Dream Act, a bill with a path to citizenship for immigrants who came when they were children. It failed in the Senate in late 2010.
One organization, the National Immigration Forum, branched out beyond the main donors and shifted its focus to recruiting conservatives, including evangelical Christians and leaders from business and law enforcement.
Young immigrants who call themselves Dreamers agitated for faster change. With little more than pocket money, students staged protests starting in 2009 that eventually prodded Mr. Obama three years later to take his first major executive action on immigration, a program that has given reprieves from deportation to more than 580,000 Dreamers.
“We did it with nothing, and we won,” said Cristina Jiménez, managing director of United We Dream, one group that led that crusade. “It was a powerful feeling.”
In 2013, Ford gave $2.3 million to United We Dream for a national effort to help young immigrants sign up for the reprieves.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
During the debate in Congress last year, the policy advocacy wing of Open Society gave $6.2 million to several groups in donations allowing lobbying.
“We have enormous faith in the groups with which we have had longstanding relationships, and we wanted to give them resources to pursue the best possible legislative fix for the problems in our immigration system,” said Caroline Chambers, deputy director of the Open Society Policy Center.
The advocates backed the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate last year. But the Republican majority in the House rejected it. In August, the House approved a bill to cancel the Dreamer reprieve program, an early warning to Mr. Obama that Republicans were ready to challenge any new unilateral action.
Foundation leaders said they have not had misgivings, even as Republican resistance to their beneficiaries’ agenda has intensified. “Name me something in the American political debate that isn’t partisan right now,” said Stephen McConnell, director of United States programs for the Atlantic Philanthropies. “It’s just the nature of the beast.”
Some opponents accuse the foundations of blatant partisanship.
“The whole apparatus has become the handmaiden of the Democratic Party,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which opposes legalization for unauthorized immigrants. “These foundations fund activist organizations designed to create ethnic identity enclaves and politically control them for partisan purposes.”
Mr. Stein’s group is funded by followers’ donations and by some large contributions from conservative donors.
Foundation leaders said they were vigilant to ensure their donations did not violate tax laws prohibiting them from funding partisan campaigns.
“We want to protect the interests of immigrants,” said Mr. McConnell of Atlantic. Echoing other foundation officers, he said, “Atlantic does not in any way support candidates or get involved in partisan politics.”
This year, as the prospects for legislation faded, foundation funding waned by at least 50 percent, activists said, leaving them scrounging. Atlantic, a mainstay, is winding down its operation, following Mr. Feeney’s instructions to give away his assets during his lifetime. Atlantic will make its last donations in 2016.
Immigrant and Latino groups carried on limited voter mobilization efforts for the midterm elections. They no longer have funds for showy rallies. They are frustrated that legislation with a path to citizenship seems out of reach.
But now that the White House has confirmed that Mr. Obama plans measures that could shield as many as five million immigrants from deportation, the advocates are mobilized and pushing him to act as broadly as his powers allow.
Last week, two days after the president held a news conference in the wake of the midterm elections, vowing to take executive action on immigration, Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA de Maryland and a coalition leader, was protesting once again in front of the White House.
“We expect the president to be big and bold,” he said. “This is his opportunity to make sure we are going to remember him as the president who made a difference for Latino and immigrant communities.”
2015-04-10-NYT-black-immigrants-have-quadrupled-since-1980
Black Immigrants Have Quadrupled Since 1980, Study SaysBy JESS BIDGOOD
New York Times, 2015-04-10
The number of black immigrants in the United States has more than quadrupled since 1980, a new study has found, and that group is expected to make up an increasing share of the nation’s black population in the decades ahead.
The study, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, found that 3.8 million black immigrants lived in the United States in 2013, and their share of the black population in the country “is projected to rise from 9 percent today to 16 percent by 2060,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of Hispanic research at Pew and an author of the study along with Monica Anderson.
That differs from the Hispanic population, Mr. Lopez said, because the share of Hispanics in America who are immigrants is declining.
Part of the reasons for the growth has been a number of federal laws over the years that have eased restrictions on immigrants, particularly for nations that had been underrepresented.
Half of the United States’ black immigrants are from Caribbean nations like Jamaica and Haiti, and 9 percent are from South and Central American countries. But the primary driver of the growth from 2000 to 2013 was the 137 percent increase in African immigrants, who now number 1.4 million.
About 30 percent of the sub-Saharan immigrants who arrived during that period came as refugees or were seeking asylum, fleeing the violence and fighting in that region of the continent.
[I.e., blacks fleeing blacks.
Yet in America, when the outcomes for blacks do not match those for whites,
that is blamed on racism.
But if the failure of blacks in America is due to racism,
where are the examples of black success when blacks are on their own,
in control of all aspects of their society?
Precisely what is "the potential of blacks"?
We can certainly see what their potential has realized in Africa and the Caribbean.
Where has it done better?]
...
2015-09-25-WP-how-a-1965-immigration-reform-created-illegal-immigration
How a 1965 immigration reform created illegal immigrationby Douglas S. Massey, the Henry G. Bryant professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project.
Washington Post PostEverything blog, 2015-09-25
Changing immigration laws without understanding how and why people move to the United States doesn't work.
It’s hard not to shake your head at one distinctively American aspect of immigration policymaking — how it tends to disregard social and economic dynamics that drive migratory flows and patterns. America’s immigration policy seems to be set in some aspirational abstract, focused on the type of country we want to be, but detached from real-world considerations.
Such was the case in 1965 when Congress enacted landmark reforms to our immigration law. While the immigration act had the noble goals of eliminating racism and prejudice from the U.S. immigration system; it was enacted without a clear understanding of how and why people migrate to the U.S. from particular countries, or how the anticipated congressional action might affect those patterns.
And so, one unintended consequence of the well-intentioned 1965 immigration reform was an unprecedented rise in illegal migration. This is turn set in motion a cycle of border enforcement that produced more, rather than fewer, undocumented migrants living north of the border — not to mention the toxic politics around the issue.
The goal of the legislation was to right wrongs —
including the bans on Asian and African immigration imposed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
and the restrictive quotas enacted in the 1920s to curtail the entry of southern and eastern Europeans. So Congress created a new unbiased system that would allocate visas equally across countries with an annual limit of 20,000 visas per country.
[Why is it wrong to forbid certain people to migrate to the United States?
Is there a "right to migrate"?
If there is, in your mind,
is there any limit on how many people take advantage of that right?
Suppose the entire population of Africa migrated to North America,
as rapidly as they could find transportation for the trip.
Why not, since as soon as they get here the liberal media is jumping all over itself
to declare them victims, of "endemic white racism",
with the only two things keeping them from having an equality of outcomes are
"white racism" and inadequate education for minorities.
As for me, I value the culture and achievements white people have made,
and hate to see that culture being displaced by the alternatives,
and those achievements being eroded and lost over a period of time.
Just for comparison,
I don't see many people complaining about Israel's limits on who may migrate to it.]
...
2015-09-28-Pew-Research-Center-study
Key takeaways on U.S. immigration: Past, present and futureby Anna Brown
Pew Research Center, 2015-09-28
[Note: The original article includes a number of visual displays
in addition to this text.]
It has been a half-century since the enactment of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which dramatically changed patterns of immigration to the U.S. by replacing long-standing national origin quotas that favored Northern and Western Europe with a new system allocating more visas to people from other countries around the world. A new Pew Research Center study explores how much the face of immigration has changed – and changed the country – and how much more it will do so by 2065.
Here are some of the key findings:
- Nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the U.S. since 1965, and accounting for deaths or those who have left, 43 million of them live here now. When their children and grandchildren are included, these immigrants added 72 million people to the nation’s population, accounting for 55% of population growth from 1965 to 2015. Immigrants and their descendants are projected to account for 88% of the population increase over the next 50 years.
- A near-record 13.9% of the U.S. population today is foreign born, with 45 million immigrants residing here. This compares with 5% in 1965, when the immigration law was changed. The current share of the population that is foreign born is only slightly below the record 14.8% that was seen during the waves of European-dominated immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This foreign-born share is projected to rise to 17.7% in 2065 as immigration continues to drive U.S. population growth.
- Since 1965, immigrants and their descendants have changed the country’s racial and ethnic makeup. In 1965, the population was 84% white, 11% black, 4% Hispanic and 1% Asian. The black share of the population has stayed steady since then, but Hispanics are now 18% of the population and Asians are 6%, while the white share of the population has fallen to 62%.
Without any post-1965 immigration, the nation’s racial and ethnic composition would be very different today: 75% white, 14% black, 8% Hispanic and 1% Asian. By 2055, the U.S. as a whole is projected to have no racial or ethnic majority. - Americans have mixed views on the impact immigrants have had on American society. Some 45% of adults say immigrants in the U.S. are making American society better in the long run, while 37% say they are making it worse.
The U.S. public’s views vary when asked about some key aspects of American life. The most negative view of the impact of immigrants is on the economy and crime, where half of Americans say they are making things worse. It’s a different story when it comes to immigrants’ impact on food, music and the arts: About half say they’re making things better. - There has been a shift since 1970 in the parts of the world sending the most immigrants to the U.S. – from Europe to Mexico to Asia. In 1970, the largest group of immigrants who had arrived within the previous five years were from Europe, continuing the trend of previous immigration waves. By 2000, almost half of newly arrived immigrants were from Central and South America (including 34% from Mexico alone). As immigration from Mexico slowed significantly in the 2000s, Asians came to make up the largest group of new immigrants beginning around 2011, and projections indicate that will still be the case in 2065.
- Today’s immigrants are more dispersed across the U.S. than they were in 1970. After the passage of the 1965 law, newly arrived immigrants increasingly settled in California, New York, Texas and Florida. By 1980 over half of those who arrived within the previous five years had settled there and, by 1990, nearly two-thirds had. But starting in the 1990s, new arrivals began to settle in less-traditional immigrant states, and by 2013, half of new arrivals chose to live in areas other than these big four magnet states.
- Today’s immigrants are better educated than those of 50 years ago. Compared with their counterparts of 50 years ago, a larger share of recent immigrants in 2013 had a high school diploma, a college degree or an advanced degree, and a smaller share had less than a ninth-grade education. Compared with U.S.-born adults, recent arrivals are less likely to have finished high school, but they are more likely to have completed college or to hold an advanced degree.
Labels: culture, immigration
posted by KHarbaugh at 12:00
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