I am also
aware that this subject demands a much longer post. Nevertheless, here are a
few musings, divided into a three part blog. My intent is to approach this
controversial topic as factually, fairly, and thoroughly as possible. Very few
people are on the fence. It seems as though the bulk of the controversy finds
itself on, or near, each end of a continuum.
On the one end,
we have those who welcome these new immigrants from around the world, and see their
presence as an enrichment of our society. They also consider them economically necessary
to counteract the low birth rate of Anglos. They bring their skills, learn new
ones, work hard, even in menial work (that is the way many of our immigrant
forbearers started), value family, and pay taxes to produce needed revenue
(local, state, and federal). On the other end, we find those who consider their
presence to be a threat to their heritage, to their jobs (sometimes true), and
what they believe to be America’s White Christian identity. In reality, this
issue has many layers, all of which cannot be dealt with in this post.
There is a
wide, seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the two most extreme sides of this
contentious debate. It seems that the majority of Americans are forming
opinions that are drifting slowly toward one end of this heated discussion or
the other. It expresses itself in fear, anger, confrontation, inflexibility,
and often violence.
At times, it
seems as though each side is attempting to make its case; but the two sides are
so far apart they are not communicating. The use of reductionist language to
characterize the other side of the spectrum does not bring us any closer to a
solution. The question is, how can such a chasm exist in our national debate, and
how we can resolve it? Perhaps a brief historical perspective may help us understand
how we got here. Prior to 1965, a quota system allowed 300,000 immigrants per year, almost all from Europe. The Immigration Reform Act of 1965 abolished that quota system, and opened immigration to people from all over the world, and allowed for family reunification. Quite quickly, during the succeeding decades, a) the number of legal immigrants quickly rose to over a million per year, and b) the vast majority, who were people of color, came from all over the world. That Reform Act transformed the demographic profile of our country.
Since 1965, around seventy million[i] immigrants of color have come here legally. The vast majority have come to give their children a better future. They became U.S. citizens, provided sorely needed labor, brought vibrancy to our cities with their small businesses, were willing to work in entry level jobs, and many of their children have become professionals. Many of these immigrants have founded or become the CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, generating jobs and revenue for local, state, and national treasuries.
However, the
focus of the controversy has been on the approximately 11 million undocumented
immigrants. “For the first time, the number of
unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. was lower in 2015 than it was at the
end of the Great Recession in 2009. The origin countries of unauthorized
immigrants also shifted during that time, with the number from Mexico declining
and the number from other regions rising, according to the latest Pew Research Center estimates.”[ii] Much to-do
has been made of the evils “they” bring with them, along with the implications
that the majority of the rest have less than honorable intentions, while saying
nothing about the other half of those without documentation. Naturally, like
any number of people this large, there will be some bad actors. However, many studies
have shown that violent crime by the undocumented is less than in the general
population. Nevertheless, a steady drumbeat of negative anecdotal information magnifies
the significance of those few. One of the tenants of propaganda is, “tell a lie
often enough and long enough, and in the end, the people will believe it.” Sadly,
it goes farther than that. Sadly, the tendency then is to reduce all immigrants
of color (almost 40% of our population) to be suspect and subtly tainted to be
here illegally. All of this feels a lot like scapegoating.
The result
has been a backlash that has exposed the persistent and ugly underbelly of
resistance to inclusiveness, and to delegitimize all the immigrants of color.
Doesn’t a national immigration policy based on false anecdotal evidence seem
extremely short-sighted to you?We have taken a very brief look at the current state of affairs. In the next post we will briefly examine the issue of U.S. immigration from an historical point of view.
[i] An
approximation based on personal calculation in census.gov.
[ii]
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/
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