The Immigration “Problem”
Immigration is good. Yes, you read that correctly. Immigration is good: for our nation, for our economy, for our society.
As the Trump administration continues its vicious, cruel, extreme nationwide efforts to round up and deport immigrants wherever it can - including workplaces, schools, churches, courthouses, homes - too few ask one simple question: why? Why this hatred and hostility for someone who, through an accident of birth, comes from the “wrong” side of the border?
The United States of America is the great and prosperous nation it is today largely because of immigrants. Unless you, dear reader, are a descendent of indigenous American “Indians”, then you are the son or daughter of immigrants. (As for me personally, three generations ago, many of my ancestors lived in Ireland, France, and Canada.)
All around us, immigrants perform vital tasks in all sorts of industries from construction to hospitality to medicine to information technology and everything in between. Plus, they enrich our culture in ways too numerous to count. To recognize the valuable contributions that immigrants make, the Statue of Liberty still stands today, urging refuge for the “tired, the poor, and the huddled masses.”
Let us step thru the usual arguments of why immigration into the USA is supposedly bad.
It all starts with the silly argument that immigrants take our jobs. Baloney. This statement reveals a profound misunderstanding of how economics works. Immigrants, you see, are consumers, too; they need and want things like food, housing, clothing, transportation, entertainment, medicine, and such. This “demand” stimulates more “supply”. In an unhampered market, supply and demand try to balance each other out. The end result of immigration, then, is simply a bigger market, with more people both buying and selling.
If the job market was truly indeed a zero-sum, never-to-grow entity, then having babies should be a crime, because one day, the baby will grow up and take someone’s job! At least immigrants, unlike babies, are productive from Day One, instead of being a pure consumer all those years until adulthood.
Closely linked is the flawed argument that immigrants suppress wages. Well yeah but they also suppress prices! If not for immigrant labor, most of us could never afford to eat in a restaurant, or have our streets paved, or homes built or repaired, or get manicures or countless other services.
Next is the flawed argument that immigrants put stress on social services. This has nothing to do with immigration; rather, the root of the problem is the existence of government-provided social services. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is a crummy way to run a healthy economy. History has endlessly re-proven that free enterprise, not the government, is the most efficient way to provide the goods and services that people want and need. And yet, the argument persists that some things, like education, transportation, medicine, retirement insurance, air traffic control, and so-many other services, are too important to be entrusted to the free market! And so we must empower bureaucrats, and provide “free” service to everybody.
Now about all those violent criminal illegals. Well, if any person commits an act of theft or violence against life or or property, then yes, government has a vital role. But the perpetrator’s country of origin is irrelevant. Nobody mentions that native-born Americans commit crimes, too; in fact, more so. Study after study has shown that immigrants, in general, are more law-abiding, more religious, more family-oriented, and even more entrepreneurial than most American natives. If peace and order is the goal, then again, we need more immigrants, not less.
Ok, so what if “too many” immigrants are flooding in (however one defines “too many”)? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that “too many” are indeed attempting to immigrate here. The knee-jerk reaction to any social problem, real or imagined, including this one, is to attempt to erect (more) governmental barriers, never mind the $cost. Spoiler alert: it never works.
Furthermore, consider the profile of the typical immigrant: they leave behind their homes, their roots, families, jobs, and everything, and making the long, arduous, perilous, dangerous journey to come to the United States, a land they view as a shining beacon of hope, stability, and opportunity. Is that flattery, or what?!? Clearly, the USA is doing something right, and their native countries are doing something wrong.
I’ll tell you what it is: the governments in their native countries are crap. They are inept, tyrannical, and cruel, and are driving their own people away by the millions. If U.S. politicians had a lick of intelligence, they’d stand on their soapbox and exploit that simple fact, and point out that free markets and liberty work, and socialism, communism, and fascism don’t. Instead, our politicians keep trying to emulate these foreign dictators.
People have (or should have) the right to live, travel, and work wherever they please. Immigration laws are contrary to that right, and do not make the world a better place.