Immigration policy is an unimaginable mess. Which seems strange for a nation of immigrants. Yet today many descendents of immigrants want to pull up the drawbridge.
But the political dynamic is changing. While the majority of people still may prefer less immigration, they typically vote on other issues. Hispanics react more negatively to restrictive immigration policy—and especially the impression of being anti-immigrant. That is one reason Mitt Romney received little more than a quarter of that community’s votes in November.
Now many Republicans are pushing immigration reform. Former President George W. Bush called on the nation to act “with a benevolent spirit and keep in mind the contribution of immigrants.”
The immigration issue takes many forms. Some 30 million people visit America annually. They make deals, play tourist, and see family. Yet visa procedures are burdensome and discourage travel. Some American consular officials treat every prospective visitor as if he wants to stay in the U.S. illegally.
The U.S. also is a traditional home for political refugees. Gaining asylum requires demonstrating fear of persecution. That often isn’t easy, especially since many oppressive states also are poor, leading to suspicion that asylum-seekers are covert economic migrants. Legal standards are not generous even for those whose lives may be at stake.
On average, around 2.6 million people enter America legally. About 1.1 million come as permanent residents and another 1.5 million temporarily—students and temporary workers, for instance. For more than a century there were few restrictions other than barring those with communicable diseases. In the early 1900s about 15 percent of the population was foreign born. Then Congress slammed shut the door. The U.S. refused to accept Jewish refugees even as Nazi persecution rose and World War II loomed. Eventually Washington cracked open the door again. Roughly 13 percent of the population today is foreign-born.
The immigration system is bureaucratic, arbitrary, and complicated, with rigid and overlapping quotas, national lotteries, and 25 different visa categories and subcategories. Attempt to navigate the system and you are reminded of Dante’s inscription for Hell: “abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
The most politically charged issue is illegal immigration, primarily from Mexico. Around 11 million people are thought to be in the U.S. illegally. Those here illegally are less likely to integrate into the community, develop long-term economic skills, and fulfill other legal requirements, such as buy auto insurance. They also are more vulnerable to mistreatment. Moreover, the illegal route is unfair to foreigners who “play by the rules” seeking one of the limited number of legal slots.
Immigration offers the U.S. substantial benefits. The relative openness of the American economy always has drawn the entrepreneurial minded and the more highly skilled and trained. Immigrants are more likely than natives to form businesses and generate patents. For instance, immigrants constitute 13 percent of the population but 18 percent of small-business owners. A Duke University study found that 25 percent of start-ups are run by foreign-born executives. Nearly four of every ten Fortune 500 companies were started by an immigrant or immigrant’s child.
More broadly, immigration expands the workforce and allows employers to quickly respond to changing demands. Bryan Caplan of George Mason University found that most immigrants are not directly competitive with most native workers.
Even when immigrants do compete, they encourage more productive Americans to move into higher-skilled work. Economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California (Davis) concluded that immigration raises the nation’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. As companies adjust their physical capacity to the expanded labor supply they increase productivity and ultimately workers’ salaries.
Notably, over the last two decades the U.S. created two million jobs annually with rising wages despite the steady inflow of illegal immigrants. Indeed, states with the highest inflow tended to have the greatest growth.
Nevertheless, illegal immigration from Mexico may lower wages, or at least slow the growth in wages, for low-income workers, especially minorities and those without high school degrees. But protecting the least desirable jobs is a poor substitute for encouraging better education and training.
In general, the benefits of immigration overwhelm any negative impacts. For instance, the National Research Council figured that immigration results in “significant positive gains” to the existing population. Similar was the conclusion of the Council of Economic Advisers.
More difficult to quantify is immigration’s impact on culture. The U.S. long was known as a “melting pot.” While immigrants didn’t give up their identities and languages, they did join a larger common culture. Critics of immigration fear that is less so today, especially with such policies as bilingual education and foreign language ballots.
Jacob Vignor of Duke figured that cultural assimilation is lower than a century ago, but has been on the rise since the 1980s. Assimilation varies by nationality. That of Mexicans is lower than average, but that may in part reflect the significant rate of illegal immigration, which discourages fuller integration.
The Center for American Progress concluded that assimilation continues, though it may be disguised when there are a large number of visible newcomers. In fact, Bryan Caplan found that Hispanic immigrants and especially their children are learning English as well as earlier immigrants. A Michigan State study reported that 88 percent of the children of Hispanic immigrants preferred English even though 90 percent of them spoke Spanish at home.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to immigration is the welfare state. Milton Friedman warned that the latter makes open borders impossible. Immigrant eligibility for some welfare benefits is limited, but access to education and health care is automatic even for those here illegally. The prospect of receiving free medical care draws expectant mothers from Mexico into U.S. Border States.
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