Outlining his position on
immigration in August of last year, Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate
for U.S. president, made his motivating philosophy clear: “There
is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the
well-being of the American people.” Although this nationalistic appeal may
strike some readers as conservative, it is very similar to the position taken
by U.S. civil rights icon and Democrat Barbara
Jordan, who before her death in 1996 headed President Bill Clinton’s
commission on immigration reform. “It is both a right and a responsibility of a
democratic society,” she argued, “to manage immigration so that it serves the
national interest.” Trump’s rhetoric has of course been overheated and insensitive at times, but his
view on immigration—that it should be designed to benefit the receiving
country—is widely held.
In the United States, there is
strong evidence that the national interest has not been well served by the
country’s immigration policy over the last five decades. Even as levels of
immigration have approached historic highs, debate on the topic has been
subdued, and policymakers and opinion leaders in both parties have tended to
overstate the benefits and understate or ignore the costs of immigration.
It would make a great deal of sense for the country to reform its immigration
policies by more vigorously enforcing existing laws, and by moving away from
the current system, which primarily admits immigrants based on family
relationships, toward one based on the interests of Americans.
IMMIGRANT NATION
Trump did not create the strong
dissatisfaction with immigration felt by his working-class supporters, but he
certainly harnessed it. Voters’ sense that he would restrict immigration may be
the single most important factor that helped him win the longtime Democratic
stronghold of the industrial Midwest, and thus the presidency. There are two
primary reasons why immigration has become so controversial, and why Trump’s
message resonated. The first is lax enforcement and the subsequently large
population of immigrants living in the country illegally. But although
illegal immigration grabs most of the headlines, a second factor makes many
Americans uncomfortable with the current policy. It is the sheer number of
immigrants, legal or otherwise. The United States currently grants one million
immigrants lawful permanent residence (or a “green card”) each year, which
means that they can stay as long as they wish and become citizens after five
years, or three if they are married to a U.S. citizen. Roughly 700,000
long-term visitors, mostly guest workers and foreign students, come annually as
well.
Such a large annual influx adds up:
In 2015, data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that 43.3 million immigrants lived in the
country—double the number from 1990. The census data include roughly ten
million illegal immigrants, while roughly a million more go uncounted. In
contrast to most countries, the United States grants citizenship to everyone
born on its soil, including the children of tourists or illegal immigrants, so
the above figures do not include any U.S.-born children of immigrants.
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Proponents of immigration to the
United States often contend that the country is a “nation of immigrants,” and
certainly immigration has played an important role in American history.
Nevertheless, immigrants currently represent 13.5 percent of the total U.S.
population, the highest percentage in over 100 years. The Census Bureau projects that by 2025, the
immigrant share of the population will reach 15 percent, surpassing the United
States’ all-time high of 14.8 percent, reached in 1890. Without a change in
policy, that share will continue to increase throughout the twenty-first
century. Counting immigrants plus their descendants, the Pew Research Center
estimates that since 1965, when the United States liberalized its laws,
immigration has added 72 million people to the country—a
number larger than the current population of France.
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Given these numbers, it is striking
that public officials in the United States have focused almost exclusively on
the country’s 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, who account for only one
quarter of the total immigrant population. Legal immigration has a much larger
impact on the United States, yet the country’s leaders have seldom asked the
big questions. What, for example, is the absorption capacity of the nation's
schools and infrastructure? How will the least-skilled Americans fare in labor
market competition with immigrants? Or, perhaps most importantly, how many
immigrants can the United States assimilate into its culture? Trump has not
always approached these questions carefully, or with much sensitivity, but to
his credit he has at least raised them.
TIMES CHANGE
Regarding cultural assimilation,
advocates of open immigration policies often argue that there is no problem. During the last great
wave of immigration, from roughly 1880 to 1920, Americans feared the newcomers
would not blend in, but for the most part they ended up assimilating.
Therefore, as this reasoning goes, all immigrants will assimilate.
Immigrants
currently represent 13.5 percent of the total U.S. population, the highest
percentage in over 100 years.
Unfortunately, however,
circumstances that helped Great Wave immigrants assimilate are not present
today. First, World War I and then legislation in the early 1920s dramatically
reduced new arrivals. By 1970 less than 5 percent of the U.S. population was
foreign-born, down from 14.7 percent in 1910. This reduction helped immigrant
communities assimilate, as they were no longer continually refreshed by new
arrivals from the old country. But in recent decades, the dramatic growth
of immigrant enclaves has likely slowed the
pace of assimilation. Second, many of today’s immigrants, like those of the
past, have modest education levels, but unlike in the past, the modern U.S.
economy has fewer good jobs for unskilled workers. Partly for this reason,
immigrants do not improve their economic situation over time as much as
they did in the past. Third, technology allows immigrants to preserve ties with
the homeland in ways that were not possible a century ago. Calling, texting,
emailing, FaceTiming, and traveling home are all relatively cheap and easy.
Fourth, the United States’ attitude
toward newcomers has also changed. In the past, there was more of a consensus
about the desirability of assimilation. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis,
the son of Jewish immigrants, said in a 1915 speech on “True Americanism” that
immigrants needed to do more than just learn English and native manners.
Rather, he argued, they “must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals
and aspirations.” This was a widely held belief. In his book The Unmaking of Americans, the
journalist John J. Miller has described how at the turn of the twentieth
century, organizations such as the North American Civic League for Immigrants
put out pamphlets celebrating the United States and helping immigrants
understand and embrace the history and culture of their adopted
country.
In the United States today, as in
many Western countries, this kind of robust emphasis on assimilation has
been replaced with multiculturalism, which holds
that there is no single American culture, that immigrants and their descendants
should retain their identity, and that the country should accommodate the new
arrivals’ culture rather than the other way around. Bilingual education,
legislative districts drawn along ethnic lines, and foreign language ballots
are all efforts to change U.S. society to accommodate immigrants in a way that
is very different from the past. Newcomers additionally benefit from
affirmative action and diversity initiatives originally designed to help
African Americans. Such race- and ethnicity-conscious measures encourage
immigrants to see themselves as separate from society and in need of special
treatment due to the hostility of ordinary Americans. John Fonte, a scholar at the Hudson Institute,
has argued that such policies, which encourage immigrants to retain their
language and culture, make patriotic assimilation less likely.
Of course, many Americans still
embrace the goal of assimilation. A recent Associated Press survey found that a
majority of Americans think that their country should have an essential culture
that immigrants adopt. But the kind of assimilation promoted by Brandeis and
the North American Civic League no longer has elite backing. As a result, even
institutions seemingly designed to help immigrants integrate end up giving them
mixed messages. As political psychologist Stanley Renshon points out, many
immigrant-based organizations today do help immigrants learn English, but they
also work hard to reinforce ties to the old country.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
A further area of contention in the
immigration debate is its economic and fiscal impact. Many immigrant families
prosper in the United States, but a large fraction do not, adding significantly
to social problems. Nearly one-third of all U.S. children living in poverty today
have an immigrant father, and immigrants and their children account for
almost one in three U.S. residents without
health insurance. Despite some restrictions on new immigrants’ ability to use
means-tested assistance programs, some 51 percent of immigrant-headed households
use the welfare system, compared to 30 percent of native households. Of
immigrant households with children, two-thirds access food assistance programs. Cutting
immigrants off from these programs would be unwise and politically impossible,
but it is fair to question a system that welcomes immigrants who are so poor
that they cannot feed their own children.
To be clear, most immigrants come to
the United States to work. But because the U.S. legal immigration system
prioritizes family relationships over job skills—and because the government has
generally tolerated illegal immigration—a large share of immigrants are
unskilled. In fact, half of the adult immigrants in the United States have
no education beyond high school. Such
workers generally earn low wages, which means that they rely on the welfare
state even though they are working.
This past fall, an exhaustive study by the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that immigrants and their dependents
use significantly more in public services than they pay in taxes, and the net
drain could be as high as $296 billion per year. The academies also projected
the fiscal impact into the future with mixed results—four of their scenarios
showed a net fiscal drain after 75 years, and four showed a net fiscal benefit.
What is clear, however, is that at present the fiscal effect is large and
negative. The study also showed, unsurprisingly, that college-educated
immigrants are a net fiscal benefit, while those without a degree are typically
a net fiscal drain. Drawing on the academies’ finding, the Trump administration has suggested
moving to a “merit-based” immigration system that would select immigrants who
can support themselves.
Immigration has also affected the
U.S. labor market. One of the nation’s leading immigration economists,
Harvard’s George Borjas, recently wrote in The New York Times that
by increasing the supply of workers, immigration reduces wages for some
Americans. For example, only 7 percent of lawyers in the United States are
immigrants, but 49 percent of maids are immigrants, as are one-third of
construction laborers and grounds workers. The losers from immigration are
less-educated Americans, many of them black and Hispanic, who work in these
high-immigrant occupations. The country needs to give more consideration to the
impact of immigration on the poorest and least-educated Americans.
Another common argument for
immigration is that it will solve Western countries’ main demographic
problem—that of an aging population. Immigrants, so the argument goes, will
provide the next generation of workers to pay into welfare-state programs. But
to help government finances, immigrants would have to be a net fiscal benefit,
which is not the case. Furthermore, the economist Carl Schmertmann showed more than two
decades ago that “constant inflows of immigrants, even at relatively young
ages, do not necessarily rejuvenate low-fertility populations… [and] may even
contribute to population aging.” Analysis by myself
and several colleagues supports this conclusion. In short,
immigrants grow old like everyone else, and in the United States they tend not
to have very large families. In 2015 the median age of an immigrant was 40
years, compared to 36 for the native-born. And the United States’ overall
fertility rate, including immigrants, is 1.82 children per woman, which only
falls to 1.75 once immigrants are excluded. In other words, immigrants increase
the fertility rate by just four percent. The United States will have to look
elsewhere to deal with its aging population.
A final argument in favor of
immigration centers on the benefits to immigrants themselves, especially the
poorest ones, who see their wages rise dramatically upon moving to the First
World. But given the scope of Third World poverty, mass immigration is not the
best form of humanitarian relief. More than three billion people in the world
live in poverty—earning less than $2.50 a day. Even if legal immigration was
tripled to three million people a year, the United States would still only
admit about one percent of the world’s poor each decade. In contrast,
development assistance could help many more people in low-income countries.
Even if
legal immigration was tripled to three million people a year, the United States
would still only admit about one percent of the world’s poor each decade.
THE ART OF THE DEAL?
The last time that limiting
immigration was on the U.S. legislative agenda, in the mid-1990s, Barbara
Jordan’s commission suggested limiting family immigration and eliminating the
visa lottery, which gives out visas based on chance. Clinton first seemed to
endorse the recommendations, but then reversed course after Jordan died and the
political winds shifted. The effort to lower the level of immigration was
defeated in Congress by the same odd but formidable coalition of businesses,
ethnic pressure groups, progressives, and libertarians that has dominated the
immigration discourse from then until the Trump era.
With the election of Trump, a
political compromise in the United States might be possible. It could involve
legalizing some illegal immigrants in return for tightening policies on who
gets to come in. Prioritizing skilled immigration while cutting overall numbers
would increase the share of immigrants who are well educated and facilitate
assimilation. The RAISE Act, sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton
(R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), would do just that. Perhaps coupling the
RAISE Act with legalization for some share of illegal immigrants could be a way
forward.
Yet no matter what policy is
adopted, immigration will remain contentious because it involves tradeoffs and
competing moral claims. And for the foreseeable future, the number of people
who wish to come to the developed countries such as the United States will be
much greater than these countries are willing or able to allow.