Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Immigration is Good For America
Tuesdays on WKYB I get to talk, mostly about happiness.
Immigrants are great for America. They improve the economy at the bottom and the top. They commit less crime. They pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. They have a higher fertility rate, which we need in an era of below-replacement fertility.
Some demagogues play on fears about immigrants, citing some scary stories. They do not, though, show the proportions of crime, welfare use, and other scary things that immigrants produce compared to the native population.
Much of the illegality of illegal immigrants comes from their immigration status. If we had an easy guest worker program, then they could live and work here above board. This would prevent them from undermining wages, and make them more likely to cooperate with the authorities on all manner of civil order tasks.
The current ban on some immigrants, and the widespread fears of coming here that the administration has generated among all foreigners, has already hurt us in tourism, in foreign students, and in the kinds of workers we are trying to attract.
Let's go back to e pluribus unum and welcome immigrants.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The broad sweep of xenophobia in much of the population(particularly in the under educated) is appeased by the feeling that their leader or emperor is going to eliminate those " ferners" which are responsible for all of their problems. In my small Kentucky town, we have a wonderful breakfast? pastry store run by an ethnic individual, and he feels compelled to have several American flags flying to prove that he is ok. Let us all hope that the original inhabitants of North America do not throw all of us out.
If Americans want to eat fresh fruit grown in the USA, it's mostly harvested by immigrants legal or not. Personally I try not to buy any fresh fruit from south of Panama.
I agree with the basic premise of your blog post, as do, I think, most Americans.
But when you say "They commit less crime", I wonder about whom you are speaking.
Every one of the "undocumented aliens" who are here are, by definition, criminals. Rather than obey our laws, their very first act on our soil was to break our law. Sure, most of them stay off the sky line so that they will not be apprehended, but their basic contempt for this Nation and its laws, and the selfishness exhibited by their willingness to jump the line, passing their law-abiding peers who play by the rules is what disgusts many of us.
Post a Comment