Editorials
(The following "Teen Editorial" was written by 15-year-old Timothy J.
Workman. What does this 9th grader know that your members of Congress don't?)
The key word in 'illegal immigrants' is 'illegal'
By Timothy J. Workman
The Workmans, Bennetts and Cioffis traveled months at sea to gain freedom
properly.
For 400 years, my family's blood has been shed on the battlefields of the
Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII and Vietnam. My uncles and grandfathers
before me fought savagely against foes, and together they and their brothers in
arms fulfilled their duty to God and country.
That is what being a true citizen of America's ideals and values is about, and
it is gained by fighting for the cause of freedom and independence, and doing so
passionately, whether it is in a courtroom or on a battlefield, after being
admitted lawfully and honorably to our society.
More and more I see today the infrastructure of our nation's ideals crumbling,
and the meaning of our citizenship and independence waning.
Would you believe me if I told you that a great-uncle (to the sixth power) of
mine took part in the Battle of Bunker Hill? Believe it because it is true. It
is true that he and his wartime comrades were among the first to set the
standards for all conflicts our flag would encounter. It is true that he lived
at the high point of American society.
What placed him, and to this day places him above all else is bravery, a
trademark of full-blooded Americans.
What my beef is for you today, ladies and gentleman, are the illegal immigrants.
What ticks me off, mainly, is that they feel they can hop the border and as long
as they can make it to Tucson, they are scot-free. They mooch off of our
government, we pay with our tax dollars for them to live an American life and in
return - as I see in my mind as a sum of all of their care for lawfulness and
freedom - an illegal Mexican flipping the American flag the bird.
Yes, you heard me, I didn't stutter once, and I mean what I say, you better
believe it. Don't get on my case, because I think the Mexicans who gained
freedom properly are the most deserving of it, and they deserve a round of
applause.
The illegal immigrants and President Bush deserve a reality update and a one-way
trip back to Chihuahua. Bush has got some nerve, demeaning the meaning of
American citizenship by proposing amnesty.
So, I guess uhhh 1/4 doesn't this make the sacrifice of prior generations
meaningless? All of our uncles and grandfathers who fought and died for freedom
are essentially just handing America off to a mass of unlawful immigrants. They
wouldn't want that, and there is nothing they can do from beyond the grave,
therefore, I take it upon myself.
Freedom so easily attainable that it doesn't even have to be worked for anymore
makes it meaningless. Sure, the illegals may say that they sacrificed their
lives on an endless, foodless, waterless trek through the heat of the desert for
freedom. But did they really? Or was it for the selfish purpose of using
preferences, yelling race discrimination and generally compelling each of us to
ensure, as their right, a superior life for them?
Yes, that is selfish, because they take what isn't lawfully theirs and they
think that is freedom. A vast majority, I guarantee you, are greeted with
American tax dollars once they have stepped all the way through the door of the
American household and tread on the carpet, whose threads are the unity and
structure of the legally recognized people of America. That's us, people!
America has been hoodwinked and spat upon by these people, and it is time to
weed out those who ask not what they can do for America, but just what America
can do for them, which cannot be done by condoning unlawful immigration.
If we can all think back to the 1980s we can really see how much the amnesty
helped then. Well, it didn't help then, or now, did it? Some people have this
habit of thinking that somehow the illegal immigrants turned legal will suddenly
bolster our economy and will "be forced to pay tax dollars."
You, reader, can see how ridiculous that statement is. Some use a different
name, steal an identity with another person's Social Security number, and taxes
are paid under that number. So, in essence, our government is being paid.
If we want to lead America into the future as a healthy political state, and as
an America with upright, honest qualities, then we will start with turning away
the idea of illegal immigrant legitimacy.
Why has our country stooped so low? Why don't we learn from the past? It is as
if President Bush is trying to please everybody, which he must believe is his
ticket to a second term, and he is doing so by embracing issues that are
opposite of what is the best for the citizens of America.
He is the ultimate Republicrat. His job is not to please but to uphold the
Constitution, mind you, and doing otherwise is inexcusable.
Breaking the law, and breaking the law and being rewarded makes a farce out of
our ancestors' blood, sweat and tears.
Timothy J. Workman is a freshman at Academy of Tucson.
Copyright The Tucson Citizen, 2002
What
happened to Earth Day environmentalists?
By
Dave Gorak, MCRI executive director
At
the beginning of my journalism career in Chicago 30 years ago, I rarely
saw a day that did not produce stories from around the country dealing with
some aspect of the environmental movement. At the heart of that movement was
the belief that its goals could be reached only through stabilization of our
population, which then stood at 203 million people.
The American people did their part by embracing zero population growth, a
practice that continues to this day to produce smaller families for
native-born Americans.
The many environmental successes since then notwithstanding, our main
objective of population stabilization has been a dismal failure, and we are
now paying the price in terms of accelerating urban sprawl, worsening traffic
congestion, overcrowded classrooms and loss of prime agricultural land to
development.
These problems have developed in main because annual immigration levels have
increased nearly five times and contributed to 70 percent of our population
growth since 1970.
Had annual immigration levels (coupled with zero population growth) remained
where they were then - under 300,000 people - Census Bureau and Immigration
and Naturalization Service statistics show our population would have peaked
at 255 million in 2020 before declining and eventually stabilizing at 236
million by 2050.
Today, this nation's population stands at 281 million people, thanks in large
part to the 1.2 million legal immigrants plus 300,000 to 500,000 illegal
immigrants who arrived here each year during the 1990s alone. At this rate,
our population will double in less than 70 years. All this happened despite
three presidential commissions that strongly urged a lowering of our
immigration levels.
This influx of newcomers also has been felt in DuPage County, whose
population grew 16 percent to 904,161 people during the 1990s. The Fund for
Immigrants and Refugees estimates that 92,374 new immigrants settled in the
collar counties and suburban Cook County between 1990 and 1996. According to
the Census Bureau, two-thirds of the estimated 1.5 million new residents who
will arrive in Illinois by 2025 will be immigrants. Most of them will settle
in the Chicago metropolitan area.
So what became of those environmentalists who gave us the first Earth Day? In
"Forsaking Fundamentals," a report just released by the Center for
Immigration Studies, authors Leon Kolankiewicz and Roy Beck explain why the
environmental movement totally abandoned population stabilization. Among
their findings:
• By 1972, the fertility rate in the this country had begun to decline
naturally, and many believed the problem of overpopulation had been solved
• Anti-abortion politics created an alliance between the pro-life movement
and the Catholic Church, and both these groups began to view population
stabilization in the same light as legalized abortion.
• In the late 1960s, human reproduction and the ills associated with
excessive population were intertwined, but as environmentalists walked away
from population issues, population groups turned their attention to women's
rights.
• The century-old environmental movements that seek to protect wildlife and
natural resources came into conflict with the New Left version of
environmentalism that links clean air, water and toxic contamination to race,
poverty and the evils of capitalism.
Those who claim to care about the environment without factoring in the impact
of mass immigration on every aspect of our daily lives are on a fool's
errand. Controlling population growth is not "anti-immigrant,"
"racist,"
"xenophobic" or "nativist." It is about large numbers of
people overwhelming
our society's ability to absorb them and, in the process, robbing future
generations of their heritage.
The above editorial was published June 1, 2001, by the Daily Herald,
Arlington Heights, IL.
Overcrowded Schools: It’s Not the Baby Boom Echo
By Steven Camarota
A new report from the Department of Education indicates that a dramatic increase in the number of public school students is overcrowding schools and severely straining public education in this country. President Clinton has used the report to call for more federal funding for education. Unfortunately, the report entitled "The Baby Boom Echo: No End in Sight," misses the point. All of the growth in the school age population is in fact a direct consequence of recent immigration and not the result of baby boomer's kids entering school.
Although the report barely mentions immigration, there is really no debate among demographers who study the issue. Official Census Bureau projections, as well as estimates done by the National Academy of Sciences, show that immigration is the cause of the growth in the school age population. The facts are actually quite straightforward. In 1998 there were 52 million school age children (5 to 17), roughly eight million of whom were either immigrants themselves or the child of an immigrant mother who had arrived since 1965, when the current immigration wave began. We know this because the Current Population Survey, a kind of mini-census taken each month by the Census Bureau, asks respondents if they are immigrants, when they arrived, and if their parents were immigrants. With this data, it is a very simple matter to estimate the impact of recent immigration on public schools.
The Department of Education's report shows that the number of students in public school has grown by about seven million since the early 1980s. Therefore, if we remove recent immigrants and their children, there would have been no growth in the number of students in school. In fact, it is very likely that the number of kids in public school would have declined over the last two decades.
Consider another piece of evidence. Official Census statistics show that almost the entire increase in the size of the school age population is among Asian and Hispanic children. Reflecting the racial-ethnic make up of the American population prior to changes in immigration law in the 1960s, the baby-boom generation is 95% black or white. If the children of baby-boomers accounted for the increase, then the growth in the school age population would have to be black and White, not Asian and Hispanic.
Of course, immigration does not explain rising enrollment in every school district. In some urban districts where enrollment would have declined significantly, immigration is causing the number of students to hold steady or increase only modestly. In some suburban districts where there are few immigrant families, enrollment is growing because young families continue to move to the suburbs. But, the national increase in the number of children in school is, without question, a direct consequence of recent immigration.
Perhaps the Clinton Administration and the Department of Education are unaware of these simple demographic facts. It seems much more likely, however, that they point to the "baby-boom echo" and not the real cause because they are reluctant to call attention to the impact of immigration.
The administration may fear that the American people would be unwilling to spend significantly more money on education if they knew that recent immigration was the reason. The fact is, these children are here to stay and it is clearly in the long-term interest of our country to educate them. But concern over public reaction does not justify issuing a misleading report about the causes of overcrowding in public schools.
This country needs a rational debate about how to improve public education. It also needs a rational debate about the wisdom of allowing 800,000 to 900,000 legal immigrants and several hundred thousand illegal aliens into the country each year. Because immigrants tend to be young and come from cultures that place a high value on large families, immigration will continue to cause the number of children in public schools to grow if the current policy remains unchanged. This surely has significant implications for the public schools. But, no matter how one feels about education or immigration, the public good is not well served by the kind of information coming out of the Department of Education.
Steven A. Camarota is Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.
Is Immigration the Answer to a Labor Shortage?
By Joseph L. Daleiden
Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Summer, 1998
Abstract
As the nation reaches the peak of a business cycle, labor shortages inevitably appear and pressure on wage rates increases, especially in the fastest growing industries. Businessmen frequently seek to increase immigration to obtain additional labor. The Federal Reserve Board also is inclined to increase interest rates to curb the possibility of inflation. Both short term fixes interfere with the natural workings of a market economy and can only create severe problems in the long term, including slower productivity growth, greater income inequality, and, ultimately, overpopulation and all of its related problems. In the final analysis, the use of immigration to solve a labor shortage is, in effect, an intergenerational Ponzi scheme.
Much of current talk about a labor shortage in the U.S. is reminiscent of the concern expressed by slave owners who argued that if the U.S. abolished slavery there would be no one to pick the cotton. Today we hear that without immigrants there will be no one to pick lettuce, or cut lawns, or work in restaurants or perform the million and one other low skilled tasks. In the high tech variation of the same theme, the software industry argues that there is a shortage of programmers and Information technology specialists. Some economists warn that the specter of labor shortages will result in lower national growth and higher inflation.
To understand whether there is any truth to these arguments, we have to review some basic economic and demographics tenants. Few persons other than economists realize that the only way a nation’s per capita wealth can increase is through increased productivity (more output using less input). In the absence of productivity growth, individuals can only increase their wealth through reallocation, i.e., the transfer of income from one individual or group to another individual or group.
A nation’s total wealth or annual output (Gross Domestic Product) can also increase through simple population growth, since there are more hands to produce things, but total wealth is largely irrelevant as a measure of changes in human well-being. China’s total output (GDP) is 8 times larger than that of Switzerland, but on a per capita basis the GDP of the Swiss is 20 times that of the Chinese.
In the normal business cycle, increases in productivity are shared by the providers of labor and the providers of capital (investors). Their respective shares are determined by the relative scarcity or abundance of each. During the 1950s and early ‘60s, the shortage of labor resulted in labor being able to improve their bargaining position and wages rose rapidly. During the 1970s and 1980s, the labor force swelled due to the baby boom and the growing labor force participation rates for women. The increased supply of labor relative to demand weakened the competitive position of labor. The growth of international markets and, hence, competition from low wage countries resulted in further downward pressure on wages.
The net result was that inflation adjusted hourly wage rates declined steadily from 1973 until 1993. Productivity grew 1.2% annually over this 20 year period, the total increase in productivity amounted to 24%. Therefore, if labor had maintained their bargaining power, real wages might have increased about 24%. Instead, real average weekly earnings dropped by 19%, a net difference of 43%. Some of this decline was offset by increased benefits, but total compensation adjusted for inflation remained unchanged over this period.
After the baby boom was absorbed into the labor force, the slowing in the growth of the labor force would normally have resulted in real wages rising again, but probably not as much as in the 1950s because the U.S. now faces far more competition from international markets. Nevertheless, since international exports account for only about 12% of total U.S. output, wage rates would still be primarily affected by the supply and demand for labor in the U.S.
Corporations understand that the supply and demand for labor determines wage rates and that is why they successfully lobbied Congress to increase immigration in 1990. Unions do not appear to understand the law of supply and demand, or else care more for attracting additional dues paying members than increasing their member’s wages. Hence, they did not oppose the increased immigration; in fact, they supported it!
Of course, given the huge increase in the labor force due to the post-war baby boom, the increase in immigration will not be sufficient to entirely offset the decline in the labor force as the post war baby boomers retire. However, the shortage is temporary since we will soon have the children of the baby boomers entering the labor force. Remember, the baby boom lasted from 1945 until 1957. Since many of the baby boomers started family formation much later than their parents, the bulk of children of the baby boomers range in age from 10 to 25. Therefore, most have not yet entered the labor force.
Can immigration fill this temporary job market shortfall? Certainly, but then there will once again be a labor surplus when the bulk of the baby boom children enter the labor market. Moreover, wage earners will be unable to increase their share of the productivity pie. A far better solution is to allow the free market to work. In this case, the labor shortage will result in increased wage rates making up some of the lost ground since 1973.
Tighter labor markets will also result in increased productivity as businesses seek to avoid higher labor cost by becoming more efficient or developing new methods of mechanization. The lemon growers of California are a good example. From W.W.II until 1964, lemon growers depended upon temporary workers under the Bacero program. When the Bacero program ended, fear of increased labor costs caused the growers to invest in mechanization and higher-producing dwarf trees. But when immigration increased again in the 1970s, the growers stopped innovating and increased their dependence on cheap labor.
Won’t higher wages result in inflation? Not if the Federal Reserve Board keeps its head and avoids pumping up the money supply as they did beginning in 1965. It works like this: the tight labor market results in increased wages. If wages rise faster than productivity, businesses will seek to maintain profits by increasing productivity (often by replacing labor with mechanization) or raising prices. But either reducing employment or increasing prices will cut aggregate demand for business products. The drop in demand means that inventories will increase and businesses will reduce production; this leads to decreased prices or layoffs. Layoffs will result in still less demand and further downward pressure on prices. Hence, inflation is curbed without the need for active government intervention.
One of the benefits of a market economy is that, for the most part, it is self- regulating. In fact, government intervention often does more harm than good by interfering with the normal adjustment processes. Importing millions of additional workers is one of those ill-advised interventions.
Initially, a high level of immigration will be viewed as an economic benefit as it results in higher levels of economic growth. The reason for increased economic growth will be in part simply due to the increase in population. However, as mentioned, only per capita GDP, not total GDP is a relevant measure of social welfare. When the National Research Council reported in 1997 that immigration increases economic output $1 to $10 billion annually, they were being disingenuous not to note that adding in the population of immigrants actually reduced GDP per capita. When the additional social costs of the immigrants are included, such as more schools, police and fire protection, water and sanitation, highways and streets, etc., not only is the per capita cost far greater, but the economic loss was estimated at $10 to 14 billion annually.
Nevertheless, it is entirely possible that in the short run increased immigration will have a net positive per capita benefit. The downward pressure on wage rates, and the resulting increase in return on investment, will attract additional capital from abroad. Furthermore, providing investors with a larger share of total national income will increase the average propensity to save and invest. As a consequence, productivity and, hence, average per capita GDP might increase. However, since the providers of capital will not share this output equally with the providers of labor, it is problematic whether labor will be better off. The NRC study found that even in the short term, immigration decreased the per capita income of the poorest 10% of society by 5% while increasing the income of the rest of society by a mere 0.2%.
In the long run, to be competitive other nations will have to either increase their productivity or, if they are unable to sufficiently increase productivity to offset the lower wages of the U.S., they will have to reduce their wage rates as well. The net result will be increasing worldwide inequality of income between the providers of capital and providers of labor.
There is yet another problem to be considered: the fate of those immigrants who fail to compete for jobs in the U.S. During the last great wave of immigration (1900-1914), 40% of the immigrants went back home when they couldn’t find jobs in the U.S. Now they, or the Americans they displace, will end up on welfare or struggling to survive on low paying jobs. Coming at a time when we are also seeking to push millions of welfare recipients into the workforce will make the problem that much worse.
The W.W.II baby boom created temporary problems when they entered school and the labor force, and will create some problems at the other end of their lives when they leave the labor force and retire. It is like the bulge in a python that swallowed a goat. It has to work its way through the digestive system. n the case of the baby boom, swallowing this huge increase in the labor force h as caused some economic heartburn, but you don’t treat indigestion by eating more food.
Finally, some policy makers have suggested that we increase the supply of labor to generate additional tax dollars to pay for the benefits of the baby boomers as they retire. But of course this would require adding still more immigrants to cover the benefits of the first wave of immigrants when they retire. Like any pyramid scheme requiring ever larger numbers, it must ultimately collapse. The answer to providing increased benefits is to increase productivity and, hence, per capita wealth. The primary way of increasing productivity is to increase investment per worker, not to simply increase the total number of workers.
Joseph Daleiden is a business economist, demographer and author who has worked in both the private and public sectors. Most recently he served as the Director of Long Term Planning for Ameritech. His latest book, "The American Dream: Can it Survive the 21st Century?" is to scheduled for release by Prometheus Books in February, 1999.
Immigration's Impact on African-American Job Opportunities
By Joseph L. Daleiden
Headway Magazine
February, 1998
Frequently, politicians and the media try to frame the immigration debate in terms of whether or not the United States should continue immigration. Put that way, the answer seems self-evident. Few Americans wish to halt all immigration. However, the real issue regarding immigration today is the same as it always has been: how many immigrants should be permitted. Throughout our history the number of immigrants has fluctuated from about 14,000 annually during the first 60 year's of our republic to today's record high of 1,000,000 legal and between 300,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants a year. To put today's immigration in perspective, the average number of immigrants since our nation's founding has been about 250,000 annually.
Many of the studies examining the consequences of immigration focus on the aggregate impact on the economy. However, such aggregates frequently obscure how immigration affects various socioeconomic groups. The conclusion from a review of immigration studies, including the most recent study by the National Academy of Science (NAS) is that in general investors have benefited while many wage earners have suffered. This is not surprising, since basic economic theory tells us that whenever the supply of labor increases faster than demand real wage rates will decline. This has been the situation in the U.S. or the last 25 year. After adjusting for inflation, the average weekly earnings declined 19% between 1973 and 1996.
The decline in wages is due to more than just the increase in immigration. Greater international competition, increased mechanization, and the influx of the baby boom in the work force have all had substantial impacts. Nevertheless, immigration has played a major role in depressing earnings in professional occupations (particularly for college teachers, scientists, mathematicians, and physicians) and even more so for entry-level jobs. The NAS study concluded that 44% of the decline in real wages of high school dropouts from 1980 to 1995 was due to immigrants competing for entry level jobs.
The high level of immigration in recent years has even negatively impacted immigrants themselves. Roughly 20% of immigrants are highly skilled and educated; they make out quite well. However 80% of immigrants tend to be low skilled and poorly educated; they have not done well. For instance, despite all of the efforts to unionize farm workers and put pressure on growers through boycotts and strikes, the annual earnings of farm workers have declined 20 to 30% over the past 20 years. The reason is simple: the constant supply of new immigrant farm workers continues to outstrip demand. In California today there are approximately two farm workers for every job.
America's Black communities have also been particularly hard hit by excessive immigration. Most persons do not realize that the fastest increase in earnings for African-Americans occurred during the period 1940 through 1960, before Affirmative Action programs were introduced. The reason is that during most of this period there was a shortage of workers, and millions of Blacks migrated from the South to get good paying jobs in Northern factories. However during the last 20 years, many of these jobs have left the country for cheaper labor abroad.
Other factory owners find that they can recruit lower cost Latino labor from Texas and California rather than turning to the inner city for employees. A recent analysis of labor force trends in the Midwest by race and occupation indicates that immigration has resulted in lost job opportunities for Blacks particularly in construction and manufacturing. During the 1990-91 recession, Blacks lost far more jobs in these two industries than Hispanics, and Blacks added far fewer jobs during the recovery.
In construction, Black contractors have seen steady erosion of jobs because their pay scales of $8 to $10 and hour cannot compete with contractors hiring immigrant labor for minimum wage. In manufacturing, which employs five times as many workers as construction, Hispanics almost doubled their share of jobs while the Blacks share declined significantly. In 1983, Blacks held 280,000 more manufacturing jobs than Hispanics. But while Hispanics added 139,000 jobs between 1983 and 1995, Black employment grew by only about 5,000 jobs.
Of particular concern for the future of Black employment in the Midwest - as in other areas of the country - is that in terms of the rate of growth, Hispanics are outpacing Blacks in every major occupation group. This should not be surprising since the growth rate of the Hispanic population in the Midwest is far higher than that of Blacks. Between 1980 and 1995 the Black population grew only 16.1% while the number of Hispanics soared 63.5%. As Hispanics gain fluency in English, we may find trends similar to construction and manufacturing, i.e., during recessions Blacks are first to be laid off and last to rehired.
To make matters worse, as a result of expanding Affirmative Action programs to other minority groups such as Asian and Hispanic, employers can now effectively discriminate against African-Americans by hiring non-citizen immigrant minorities. While such an action violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it is widely practiced since the EEOC has rarely, if ever, prosecuted a minority employer for discriminating against Blacks, nor have they prosecuted any employer for discriminating against Blacks in favor of another minority.
The result of the way Affirmative Action is administered has resulted in a new insidious pattern of discrimination. Consider the following:
* In New York, whose population is 25% Black, only 5% or the employees who work in Korean owned stores are African-American, while more than 1/3 are Mexican and Latin American immigrants. Even in Harlem, the percentage of Hispanic employees outnumbers Blacks. (By the way, it isn't true that Blacks will not accept low paying jobs, as often alleged - it is estimated that in Harlem there are 14 job applicants for every minimum wage job.)
* In Los Angeles, which is 17% Black, only 2% of small Korean-owned businesses hire Blacks.
* Nationwide, one-half of the SBA set-aside contracts go to firms owned by immigrants or children of immigrants.
* In California during the 1980s, the employment of African-Americans as bank tellers fell 39% while jobs for foreign-born tellers increased by 56%. Similar displacement has been found among janitors, hotel maids, waiters, and hospital nursing assistants and orderlies.
* A study of EEOC records of large firms revealed that during the 1990-91 recession, Asians and Hispanics gained 55,104 and 60,040 jobs, respectively, while Blacks lost 59,479 jobs. In almost every state Blacks lost jobs. Ironically, only in Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana - states most noted for past discrimination against Blacks - did the employment of Blacks increase significantly. The reason is that there has been a minimal amount of immigration into these states.
History has a way of repeating itself, with often tragic consequences. Prior to the great wave of immigration at the turn of the century, Blacks were moving up the economic ladder, getting jobs in the various trades. But with the huge influx of immigrants, Black job opportunities quickly dried up. Leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington objected to a trend that they knew would be devastating to their people. Douglass wrote, "Every hour sees the Black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived immigrant whose hunger and whose color are thought to give him a better title to the place."
It is at least arguable that had America employed its Black population at the turn of the century, Black Americans be far better off socially and economically than they are today. Additionally, all Americans would have benefited enormously by avoiding the billions of dollars expended trying to use welfare and Affirmative Action to solve a problem that a market economy would have resolved two generations ago. The answer is a job eligibility verification system to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants, and a reduction of legal immigration to the historic level of 250,000 annually.