Lost in the public view that immigration is primarily a problem is another perspective, that immigration is good and necessary. America needs immigrants. Herb Rothschild makes that case in this guest post.
Rothschild taught English Literature at Louisiana State University. He is the author of The Bad Old Days, a memoir of his years as a Civil Rights activist in Louisiana. He lives in Talent, Oregon. This column appeared last Friday in Rothschild's regular weekly column in Ashland.news.
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Guest Post by Herbert Rothschild
One way to calculate with reasonable accuracy how many immigrants the U.S. needs is to decide a desirable ratio between workers and retirees. The current ratio of 2.8 to 1 is too low.
I had to write this column before the debate between Biden and Trump, so I couldn’t know what they would say about immigration. I’m sure it figured largely in the debate. I’m almost as sure that neither candidate spoke thoughtfully about it.
For Trump, treating immigration as an existential threat has paid big electoral dividends, so I can expect nothing truthful, much less useful, from him. I don’t expect too much more from Biden. Over the last three years he’s tacked this way and that, trying without success to seem both tough and humane.
Some specific policies related to immigration are obviously proper, and Biden has supported many of them—citizenship for DACA kids, an easier path to legal status for undocumented spouses and children of citizens, and more resources to expedite asylum requests. Another reasonable policy would be a second iteration of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Simpson-Mazzoli), which, among other provisions, legalized most undocumented immigrants who had arrived before January 1, 1984. Simpson-Mazzoli was the last comprehensive immigration bill Congress passed.
In February, 2022, when a flood of refugees from Haiti reached Del Rio, Texas, I wrote a column about how our imperial interference in the affairs of Latin American and Caribbean countries continually exacerbates the poverty and tyranny that people flee. So, if we want to reduce the flow of immigrants to our southern border, we must change our own behavior.
It's not clear, though, that the flow of immigrants should be reduced, or by how much. What we haven’t heard in the public forum is informed discussion about whether immigration is desirable. We need that discussion to counter the vilification of immigrants on the one hand and mere altruism on the other. Neither of these attitudes generates wise political policies.
The U.S. sorely needs immigrants. Just how many we need and how many we can accommodate without undue stress are questions needing answers. While precision will elude us, we have useful data on which to draw.
First, there is the demographic forecast. The fertility rate for a generation to replace itself is 2.1 births per woman. For the 20 years before the 2007–2009 recession, the U.S. fertility rate was slightly under that. Since then, the rate has fallen. In 2020, the rate equaled 1.64 births per woman, then rose to 1.67 in 2022. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that by 2034 our fertility rate will settle at 1.70.
Only because more of us will live longer, the CBO projects that U.S. births will exceed deaths until 2040, after which our population will decline absent immigration. And even now, because the retired population is growing relative to the working population, absent immigration the burden of sustaining the older cohort would be heavier than it is, with fewer people to shoulder it either as taxpayers or caregivers.
The U.S. Social Security system was designed for a much higher ratio of workers to retirees than exists today. In 1960, there were more than 5 workers for every beneficiary. Now it’s 2.8 to 1. The Social Security Administration (SSA) predicts that the ratio will dwindle to 2.3 to 1 by 2035. And that’s with immigration. Absent immigration, our pension and health care systems would soon collapse even if technology makes some workers more productive.
So, one way to calculate with reasonable accuracy how many immigrants per year the U.S. needs is to decide a desirable minimum ratio between workers and retirees (taking into account that many immigrants arrive with children). The current ratio of 2.8 to 1 is too low, and the shortfall is exacerbated by keeping undocumented workers in the economic shadows where their pay is low and untaxed. We should raise ratio to at least 3 to 1 and maintain it there.
People responsible for tracking economic performance keep telling us how dependent we already are on immigrant workers. Last week, Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve System, said, "We've seen labor force supply come up quite a bit through immigration and through recovering participation. That's ongoing, mostly now through the immigration channel." Financial analysts like Elsie Peng and David Mericle of Goldman Sachs and Mark Zandi from Moody’s credit the post-pandemic surge in immigrants with stabilizing wages and cooling inflation. And immigrants aren’t taking jobs from citizens. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, in May the number of job openings was 8.1 million while the number of unemployed looking for work was 6.1 million. Actually, immigrants create more jobs than they take. That’s the finding of an academic study entitled “Immigration and Entrepreneurship in the United States.” Immigrants are 80% more likely than long-time residents to become entrepreneurs. First- and second-generation immigrants are launching businesses across the spectrum, from small sandwich shops with one or two employees to major tech firms with thousands of workers. Elon Musk is an immigrant.
Regarding the future impact immigrants will have on the economy, on June 18 the CBO released An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034. It predicts that increased immigration to the U.S. is expected to drive highereconomic growth, grow federal revenues and shrink deficits. Regrettably, most of this increase will be immigrants without work permits. Nonetheless, they will add almost $9 trillion to our Gross Domestic Product over the next decade.
Immigration has its costs, although very little to the criminal justice system. Even undocumented immigrants can access health care and their children can attend school. Most significant is their added strain on an already-inadequate housing stock. The question of how many immigrants we can accommodate without undue stress hinges upon other policy decisions we make, especially the funding of state governments, controlling health care costs, and addressing our woeful housing shortage. In social systems as in natural ones, the parts are interrelated.
OK. How much of what you just read did you hear in the debate?
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11 comments:
What I heard in the debate was Trump making his usual assertion that immigrants are the inmates of other countries’ prisons and insane asylums, sent here to murder, rape and pillage in the U.S. What insane asylum turned loose the whack jobs that spew and cheer such toxic BS?
What I don’t remember hearing is that Congress is supposed to address immigration policy, but Trump told Republicans not to.
My favorite immigration poster shows a picture of Apache warriors with the caption, “Homeland Security, Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.”
Not mentioned in this excellent analysis is that another way to keep Social Security solvent is to change how the tax is collected. High income individuals and corporations are effectively exempt, ostensibly in the interests of fairness, but in reality it's political expediency. Related to this is income inequality overall.
Also this is a US foreign policy issue as well. Every country South of us is in crisis, from climate to crime, and if we wish to address the refugee problem the geopolitical aspect is crucial.
Finally, this is solvable but Republicans have chosen to abdicate their responsibility to negotiate a plan. The recent phony "bipartisan border plan" was a red herring, a bad faith con between Republicans and Trump to keep it a campaign issue while deflecting blame.
As with most complicated issues, it's important up front to define the terms and under discussion, and the corresponding parameters. Isn't the issue less whether the border is "closed" or "open", than if it is secure, as in controlled? Isn't the issue less processing asylum requests, than establishing and enforcing the form, location and minimum requirements of actionable asylum requests in the first place? What is the status quo while requests are processed?
If the distinction between lawful and unlawful immigration is ideally to be effectively erased over time, say so openly. If so, just here in the U.S.--and Western Europe--not elsewhere? If properly vetting those who arrive--all of them--for national security purposes is a secondary consideration to immigration's posited economic benefits, say so openly. If "refugee" and asylum seeker should now include those fleeing economic hardship, including via climate, say so openly.
If the presumptive acceptance and support of migrants to the U.S. is primarily a moral obligation, from geopolitics and history, a function of global social justice, say so openly.
Nice argument for a benevolent immigration policy. The problem is, people whose lives have been ruined by elite economic policies like globalization are in no mood to be benevolent. People in areas where social services are being overwhelmed by an influx of immigrants are in no mood to be benevolent.
We need to be taking very good of the people who are already here first. Only then would we be in a position to start taking care of the rest of the world.
Michael,
You're referring to Native Americans right?
"We need to be taking very good of the people who are already here first."
TFG tanked an immigration plan to help his campaign. Just like Nixon kept the Vietn war going to help his campaign, and Raygun got Iran to keep Americans hostage longer to help his campaign.
See the pattern?
"people whose lives have been ruined by elite economic policies like globalization"
“Globalization” simply refers to international trade, which has been going on since time immemorial and benefits everyone. To culture warriors, however, it’s a disparaging term that has something to do with foreigners, like immigration, and thus inflames the gullible.
Anonymous; It occurs to me that among those who were here first are all those inhabitants of the Incan, Mayan and Aztec Civilizations, arguably here for well over a thousand years before Cortes and the other rapists, marauder and brigands showed up.
Well, the imperialist, mass-murdering, mass-enslaving overlord conquistadors shamefully displaced……the imperialist, mass-murdering, mass-enslaving overlord Aztecs. With the latter, add in mass execution of “lesser” peoples in religious rituals.
Globalization also denotes the desired effacing of nation-states as such —including borders?—in favor of centralized authority presiding over social and cultural matters as well as economic and political. The European Union is a step in this direction.
There’s still the soccer tournament to raise nationalistic spirits!
Globalization, in the context of current American politics, means shutting down American factories and putting those people out of work and exporting those jobs to places with lower labor costs. It means devastating the economies of towns all across America for the benefit of financial predators. It means putting profits for shareholders above any other consideration.
It means empowering the Davos elites to the detriment of all of the rest of us. It means creating the social conditions that lead to the rise of demagogues like Donald Trump.
Because you know that something’s happening,
But you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mr Globe…
The European Union was an attempt to fashion Europe into a union more like the United States. It seems to have worked. White-wing fanaticism is coming back into fashion there too.
Globalization is just the spread of free-market capitalism, but I see that it’s also become a more general term like “woke” that encompasses whatever those poor oppressed White guys perceive to be victimizing them.
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