Immigrants all over the country are pouring into the streets to protest new proposals to restrict immigration. This took place as Congress debates various proposals on immigration. One of these proposals, by the way, would require that churches help only legal immigrants.
I’ve been following the immigration issue for 20 years, first as a reporter in Miami (which long ago became a majority immigrant city) and now as the friend of many immigrants and immigration lawyers.
Read on to get my take on the immigration issue.
1)In general, I support the McCain-Kennedy bill in the Senate, which would give about 12 million illegal immigrants amnesty, allow them to stay here after paying a fine and learning English. (Yes, I find it hard to believe I’m on the same side of this or any issue as Teddy Kennedy).
2)I would support the eventual building of a wall along the Mexican border only if it is accompanied by negotiations with the Mexican government that would involve a massive increase in legal immigration processing by border control agents inside Mexico. We would also need to allow many more legal immigrants from countries where there is a demand to come to the United States. In effect, I think we need to convince the Mexican government that we want immigrants but that they need to be processed legally.
3)As a general policy, I support any immigrant who wants to come to the United States coming here, but he or she must do so legally.
I can already anticipate the drumbeat of opposition. Before you send the nasty-grams, please consider this: the demographics of the world are changing quickly. Countries that have long sent us immigrants are going through a massive demographic shift. There simply will not be as many young people interested in coming to the United States 10-20 years from now as there is now. Countries like India and China that had massive poverty are now becoming prosperous. This means they will not need to send immigrants abroad.
In fact, in the near future there will be increasing competition for immigrants. The populations of Europe and Japan are declining, and countries that have historically had large population growths are on a downward turn. Spain, for example, is facing a population shortage and is attracting Latin American immigrants because it prefers them to Arab immigrants (they speak Spanish and are Christian rather than Muslim). Keep in mind that the United States still has a higher birth rate than Europe, but the birth rate is decreasing and our population may begin to level out or decrease without immigration.
Immigration is good for the United States. It brings in new blood anxious to start businesses and invest in the country. Immigrants are proud of being Americans and anxious to work.
There are legitimate concerns about English being spoken less and less among recent immigrants. We should promote English instruction. But keep in mind that even in Miami, a city with a majority Hispanic population and where Spanish is spoken just about everywhere, children are all instructed in school in English. The second generation becomes fluent in English and American culture.
To sum up, I am not alarmed about the immigrants coming to our shores. I am curious, however, about more details on the proposal to require churches to confirm immigrant status before helping out immigrants. Does anybody have details?
UPDATE: Check out this page, which has details on population growth by country worldwide. Most of the countries that send us immigrants today will begin losing population in a few decades. As mentioned above, immigrants will be a hot commodity.