Posted on 06/16/2007 8:52:36 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat
America’s peculiar immigration crisis today is neither a crisis, distinctly American nor historically peculiar, three University of Colorado professors declared during a forum Friday.
“I hate to break into the clutter of all the doom and gloom out there, but the American economy is booming,” said professor Kenneth Bickers, chairman of CU’s political science department. “Sending home illegal immigrants probably would not decrease the unemployment rate. It would do the opposite.”
Bickers and two other panelists discussed immigration through the lenses of U.S. history, politics and religion, with one speaker portraying the plight of Asian immigrants in the 1800s.
America’s low 4.5 percent unemployment rate — despite more women in the work force and about 12 million illegal immigrants — defy arguments that an immigrant invasion is ruining the U.S. economy and leaving Americans jobless, Bickers said.
When an audience member suggested unemployment levels would drop to zero with mass deportations, Bickers argued that illegal immigrants who care for the children and elderly parents of working-age Americans actually allow more people to work.
Historically, whatever the current wave of immigration — whether German, Italian, Irish or Chinese — popular American belief has asserted they would never assimilate, the professors said. The Irish would undermine law and order and remain loyal to the pope instead of the president; inhabitants of Little Italys in large U.S. cities would never learn English.
“Opponents to immigration invariably cite (a fragmented culture) as a reason to keep people out,” history professor William Wei said.
Though first-generation immigrants begin to assimilate and their American-born children almost invariably do, natives’ fears of a pending culture takeover never disappear, he said.
More than any other country, America succeeds at assimilating its immigrants, Wei said.
As Americans moved west in the 19th century, Asians, Africans and Hispanics — voluntarily or otherwise — helped build the infrastructure. Though Asian laborers were initially welcomed, an anti-Asian movement spurred by fears of “racial and cultural contamination” led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. America didn’t restore Chinese immigrants’ full access to property and citizenship until World War II, when Japanese propaganda pointed to unfair U.S laws and claimed Americans are anti-Asian, Wei said.
Historically, Asian Americans have overcome harassment, discrimination and violence en route to achieving economic success and becoming “a model minority,” Wei said.
Asian immigrants’ endurance of hardships and eventual success have left many Americans with an odd indifference to struggling immigrants today, Wei said: “If you’re not achieving in the U.S., it’s your own fault.”
Until World War II, U.S. immigrants were classified not by education, wealth or knowledge of American systems, but race, history professor Ralph Mann said. In order of value, Nordics, Celts, Middle Europeans, Southern Europeans, Slavs and Orientals would be accepted above any “more lowly” race, he said. Still, one quarter of the American Army during World War I didn’t speak English.
In 1924, the immigration system was codified; in 1965, it was overhauled, with race being formally removed as a factor, Mann said. In the mid-1980s, a major amnesty legalized more than 3 million illegal immigrants.
Forty people, half of whom are CU alumni, attended Friday’s Immigration in American History session. The CU Alumni Association hosts the second day of the forum at 1 p.m. today. Three different professors will discuss U.S. policy and immigration’s impacts on American identity, prosperity and national security.
The forum is open to the public but costs $92.
What is it about “ILLEGAL” that these eggheads don’t understand????
Also historically it was nearly impossible to succeed outside your own ghetto if you didn’t speak English. Not so today. There is an entire nation-within a nation where no one needs to learn English to get by. This is causing cultural balkanization that the leftists just love.
Things are different now, way different.
Good point!
Maybe green cards and temporary visas should come with a locator device. That way, if they're not where they are supposed to be, unless they have a good reason for being there, having changed jobs or something, they should be deported. That's one way all these folks here on 'student' visas wouldn't be able to stop attending the school and just melt into the populace.
The fall of the Roman Empire.
Nope. They would be the Chief Diversity Officers and would be spouting the same line.
How can we justify holding anyone in jail if we follow the "but we can't breakup families" argument illegals and their advocates make? Dad goes out and knocks off a bank but can't be sent to jail because he has two kids? If a prisoner has conjugal visits with his girlfriend and gets her pregnant, should he be let out of prison to be with his "family?" Do we really want to establish that precedent? Parents cannot be jailed for any reason? Should we not jail the poor if they commit a crime? What about single parents, the physically impaired, ethnic groups or religious groups? Whenever you make excuses for one group or another, when it comes to obeying the law, the law ceases to have meaning. There has to be a single, basic standard for all citizens in order to provide a stable, peaceful society.
No other country in the world would even consider such a thing. It's ridiculous. It would mean total anarchy. No society can peacefully exist without laws and if you allow millions of illegal immigrants a pass on their law-breaking, what meaning can any of our laws have? Wherever they come from, illegal immigrants cannot have a separate set of rules apart from those of society in general. That is what this is all about.
--The 35.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded -- two and a half times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910.
--Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history.
--Immigrants account for 12.1 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in eight decades. If current trends continue, within a decade it will surpass the high of 14.7 percent reached in 1910.
--Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Since 1990, immigration has increased the number of such workers by 25 percent, while increasing the supply of all other workers by 6 percent.
--The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 29 percent, compared to 18 percent for native households.
--The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 18.4 percent, 57 percent higher than the 11.7 percent for natives and their children. Immigrants and their minor children account for almost one in four persons living in poverty.
The Hispanic Challenge By Samuel P. Huntington
"The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.
Contemporary Mexican and, more broadly, Latin American immigration is without precedent in U.S. history. The experience and lessons of past immigration have little relevance to understanding its dynamics and consequences. Mexican immigration differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration due to a combination of six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration, persistence, and historical presence."
"Continuation of this large immigration (without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures. A few stable, prosperous democracies—such as Canada and Belgium—fit this pattern. The differences in culture within these countries, however, do not approximate those between the United States and Mexico, and even in these countries language differences persist. Not many Anglo-Canadians are equally fluent in English and French, and the Canadian government has had to impose penalties to get its top civil servants to achieve dual fluency. Much the same lack of dual competence is true of Walloons and Flemings in Belgium. The transformation of the United States into a country like these would not necessarily be the end of the world; it would, however, be the end of the America we have known for more than three centuries. Americans should not let that change happen unless they are convinced that this new nation would be a better one.
I beg to differ.
From Ellis Island to the President, immigration is THE issue.
America has no real culture of its own, and thus deceived other countries (especially European) that a "Melting Pot" was natural.
Native Americans, Irish Americans, African Americans, etc etc lead people to believe a Country doesnt have to be homogenous.
However, any definition of "Nation State" will deliver a very different picture.
The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.
Ok lets legalize a couple million teachers to compete with these clowns and see if they change their mind!
Three professors who don't realize that an expanded social net, close proximity of a mother country, and a political commitment to multiculturalism, instead of assimilation, makes this immigration wave completely different from those who preceeded it?lol... they would get paid quite nicely in the private sector(and probably do during their sabbaticals).
None of them are competent in their field.
All would lose their jobs in the private sector.
THE POPULATION OF AMERICA HAS DOUBLED IN MY LIFETIME
If you have lost control of your local school system and you believe it is because liberalism is triumphing over conservatism, you are right but you have identified the symptom and not the cause: The population of America has doubled in my lifetime.
If you have lost control over your own real property, if your rights to manage, improve, and develop your property have passed over to bureaucrats, if you can no longer choose whom to rent to or whom to sell to, if you have lost confidence that your deed in fee simple absolute will protect you against a venal government or one wholly given over to interest groups, and for all of this you blame liberalism, you have identified the symptom but not the cause: The population of America has doubled in my lifetime.
If you are a rancher who has lost his rights to graze his cattle upon lands licensed to his family for generations, if you're a fox hunter who has been deprived of his sport, if you must wait three hours for a tee time, if you have given up taking the family to the Jersey shore because the travel time now exceeds three hours, if, after hours of travail, you finally arrive at the Jersey shore with your family and you find your neighbors to close, too numerous, polyglot, and uncongenial, know this;The population of America has doubled in my lifetime.
If you look at Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida as-miracle of the jet age-suburbs of New York City, and you watch helplessly as the politics of these counties veer ever farther left potentially dragging all Florida and, with Florida, the soul of the Republican Party in America, be advised: The population of America has doubled in my lifetime.
If, as a parent or grandparent, you find yourself mightily boring your children or grandchildren with descriptions of how Christmas used to be, descriptions of a time gone by when shopkeepers were permitted to say, "Merry Christmas," when Christmas carols were really that, carols, when the public square was a place for the exuberant celebration of the birth of Christ, rather than a forum for the celebration of the pagan, then you instinctively know: The population of America has doubled in my lifetime.
If you are old enough to remember America before the vietnamization of America, then you must love your country and you see her "a shining city on the hill" as the last best hope for men.
You know what to do.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "Bar Fight in the Blue Ridge: The Battle for NC 11"
Predictable tripe from 3 “professors.”
Great responses on this article. I thought some of the same things just reading the article. Wow, seems like those that paid $92 to attend went just to sit and watch! They didn’t ask any tough questions it seems!
The range of immigration cost (assuming this is legal immigration) is about like us NOT knowing within an 8 million people range how many are here!!!
I also have to shake my head in total disgust that since the student visa shake up government wanted to know EXACTLY where these students are going to school and make sure they are attending..and let 12-20 million illegals run wild anywhere they want to!! I am sure the Taliban and other terrorist organizations are laughing their heads off at our leader(??)ship in D.C. right now. Plus, love how our President calls for the Iraqis to obey and honor the laws set before them to help their country all the while allowing illegal aliens to make new law here!????
I guess I am not acedemic enough or elite enough to understand.
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