Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 12, 1995 TAG: 9509120014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEITH M. ROCKWELL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The crux of the argument made by California Gov. Pete Wilson and Washington commentator Pat Buchanan is this: Immigrants are responsible for rising unemployment among their followers (who tend to be white males).
Paradoxically, these men - and a growing number of others in Congress and the states - claim immigrants don't work in this country and represent a crushing blow to the taxpayers who must foot their ever-rising welfare and Medicaid bills.
This stridently xenophobic claptrap is eerily reminiscent of 1930s Germany or modern France, where anti-immigrant activist Jean-Marie Le Pen has secured more than 20 percent of the vote in some regions.
The unfortunate fact is that no issue today is as driven by ignorance as immigration. At 5.7 percent, unemployment is at levels that could only have been dreamed of a decade ago. While there has been some displacement of workers, this has been a regional phenomenon and can be explained in part by increased imports, outsourcing by U.S. manufacturers and the migration of working-class Americans away from states like California and New York.
It is true that the 250,000 welfare-dependent immigrants who have arrived in this country since 1990 represent an unfortunate economic burden that needs to be addressed. But it is undeniably true that no economic study has ever concluded that immigrants were responsible for any significant rise in unemployment or substantial decline in wages.
A 1982 study by Jean Baldwin Grossman showed that a 10 percent increase in immigration leads to a 0.8 percent reduction in the number of employed natives. But a study 10 years later by Elaine Sorenson of the Urban Institute found no statistically relevant link between immigration and the number of weeks worked by native-born Americans.
Another study by the Urban Institute found immigration had no significant impact on wages.
What is far easier to document is the economic contribution made by immigrants, who have been an engine of prosperity that has driven this country for more than two centuries.
In 1989, according to the 1990 U.S. Census, foreign-born wage earners earned $285 billion, or 8 percent of all reported income. Immigrants pay $30 billion more in taxes than they take in government benefits.
Less easy to quantify, but no less relevant, is the entrepreneurial spirit brought by immigrants, 7.2 percent of whom own their own businesses. Immigrants also attract foreign capital to the U.S. regions they inhabit and have proven a catalyst in the formation of export networks.
While it is true that immigrants who arrived here after 1990 are more likely to receive welfare benefits than U.S. natives, 94.3 percent of the 4.5 million such immigrants are working. For immigrants who came here during the 1970s and 1980s, the percentage on welfare is about the same (2.9 percent) as for U.S. natives. And of those who arrived before 1970, only 1.4 percent receive public assistance.
The focus of the Wilson-Buchanan attack is the estimated 4 million illegal immigrants in the United States. It's clear that every nation needs immigration controls, but in lashing out so provocatively against the illegals, these men have stoked the barely hidden anti-immigrant passions of many Americans. The distinction between the two kinds of immigrants has become blurred and legal immigrants are caught in the anti-foreign hysteria.
Bills are now before Congress and several state legislatures that would restrict health and education benefits not only for illegals but for legal immigrants as well. Some congressmen now speak of changing the Constitution so individuals born here of foreign parents are not entitled to citizenship. Others would scrap the family reunification program.
These lawmakers target not only low-skilled immigrants harvesting crops and cleaning office buildings but scientists and engineers who help make U.S. semiconductor, software, pharmaceutical and engineering companies the envy of the world.
A far stronger case can be made that job loss in this country is due to overseas investment by U.S.-based multinationals and not to an influx of immigrants. It also could be argued that the tax base shrinks when a plant moves offshore.
But these arguments are shortsighted and pointless in an increasingly interrelated global economy. U.S. jobs may be displaced when Ford Motor Co. builds a factory in China, but employment surges when Toyota or Mercedes builds a plant in this country.
Had the $58.5 billion U.S. companies spent last year on foreign plant and equipment been invested in this country, no doubt it would have led to many more new jobs. But foreign investors spent $60.5 billion last year in this country, and the $504.4 billion in direct foreign investment in the United States supports some 4.7 million high-paying U.S. jobs.
While Buchanan, who recoils at any dealings with foreigners, may support capital controls, Wilson boasts of his free-market credentials. Yet, there is striking incongruity in a position that embraces the free movement of goods and capital but simultaneously presses for new barriers on the movement of people - barriers that ironically may accelerate the export of capital as companies search for qualified labor.
If economics is not the motivation for the tawdry Wilson-Buchanan view on immigration, then what is driving their rabid anti-immigrant rhetoric?
The politics of fear and hate are not what a nation settled and built by immigrants should be about. The idea that those who have made it here should now raise the drawbridge is hypocritical and defeatist and runs contrary to the interests of the United States.
Keith Rockwell is Washington bureau chief for The Journal of Commerce.
by CNB