If you don’t know where you stand with regard to the illegal aliens, maybe you can at least get a handle on the problem with LEGAL IMMIGRATION. Just like your check book, it is all about numbers. Roy Beck has the numbers. And, as we all know, numbers don’t lie - even if we don’t want to believe them!
Now, you can watch the video or read the rest of this post. My advice: do both!
Beck is a former journalist who now devotes his time to educating Americans about the destructive truth of our immigration policies. Roy started Numbers USA in 1997 to carry out the recommendations of the U. S. Commission on Immigration Reform, created by the Immigration Act of 1990 and the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Some people don’t like him, but all I can say is that he makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Remember, I am talking about legal immigration, those people who enter the US with our permission each year. How many people do you think that is? Would you believe that from 1776 through 1976 the traditional level of immigration to this country was an average of 250,000 people per year.
Roy’s point is that throughout our history when we have exceeded traditional levels of immigration we have always had problems assimilating the additional immigrants. Immigrants have also suffered from high levels of immigration because they are forced to compete for jobs in a market flooded with available workers.
However, beginning in 1959, US immigration policy has taken a wrong turn. After the devastation of WWII, many people wanted to immigrate from Europe to America for a better life. By the end of the ’50s, Europe;s economy had improved and less people were immigrating to America. You may remember this was about the same time a lot of us were being told we needed to achieve zero population growth. Well, the law of unintended consequences went into effect when Congress, apparently fearing we would not have enough European immigrants, began opening the floodgates.
Up until 1965 there were annual immigration quotas and East European countries had the largest quotas. In 1959 Congress invented “chain immigration” so that Europeans could bring their extended family. With chain immigration, the person who is approved for entry into the country gets to bring his relatives with him. In 1965 Congress did away with quotas and allowed immigration from all countries on the same basis. As a result of chain immigration, since 1990 we have been averaging 1,000,000+ legal immigrants a year. This is in addition to a milliion or more illegal aliens entering the country every year.
Do you wonder why immigration hasn’t been a big deal for the last 60 years (since WWII) and now, all of a sudden, it is a very big deal? Well, it’s because when legal immigration is at the traditional level of 250,000 a year, the country has been able to cope with this increase in population. However, after almost 40 years of higher levels of immigration, we are experiencing the pressure of these increased numbers on our utility and transportation infrastructure, our schools systems, our employment rates and wage rates.
According to Roy, there is a relationship between levels of legal immigration and illegal immigration. The greater the number of legal immigrants, the greater the pressure on others to enter illegally.
One of the problems with our immigration policy is that it has been run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the ACLU. The Chamber and its pro business agenda promotes higher levels of immigration to exploit cheap labor at the expense of the American worker. Naturally, the ACLU is motivated bythe liberal idea that everyone should get to live in Amercia. (While I generally support ACLU principles, like all organizations, they can take the wrong stance on any particular issue. This is one of them.)
The problem with our immigration policy is that it is not guided by the most important question: What level of immigration is in our national interest? Politicians ignore focusing on this issue because of political correctness and voters. They don’t want Hispanic Americans mad at them.
I asked Roy where our presidential contenders stood on this issue of reducing immigration levels. (You can find check out your state delegation here.) All three of the remaining front runners, McCain, Clinton, and Obama, have the same rating: abysmal.
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