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Immigrants! Immigrants! Seems like they are all over the news these days, legal ones and illegal ones and how we can keep America pure. But you don’t have to study much to realize that many of America’s greatest strengths – our desire for a better future, our confidence that we can achieve it, and the creativity and innovation that we use to get the job done – come in large part from the almost-continuous stream of immigration into this country.
Had not Hitler run his brainy Jewish scientists out of Germany and then Europe – and into our open arms – he might have dropped the atom bomb on us instead of us getting it first. The great physicist Enrico Fermi was not even Jewish, but his wife was, so when he won the Nobel prize in 1938, they flew directly from the award ceremony in Stockholm to the US rather than return to Mussolini’s Italy. Six years later he directed the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, in intense secrecy under the football stadium stands at the University of Chicago.
Some cry that, “Well, these immigrants are not like the old ones, they don’t want to learn our language, etc. etc. etc.” Again, that idea is pretty well dispelled with a look at the history books. The people who were “already here” have always felt that the world was going to hell in a hand basket with the next boatload, no matter where they came from. I would not be surprised if the Native Americans who were here before the Europeans felt the same way.
But despite the outcries, millions of people keep coming to America. Our country remains the beacon of hope for huge numbers of people around the world. Our free economic and political system is a powerful magnet. As our population growth due to natural births and deaths declines, we (like Western Europe) need more workers at all talent levels. I heard the great management thinker Peter Drucker talk a few years before his death, and his prediction was that the most important political question of the western world in the early 21st century would be immigration. Boy was he right. He said that the US was the only major economy that had proven its ability to absorb and integrate immigrants of all types. That it would be much rougher for his native Europe to adjust to the need for integration and diversity. (Among the smaller economies, Singapore, Australia, and particularly Canada seem to have done amazing jobs of accepting and integrating multiple cultures.)
Over the last several years I studied the museum industry, leading me to visit over 300 museums worldwide. Among the most moving experiences you can have in a museum or historic site is the tour of Ellis Island, just off Manhattan, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants landed. If you have not done this tour, make sure and get there the next time you are in New York City.
In these tough economic times, the impulse of some is to turn inward, away from the world. A handful of members of Congress (for example Sanders of Vermont and Grassley of Iowa) have set it up so that any company receiving federal TARP funds cannot hire talented foreigners (via the H-1B visa program). One key measure is named the Employ American Workers Act (EAWA). It is harder and harder for all those Asian scientists getting PhD’s in this country to stay here. Such measures could cause a significant decline in new technology enterprise creation and patent originations in this country. That would be an awful thing.
According to Harvard and Duke’s Vivek Wadhwa, writing in the Washington Post on March 8, 2009, immigrants founded a quarter of all US engineering and technology companies between 1995 and 2005. They founded half of such companies that were based in Silicon Valley. In the 2000 census, immigrants made up only 12% of the US population but they were 47% of all engineers and scientists with PhD’s. About 25% of all international patents filed from the US in 2006 named foreign nationals as inventors. Businesses operated by immigrants employed 450,000 Americans in 2005. Many of these people, or the future waves of such people, will go home to or stay home in India, China, and Korea if we force them to, but many would rather not.
On the other hand, the UK will automatically give a minimum one-year work permit to anyone earning an MBA from one of the world’s top 50 business schools. And it is not impossible that other nations would backlash against our turning inwards. Many of the best US-based companies earn a large share of their profits overseas. What happens if foreign countries will not let Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Johnson & Johnson place American executives overseas? How will our best and brightest learn to manage and prosper in the global marketplace?
I moved from the Midwest to Texas 27 years ago. One of the things that drew me to Texas, and keeps me here, is its open arms for “foreigners,” including Hoosiers like me. Of course there are times and places where this has not been the case. When the first Vietnamese fishermen arrived here they had a huge conflict with the other fishing industry folks along the Texas coast. But, at least compared with other places where I have lived, on an overall basis Texas seems to love and accept immigrants. Today the Vietnamese are an important and vibrant part of Houston culture, and the Vietnamese language is the third most important after English and Spanish.
Texas has kept our taxes low so newcomers can afford to live here and has kept business opportunities fluid and available to all. When I hear people talk about the evil of illegal Mexican immigrants, I wonder how the Texas economy can be so strong when we have millions of those “illegals?” Personally, I don’t mind being surrounded by people who would go to great personal risk to mow yards and pour concrete in order to send a few bucks home to the wife and kids. These are hard-working, generous, family-first people like the people I grew up among in Indiana, and today live among in Texas.
In all the screaming and crying and building of fences, I hear almost no rational thought about immigration. On both sides, loud voices drown out serious study and discussion. But they shouldn’t drown out your own thinking. I suggest you start with, of all things, a textbook: Strangers to These Shores, by Vincent N. Parrillo (Ninth Edition, 2009, Pearson/Allyn & Bacon). This is the only book I have found which not only talks about long term trends and implications of immigration in America, it also discusses each of the major immigrant groups and their nature. So you can ditch the stereotypes and find out the facts. So you can understand that 1 out of 8 Korean immigrants runs their own business – perhaps the most entrepreneurial group to ever come to these shores. And that they do it with a unique system of sharing the financial risk with friends and family.
Learn about everyone from Poles to Palestinians, about how they fit (or don’t fit) into America. Where do they live in the United States? Did you know that 77% of Arab-Americans are Christians?
Get this book, flip through it, lose yourself in the charts and tables and wonderful maps. You will see an America that you may hardly be aware of. Over time, the United States will become more and more Latin and more and more Asian. It is too late to turn back that clock. It will not just be California, Hawaii, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico – it will be the whole nation. Anyone who hopes to understand this emerging nation needs to read (or, using my method, “digest”) this book.
For those of you who want to take a harder look at the political and historical realities of immigration, you can get a less chart-filled and more academic but still excellent treatment in A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America, by Aristide Zolberg, which recently came out in paperback (Harvard University Press, 2008). If you read this book, you will quickly realize that we have always used immigration policy as a football, going from one end of the field to the other, so today’s intense controversies are nothing new.
As a thinking citizen, whether you agree with me or not about immigration, you cannot understand the issues clearly without delving into books like these. Watching cable news, left or right, will get us no closer to real answers to our very real national and international challenges.
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Gary, loved this article and I’m about to TWITTER it, Gene
Thanks so much, Chef Gene. Twitter away! Gary
Gary,
I am excited to see your website. I am just exploring now, but will tell all my associates to give it a try.
Bill (an Oily Rag)
Great summary and I learned a ton in 30 seconds. Thanks Gary!
Excellent, thank YOU, Paul.
Gary
Hello, Gary– I’m pleased to see you finally have a web site! This is a very thoughtful post on immigration, and I agree with you 100%.
I think you’ll find that most Americans who seem to oppose immigration really only oppose *illegal* immigration. We want to see the law–the spirit of the law–protected from those who would thwart our laws or exploit our social services, so the opportunities of freedom and prosperity are available to all who come to our shores through the established channels. Though I appreciate someone’s desire to live in the United States, I don’t think stealing identities or smuggling themselves across the border should be rewarded. I think you’ll agree that bending or breaking the law is not the best way to establish friendly contact with one’s new countrymen. Having said that, I also realize that many legitimate citizens are mistaken as “illegals”; only consistent justice and time can solve that problem.
-Tim
Thanks, Tim.
It strikes me that the important things we need to know about someone include “are you a citizen of this country?” “do you have a passport?” “are you just visiting this country?” “are you working in this country and hence subject to taxation?” “are you attempting to use public services which you may or may not qualify for, given those answers?”
In this context, I think term “illegal” may not be very meaningful, which I understand may sound strange coming from me in the context of the way the debate is framed in the US press.
But I cannot help but think of France and Germany, two countries which have a longstanding and fairly recent animosity, and even today have large cultural and attitudinal differences — but they do not even have border gates anymore. How do they deal with these issues? When someone shows up at a French hospital or public school, how do they make sure the taxpayers (who pay a LOT more than Americans do) are not getting cheated?
I realize there are many differences between our situation with Mexico and their situation, but there still have to be things we can learn about how best to deal with these real issues.
On the other hand, i don’t think whether someone is a legal or illegal alien is a “real issue” — in the sense that if someone snuck over the border from Mexico, spent the day hanging out in Texas and didn’t do anything wrong or make any income, and then went home, no one on other side of the border would care about it. It’s not about what we call them or their legal status so much as it as about jobs and the use of services.
And if France and Gerrmany can figure it out, or two countries with substantially different incomes like eastern and mediterranean Europe vs. Northern Europe can figure it out, we should be able to figure it out.
Gary,
From where I sit I see immigration issue as follows:
American history shows that immigrants that flourished embraced the American culture by learning the language, respecting the laws, and encouraging their children to get educated in American ways of being.
Let’s also be clear immigrants who come illegally are law-breakers that is not disputable and most Americans do not like law breakers.
Also immigrants (whether here legally or illegally) who don’t encourage their children to learn the language, hide in their own sub communities, treat their wives like second class citizens, let their religious tenets infringe on individual rights, litter, avoid taxes, etc. are the immigrants that most Americans have concern with. In general this shows a disrespect for the rules, laws and ways of America.
“When in Rome do as the Romans”. Respect a cultures ways and rules. Of course, in America immigrants are free to disregard these views and hold on to their culture and not Americanize themselves. And Americans are free to dismiss them and ignore them, not due to racism but due to lack of common ground. Americans are fair people, and the immigrants that want to be here, and have followed the constitution and our laws are the ones that gain acceptance and flourish. Many recognizable groups, Asians, Indians (not Native Americans), West Indies Africans have prospered in America. These groups are physically distinguishable from “white” Euro-Americans so there appears to be no racism component to the immigration concerns of Americans.
Americans have a “brand” which is being “American” part of the greatest culture in the history of mankind. Immigrants that don’t embrace the American culture of freedom, equality, individual rights, and self responsibility dilute American citizenship.
That’s my two cents worth.
Thanks for your time,
Greg
What would happen if we opened our borders and partnered with Mexico – and Canada? Usually, the elite concern themselves with immigration from lesser countries, from countries where the peoples therein have a less than equal life to our own. Would we not be those people to other developed nations?
But that’s a side point. Many of our expensive and talented PhDs head back to their own countries to bring the knowledge gained here from OTHER Phds who taught them. The University of Mexico has many fine graduates, yet we do not see these in this country very often – or is it that we just do not hear from this populace? What we see are those ‘lesser’ individuals, the ones that come to make a living here and send the $$ back to their families. But that’s not 100 percent of the immigrants. If we partnered with Mexico as many countries do in Europe, we might have a single currency, borders that open and labor that, if not as cheap, would bring us more income as a nation through taxation and through fiscal spending, as well as a newer, more defined cultural experience (more via the passage of Americans to Mexico than the other way around.) Mexico would be richer by knowing us.
But we can’t expect their political problems to go away. The Zapatistas and other politically rebellious entities are not hoodlums, but groups trying to create decent societies by building hospitals and schools and community – despite the current political climate (and often against its wishes). Would we interfere with that? Probably. These are people that try to protect their heritage crops – corn, for example, from NAFTA, who brings in Monsanto’s genetically modified corn and floods the Mexican markets with it. If you are in doubt about the importance of corn to Mexico, I suggest a book entitled, _Corn Woman_ by Sue Littleton.
We have to think about immigration as a two-way street and rethink the mindset of the ‘illegal immigrant’ as being a poor worker from the borders of Mexico. If Mexico’s corrupt political climate and methodology encourages desperation and a fleeing mentality, isn’t that corruption the cause and immigration to this country only a symptom of real issues that should be addressed before we completely open our borders? Yet, if we do this, I don’t think it’s a door that needs to be opened, but bridges that need to be built and a foundation of trust that needs to be established between our countries.
And we need to learn a lot more about that world, first, before we make complete idiots of ourselves in our base assumptions of what an ‘immigrant’ is.
There is a big difference between immigrants who come here legally and the ones who are undocumented. The undocumented workers seem to me to be the most vocal and militant. In fact, 2 years ago over 30,000 undocumented workers protested in downtown Chicago for their ‘rights’. And undocumented workers protected by California labor laws. To me these people want to be rewarded for circumventing established laws. The only ‘right’ they have is to follow the immigration laws or get out.
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