Now let me get this straight. Because Bernard A. Weisberger says that immigration was once an asset (“A Nation of Immigrants,” February), it means that it must always be an asset? Because concern about immigration once had elements of xenophobia, this means all concern about immigration is xenophobic?
History teaches me that public policy is never static. Is it not possible that policies that made sense when we were a relatively empty continent in an uncrowded world no longer make sense in a crowded continent in a crowded world?
For the twelve years I was governor of Colorado, immigration made most of our problems worse. It further burdened an already overburdened school budget. A significant portion of our jails are filled with the foreign-born. Our experience is that immigrants are much more likely to be on welfare.
Bottom line: An increasing number of our citizens are asking: Why do we want an America of 400 million people? What advantage is it to our grandchildren to have a California of 50 million people? In an economy that is expected to create an average of 1.5 million new jobs a year and has 3.5 million of its own citizens turn eighteen every year, does it make sense to yearly bring in one million additional immigrants?
I would suggest that Mr. Weisberger was arguing his political views, not some immutable lesson of history.
Richard D. Lamm
Former Governor Denver, Colo.
Nation of Immigrants
Bernard Weisberger appears to believe that the cause of the recent wave of anti-immigrant sentiment is that the majority of Americans resent “aliens.” While I do not doubt that for some this may be the case, others want them gone because they are an economic burden.
We currently have a recession in California, and we are very concerned about the costs to our state caused by the millions of immigrants. Mr. Weisberger states that “the evidence of the actual economic effect of immigration is inconclusive,” quoting a Business Week article that states that “the U.S. is reaping a bonanza of highly educated foreigners.”
But the fact is that in California the average education of immigrants is seventh grade. Because of the lack of skills and lack of education, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children dependency rate in 1990 for Latino women was 23 percent higher than the rate for all other women. The Department of Social Services estimates that nearly half of all refugees in the state are dependent on public assistance. While rich people from Hong Kong may long to come here, I can assure you that rich, well-educated Mexicans are not flooding across our borders.
Of the California state-prison population, 16 percent is known to be in the country illegally. The cost to taxpayers is $402.7 million annually. One of the most devastating economic effects of immigration is to the school system. Forty-five percent of all immigrant children in the United States are in California schools. In the last two years the state has transferred in excess of three billion (not million) dollars in taxes from local governments and special districts to fund schools. The rising school population is caused by immigration.
How do I know all this? I am a budget analyst for the County of Santa Barbara. I am a liberal Democrat; I really did not want to believe that immigration was such a problem. But I understand numbers, and the numbers are clear.
Last, I do not condemn the immigrants, and I believe that we have to take care of those who are here. This Californian is angry, however, at employers who hire illegal aliens, encouraging more to come, and at the federal government for not stopping the influx at the borders and at those who mouth doctrinaire ideologies without regard to the facts and at publishers who publish same.
Linda H. Thorn Santa Barbara, Calif.
Nation of Immigrants
Weisberger’s “history” of American immigration brought a tear to my eye. I’m crying because so much of it is bogus history. Some “historians” insist on repeating a modern-day immigration mythology, woven since the mid1950s. When will the public ever hear a historically truthful and meaningful account of the impacts and politics of the history of American immigration, based on its actual contexts and time frame?
Weisberger’s version of American history is designed to reinforce a modern-day political notion that immigration restrictionists can have no moral standing. It’s the “see, look what someone said about your grandmother” strategy, and it’s really designed to ensure that all Americans will think only one way about immigration, his way.
Weisberger understates the proprietary nature of the original colonial establishments, and neglects to mention the disastrous effects British migration had on New Amsterdam in the 1660s. But his real fault is to say that “immigration helped bring on the Revolution and to give it a surprising new meaning.” The clause he cites from the Declaration of Independence was a “kitchen sink” argument thrown in by Thomas Jefferson when he was listing grievances with King George. It was hardly the key basis for causing the Revolution.
Weisberger never mentions the fate of the Indians or of anyone else displaced by succeeding waves of migration. Nor does he mention the fact that we’ve admitted more immigrants in the past five years than during the entire period from 1607 to 1850 or that immigration will add the equivalent of the current population of Japan to the United States in the lifetime of young Americans. Whoever voted for that? Who wants that? It’s just business as usual, I guess, and the increasingly frantic American public is just imagining that somehow something’s changed. This country will pay for the myopia of people like Weisberger with more of the dismal future that is now unfolding before our very eyes.
Dan Stein
Executive Director, FAIR
(Federation for American
Immigration Reform) Washington, D. C.
Nation of Immigrants
Bernard A. Weisberger replies: Let me see if I’ve got Governor Lamm straight. He couldn’t solve all the problems of crime, welfare, schooling, and unemployment in Colorado during his tenure, and it would have been much easier without those darned immigrants on welfare and in jail. He has nothing to say about those legally admitted, naturalized, and working; does he make a distinction? What other “undesirables” can he scapegoat? Will the nation’s problems go away if we stop admitting a million immigrants a year —less than half of one percent of our current population? And are there no methods of population control other than removing the welcome mat for the upwardly striving and oppressed of the world? Lamm calls that a “policy,” which to me is like calling self-government a policy. Should we give that up now, too, because we aren’t the same country we were a century ago?
Linda Thorn’s letter, too long to print in full, did contain impressive statistics arguing that California, at least, has a large population of poor and illegal immigrants who impose a heavy net burden on the taxpayers. That sounds like an argument for better immigration control (including international cooperation in leveling economic conditions among nations) and for enlarged federal assistance to impacted states. I am glad that she doesn’t “condemn the immigrants” for all the agonies of California’s decline since the fading of the Cold War boom and for other blows to the state’s once-robust economy.
I wrote my article primarily to remind readers of what is often overlooked in the current debate: that immigration has been a mighty force for good in our history and that the majority of today’s immigrants work, pay taxes, and have entered legally under statutes that set a limit of seven hundred thousand annually on a preferential-quota basis designed to reunite families, add to the national pool of skills and talents, and rescue refugees.
Mr. Stein, of FAIR, doesn’t like my history, but his own “history” is far wide of the mark. Friendly histories of immigration go back well before the 1950s. They point out, among other things, that the colonies desperately needed labor, and it was the steady inflow of predominantly British immigrants (and slaves) that enabled them to reach the self-sufficiency without which there would have been no Revolution. Stein says that immigrants displaced the Indians. That is, alas, the truth, but only to the Indians do I concede the right to complain about the foreigners. Stein’s nettled tone arises from the fact that he is discomforted by the reminder that he is singing old tunes. And I think it’s important to know what part ethnic and racial stereotypes played in previous nativist movements.
Overall, my critics seem to think that I was reading my politics into the subject. On the contrary, my politics in this matter are conditioned by my knowledge of history. Only a fool would deny that we face serious problems as a nation. I argue simply that we can deal with them within the framework of our past principles. These include welcoming strangers and embracing them within the American family on the basis of merit, not ancestry. If we forget or abandon them, then I would like to paraphrase that sentimental ideologue Abraham Lincoln, as I quoted him in the article, and say that I would prefer emigrating to another country where they take their xenophobia pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
