Immigrants what do you think

Almost seven in 10 69 percent immigrants were working full time, part time, or were self-employed at the time of the survey. Only 18 percent report that they or their families had received food stamps.

Fewer 10 percent say they had received donations or free services from a charity or church. In contrast, more than three in four 76 percent have volunteered their time or contributed money to a community organization or church. Only four percent report health insurance coverage through Medicaid; 60 percent have private health insurance, nine percent are covered through Medicare. Twenty-two percent reported having no medical insurance.

Immigrants display an appreciation of the U. Not surprisingly, many immigrants stay in touch with folks back home: 59 percent regularly phone family abroad and another 44 percent send money at least once in a while.

Respondents split 47 percent to 52 percent between those who closely follow current events in their country of origin and those who do not. But immigrants' desire to stay connected with people and events "back home" does not contradict a desire to stay in their new home. In fact, 74 percent say they plan to stay in the U. Fully eight in 10 80 percent say they would still come to the U. Sympathetic attachment to the U. Finally, about one in four 26 percent say they or a member of their family has served on active duty in the U.

The national origins of immigrants to America are changing in step with both world events and evolving U. To argue that open borders would destroy American sovereignty is to argue that the United States was not a sovereign country when George Washington, Andrew Jackson, or Abraham Lincoln were presidents.

We do not have to choose between free immigration and U. Furthermore, national sovereign control over immigration means that the government can do whatever it wants with that power—including relinquishing it entirely. It would be odd to argue that sovereign national states have complete control over their border except they that cannot open them too much. Of course they can, as that is the essence of sovereignty.

After all, I am arguing that the United States government should change its laws to allow for more legal immigration, not that the U.

This is an argument used by some Republicans and conservatives to oppose liberalized immigration. They point to my home state of California as an example of what happens when there are too many immigrants and their descendants: Democratic Party dominance. They would further have to explain why Texas Hispanics are so much more Republican than those in California are. Nativism has never been the path toward national party success and frequently contributes to their downfall.

In other words, whether immigrants vote for Republicans is mostly up to how Republicans treat them. Republicans should look toward the inclusive and relatively pro-immigration policies and positions adopted by their fellow party members in Texas and their subsequent electoral success there rather than trying to replicate the foolish nativist politics pursued by the California Republican Party.

Although some Texas Republicans have changed their tone on immigration in recent years, they have focused primarily on border security rather than forcing every state employee to help enforce immigration law. My comment here assumes that locking people out of the United States because they might disproportionately vote for one of the two major parties is a legitimate use of government power—I do not believe that it is.

The resultant weakening in economic growth means that immigrants will destroy more wealth than they will create over the long run. This is the most intelligent anti-immigration argument and the one most likely to be correct although the evidence does not support it.

Economists Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett lay out an enlightening model of how immigrants from poorer countries could theoretically weaken the growth potential of the countries that they immigrate to. Their model assumes that immigrants transmit anti-growth factors to the United States in the form of lower total factor productivity.

However, as the immigrants assimilate, these anti-growth factors weaken over time. Congestion could counteract that assimilation process when there are too many immigrants with too many bad ideas, thus overwhelming assimilative forces. Clemens is rightly skeptical that this is occurring but his paper lays out the theoretical point where immigration restrictions would be efficient by balancing the benefits of economic expansion from immigration with the theoretical costs of degradation in economic growth.

Empirical evidence does not point to this effect either. In a recent academic paper , my coauthors and I compared economic freedom scores with immigrant populations across over countries over 21 years. Some countries were majority immigrant while some had virtually none.

Immigrant countries of origin did not affect the outcome. These results held for the United States nationally but not for state governments. States with greater immigrant populations in had less economic freedom in than those with fewer immigrants, but the difference was small. The national increase in economic freedom more than outweighed the small decrease in economic freedom in states with more immigrants.

Additionally, large shocks into specific countries result in vast improvements in the economic freedom score. Large immigrant populations also do not increase the size of welfare programs or other public programs across American states and there is a lot of evidence that more immigrants in European countries actually decreases support for big government.

Although this anti-immigration argument could be true, it seems unlikely to be so for several reasons. First, it is very hard to upend established political and economic institutions through immigration. Immigrants change to fit into the existing order rather than vice versa. Institutions are ontologically collective—my American conceptions of private property rights would not accompany me in any meaningful way if I went to Cuba and vice versa.

Local institutions are incredibly robust under a model called the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement. It would take a rapid inundation of a local area by immigrants and a replacement of natives to upend institutions in most places.

The second possibility is immigrant self-selection: Those who decide to come here mostly admire American institutions or have opinions on policies that are very similar to those of native-born Americans. As a result, adding more immigrants who already broadly share the opinions of most Americans will not affect policy. This appears to be the case in the United States. The third explanation is that foreigners and Americans have very similar policy opinions.

This hypothesis is related to those above, but it indicates an area where Americans may be unexceptional compared to the rest of the world. According to this theory, Americans are not more supportive of free markets than most other people, we are just lucky that we inherited excellent institutions from our ancestors. The fourth reason is that more open immigration makes native voters oppose welfare or expanded government because they believe immigrants will disproportionately consume the benefits regardless of the fact that poor immigrants actually under-consume welfare compared to poor Americans.

In essence, voters hold back the expansion of those programs based on the belief that immigrants may take advantage of them. As the late labor historian and immigration restrictionist Vernon M.

Briggs Jr. Government grows the fastest when immigration is the most restricted, and it slows dramatically when the borders are more open. Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels thought that the prospects for working-class revolution in the United States were smaller here due to the varied immigrant origins of the workers who were divided by a high degree of ethnic, sectarian, and racial diversity.

That immigrant-led diversity may be why the United States never had a popular worker, labor, or socialist party. The most plausible argument against liberalizing immigration is that immigrants will worsen our economic and political institutions, thus slowing economic growth and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Fortunately, the academic and policy literature does not support this argument and there is some evidence that immigration could actually improve our institutions.

Even the best argument against immigration is still unconvincing. The empirical evidence on this point is conclusive: The flow of skilled workers from low-productivity countries to high-productivity nations increases the incomes of people in the destination country, enriches the immigrants, and helps or at least does not hurt those left behind.

Furthermore, remittances that immigrants send home are often large enough to offset any loss in home country income through emigration.

In the long run, the potential to immigrate and the higher returns from education increase the incentive for workers in the developing world to acquire skills that they otherwise might not—increasing the quantity of human capital.

Instead of being called a brain drain, this phenomenon should be accurately called a skill flow. Economic development should be about increasing the incomes of people and not the amount of economic activity in specific geographical regions. Immigration and emigration do just that. The late economist Julian Simon spent much of his career showing that people are an economic and environmental blessing, not a curse. Despite his work, numerous anti-immigration organizations today were funded and founded to oppose immigration because it would increase the number of Americans who would then harm the environment.

Concerns about overcrowding are focused on publicly provided goods or services—like schools, roads, and heavily zoned urban areas. Private businesses do not complain about crowding as they can boost their profits by expanding to meet demand or charging higher prices. If crowding was really an issue then privatizing government functions so they would then have an incentive to rapidly meet demand is a cheap and easy option.

Even if the government does not do that, and I do not expect them to in the near future, the problems of crowding are manageable because more immigrants also means a larger tax base. Reforming or removing local land-use laws that prevent development would also go a long way to alleviating any concerns about overcrowding. Additionally, As of March , close to , people have applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, and , people have had their applications approved.

DACA has significantly and positively affected the lives of those who have received the temporary status: A Harvard University study found that 60 percent of DACA beneficiaries reported obtaining new jobs and 45 percent reported increased wages. An additional 5 million parents and DREAMers will receive temporary work permits and relief from deportations under the deferred action programs.

Nearly 3 million of those eligible are from Mexico and Central America, with an additional , from Asia. The deferred action programs will significantly boost the U. Over the next 10 years, the U. Sanam Malik Research Assistant. Wolgin Managing Director, Immigration Policy. You Might Also Like.

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