Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and progressives are doing better than that with regards to at least one issue — immigration. A new study at the Center for American Progress claims that comprehensive immigration reform leading to legalization for millions of immigrants could yield $1.5 trillion in benefits to the U.S. economy through higher wages and productivity.
Opposition to immigration reform — often with racist overtones — has unfortunately become a core cause in many conservative circles. Often the objection is cultural, as promoted by the late political scientist Samuel Huntington — the perception that immigration threatens a core American identity and that the current crop of Hispanic immigrants is uniquely resistant to cultural assimilation. Others focus on the issue of legality, arguing that illegal immigrants are lawbreakers and should be treated as such.
Both themes are misguided and contrary to sound conservative principles. The cultural claim is historically unfounded. Previous waves of immigrants — Irish, Chinese, German, Eastern European — were always thought at the time to be resistant to assimilation. Such views were always proved wrong within a couple generations. There is simply no evidence for the Huntingtonian hypothesis, even leaving aside its transparently racist foundations.
The issue of illegality is simply a problem of exaggeration. Yes, illegal immigrants broke the law, but probably so did you when you exceeded the speed limit on your way to work this morning. The issue isn’t whether or not illegal immigration is illegal, but rather what the appropriate consequence should be. If individual immigrants have committed other crimes, particularly violent crimes, even progressive plans for immigration reform would concede that imprisonment and deportation is the appropriate response to those other crimes. But illegal immigration in and of itself is a victimless crime. These are people merely trying to survive and support their families. It is hardly just to treat them as violent or dangerous felons in response. Payment of a moderate fine is more appropriate, and a path to legalization should be provided for those that have been otherwise contributing members of their communities.
And that leads to the economic argument that conservatives should prize but which they for some reason ignore and cede to progressives. Immigration is an economic plus. Surveying the economic and demographic performance of the world’s democracies, a pattern quickly emerges. Those with highly restrictive immigration policies — Japan, for example — are struggling to find ways to fund their basic government services for an aging population while the economy is crippled by labor shortages. There simply is a lack of people to pay the taxes necessary to fund the government’s entitlement programs. Because of its generally restrictive immigration policies (few European countries allow paths to citizenship for immigrants, relegating them to marginalized and occasionally violent ghettos) Europe is rapidly approaching a situation that will potentially be even more serious than Japan. But, in contrast, the American economic and government budgetary difficulties have been perpetually mitigated by a source of low-cost labor not available in Japan. And going back over a century, immigrant communities drawn by the magnetism of American openness have provided a source of economic vibrancy and entrepreneurship that has driven the engine of American prosperity time and time again. In addition to bringing in low-cost labor, American openness attracts the world’s best and brightest. The bottom line is that openness to immigration serves economic prosperity on multiple levels. Conservatives betray their own principles when they ignore these facts.
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