A good fence to protect a great nation
Washington Post economics op-ed columnist Robert J. Samuelson has a good piece on the current chaotic and destructive state of immigration to America:
It’s time to build a real fence or a wall along every foot of the 1,989 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border. There can be only two arguments against this approach to keeping out illegal immigrants: (1) it won’t work — possible, but we won’t know unless we try; or (2) we don’t want it to work — then, we should say so and open our borders to anyone but criminals and terrorists.
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Even a country as accepting of newcomers as the United States cannot effortlessly absorb infinite numbers of poor and unskilled workers.
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If there are “shortages” of unskilled American workers, the obvious remedy is to raise their wages. A Texas roofing contractor testified to Congress that he couldn’t get enough roofers at $9 an hour. Okay, increase it to $10 or $12. Higher wages will bring forth more workers. Perish the thought. Business groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, clamor for more guest workers. That’s a euphemism for cheap labor. These business groups seem unperturbed by extravagant increases in chief executives’ pay. But they’re horrified by anything that might raise the wages of maids, waitresses, laborers or gardeners.
As for assimilation, it’s true that millions of Hispanic families are moving into — and reshaping — the American mainstream. But average trends look less encouraging. Since 1990 about 90 percent of the increase in people living below the government’s poverty lines has come among Hispanics. That has to be mainly immigrants and their U.S.-born children. In a report, the Pew Hispanic Center notes:
- Residential segregation is increasing. In 2000, 43 percent of Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with Hispanic majorities, up from 39 percent in 1990.
- The median net worth of Hispanic households is about 9 percent of that of non-Hispanic whites (net worth is what people own minus what they owe).
- Only about a quarter of Hispanic college students graduate compared with about half for non-Hispanic whites.
Assimilation takes time. The big difference between today’s Hispanic inflows and past immigration waves is that those stopped. History or restrictive laws intervened. There was time for newcomers to adapt. Left alone, there’s no obvious reason why the present Hispanic immigration should even pause.
