Interesting . . . First article seems "somewhat" related to my post on the UCs 2007 admission numbers.Illegal immigration's harmful effects
The Washington Times: May 25 , 2007 -- by Carol M. Swain
The Congressional Black Caucus has not been an effective voice for working-class Americans on the issue of immigration reform.
African Americans should expect and demand more from the CBC, because its members have elected to organize as a racial caucus. By doing so, CBC members have placed upon themselves the obligation to represent the interests of the millions of black constituents who have faithfully and repeatedly sent them to Washington.
Instead, CBC members have ignored social-science studies, congressional testimony and census data documenting the harm that high levels of immigration have caused and are continuing to have on low-wage, low-skill workers. Intervention is needed. African Americans and their allies should hold CBC members and other Democrats accountable for failing to represent the interests of their constituents.
It was Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, who chaired the Senate committee that held hearings on black male unemployment in spring of 2007. James Wright, a journalist writing for Afro-American News, reported that Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, chose not to sit on Mr. Schumer's committee. At the time that Mr. Wright's newspaper went to press in March, no CBC representatives were seated on the bicameral committee of House and Senate members.
Given their past stances, CBC members can be expected to support amnesty for illegal immigrants and the proposed new guest-worker program that will further disadvantage working-class Americans and those who will compete with the new immigrants for housing, health care, education and other benefits provided to low- and moderate-income Americans.
We need only focus on unemployment to get an idea of how African Americans and other historically disadvantaged groups are adversely affected by high levels of immigration. Consider that black unemployment rates are usually double the rate of whites and are higher than the rates of Hispanics. For example, in April 2007, the national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. The black unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, with the rate for black males at 9.7 percent. The rate for Hispanics was 5.4 percent. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor statistics has forecast that in the next seven years the Hispanic labor force will be 6.3 million workers greater than the black workforce. As well, by 2014, the black workforce will lag behind the Hispanics, Asians and white non-Hispanics in labor-force participation.
Employed African Americans include a disproportionate percentage of high-school dropouts and graduates who compete directly with legal and illegal immigrants for low-wage, low-skill jobs.
New immigrants arriving since 1990 have increased the supply of labor by 25 percent for the kinds of jobs traditionally taken by poorly educated Americans. Using data from 2000-2004, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has found that while immigrant workers constituted 15 percent of the U.S. labor force, they were a whopping 40 percent of workers without high-school diplomas. Only 12 percent had greater than a high school diploma.
The greatest competition for low-skill jobs is now occurring among people at the margins of society, a multiracial group that includes poorly educated blacks, whites and Hispanics. It is no wonder members of the working-class are the ones most upset about high levels of immigration.
Whether the topic is education, poverty, housing, health care or unemployment, blacks remain clustered at the bottom of the ladder in a most desperate situation. Therefore, their need for representation in Congress is ongoing -- the more vigorous, the better.
The interests of American citizens should trump any obligations to illegal immigrants who have willfully broken the nation's laws and demanded rights and privileges not guaranteed by the Constitution. Often these immigrants show open hostility and disdain for African Americans, the very group whose civil-rights movement has benefitted them enormously.
CBC members should be expected to bring more to their districts than descriptive representation and loud rhetoric about race and rights. Effectively representing their constituents should trump symbolism and the Caucus's tendency to pursue abstract rights for imagined coalition partners. If the CBC is to fulfill its goals and obligations to America, it must be actively involved in shaping immigration legislation to take into consideration the needs of the most vulnerable Americans.
Carol M. Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, is the editor of Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
A Bill That Earned Its Doubters
The Washington Post : May 24 , 2007 -- by George F. Will
Compromise is incessantly praised, and it has produced the proposed immigration legislation. But compromise is the mother of complexity, which, regarding immigration, virtually guarantees -- as the public understands -- weak enforcement and noncompliance.
Although the compromise was announced the day the Census Bureau reported that there now are 100 million nonwhites in America, Americans are skeptical about the legislation, but not because they have suddenly succumbed to nativism. Rather, the public has slowly come to the conclusion that the government cannot be trusted to mean what it says about immigration.
In 1986, when there probably were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, Americans accepted an amnesty because they were promised that border control would promptly follow. Today the 12 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here five or more years, are as numerous as Pennsylvanians; 44 states have populations smaller than 12 million. Deporting the 12 million would require police resources and methods from which the nation would rightly flinch. So, why not leave bad enough alone?
Concentrate on border control and on workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who are or will arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away.
Under current immigration policies, America is importing another underclass, one "with the potential to expand indefinitely," according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. To sentimentalists who cling to "the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue," she says:
From 1990 to 2004, Hispanics accounted for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. Only 53 percent of Hispanics earn high school diplomas, the lowest among American ethnic groups. Half of all children born to Hispanic Americans in 2005 were born out of wedlock -- a reliable predictor of social pathologies.
The legislation supposedly would shift policy from emphasizing family unification to emphasizing economic criteria (skills) when setting eligibility for immigrants. Critics say this will sunder families. But the sundering has happened; it was done by illegal immigrants who left family members behind and are free to reunite with their families where they left them.
Anyway, the supposed shift from emphasizing family relations -- the emphasis that results in "chain migration" -- to economic merit may be diluted to nothingness. It is highly suspicious that there was a rush -- fortunately stymied -- to pass this legislation through both houses and get it to conference, where the majority of participants will be Democrats eager to court Hispanic votes.
Some Democrats argue that liberalism's teetering achievement, the welfare state, requires liberal immigration policies. The argument is: Today there are only 3.3 workers for every retiree. In January, the first of 77 million baby boomers begin to retire. By the time they have retired, in 2030, there will be 2.2 workers for every retiree -- but only if the workforce is replenished by 900,000 immigrants a year.
On Monday, however, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation stunned some senators who heard his argument that continuing, under family-based immigration, to import a low-skilled population will cost the welfare state far more than the immigrants' contributions to the economy and government. He argued that low-skilled immigrants are costly to the welfare state at every point in their life cycle and are very costly when elderly. Just the 9 million to 10 million adults already here illegally will, if given amnesty, cost an average of $300,000 -- cumulatively, more than $2.5 trillion-- in various entitlements (Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc.) over 30 years.
To those who say border control is impossible -- often these are the same people who said better policing could not substantially reduce crime, until it did -- one answer is: It took just 34 months for the Manhattan Project to progress from the creation of the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee wilderness to the atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N.M. That is what America accomplishes when it is serious.
In an attempt to anesthetize people who sensibly say "border control and workplace enforcement first," important provisions of the legislation would supposedly be "triggered" only when control of the border is "certified" by the president. But in what looks like a parody of the Washington mentality, certification would be triggered not by border control but by the hiring of border control agents and other spending. So, the supposedly hardheaded aspects of the legislation actually rest on the delusion that spending equals the achievement of the intention behind the spending. By that assumption, we have long since tranquilized and democratized Iraq.
The Washington Times: May 25 , 2007 -- by Carol M. Swain
The Congressional Black Caucus has not been an effective voice for working-class Americans on the issue of immigration reform.
African Americans should expect and demand more from the CBC, because its members have elected to organize as a racial caucus. By doing so, CBC members have placed upon themselves the obligation to represent the interests of the millions of black constituents who have faithfully and repeatedly sent them to Washington.
Instead, CBC members have ignored social-science studies, congressional testimony and census data documenting the harm that high levels of immigration have caused and are continuing to have on low-wage, low-skill workers. Intervention is needed. African Americans and their allies should hold CBC members and other Democrats accountable for failing to represent the interests of their constituents.
It was Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, who chaired the Senate committee that held hearings on black male unemployment in spring of 2007. James Wright, a journalist writing for Afro-American News, reported that Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, chose not to sit on Mr. Schumer's committee. At the time that Mr. Wright's newspaper went to press in March, no CBC representatives were seated on the bicameral committee of House and Senate members.
Given their past stances, CBC members can be expected to support amnesty for illegal immigrants and the proposed new guest-worker program that will further disadvantage working-class Americans and those who will compete with the new immigrants for housing, health care, education and other benefits provided to low- and moderate-income Americans.
We need only focus on unemployment to get an idea of how African Americans and other historically disadvantaged groups are adversely affected by high levels of immigration. Consider that black unemployment rates are usually double the rate of whites and are higher than the rates of Hispanics. For example, in April 2007, the national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. The black unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, with the rate for black males at 9.7 percent. The rate for Hispanics was 5.4 percent. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor statistics has forecast that in the next seven years the Hispanic labor force will be 6.3 million workers greater than the black workforce. As well, by 2014, the black workforce will lag behind the Hispanics, Asians and white non-Hispanics in labor-force participation.
Employed African Americans include a disproportionate percentage of high-school dropouts and graduates who compete directly with legal and illegal immigrants for low-wage, low-skill jobs.
New immigrants arriving since 1990 have increased the supply of labor by 25 percent for the kinds of jobs traditionally taken by poorly educated Americans. Using data from 2000-2004, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has found that while immigrant workers constituted 15 percent of the U.S. labor force, they were a whopping 40 percent of workers without high-school diplomas. Only 12 percent had greater than a high school diploma.
The greatest competition for low-skill jobs is now occurring among people at the margins of society, a multiracial group that includes poorly educated blacks, whites and Hispanics. It is no wonder members of the working-class are the ones most upset about high levels of immigration.
Whether the topic is education, poverty, housing, health care or unemployment, blacks remain clustered at the bottom of the ladder in a most desperate situation. Therefore, their need for representation in Congress is ongoing -- the more vigorous, the better.
The interests of American citizens should trump any obligations to illegal immigrants who have willfully broken the nation's laws and demanded rights and privileges not guaranteed by the Constitution. Often these immigrants show open hostility and disdain for African Americans, the very group whose civil-rights movement has benefitted them enormously.
CBC members should be expected to bring more to their districts than descriptive representation and loud rhetoric about race and rights. Effectively representing their constituents should trump symbolism and the Caucus's tendency to pursue abstract rights for imagined coalition partners. If the CBC is to fulfill its goals and obligations to America, it must be actively involved in shaping immigration legislation to take into consideration the needs of the most vulnerable Americans.
Carol M. Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law at Vanderbilt University, is the editor of Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
A Bill That Earned Its Doubters
The Washington Post : May 24 , 2007 -- by George F. Will
Compromise is incessantly praised, and it has produced the proposed immigration legislation. But compromise is the mother of complexity, which, regarding immigration, virtually guarantees -- as the public understands -- weak enforcement and noncompliance.
Although the compromise was announced the day the Census Bureau reported that there now are 100 million nonwhites in America, Americans are skeptical about the legislation, but not because they have suddenly succumbed to nativism. Rather, the public has slowly come to the conclusion that the government cannot be trusted to mean what it says about immigration.
In 1986, when there probably were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, Americans accepted an amnesty because they were promised that border control would promptly follow. Today the 12 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here five or more years, are as numerous as Pennsylvanians; 44 states have populations smaller than 12 million. Deporting the 12 million would require police resources and methods from which the nation would rightly flinch. So, why not leave bad enough alone?
Concentrate on border control and on workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who are or will arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away.
Under current immigration policies, America is importing another underclass, one "with the potential to expand indefinitely," according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. To sentimentalists who cling to "the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue," she says:
From 1990 to 2004, Hispanics accounted for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. Only 53 percent of Hispanics earn high school diplomas, the lowest among American ethnic groups. Half of all children born to Hispanic Americans in 2005 were born out of wedlock -- a reliable predictor of social pathologies.
The legislation supposedly would shift policy from emphasizing family unification to emphasizing economic criteria (skills) when setting eligibility for immigrants. Critics say this will sunder families. But the sundering has happened; it was done by illegal immigrants who left family members behind and are free to reunite with their families where they left them.
Anyway, the supposed shift from emphasizing family relations -- the emphasis that results in "chain migration" -- to economic merit may be diluted to nothingness. It is highly suspicious that there was a rush -- fortunately stymied -- to pass this legislation through both houses and get it to conference, where the majority of participants will be Democrats eager to court Hispanic votes.
Some Democrats argue that liberalism's teetering achievement, the welfare state, requires liberal immigration policies. The argument is: Today there are only 3.3 workers for every retiree. In January, the first of 77 million baby boomers begin to retire. By the time they have retired, in 2030, there will be 2.2 workers for every retiree -- but only if the workforce is replenished by 900,000 immigrants a year.
On Monday, however, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation stunned some senators who heard his argument that continuing, under family-based immigration, to import a low-skilled population will cost the welfare state far more than the immigrants' contributions to the economy and government. He argued that low-skilled immigrants are costly to the welfare state at every point in their life cycle and are very costly when elderly. Just the 9 million to 10 million adults already here illegally will, if given amnesty, cost an average of $300,000 -- cumulatively, more than $2.5 trillion-- in various entitlements (Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc.) over 30 years.
To those who say border control is impossible -- often these are the same people who said better policing could not substantially reduce crime, until it did -- one answer is: It took just 34 months for the Manhattan Project to progress from the creation of the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee wilderness to the atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N.M. That is what America accomplishes when it is serious.
In an attempt to anesthetize people who sensibly say "border control and workplace enforcement first," important provisions of the legislation would supposedly be "triggered" only when control of the border is "certified" by the president. But in what looks like a parody of the Washington mentality, certification would be triggered not by border control but by the hiring of border control agents and other spending. So, the supposedly hardheaded aspects of the legislation actually rest on the delusion that spending equals the achievement of the intention behind the spending. By that assumption, we have long since tranquilized and democratized Iraq.
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