The role of immigrants in American society has been a major issue in the United States since the early 18th century. Over this time period and to the present day, the same basic economic and social questions move in and out of the debate. Will immigrants depress wages? Commit crimes? Spread diseases? Take jobs? The answers to these questions vary, some positive and some negative.
The consensus in America as I see it today generally is that legal immigration is a positive thing. After all, legal immigration focuses on letting in the best and the brightest from the outside world. Thus, the main point of contention revolves around what to do about illegal immigrants, specifically the millions who have come over the southern border from Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The economic studies concerning illegal immigrants suggest they don't greatly hurt the economy and may even help it. They generally don't compete for middle-class jobs, but mostly for lower-class positions. Oddly enough, they are most often found in the exact same jobs that newly arrived legal immigrants from earlier years fulfilled: temporary agricultural work and low-paying manual labor.
While certain absolute numbers concerning how much it costs to educate and provide health care for illegal immigrants are large, immigrants provide goods and services to the entire country at lower prices than would otherwise be possible. As an impact on the economy as a whole, the effects of illegal immigration are minimal. Given this evidence, is there a deeper driving force behind the debate?
In my own personal experience, the issue of illegal immigration has far more to do with socio-cultural issues than it ever has with economics. In my hometown of Green Bay, Wis., I went to an elementary and middle school with hardly any minority students at all. However, beginning in high school, Green Bay experienced a large influx of Hispanics. In the course of a few years, my high school and hometown underwent a dramatic demographic change.
It's quite possible that a large percentage of the Hispanic students were the children of illegal immigrants. Many of the Hispanic students in the school did not speak English very well or at all. A sort of mutual nonrecognition existed, with most white students not mixing with Hispanics or African-Americans and vice-versa.
The influx of a different race in Green Bay created a "culture clash" between the white citizens and Hispanic immigrants. The county board passed a resolution to make English the official language. Letters to the editors of the local papers complained of the increasing incidence of hearing Spanish around town and worried that Hispanics were "destroying one of the most unifying aspects of our American society."
For every Hispanic parade or news item, there were that many more mutterings about how our "good American society" was being undermined and turned into just another part of Mexico. As I have no reason to believe that Green Bay is a unique case in regard to the immigration discussion, I'm sure that the exact same debate has gone on elsewhere as well and most college students are familiar with it.
The most common counterargument to anti-immigration talk is that the United States has always been a country of immigrants, a grand "melting pot" of which citizens should feel proud. Personally — although it is hard to compare anti-immigrant sentiment over the years — I feel the climate surrounding immigration today is much more civil than in 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet I have a feeling that a more vigorous debate could well arise over the issue of immigration because of its intrinsic link to race and the larger demographic transformation of the United States.
In the past, immigrants from Europe were eventually absorbed into the native white population, a process made much easier because they were actually white themselves. However, the vast majority of recent illegal immigrants are not white. The consensus among demographers is that non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the majority of the population sometime before 2050. The burgeoning proportion of Hispanics in the United States population is largely responsible for this demographic shift, and illegal immigration over the southern border has been one of the driving forces of the change.
In the illegal immigration debate, the anti-immigration faction can best be described as afraid of this process. This shift in demographic composition will almost certainly result in a transfer of political power away from the traditionally dominant white majority. Given how minorities have often been unreservedly disadvantaged throughout American history, it's no surprise white Americans fear the idea of no longer being the majority (although they will still be the largest racial group).
Furthermore, the track record of multiracial and multiethnic societies hasn't exactly been the greatest. A common worry among immigration foes is the "Balkanization" of the United States. The term "Balkanization" refers to the splitting up of the Balkan Peninsula in Europe into many different smaller countries based largely along ethnic lines.
Some immigration foes fear a de facto split of the country into ethnic areas: a Hispanic Southwest, or on a smaller scale within states and cities where the people no longer have an allegiance to the country as a whole. In their eyes, this is a particular problem with illegal immigrants, as they cannot easily integrate into a new society.
There is no easy solution to the immigration debate. Illegal immigration will continue to a large extent, regardless of the amount of expensive enforcement put in place on the borders. However, simply letting everyone into the United States who wants in does not seem to be feasible, especially with the unresolved problems surrounding integrating immigrants into society.
Rather than having immigration advocates blindly yelling, they need to tailor their efforts to address the issues I've outlined above. Solving it will require cooperation from all the sectors of society and a refocusing of the debate from the economic implications to the social ones. Fear of the "other" is never easy to overcome. The effort won't be easy or short, but faced with a reality that will not disappear, the issue must be resolved.
Andrew Wagner ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in computer science and political science.
