XPost: alt.politics.immigration, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns XPost: sac.politics

Immigration has recently become a lightning rod for America�s
deepest
fears of social chaos and national decline. Millions worry that
immigration is rapidly transforming America into a third-world
country,
with crowded, violent cities, under-educated and low-skilled labor,
and
an ethnic spoils system replacing America�s tradition of
constitutionalism and individual rights. Concerns are rising that
immigrants are abusing the generosity of our welfare state, and will
become an enormous burden on taxpayers. And because a large number
of
immigrants are Spanish-speaking, many Americans fear that continued immigration, especially from south of the border, will result in the balkanization of our country into different language and ethnic
groups,
ultimately leading to the sort of social tensions afflicting
countries
from Canada to Ukraine to, in the worst case, Bosnia.

These are legitimate concerns, but the problems that Americans
rightly
fear are not due to immigration itself, but to the wrong-minded
social
policies of our government. State-sponsored affirmative action,
bilingual education, and multiculturalism are promoting dangerous
levels
of ethnic group tensions and conflict. And our welfare system is
breeding pathological levels of crime and dependency�not primarily
among
immigrants but among native-born whites and blacks.

A country in which 22 percent of white children and 70 percent of
black
children are born out of wedlock need not look to immigrants as the
source of social breakdown. The underlying problems are government
policies whose emphasis on group rights promote ethnic tensions and
a
welfare state that encourages individuals to destroy their own
families.

Immigrant Blessing

With proper government policies, immigrants are a blessing. We saw
this
with earlier waves of immigration, as America absorbed and
assimilated
tens of millions of foreign immigrants of every language, religion,
and
ethnicity. By 1900, some 20 percent of America�s total population
was
foreign-born, and an additional 10 percent arrived in the following
decade. Today�s immigration rate is only a fraction of this level.
Millions of impoverished, poorly educated Jews, Slavs, and Italians
became proud and productive Americans through a public school system
that emphasized English language skills and American culture, and a
society that provided economic opportunity rather than government
entitlement. The Ellis Island tradition was harsh but fair:
Immigrants
with illnesses, or who were otherwise likely to become a burden on
society were excluded, while those with willing hands were allowed
through the Golden Door. This is the tradition to which America
should
return.

Even today, despite government policies that foster dependency, the
immigration of the last three decades has still been a strong net
positive for the American economy. Anyone walking the streets of New
York City or most other major urban centers sees that the majority
of
the shops are owned and operated by immigrant entrepreneurs, often
in
ethnically defined categories�Korean grocers, Indian newsstands,
Chinese
restaurants. It is obvious that most of these shops would simply not
exist without immigrant families willing to put in long hours of
poorly
paid labor to maintain and expand them, in the process improving our
cities. In Los Angeles, the vast majority of hotel and restaurant
employees are hard-working Hispanic immigrants, most here
illegally, and
anyone who believes that these unpleasant jobs would otherwise be
filled
by either native-born blacks or whites is living in a fantasy world.

The same applies to nearly all of the traditional lower-rung
working-class jobs in Southern California, including the nannies and
gardeners whose widespread employment occasionally embarrasses the upper-middle-class Zoe Bairds of this world, even as it enables
their
professional careers by freeing them from domestic chores. The only
means of making a job as a restaurant busboy even remotely
attractive to
a native-born American would be to raise the wage to $10 or $12 per
hour, at which level the job would cease to exist�this is Economics
101.

Though immigrants are frequently blamed for the severity of
California�s
current economic problems, there is no connection whatsoever
between the
two. Massive numbers of jobs have been lost because of the wind-
down of
the defense aerospace industry, the bursting of the 1980s real
estate
bubble, and the enormous costs of environmental and work-place
regulations, none of which have any obvious connection to
immigration.
Furthermore, immigration levels (both legal and illegal) reached new
heights during California�s sustained economic boom of the past
decade.

Since most newcomers tend to be on the lower end of the wage scale,
and
many have children in public schools, they initially do tend to cost
local governments more in services, mostly education costs, than
they
pay in sales and income taxes. This is the source of Governor Pete
Wilson�s current lawsuit against the federal government to recover
the
�costs� to California of illegal immigration. The same could
probably be
said, however, for all members of the working class having young
children. The real culprit is our outrageously inefficient public
school
system, which spends much and delivers little. Furthermore, Jeffrey
Passel of the Urban Institute has shown that because of their age
profile, even working-class immigrants generally pay much more in
federal taxes (primarily Social Security withholding) than they
receive
in federal benefits, so we might well say that immigrants are
helping us
balance our federal budget deficit, as well as allowing our low-end
service industries to survive.

Professional Necessity

But immigrants are crucial not just to industries reliant on cheap,
low-skilled labor. Silicon Valley, home to my own software company,
is
absolutely dependent upon immigrant professionals to maintain its
technological edge. A third of all the engineers and microchip
designers
here are foreign born, and if they left or if their future inflow
were
cut off, America�s computer industry would probably go with them. In
fact, many of the largest and most important technology companies
of the
1980s in California and elsewhere were created by immigrants,
including
Sun Microsystems, AST, ALR, Applied Materials, Everex, and Gupta.
Borland International, a premier software company worth hundreds of
millions of dollars, was founded by Philippe Kahn, an illegal
immigrant.
These immigrant companies have generated hundreds of thousands of
good
jobs in California for native Americans and have provided billions
of
dollars in tax revenues. Without immigrants, America�s tremendous
and
growing dominance in the industries of the future, such as computer
hardware and software, telecommunications, and biotechnology would
be
lost.

Ironically, while several of the most parasitic sectors of American society�politicians, government bureaucrats, and trial lawyers�are
almost entirely filled with native-born Americans, each year a
third to
a half of the student winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search�America�s most prestigious high school science
competition�come
from immigrant families, often quite impoverished. America�s elite
universities have student bodies that may be 20 percent Asian these
days, and crucial fields like science and engineering are often
half or
more immigrant.

No Cause for Alarm

Obviously not all immigrants are scientists and entrepreneurs; many
are
welfare recipients and criminals. Large numbers of Americans are
worried
that recent immigrants contribute disproportionately to crime,
welfare
dependency, and social decay, and that their non-European origins
will
exacerbate America�s growing ethnic strife, eventually leading
perhaps
to separatist ethnic nationalism.

These concerns are frequently overstated. A recent National Review
editorial made much of the statistic that 20 percent of California�s
prison inmates are immigrants, but this is hardly surprising in a
state
where 20 percent of the general population are immigrants.
Similarly,
even George Borjas, an economist opposed to current immigration, has
admitted that the national welfare dependency rate among non-refugee
immigrants is nearly the same as that of the general population, 7.8
percent versus 7.4 percent, despite the often poor education and
relative poverty of many newcomers. A recent University of Texas
study
focusing on all forms of public assistance found that 20 percent of
immigrant households in California were recipients compared with 26
percent of native-born households; for Mexican immigrants and
non-immigrant Anglos, the numbers were 18 percent and 19 percent
respectively. None of this data on immigrants seems cause for great
alarm.

Contrasting signs of immigrant advancement and assimilation are
quite
widespread. Just recently, a top high school valedictorian from San
Diego was discovered to have immigrated illegally from Mexico as a
child. This followed a similar case of a Mexican illegal who
graduated
as a valedictorian in San Francisco. In California the 10 most
common
names of recent home-buyers include Martinez, Rodriguez, Garcia,
Nguyen,
Lee, and Wong, with the Nguyens outnumbering the Smiths two to one
in
affluent, conservative Orange County.

In fact, nearly half of California�s native-born Asians and
Hispanics
marry into other ethnic groups, the strongest possible evidence of
assimilation at work. These intermarriage rates are actually far
higher
than were those of Jews, Italians, or Poles as recently as the
1950s.

Exaggerated Danger

Or consider those places in America where the deepest unspoken fears
have already been realized, and white Americans of European origin
(�Anglos�) have already become a minority of the population. San
Jose,
California�the 11th largest city in the nation�is one such example.
It
has a white population of less than 50 percent, and contains mostly
Asian and Hispanic immigrants�comprising some 20 percent and 30
percent
respectively�including large numbers of impoverished illegal
immigrants.
San Jose has a flourishing economy, the lowest murder and robbery
rates
of any major city in America�less than one-fifth the rates in
Dallas for
example�and virtually no significant ethnic conflict.

Similarly, El Paso, Texas is the most heavily Hispanic (70 percent)
of
any of America�s largest 50 cities, but also has one of the lowest
rates
of serious crime or murder, with a robbery rate just half that of
Seattle, an overwhelmingly white city of similar size. The American
state with the lowest percentage of whites in the population�about
one
third�is Hawaii, hardly notorious as a boiling cauldron of ethnic
conflict and racial hostility between whites and non-whites. And the
statistics show that despite its heavy urbanization, Hawaii has
among
the lowest serious crime rates of any state in the nation.

Hispanic involvement in recent urban riots and disturbances has been
greatly exaggerated by the media. For example, the 1991 Mount
Pleasant
riot in a Hispanic neighborhood of Washington D.C. has regularly
been
cited as an example of Hispanic immigrant volatility, even though
on-the-scene observers have pointed out that the rioters were
primarily
black. Similarly, in Los Angeles, nearly all the rioting was by
native-born blacks, although Central American immigrants joined in
some
of the later looting. Heavily Mexican-American East Los Angeles was
nearly the only part of the city untouched by any significant
rioting or
looting.

Threat and Opportunity

For conservatives, the immigration debate should be viewed both as a
major threat and a major opportunity, each rooted in simple
demographics
and voting strength. For example, 30 percent of California�s current
population is Hispanic and 10 percent is Asian, with the vast
majority
being from immigrant families of the last two decades. Add in other
immigrant groups such as Iranians and Armenians, and the total
comes to
nearly half the general population, and with enormous demographic
momentum (half of all children born each year are Hispanic alone).
Although current immigrant voter registration is very low�Asians and
Hispanics total just 10 percent in most elections�this will change,
and
even if all immigration, both legal and illegal, ended tomorrow,
immigrants and their children would soon dominate California
politically. The demographics of states like New York, Florida, and
Texas are moving in similar directions. Furthermore, the dramatic
economic success of Asian immigrants should soon make them a major
source of political funding both in California and nationwide.

This is potentially a very good thing for conservatives. Most
Hispanics
are classic blue-collar Reagan Democrats, with the same social and
economic profile as Italian-Americans or Slavic-Americans. They are
largely working-class, family-oriented, and socially conservative,
with
a strong commitment to traditional religion, either Catholic or,
increasingly, Evangelical Protestant. Hispanics might well have
remained
John Kennedy or Scoop Jackson Democrats, but the party of George
McGovern and Bill Clinton has little attraction for them.

Asians, similarly, are much like Jews in their professional and
socio-economic profile, but without liberal guilt. The socialist
legacy
of Eastern European intellectuals and the Roosevelt New Deal has
made
Jews a bedrock base of the Democratic Party, and is very different
from
the anti-liberal Confucianist tradition found in most Asian
cultures.
The small-business background and hostility to affirmative action of
Asians leaves them a natural constituency for conservatives as well.

This analysis is not the mere wishful thinking with which
Republicans
periodically discuss raising their dismal percentages of the black
or
Jewish vote. Although nearly all of California�s prominent Asian or
Hispanic political figures are liberal Democrats, ordinary Asians
and
Hispanics have regularly given the Republicans 40 to 50 percent of
their
vote. For example, in 1992, George Bush received a higher fraction
of
the Asian vote (40 percent) than he did of the Anglo (�white�) vote
(33
percent), while Bruce Herschensohn, a very conservative Republican
senatorial candidate, won 44 percent of Asian voters and 40 percent
of
Hispanic voters in his race against Barbara Boxer. Richard Riordan,
a
moderate Republican, was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1993 with
similar shares of the Asian and Hispanic vote, despite running
against
Michael Woo, Los Angeles�s leading Asian-American politician. And
Governor Pete Wilson won his tight 1990 race against Dianne
Feinstein
because of the high percentages he received from Asians (58
percent) and
Hispanics (47 percent), as well as whites (53 percent). By
contrast, the
black vote for each of these Republican candidates was in the 10 to
15
percent range.

Nearly every significant Republican victory of the past decade in
California has depended on immigrant votes, and these totals have
been
achieved despite the fact that the California Republican Party has
rarely, if ever, nominated an Asian or Hispanic for statewide
office. So
long as the Republican Party does not throw away its opportunity by
turning anti-immigrant, these percentages should rise substantially
as
immigrants grow in affluence and younger Asians and Hispanics rise
through the ranks to become Republican leaders. Matt Fong, a
Chinese-American and this year�s Republican nominee for state
treasurer,
is one example.

Pushed into the GOP

Furthermore, there is a high likelihood that the Democratic Party
will
do its own part in pushing immigrants into the Republican camp. The
three most anti-immigrant constituencies in America are blacks,
union-members, and environmentalists, and these are core elements
of the
Democratic Party, especially its liberal wing.

The rise of black xenophobia and the criminal pathology in many
black
neighborhoods, along with black proximity to immigrant areas, has
led to
repeated ethnic violence. It culminated in the Los Angeles riots,
which
were actually anti-immigrant pogroms more than anything else, with
whites being merely a secondary target of the rioters. Even prior
to the
riots, the death rate of Korean shopkeepers in black neighborhoods
was
as high as that of American soldiers in the Vietnam war, and
popular rap
songs have focused on subjects like burning down all the Korean
shops in
black neighborhoods. The media has consistently failed to report or
emphasize the large numbers of rapes and murders committed by blacks
against Asians, many of which look suspiciously like so-called �hate
crimes.�

Similarly, black-Hispanic tensions in California have risen
enormously
since the Los Angeles riots, during which Hispanic families with
small
children were attacked and brutalized by black mobs; also, a
substantial
percentage of the shops destroyed were Hispanic-owned. Since such
conflict between �minority� groups does not conform to the dominant
liberal paradigm, it is largely ignored in the mainstream media, but
perfectly well recognized by the Asian and Hispanic press.

No FAIR

On the policy level, important environmentalist groups such as Zero
Population Growth and the Carrying Capacity Network have adopted a
strong anti-immigration line, and the most prominent anti-
immigration
organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform
(FAIR), has
its origins in the environmentalist movement. Such hostility to
immigration is rooted in the role that immigration plays in
increasing
America�s population and birth rate, and generating economic and
industrial growth, all anathema to fervent environmentalists. Since
most
immigrants hail from crowded Third World nations in Latin America
and
Asia, one might also suspect that a mental image of immigrants
turning
the empty expanses of America�s natural beauty into another densely
populated Hong Kong is also at the back of environmentalist
concerns.

Then, too, there exists an obvious incompatibility between
immigration
and an extensive social welfare state, in which low-skilled
newcomers
are mouths to feed rather than hands to work. Even the most stubborn
liberal Democrats must realize that extending America�s generous
welfare
benefits to all Third World inhabitants who cross our borders would
quickly bankrupt any economy, and cause the collapse of the modern
welfare state. Witness the recent Democratic proposal to fund
national
health care by eliminating various social benefits for legal
immigrants,
a position maintained despite the outrage of Hispanic and Asian
Democrats. It is no coincidence that immigration is a much more
dramatic
political issue in California, which has an extensive welfare state,
than in Texas, which does not.

These facts underlie the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Senator Barbara
Boxer, Representative Tony Beilenson, and other prominent California
liberal Democrats. Boxer has advocated such measures as building a
defensive wall across the Mexican border, to be patrolled by the
National Guard, while Beilenson has proposed amending the
Constitution
to deny the right of U.S. citizenship to immigrant children born in
America. Proposals that the media only recently used to demonize as
nativist the Buchananite right wing of the Republican Party have now
become the common currency of the left wing of the Democratic
Party. All
of these forces are inevitably driving the Democratic Party toward
an
anti-immigration stance, and there is no policy change that can
avert
this conclusion. It is no coincidence that Governor Pete Wilson, a
leading anti-immigrant figure in the Republican Party, is a very
liberal
Republican, being both a strong environmentalist and a firm
believer in
the social welfare state.

Thus, if used properly, immigration could serve as the issue that
breaks
the Democratic Party and forges a new and dominant
conservative/Republican governing coalition. Certain major segments
of
the Democratic Party, aside from the Asians and Hispanics, are
pro-immigrant or at least cosmopolitan, including Jews, academic and
media elites, and top business executives. But they have neither the
numbers or the fervor of the anti-immigrant elements, and, just as
in
the related issue of the Democratic Party�s gradual reversal of its
historic support for free trade, they will eventually be pushed
aside.

Furthermore, although many in these pro-immigrant Democratic groups
have
long recognized the failure of welfare policies, and the harms
inflicted
by bilingual education and affirmative action, they have usually
been
unwilling to attack these programs directly. Once it becomes
absolutely
clear that these policies inevitably provoke widespread anti-
immigrant
sentiment and simply cannot be reconciled with America�s traditional
openness to immigrants, these Democratic groups will split into
pro-welfare state and pro-immigrant wings, with the pro-immigrant
wing
being drawn toward a pro-immigrant Republican Party.

Sacrificing the future

Under the right circumstances, this can be the issue that sparks a
massive rollback of the welfare state and the ethnic group policies
of
the past 20 or 30 years, with these dramatic changes being backed
by a
dominant political alliance of Asians, Hispanics, and conservative
Anglos.

Yet many Republican politicians are riding what they misperceive as
an
irresistible tide of anti-immigrant sentiment and attempting to
move the
party in a strongly restrictionist direction. Such individuals are
sacrificing the long-term future of their party�and of America
itself�for momentary political gain, and working to snatch defeat
from
the jaws of victory. Republican support for reasonable levels of
legal
immigration and for a well-funded Immigration and Naturalization
Service
to deter illegal entry is perfectly appropriate: All sovereign
nations
control their borders. But for a country facing so many real
problems�a
disastrous welfare system and the urban underclass that it has
fostered,
horrifying levels of crime, and an outrageously expensive system of
civil litigation�to grow hysterical about immigration�which is
actually
a net plus to our economy and society�seems the height of
irresponsibility.

Back to Ellis Island

Instead, the Republican Party should focus its efforts around those
core
policies that would serve to unite rather than divide conservative
natives and immigrants (see survey results in sidebar). These should
include absolute opposition to affirmative action policies in all
their
many guises, which Thomas Sowell and others have shown inevitably
lead
to heightened ethnic conflict wherever in the world they are
implemented. Also, we must return our public schools to the
teaching of
our unifying English language and our common American culture, and
eliminate the native-language instruction and divisive
multiculturalism
programs that could fragment our society. George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are just as relevant heroes for the
children of Asian and Hispanic immigrants today as they were for the
children of Italian, Slavic, and Jewish immigrants at the turn of
the
century.

We must also dramatically roll back our well-intentioned but failed
welfare state, whose costs have been far greater than the $4
trillion
spent directly since 1964. Massive social welfare programs have
left us
with a combined legacy of gigantic annual budget deficits and very
high
tax levels, which severely depress our economic growth. But even
more
serious have been the severe social pathologies generated by these
programs, overwhelmingly among the native-born, which have left
large
portions of nearly all our major cities devastated wastelands. All
of
this would have been unimaginable 30 years ago.

Removing from the welfare rolls the 10 percent of recipients who are
immigrants is certainly a necessary and proper action for our
government
to take, but it will not save our society unless we apply the same
measures to the other 90 percent who are native born. And combining
these two actions would serve as a sure means of winning rather than
losing crucial immigrant votes. Our goal must be to return our
entire
society to the values of individual liberty, community spirit, and
personal self-reliance that once characterized the American spirit,
drawing from the traditions of the Western frontier and Ellis
Island.



SIDEBAR: Political Scapegoats

In December 1993, while considering a primary challenge to Governor
Pete
Wilson of California, I commissioned an extremely detailed survey of
1,200 Republican primary voters, with one of the main sections
being an
analysis of their views on the crucial issue of immigration.

At first glance, the results seemed to confirm the conventional
wisdom
on illegal immigration with the respondents rating �stopping illegal
immigrants at the border� at 4.3 in importance (on a scale of 1-5),
second only to crime control (4.5), and slightly ahead of job
creation
and tax limitation. But when voters were then asked the reasons
behind
their immigration concerns (in two parallel subsamples of 600 each,
dealing with illegal and legal immigrants respectively), neither
illegal
nor legal immigrants were viewed as taking jobs away from other
Californians, as committing much crime, or as generally turning
California into a �Third world� state. The only issues that raised
significant concerns were the financial drain of illegal immigrants
on
welfare (4.1), fears that legal and illegal immigrants weren�t
learning
English in the schools (3.2 combined), and anger that legal and
illegal
immigrants and their children would benefit unfairly from
affirmative
action (3.3 combined).

Next, respondents were informed that some studies showed that most illegal/legal immigrants were paying taxes, obeying laws, trying to
learn English, and weren�t on welfare; by better than 2-1 the
response
was that under such circumstances, immigration was not a serious
problem
in California. Following this, the respondents indicated by a
margin of
nearly 4-1 that they agreed that immigrants were being unfarily
blamed
by politicians for problems like crime and welfare, which were more
connected with the native-born urban underclass than with legal or
illegal immigrants.

Finally, a subsampled of 600 was informed that a hypothetical
candidate
believed that immigrants � both legal and illegal � were being
scapegoated by politicians, and that if welfare benefits were cut
and
bilingual education and affirmative action stopped, then immigration
would again become an actual plus for California. A majority of the
subsample agreed, and more significantly, the voters of this
subsample
were willing to support the hypothetical candidate on a sample
ballot
just as strongly as were the other 600 subsample: A pro-immigration
stance had incurred no political cost. All of this data indicate
that
the immigration issue is largely a proxy for concerns about welfare, affirmative action, bilingual education, and multiculturalism, and
is
much broader than it is deep.

The result of my actual gubernatiorial primary race supports this
conclusion. Despite my complete lack of name recognition or
political
experience, my being outspent nearly four to one by Governor
Wilson, and
my public opposition to immigrant bashing, in just eight weeks of
campaigning I raised my support from 8 percent to 34 percent by
election
day, including nearly half of all Republican voters age 50 and
under.

https://www.unz.com/runz/immigration-or-the-welfare-state/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)