- Yeh Ling-Ling, Executive Director of Diversity Alliance for Sustainable Growth
The Bush Administration just projected a record deficit for the next two years. Most states are also facing the worst fiscal crisis in decades. Meanwhile, U.S. unemployment remains high, over 6%. Our infrastructure is overburdened.
These stark facts ought to give American leaders the courage to advocate an immigration policy that would drastically reduce the number of service users and save jobs for all legal residents.
Annual
legal immigration has averaged about 1 million a year while
illegal immigration is estimated to be about 800,000 annually. Adult immigrants need employment, just like U.S.- born Americans. If the U.S. continues to massively export high-tech and manufacturing jobs and simultaneously import professional and low-skilled workers, how can unemployed Americans find work?
If President Bush and Congress are serious about addressing unemployment in this country, they should temporarily halt job seekers from entering the U.S. by passing legislation to reduce legal immigration from an average of 1 million a year to no more than 200,000. Deportation of millions of illegal immigrants would open up jobs to legal residents who need work.
Immigration advocates claim that immigrants are doing jobs that Americans don't want. But our native poor still hold low-skilled positions in areas of low levels of immigration. Furthermore, this country still has millions of unemployed and under-employed low-skilled Americans. Why don't we give them incentives to take those jobs?
Regarding farm labor, American farmers should continue to mechanize and not rely on a cheap foreign labor force that burdens American taxpayers.
The computer industry lobby also argues that they cannot find qualified Americans for the jobs. However, a continuing study, by
University of California Professor of Computer Science Dr. Norman Matloff, shows that American computer scientists are being displaced by foreign-born workers. Also, many high-tech employers should not require applicants have specific skills or knowledge.
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has said that those specific skills and knowledge are easy to learn. He is looking for people with a certain type of intelligence who feel excitement about software.
The open-borders lobby argues that immigration is needed to boost the economy. But the United States was a very prosperous country in the 1960's with 200 million people. Most families then needed only one income to live a middle-class lifestyle. Now, with 90 million additional people, due mostly to immigration-related growth, this country is the greatest debtor nation in history. Most families need two incomes to barely make ends meet. Our quality of life is steadily deteriorating.
Many schools are swamped with exploding English-deficient enrollments. U.S. education went from being one of the world's finest to one trailing Japan and many European countries as many schools are swamped with English-deficient students.
High immigration also affects homeland security. If the U.S. continues to allow some 800,000 illegal immigrants and large quantities of drugs to be smuggled into this country every year, why not terrorists and biochemical weapons? Furthermore, some of the perpetrators of the 9/11 tragedy were legal immigrants, and the British shoebomber is not an Arab.
Consequently, the one million legal immigrants admitted every year all require screening. If this country continues the current rates of immigration, how can our overburdened law enforcement agencies intercept or root-out terrorists?
Americans should also be aware that terrorists are not the only threat to our national security. Harvard
Professor Samuel P. Huntington, author of the best-seller
Clash of Civilizations, has written that high Mexican immigration is a "threat to American societal security."
Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico, wrote in 1982:
"The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot." In 1998, the
then-Mexican Consul General Jose Pescador Osuna openly said: "We are practicing La Reconquista in California."
Indeed, if the U.S. population continues to grow the way it did in the last decade as shown in the 2000 Census, mathematically, by 2070 -- within the lifetimes of today's children -- people with Mexican origins will then be the majority in the entire United States.
In 1997,
Ernesto Zedillo, then president of Mexico, said in Chicago that the "Mexican nation extends beyond its territories enclosed by its borders" and that "Mexican migrants are an important, a very important, part of it."
Should we allow Mexico to use legal and illegal immigration to extend the Mexican nation? Many individual immigrants have many good qualities. However, our current immigration policy does not reflect today's economic reality. Also, the United States cannot achieve long-term economic recovery or prosperity with a growing semi-literate youth.
Mass immigration is also threatening the survival of the U.S. as a nation.
General Tommy Franks, commander of American forces in the war in Iraq, stated this past April: "I believe that any nation that wants to control its borders can do so." Therefore, the United States can and should seriously control its borders and drastically lower legal immigration as was done around 1924. This is a necessary first step if our leaders are serious about addressing America's problems.
Yeh Ling-Ling is the Executive Director of
Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, a national non-profit based in Oakland, California.
