On Immigration Just Keep The Economy Growing - Road to the Middle Class

SO WHICH IS it? Robert Samuelson says that immigration is a problem because there’s a conflict coming between a burgeoning Hispanic immigrant population of the less-educated and retiring baby-boomers who are going to want their benefits.

The American Immigration Law Foundation says that the Hispanic immigrants are doing fine and that

Latinos experience substantial socioeconomic progress across generations compared to both their immigrant forefathers and native Anglos.

Let’s face it. There has been a conflict between established Americans and immigrants since the founding. The common school movement was founded in part to force assimilation of the dangerous Catholic Irish that were emerging in the 1830s. Then we were worried about Jews in 1900, blacks in the 1960s, and now Hispanics in the 21st century.

The problem is always the same. Will the uneducated, unadapted immigrants trash the America that we higher-toned Americans have so tenderly built?

Then answer always is: We can’t be sure. Up to now, immigrants have always assimilated into the spirit of democratic capitalism, more or less, sooner or later. But will they assimilate this time?

In The New Americans Michael Barone shows how Jews, Italians, and Irish were the problem immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, just as East Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks are the problem now. Their success in assimilation depended upon their exposure, before arrival in the urban economy, to the culture of the rule of law.

Then as now the Democrats latched onto the new immigrants for their votes and also because Democrats believe in race, class, and ethnic politics.

What will happen this time? We don’t know. But we can help things along by making sure that there are jobs, jobs, jobs. As long as there are jobs, then people can rub along.

It is when the economy goes seriously south, as during the Great Depression when the suits totally screwed things up, that you need to watch out.

So while it is sensible to worry about resentful immigrants and selfish baby-boomers, the big thing is to keep the economy in good shape. You do that and a lot of problems just look after themselves.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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