Great article on why we should restrict immigration
June 14th, 2007 by aaronharnlyThe Atlantic Monthly is running a really hard-hitting, pull-no-punches piece on immigration restriction, and why this is the right time to put the brakes on.
It begins by acknowledging the historical role that immigration has played in our nation:
From the beginning, it has been the policy of the United States, both officially and according to the prevailing sentiment of our people, to tolerate, to welcome, and to encourage immigration, without qualification and without discrimination. For generations, it was the settled opinion of our people, which found no challenge anywhere, that immigration was a source of both strength and wealth.
It goes on to note that support for immigration generally rests on two key ideas:
Immigration boosts our population, which we need because our birthrate is lower.
Immigration brings laborers that do work that Americans are unwilling to do.
These two opinions were, first, that immigration constituted a net reinforcement of our population; secondly, that, in addition to this, or irrespective of this, immigration was necessary, in order to supply the laborers who should do certain kinds of work,…
The article then dismantles each of these two ideas. First, on the idea that we need immigration because our birthrate has declined — in fact, the article shows, our birthrate has declined because of immigration:
The arrival in the United States, … increasingly, of large numbers of degraded peasantry created for the first time in this country distinct social classes, and produced an alteration of economic relations which could not fail powerfully to affect population. The appearance of vast numbers of men, foreign in birth and often in language, with a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, of an industrial grade suited only to the lowest kind of manual labor, was exactly such a cause as by any student of population would be expected to affect profoundly the growth of the native population. Americans shrank alike from the social contact and the economic competition thus created. They became increasingly unwilling to bring forth sons and daughters who should be obliged to compete in the market for labor and in the walks of life with those whom they did not recognize as of their own grade and condition.
And second: the idea that we need immigrants to do work that Americans are unwilling to do — this too is turned on its head. In fact, Americans only become unwilling to do certain “degrading” labor only when new groups of immigrants arrive:
Does the Italian come because the Irishman refuses to work in ditches and trenches, in gangs; or has the Irishman taken this position because the Italian has come? The latter is undoubtedly the truth; and if the administrators of Baron Hirsch’s estate send to us two millions of Russian Jews, we shall soon find the Italians standing on their dignity, and deeming themselves too good to work on streets and sewers and railroads. But meanwhile, what of the republic? what of the American standard of living? what of the American rate of wages?
Finally, the article points out that we just don’t have the room to absorb this influx of immigrants any more:
First, we have the important fact of the complete exhaustion of the free public lands of the United States. Fifty years ago, thirty years ago, vast tracts of arable laud were open to every person arriving on our shores, under the Preemption Act, or later, the Homestead Act. A good farm of one hundred and sixty acres could be had at the minimum price of $1.25 an acre, or for merely the fees of registration. Under these circumstances it was a very simple matter to dispose of a large immigration. To-day there is not a good farm within the limits of the United States which is to be had under either of these acts. The wild and tumultuous scenes which attended the opening to settlement of the Territory of Oklahoma, a few years ago, and, a little later, of the so-called Cherokee Strip, testify eloquently to the vast change in our national conditions in this respect.
Finally, the author calls for a national “rest” from immigration, to give our country a chance to recuperate from its devastating effects, before more undesirables arrive:
For one, I believe it is time that we should take a rest, and give our social, political, and industrial system some chance to recuperate. The problems which so sternly confront us to-day are serious enough without being complicated and aggravated by the addition of some millions of Hungarians, Bohemians, Poles, south Italians, and Russian Jews.
And yes, it was written in 1896.
