How do you fix the welfare problem when you are bringing in mostly poor and unskilled people who depress wages and take jobs from Americans? We don't have a worker shortage problem, we have a job shortage problem. Real wages have been declining for the past 40 years.
I don’t have a problem with an immigrants demographic background.
I will be politically incorrect and say I do. When you bring in most of your immigrants from the Third World and in numbers that will make non-Hispanic whites a minority in 30 years, what kind of country will we have in terms of national identify and a sense of shared endeavor? We changed the immigration rules in 1965 to make America look more like the rest of the world rather than having immigrants come mostly from Europe. It has had a major impact on this country demographically, culturally, and electorally.
Legal immigrants are predominantly minorities as defined by the U.S. Government, which entitles them to special benefits like affirmative action and minority business set asides. This reinforces and incentivizes group identification rather than assimilation.
And we know they vote Democrat two to one. This last election has shown that we are entering an era of tribal politics. 59% of whites voted for Romney. He got the majority of white voters in all age groups and gender. Obama won 93% of the black vote, 73% of the Asian vote and 71% of the Hispanic vote. By 2019 half of the children 18 and under will be minorities and by 2042 half of the country will be. Demography is destiny.
The second issue is with American values. Those have been dropping precipitously over the last half century. How much is driven by domestic education policy v. country of origin culture I don’t know. Both are problematic.
We are not the same country we were in 1960. 89% of the population were non-Hispanic whites. About one in 25 was foreign born. Today, 66% of the population is non-Hispanic whites and one in 8 is foreign born. Where do you think the mantra of multiculturalism and diversity is a strength comes from? Many of these people do not share our cultural values or share the vision of our Founders, who have been demonized in our schools as white racists.
The immigration issue will become much more polarizing as we see increased immigration and lower native birthrates, principally among non-Hispanic. Europe is consumed with the immigration issue as it tries to preserve its culture and values along with the welfare state. Immigrants in Europe are also using welfare programs to a much higher extent than the native born and they are depressing wages, especially among blue collar workers.
Of the two, I would cite our education policy which is no longer American, but Politically Correct in belief and internationalist in teaching (by this I mean that American exceptionalism is not taught). Illegal immigrants rarely learn English, are Balkinized in their own communities and don’t ever take the Constitution/Citizenship classes or test. That’s a problem.
What is the root of this political correctness? We have become a much more diverse society comprised of significant numbers of people who don't share our cultural values and views on the role of government. We are also encouraging group identity rather than assimilation. We are transmitting the message that all cultures are equal and that there is nothing exceptional about America. We must not offend any of these cultures even if it means that American traditions and values must be curtailed. And the more immigrants from the Third World that you bring in, the worse it will get.
It is not only illegal aliens that are not learning English properly. There are 10.4 million students from immigrant households in public schools, accounting for one in five public school students. Of these students, 78 percent speak a language other than English at home. Overall, one in four public school students now speaks a language other than English at home.
And learning English comes at a cost. Here in Fairfax County, there are over 31,000 ESOL students in the system. The costs of just the ESOL instruction alone (excluding the regular per capita costs) are $104 million a year. And it is being paid by property taxes. The costs of immigration, legal and illegal on our educational system, are huge and they are not computed by the CBO and the estimated costs of adding another 33 million permanent legal immigrants over the next 10 years.
Our educational system is not teaching civics and the Constitution to all students, not just immigrants. And American history is being neglected and distorted.
My point about the local and state generated issues is that ‘sanctuary’ cities are allowed to exist. Those same urban centers also force people into poverty via their regulation of the market place. It is very hard to work or set up a business there. That must change as it affects blacks disproportionately and they make up the domestic workforce being replaced by immigrants, mainly from Mexico.
I just completed working on and participating in the DCMarch for Jobs yesterday. We had several thousand people turn out. Not a very encouraging sign given that we had an all-star cast of speakers ranging from Steve King, Allen West, Ted Cruz, and Jeff Sessions to a host of black leaders like Jesse Peterson and KC Smith, Katrina Pierson, etc. The real problem is that both parties have abandoned the American worker. And the McRubio-Schumer amnesty will hit all kinds of workers--blue collar and white collar alike-- and of all races and ethnicities.
It’s a tangled web, that only liberty can unwind.
Our liberty is being diminished daily by the political, corporate, and media elites. We are all being ensnared and suffocated by this web. And ignorance of the issues is the main reason the public remains unaware of what is happening and what is at stake.
I agree with kabar that ever increasing “legal immigration” is a mortal threat.
When FD Roosevelt threatened to pack the SCOTUS with his cronies, congressmen from his own party wrote, “This is more power than a good man should want, or a bad man should hsve.” But while they were fighting that, Roosevelt went ahead with the rest of his leftist policies, which still plague us today.
Similarly, while we are very focused on illegal immigration. (which is a huge problem, and threatens add millions of leftist voters with the help of the GOP), legal immigration seems to have no limit.