Holding Center: There is a need for immigrants in the United States


(Kevin Yin | Daily Trojan)

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I have always found this inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty to be a beautiful affirmation of our better nature: the part of us that feels the pain of others and wishes to help.

But we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act four years before the Statue of Liberty was even installed and today there are miles of metal wall under construction in Texas — we’ve never been that selfless nation described in the poem. Even our arguments to exclude have stayed the same: immigrants depress wages, they bring crime and steal jobs and, on some level, immigrants threaten our culture. 

I do not think it’s shameful to agree with any of these statements; immigration policy should not be charity. And it should be easy to see why the Republican Party — increasingly composed of low-wage white voters — is hesitant to fling open the country’s gates: We have enough tired and enough poor of our own.  

I only think it’s a shame that so much suffering has been justified using obsolete ideas. The first argument, that immigrants depress wages, is only true when any two groups compete for the same positions. But this is not the case among the nation’s low wage jobs; there is no overflow of farmhands and landscapers, no unemployed crowds clamoring to pick berries in a hot field all day. 

And, really, U.S.-born workers don’t want these jobs. These positions tend to be physically strenuous, rote and unsafe. Because our country has a million-worker shortage and a rapidly aging population, the economy needs an immigrant workforce to fill these positions. According to Giovanni Peri, a professor of Economics at UC Davis, “Most economists agree that … immigrants have not come at the cost of either of American jobs, nor of American wages.”

Despite this, much of the anti-immigration rhetoric has centered on non-citizens being “public charges,” pointing to their supposed burden on the economy and social services. These arguments disregard the fact that we need immigrants as much as they need us. In addition to filling our worker shortages, immigrants contribute more than their fair share to the public pot. 

The average immigrant will pay $80,000 more in taxes than they receive in government services. In 2010, undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion into Social Security, and only got $1 billion back. If we deport these workers, as 70% of Republicans have supported, we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot. 

And the decision would be made to appease fear; at the base of the anti-immigration resurgence is a story that many conservative leaders have repeated: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” President Donald Trump has used the words “invasion” and “killer” 500 times at his rallies to describe immigrants.

But immigrants commit less crime than U.S.-born Americans in part because they have so much more to lose. This is not to mention that unauthorized immigration was at a 12-year low in 2016 and that more Mexicans have been leaving the U.S. than arriving. So where does this story of invasion come from? 

The easy answer is politics. Trump chanted “build that wall” all the way to the White House. Banging on the anti-immigration drum turns out voters in droves. There is a political disincentive for conservatives to update their stance, even if it ends up harming the country. Conservative leaders craft anti-immigration policies because they know that immigrants largely vote Democratic. 

But the party didn’t invent immigration fears. There is a prevailing sentiment that immigrants threaten American culture, our traditions and way of life. This argument has no easy address, as there is no statistic that can disprove fear. 

All I can say is that American culture is tied to our multiculturalism, a history of accepting foreign aspirants to the fabled American dream. If we wall ourselves up to preserve some strange conception of our culture, then our culture will starve. 

Look around: We are all the children of immigrants, somewhere up the line. 

Dillon Cranston is a sophomore writing about politics. His column, “Holding Center,” runs every other Wednesday.