What if I told you there were only one thing you needed to do to own American politics for the next 50 years?
The Pew Research Center estimates that at current rates of immigration, 19 percent of our residents will be foreign-born by 2050. Hispanics, many of whom constitute one of our dominant immigration groups, will balloon to 29 percent of the population. Naturalized Asians, the group that has the highest average income, will rise to 9 percent of the population. And white Americans, a group that makes up 87 percent of Congress and whose ancestors were themselves immigrants, will constitute less than half of the population.
Immigrants — and their children — are our future voters. They are also the future engine of our economic growth. They will decide the direction of our country. Therefore, it is in our best interest to set the foundations now for a mutually prosperous future for current citizens and immigrants. Congress needs to make sure that we give immigrants a chance to succeed in the United States even as it ensures that our citizens can compete and prosper alongside the new groups. We must learn from the history of the founding of our immigrant nation and the racial division that has caused so many of our current and past national issues. If we, immigrants and multi-generational Americans, can unify around our flag or at the very least our shared economic fortune, we can win the future.
The first step in peaceful coexistence is making sure we retain the immigrants who will make the most jobs. So why do we treat these future decision-makers like second-class citizens? Every time I talk to a foreigner at Brown, Harvard, Yale, the University of Virginia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and similar schools, I am stunned. Every single person is worried about finding a job that would provide a visa after school. It is absurd that we educate these people and give them the tools they need to build our great nation and then we say, “Eh, you’re not that valuable to us, we may just kick you out.” What is the rationale? Well, our representatives supposedly speak for their constituents, and those constituents believe outside competition for local jobs isn’t good for their bottom line. Logically, the idea that more foreigners — and therefore more competition for jobs — are harmful to “true citizens” makes sense.
But that belief could not be more wrong. Our population needs to know this. Despite the current headwind provided by the government, many immigrants still stay. And they produce. In 2011, more than 75 percent of the patents filed by the top 10 patent-producing universities in the United States included one or more immigrant inventors. In addition, beyond the highly skilled immigrants, the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that immigration reform for all skill levels would improve our economic growth by 4.8 percent and lower our deficit by $1.2 trillion over 20 years.
The chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, Stephen Gross, has independently confirmed the deficit-reducing power of immigration — in this case undocumented immigration. In a rare moment of sunshine for our dysfunctional Social Security program, his research has found that undocumented immigrants annually contribute $15 billion to Social Security but receive only $1 billion in benefits from the program. This surplus has accumulated like snowpack in pre-global warming Antarctica to the degree that undocumented immigrants have contributed $300 billion, or 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion in our Social Security Trust Fund.
On top of its deficit-reducing power, the Bipartisan Policy Center recently declared that immigration reform would result in wage increases for American citizens because immigrant labor can fill the jobs Americans will not take — like construction site cleanup. As a result of such complementary labor, the residential housing sector — a crucial driver of U.S. economic growth — would grow by $69 billion a year.
These findings are directly in line with the consensus among economists that immigration reform would have a positive effect on our economy. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute last year told the New York Times that the idea that immigrants at every skill level help the economy is “not controversial” and that there is a “clearly positive” effect of increased immigration on family incomes in the United States. In addition, it has been estimated that up to half of the entrepreneurs and founders behind our new tech companies — think Sergei Brin of Google — are immigrants. These companies have been a source of real and massive growth through production and innovation, rather than consumption. Millions of high-quality jobs have been created as a result. Clearly, regardless of their level of skill or documentation, immigrants are a massive engine of growth for our economy. So why do so many Americans think immigration is bad for their wallets, and what can this teach us about our future policy decisions?
Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California at San Diego, has followed this issue closely for years. His research has found that there are two different groups that feel threatened by immigration: low-skilled workers, like high school dropouts, who feel they may be pushed out of jobs, and people of all education levels in states that offer extensive social programs to their residents. The objections of these two groups must be answered for the U.S. population to live in peaceful coexistence.
Congress must address its constituents’ concerns if it is to successfully reform immigration and harness the economic power of immigrants. To ensure that low-skilled workers still have economic opportunities afforded to people with certain levels of education, Congress could offer free online high school curricula that have been constructed and peer-reviewed by premier public and private schools. The schools would gain prestige or tax dollars. The new students would improve their social capital and employability, and it would be easy to implement widely for a low cost. Corporations could partner with the government to seek out and hire employees directly from the ranks of graduates.
An obvious subsequent step would be a secondary partnership in which the government and premier universities would create a distilled online college program — a one- or two-year mini bachelor’s degree. Based on scores and employee assessments, corporations could use these courses as a net to catch hidden talent and intelligence and put people on a fast track to climb the management structure. Upward mobility would drastically increase. This initiative would also strengthen these companies by providing them with intelligent and driven individuals who are loyal to the company and have a very different perspective on the world because of their alternative route to management. If these programs were successful, our government could expand them and offer them to all our citizens.
The second area that must be addressed is the burden of undocumented immigrants on local governments. The answer to this issue is obvious: Provide undocumented immigrants with the legal standing and a path to citizenship offered in the Senate’s recent immigration bill. Immigrants will support their own weight on a local and federal level. Local citizens won’t be left with the fiscal burden. This rationale may be why a recent New York Times poll found that 83 percent of Americans support a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented migrants already in the country as long as they learn English and pay back taxes.
There are many more things we can do to ensure that the United States and its shifting demographics can prosper. The above are just two obvious solutions that might work. The political party that ensures our countrymen can peacefully and profitably coexist will help us maintain our dynamism and success through currents of change. If we can live together, our nation of immigrants past and present will win the future.
“A swallow does not a summer make,” though it seems like politicians disagree. Nico Enriquez ’16 may be reached at nenriquez3@gmail.com.
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