Immigration is the Third Rail of American Politics

 By Henry Srebrnik, Moncton Times & Transcript

Immigration, legal and otherwise, is the issue of our time in the western world. We are seeing the popularity of anti-immigrant parties across Europe, Canada, and even Japan, increase. As for the United States, this will most likely be what Donald Trump will be remembered for in his second term.

Due to the ever-rising numbers of migrants to the U.S., the enforcement of immigration restrictions has become more oppressive and more unpleasant as time passes. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Nov. 27 that he would “permanently pause migration” from all “third world countries” to allow recovery from policies that had eroded the “gains and living conditions.” of many Americans.

In the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration, the Census Bureau calculated that between 2023 and 2024, roughly 2.8 million more people migrated into the United States than left. This year, the net figure could be close to zero, even negative.

In an interview with the British website UnHerd published Dec. 22, Vice-President J.D. Vance spoke about the issue. “We have to accept that if you overwhelm the country with too many new entrants -- even if they believe the right things, even if they’re fundamentally good people -- you do change the country in some profound way.” The Biden administration let in too many people, too quickly. “If the numbers were much smaller, and we had tried to select for people who were much better at assimilating into American culture,” he added,  the current mess might have been avoided.

The tendencies that lead to increasing immigration are powerful. A lot of immigration is chain migration. If you are, say, a Colombian or Guatemalan, you will be able to live in a largely Spanish-speaking apartment complex and patronize Spanish-speaking barbers and shops. You can watch your soccer team on a television with some compatriots.

Another reason why many oppose rising migration is remittances. Immigrants send money back to relatives in their home countries. In 2024, immigrants remitted $161 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean, including $65 billion sent to Mexico, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

At various times, America all but halted the influx of migrants. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act halted a migration that had brought 35 million newcomers from every corner of Europe (but few from elsewhere). It set up national-origin quotas based on the proportion of each nation’s emigrants in the U.S. Census of 1920.

The restrictions had been energetically lobbied against, but the new law was popular. Restriction brought stability and allowed assimilation. The 1924 act was key, as it denied cultural reinforcements from abroad, which forced the newcomers to submit to the majoritarian American culture.

All this changed 60 years ago, when President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 reopened the gates. Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act. It removed national origins quotas – and ethnic identity was now encouraged over assimilation. Any effort at reimposing limits would be susceptible to accusations of racism. Even Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, intended as a compromise between restrictionists and liberals, wound up incentivizing migration through a lenient amnesty.

But the real problem is this: Once the limits on mass migration from poorer regions of the globe were effectively removed, so were the limits on how far the wages of untrained Americans could fall. High-volume, low-wage immigration has been the main culprit in the widening inequality of the past half-century.

In a 1995 study, the Harvard economist George Borjas showed that mass migration effected a large transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. In his analysis, “The Economic Benefits from Immigration,” published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, he found that the native rich (primarily employers and capital owners who employ the immigrant labour) were made richer because the influx of workers lowered labour costs.

The native poor (primarily low-skilled workers who compete with immigrants for jobs) were made poorer due to wage suppression. The native rich who employ the immigrants were made $566 billion richer, while the native poor, who compete with the immigrants, were made $516 billion poorer.

Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many Blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip.

According to U.S. census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 per cent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.

But this isn’t just about economics, it’s also about national identity. Instead of mocking the “melting pot,” why not look at what has turned E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) into its opposite. Without assimilation, you don’t have immigration but invasion.

In the case of Mexicans, there’s also the potential issue of irredentism, the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it, since most of the southwest was -- unjustly -- stolen from Mexico in a 19^th century war.

Hence Trump’s closed borders, hardline actions against illegal immigration, with National Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials engaged in rounding up and expelling people. It’s not pretty.