Fight for Democracy, Part 15: The Country Immigrants Built (and are still building)

One of the clear difference between Republican and Democratic policy and ideology is their stances on immigration. Democrats favor the concept and want to improve the process, allow in more refugees, and give the good people who are here undocumented a path towards citizenship. Republicans are a bit of mixed bag: the base talk about legalities, worry about crime, and want to greatly limit immigrants (at least a certain type), while the representatives cater to those fears but also have to serve the business interests who are well aware our economy depends up the cheap labor of immigrants. But how did we get here and where should we try to go?
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-politics-immigration

Historically we are a nation of immigrants. Virtually all of us came here or descended from citizens of different countries. Our nation was founded by people who had not been here very long and grew to prosperity on the backs of immigrants, both willing and unwilling. Our economy has always depended on growth which can only be sustained by allowing people in because our now-native population does not reproduce at a fast enough rate. We are built on immigrants because they bolster our economy (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-07-10/economic-statistics-suggest-immigration-is-a-boost-to-the-us-economy), they pay taxes (https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17229018/undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes), and they largely do not receive government aid since they are ineligible for welfare. They work hard jobs that need to be done at low wages that native-born Americans won’t do. They make us richer.

And study after study has shown that immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ea2a6cf9d2eb
). They climb out of poverty at higher rates. They improve on their parents’ education levels at higher rates. They start more businesses and lead to more innovation. They make us better.
https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/articles/2018/01/immigration-visa.html

Most people know this (https://news.gallup.com/poll/235793/record-high-americans-say-immigration-good-thing.aspx), but some don’t. Where does anti-immigration sentiment come from? As I heard one second-generation American say: these immigrants are different. But how? They are poor - but they’ve always been poor. From the Scots-Irish and German immigrants of our nations start, to the Irish fleeing famine, to the current crop of Central and Southern Americans, our immigrants have always been poor. They’ve rarely spoken English or been educated. The vast majority, then and now, have been Christian. So what makes our current immigrants different? Since it’s mostly white, older Protestants who are anti-immigrant, and our current group of immigrants have darker skin than previous ones, I’ll let people draw their own conclusions.

What’s perhaps more surprising about how much anti-immigrant rhetoric is coming from the Republican base and leadership is the fact that we are on a downswing that started under Obama. The number of illegal immigrants has been falling for ten years now and is at a forty year low (https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/). The number of undocumented immigrants living here is holding steady. The number of refugees coming to our country is falling precipitously in spite of the fact that the world numbers are rising. Immigration is putting less pressure on our country now than any time in our memories, so where’s the urgency?

As is the case with most large policy issues, Democrats represent the majority opinion, Republicans the minority. But Republicans do this for a reason. It motivates their base. Any general sense of threat, be it to our safety or our culture, whether well-founded or not, leads voters to be more conservative. The Republicans distort reality time and again to drive a minority opinion to win out over the majority. The solution is simple: vote for truth, vote for majority rule, vote Democrat.