Homeland Security

DATE=01/17/03

TYPE=FOCUS

NUMBER=8-074

TITLE= IMMIGRATION IN AMERICA

BYLINE=SERENA PARKER

TELEPHONE=202-205-4679

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ED WARNER

Please note, this show airs January 20, 2003.

INTRO: Over the next 50 years, the population of the United States is expected to grow to more than 400 million from an estimated 288 million people today. About two-thirds of this increase will come from immigration. Many Americans say their country will be unable to handle such a population explosion. They fear America's economy won't expand rapidly enough to provide jobs for all U-S citizens along with the new immigrants. They worry that infrastructure, public schools and health care will suffer. In this Focus report, VOA's Serena Parker looks at immigration in America.

TEXT: By the year 2050, the population of the United States will have grown by 120 million people. Eighty million of them will be immigrants or the children of immigrants. Although the United States was built on immigration, today many Americans worry that their country won't be able to absorb the new waves of immigrants and transform them into successful citizens.

Dan Stein is executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. He says that unlike earlier periods in American history, when immigration was used to build and populate our nation, the United States today has no real need for so many new arrivals.

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We've got about 285, 288 million people who are here in the United States now, and at current projections, the United States Census Bureau, the agency that counts people, is projecting that we're going to have perhaps as many as 400, maybe 500 million people in the next 50 years. Nobody in the United States has planned for that kind of population growth, and we've got enormous infrastructure requirements to accommodate the traffic congestion, the additional housing, the schools, and of course, the jobs that would be required to keep that all going. And no one has really planned for that.

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While opponents of immigration want to see a reduction in the number of all immigrants, they especially want the government to crack down on illegal immigration. The U-S Census Bureau estimates there are eight to nine million people here illegally, although some estimates place that figure closer to 13 million.

John Wahala, a research associate at the Center for Immigration Studies, says immigrant workers stand to earn significantly more in the U-S than they would in their own countries.

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But immigrants, it's important to keep in mind, don't benefit from successive waves of massive immigration. This would saturate the low end of the labor market and drive down wages for the immigrants here. And what it does is create large disparities between the rich and the upper middle class and the poor. Subsequently, what you have is immigrants becoming economically and socially isolated and unable to realistically compete in a largely post-industrial society.

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Illegal immigrants often have no health insurance and rely on state and local hospitals, adding financial pressure to already strained state budgets. Illegal immigrants tend to be young and have children who don't speak English enrolled in state-funded public schools, which puts an extra burden on the states.

Opponents of immigration worry that already overcrowded schools won't be able to handle the influx of non-English speaking students. But given the global reach of American popular culture, the youngsters are expected to pick up the language quickly enough.

Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington, says assimilation has been a concern ever since immigrants began coming to the United States and so far, immigrants have successfully assimilated. There's no reason to think the country cannot continue to do so.

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But the question is: Is that sustainable? Our population tripled in the last century, and by every measure of U-S well being, virtually every measure, we're better off. And so I don't think there's any reason to believe we can't continue to live better, more prosperous, healthier lives. Places like Japan, some countries in Western Europe, are starting to see that there are very real problems that come with slowing population growth, and in some cases even contracting population growth.

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While birth rates in Europe and Japan continue to decline, American birth rates, which fell in the 1980s, are now on the rise among native born Americans and non-citizens. Mr. Griswold says these rates, and America's relative openness to immigrants, give the United States some important advantages over Europe and Japan.

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Immigrants do several things. They keep prices more affordable by providing labor in areas where Americans don't really care to work: construction, service industries, retail, those sorts of industries. Also, they bring innovative ideas, and that's particularly true of higher skilled immigrants. And then they bring drive and initiative. Just a small percentage of the world's population is immigrants living in a country other than the one they were born in. It requires initiative and self-starting characteristics, and immigrants have traditionally brought that to America and continue to bring that to the United States.

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We do find that immigration is a net positive benefit to the United States economy.

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Jim Smith is a senior economist at the Rand Corporation who has conducted several studies on immigration.

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The benefit, however, was about 10 billion dollars a year. That may sound like a big number but relative to the entire U-S economy, which is about 10 trillion dollars a year, it's relatively small. So immigration is a positive net benefit, but it's hardly the driving force of the U-S economy. So the benefits can be also exaggerated by pro-immigrants. It's a positive benefit. It's something that does the U-S economy good, but it's far from the driving force in our economic growth.

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While new unskilled immigrants tend to gain economically, their arrival hurts low-income U-S citizens, says Jim Gimpel, professor of government at the University of Maryland. This can lead to tension between native-born and immigrant workers.

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You can say that immigration is good for the economy as a whole, but you can also say that immigration is not especially good for those people who are in vulnerable segments of the economy, who are working in low-skilled and no-skilled positions and who really need a raise. So it's one thing to say that immigration benefits the Marriott hotel manager or the Old Ebbitt Grill restaurant owner downtown. It's quite another thing to evaluate the effects of immigration on someone who is doing landscaping work or someone who is doing agricultural labor or working in meat packing plant. And he's got immigrant competitors coming in who are willing to work for one-third to one-half less.

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As the U-S economy sputters along and companies announce large layoffs, the unemployment rate reached six percent in December, the highest in eight years. The sluggish economy has contributed to looming federal and state budget deficits. Mr. Stein of FAIR says that as a result, he expects some kind of immigration backlash in the U-S Congress.

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When the governors and leaders of states begin to propose radical cutbacks in social service spending or new school construction, invariably the whole question of the affordability of mass immigration comes to the fore, as it did ten years ago. And so we're likely to see, certainly in the popular branch of the legislature, the House of Representatives, some initiatives if not cut back immigrant eligibility for various entitlement programs, maybe cut back the overall flow of unskilled immigration itself. And we expect to start seeing that in the next few months.

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Although opponents of immigration want the government to reduce the number of legal immigrants and crack down on illegal ones, they acknowledge that it will be hard. The U-S economy is the largest in the world, and the American dream of improving one's fortune is irresistible to many.

For Focus, I'm Serena Parker.