Thread: City, Thank Your Illegal Immigrants

http://www.nysun.com/article/39064

September 5, 2006 Edition > Section: Opinion > Printer-Friendly Version

City, Thank Your Immigrants
BY EDWARD GLAESER
September 5, 2006


Today the House of Representatives reconvenes after spending the summer holding public hearings discussing the alleged dangers of unchecked immigration. The House's Republican leaders will decide whether to follow the Senate towards moderate immigration reform or whether to follow Representative Tom Tancredo's hard anti-immigration line and an appeal to immigration's enemies. The Republican attraction to nativism isn't new. The party was formed in the 1850s on the ashes of the Whigs, the Free Soilers, and the American Party, a.k.a. the Know-Nothings.The Whigs defined themselves, like the English Whigs, by their opposition to governmental tyranny embodied by Andrew Jackson. The Free Soilers moved towards liberty for all Americans. But the Know-Nothings were defined by opposition to immigration. While I revere the Republican heritage of freedom and limited government, I despise this heritage's dark doppelganger — the anti-immigrant legacy of the Know-Nothings.

One reason all this should matter to New Yorkers is that an attack on immigration is an attack on cities. Thirty-seven percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born. For centuries, New York City has been the country's main port of entry. Not coincidentally, Manhattan was at its largest relative to America in 1910, at the height of American immigration. New York's ethnic neighborhoods still provide a way-station for immigrants combining American urban prosperity with old country comfort. Just as in 1900, it is still a lot easier to keep kosher in Brooklyn than in rural Minnesota. Native Americans have fled to car-based living in the exurbs but less wealthy immigrants value the ability to take the "7" train all the way from the immigrant enclaves in Flushing to Times Square.

Just as cities are good for immigrants, immigrants are good for cities. Agglomeration economies are the essence of urban productivity — more people make cities more productive. But New York City's population only grew in the 1990s because of immigrants and the city seems to have lost almost 50,000 people since 2000. Unless immigration increases, New York will continue to decline.

Nativism is tied to the view that immigrants pose a threat to our culture. But immigrants are New York's culture. Since 1655, when the Dutch West India Company welcomed New York's first Jews, the cultural heritage of every New Yorker has been a heady brew made from scores of societies. German hot dogs, Italian pizza, Dutch place names, Yiddish epithets, Latin music, and English pretension (okay and literature and musicals about felines) are all intrinsic parts of New York's cultural heritage.

We have been told that the new nativism is justified by a post 9/11 need to secure our borders. Personally, I am much more frightened of nuclear weapons crossing the borders than Mexican immigrants. More significantly, I remain convinced that robust immigration is a bulwark of our national security.American immigrants played a critical role in winning America's 20th century wars. It wasn't the worst thing to have our own Germans — Eisenhower and Nimitz — fighting the Axis. Who knows what role the children of Asian immigrants going to Stuyvesant are going to play in the next war? Our 21st century strength depends on our total economic and military might — a more populous America will contribute to that strength.

Our country needs immigration reform that will increase, not decrease, immigration flows. America would have little trouble absorbing a million or more extra immigrants each year, especially with a more sensible immigration policy. We can get tougher on illegal immigration, but we should join that with a dramatic increase in the number of visas.

Our visa policy should be smart. We should favor the young and the skilled who are more likely to contribute to the economy than to tax the safety net. The Australians have long used a points system that favors the educated, and there is no reason not to embrace this type of approach. As an economist, I even like auctioning visas to the pool of suitable immigrants. We can respect national security concerns by favoring those countries that have been America's recent allies and penalizing those places that fight against us.

I do not have any greater right to American freedom and prosperity than anyone else does, and it pains me that we deny those blessings to the rest of the world. When America closed its borders in 1924, the country lost one of its claims to moral greatness: the promise that anyone could come and be free. Every time we raise our walls, we reinforce our image as Fortress America. I hope the House remembers the promises etched on the Statue of Liberty, "send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Mr. Glaeser is the Glimp professor of economics at Harvard, director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Mr. Glaeser is the Glimp professor of economics at Harvard, director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

And is, IMO, globalism and the downfall of our nation to our young people.

"send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Hear violins?

Problem is we're overwhelmed with illegal immigrants. I don't recall but I think the professor called them immigrants. No problem with immigrants, but to have 12-20 million illegal immigrants is unacceptable and a drain on our hospitals, schools, jails, etc.

If this professor and the mayor of NYC feel these illegal immigrants are so necessary let's get the word out for them to all go there where they are needed and welcomed.

I just sent this letter off to the editor of the paper.

Dear Editor:

I am shocked that Edward Glaeser, a Harvard professor fails to understand the BASIC difference between LEGAL, and ILLEGAL immigration. As a foe of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, I want our borders secured, and want most if not all of those here ILLEGALLY returned to their home country. That does not make me ANTI Immigrant, but anti-illegal immigration.

Perhaps as a Harvard Professor, Edward Glaeser does not have to worry about the negative impacts on his salary that those of us in the lower and middle class do. Perhaps in his ivory tower, he does not know the horror of having your property values ruined because George Bush and the ICE refuse to investigate and crack down on a tenement house filled with 30 or so ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Yes, LEGAL IMMIGRANTS are good for New York City, and each and every one of them should be welcomed with open arms, but ILLEGAL ALIENS should be shunned, and reported to the authorities, as should those who hire them.

Pinto Bean
Peekskill, New York

The Republican attraction to nativism isn't new.

But he doesn't mention how the KKK was actually known as the terrorist arm of the Democrat party. Hmmm, I wonder why? And if these so-called 'immigrants' are so great for an economy, why don't they stay home and build their economies?

http://www.californiareview.org/index.php

During hearings in Congress regarding the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1872, the Democrats admitted the Klan was a part of the Democratic Party. Like Democratic Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina said, "We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank, and only one plank, namely that this is a white man's country and white men must govern it."

Our visa policy should be smart. We should favor the young and the skilled who are more likely to contribute to the economy than to tax the safety net. The Australians have long used a points system that favors the educated, and there is no reason not to embrace this type of approach. As an economist, I even like auctioning visas to the pool of suitable immigrants. We can respect national security concerns by favoring those countries that have been America's recent allies and penalizing those places that fight against us

The above is the only statement within that entire article that I agree with:

I agree that our visa policy should be smart. That being said, that would mean that the millions of 3rd grade educated bottom of Mexico's barrel which continue to come here illegally should be deported and so should their anchor babies that are fast becoming the nations highest population of teen pregnancy and illiterate drop outs.

Next in line should be the Russian illegals whose drug smugglers, gangs and prostitution rings are also rampant and a detriment to our society.

After deportation of these 2 very dangerous populations of illegals we should then work through the rest of those of various nationalities in this country illegally and usurping the 14th amendment and all the social services it entitles them to.