San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

Another inconvenient truth / Immigrants, the work ethic and nativist myth

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.

Nativist lore has it that immigrants only come to the United States for the handouts. Supposedly, whether they arrive legally or illegally, their chief ambition is to simply collect welfare, milk social services and otherwise sponge off America’s generosity. For more than 200 years, the narrative has been that newcomers are constantly taking, using and consuming without giving back to the country that received them.

That is just not so. In fact, it is a malicious lie that is often used to justify all sorts of mistreatment of immigrants. For one thing, who has time to take advantage of the system? According to most studies, and lots of anecdotal evidence all around us, many immigrants are too busy working, starting their own businesses and employing others to stand in line and collect benefits. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

That point was recently driven home again with the release of a new report detailing that, in our own back yard, Latino immigrants are very likely to be self-employed – more likely, in fact, than nonimmigrant Latinos and even native-born U.S. citizens. The report by the California Immigrant Policy Center, a statewide partnership of immigrant-rights groups, was compiled using U.S. Census data pooled from the American Community Survey from 2005 to 2007. According to the report, one-quarter of San Diego County’s gross domestic product is generated by immigrant workers, either acting as entrepreneurs or employed by others. Latino immigrants in the county have a self-employment rate of 13 percent. That’s greater than native-born citizens, including native-born Latinos.

Some of this will sound counterintuitive to those who believe that the longer an immigrant family remains in the United States the better off they are. That is not always the case. For all that is gained over the generations in terms of greater prosperity and opportunity, it might be that other things – such as optimism, a work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit – go by the wayside.

If immigrants are now, and likely always have been, an economic positive to a given region, then San Diego County is in good stead. According to census data, 23 percent of county residents are immigrants, and 45 percent of those are naturalized citizens. And those immigrants come from all over the world, including Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa. And many of them own their own businesses.

The message from all this is encouraging. Despite what you hear on talk radio or from conservative bloggers, most immigrants give back to the economy as much as they take. It’s essential that they come legally, of course. That part is nonnegotiable. But, the fact is that, once they’re here, they’re more likely than the native-born to roll up their sleeves, start their own businesses, make payrolls and employ other workers. Without these newcomers and all that they contribute, we’d be a less productive and more culturally impoverished country – one that bore no resemblance to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

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