Thread: It's Time to Curb Legal Immigration by James R. Edwards, Jr.

It’s Time to Curb Legal Immigration
by James R. Edwards, Jr.

05/25/2010

Whether to cut legal immigration is an important question badly in need of being asked and answered. The answer will determine the future of this nation—in terms of quality of life, economic prosperity, national security and our ability to help less fortunate countries.

America is experiencing the highest volume of legal immigration since the Great Wave ended a century ago. Unfortunately, most Washington politicians don’t understand immigration policy and its consequences. Those who do tend to be liberals with a political agenda. Equally unhelpful is when uninformed opinions blur the picture.

RealClear Wrong

For example, the political website RealClearPolitics.com ran a column asserting that the American people don’t care about current legal immigration levels, that it’s really just illegal immigration that has them upset.

"Americans support legal immigration and oppose illegal immigration," RCP's chief political correspondent David Paul Kuhn wrote. "But another picture often emerges from the chattering class. Americans' opposition to illegal immigration is wrongly described as opposition to immigration itself."

Mr. Kuhn claimed that legal immigrants possess characteristics of human capital not much different from native-born Americans and markedly superior to illegal aliens. It’s true that legal immigrants generally stack up better than illegals. But sadly, today’s legal immigrants trail the native-born in critical socioeconomic indicators.

Census Bureau data show how legal immigrants are generally poorer, less educated and lower skilled than your typical American. The Census-based figures that follow are for all immigrants, legal and illegal combined, except for those specifically breaking out results for illegal aliens. About one-third of the foreign-born population is unlawfully present.

Perhaps the most important predictor of socioeconomic success in America is education. Today, 57% of illegal aliens lack a high school education, 24% finished high school and just 19% have any education beyond the secondary level.

Thirty-one percent of all foreign-born adults have failed to complete high school. Only 8% of the native-born are dropouts.

Fifty-five percent of illegal aliens earn less than 200% of the poverty level. Two-fifths of illegal alien households (through U.S. citizen children) are in a major welfare program. About two-thirds of illegals lack health insurance.

By comparison, 40% of immigrants make less than 200% of poverty wages, 28% of Americans earn that little. A third of immigrant families are on welfare, while 19% of American families are in a welfare program. Some 34% of immigrants are uninsured, while 13% of the native-born lack coverage.

Chain Migration

Legal immigration volume runs four times higher than the average of the nation’s first 200 years. Immigration averaged 250,000 a year from 1776 to 1976. Congress liberalized immigration laws in 1965 and again in 1990. This led to sustained legal immigration exceeding a million a year for the past two decades.

The new policies put “family reunificationâ€

Speaking for myself, I agree, our legal immigration numbers are to high at this point and time. Actually, they're not sustainable in the long term. IMO, our quality of life in this country is decreasing at an alarming rate and much of that can be attributed to excessive immigration, illegal and legal. I have absolutely no reservations when I say, future generations of Americans WILL NOT be able to 'touch' nature as I did during my childhood.

Curb it? How about a ten year moratorium on legal immigration. When we get the country back in order then we can see about LIMITED legal immigration. LIMITED.