Why not reduce legal immigration?
Why not reduce legal immigration? (OPINION)
Updated: Jan. 09, 2019, 9:53 p.m. | Published: Aug. 08, 2015, 2:44 p.m.
By Guest Columnist | The Oregonian
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Immigration advocates rally outside the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on July 10 to call for an end to the delay in implementing the immigration initiatives that President Obama announced in November 2014.
(Caitlin Faw/NOLA.com The Times-Picayune via AP)
By Elizabeth Van Staaveren
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., dares to venture into a taboo subject for Democrats and most Republicans: He advocates reducing the current extremely high volume of legal immigration. In a recent interview, Sanders said, "Open borders? ... That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids? ... I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer."
Many studies prove that excessive immigration has adversely affected the wages and job opportunities of citizens. Employers exploit the visa system, which is riddled with fraud, to import foreign workers and dismiss citizens. They misrepresent the truth when they claim Americans won't do or can't do those jobs, or there are not enough citizens to fill jobs. The massive immigration that has occurred since 1970 has brought the foreign-born population to unprecedented levels. Some try to say it's only a comparatively small percentage of the total population, but since the total population today is enormous compared to 1890-1900, the actual numbers are huge.
Sanders might have mentioned the effects of exploding population numbers on our natural environment, the loss of forests and farmland to ever-expanding housing and related infrastructure, or the overcrowding in cities and the complications of governance for so many people. With well over 321 million people in the U.S. already, look at the Census Bureau's population clock: one birth every seven seconds, one death every 13 seconds, one international migrant every 33 seconds, for a net gain of one person every 11 seconds. We're already on automatic pilot for explosive population growth unless Congress stops it by reducing immigration.
U.S. voters do not want the population increases caused by these enormous levels of immigration. Many honest polls say so, and yet congressional leaders of both parties ignore citizens' needs and opinions and work ceaselessly for more and more legal immigration. A Washington, D.C., reporter, Julia Hahn, has recently exposed the duplicitous statements of GOP congressional leaders on the need for more immigration, in an article posted on Breitbart.com. One of the worst offenders is Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wa., who is House GOP conference chairwoman.
In the 2016 presidential race, Sanders is one of the many contenders. He's currently rated F- by NumbersUSA, which compiles records of votes and public statements by candidates on immigration and displays them on their website. His voting record doesn't actually match the support for less immigration that he recently expressed, but he's done a great service to the public just to talk about it. Hopefully, he and Donald Trump will break the taboos on critical examination of our recklessly expansive legal immigration policies. They both speak frankly; how refreshing that is.
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Elizabeth Van Staaveren of McMinnville is a longtime member of Oregonians for Immigration Reform.
https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2...immigrati.html
