(1) The economic benefits to Americans of America’s present immigration policies are very small. Almost all of those benefits are captured by the most affluent Americans.
(2) The fiscal costs of present immigration policies are high. The argument that immigrants strengthen Social Security and Medicare is false. America’s bias in favor of low-skilled immigrants, legal and illegal, means that immigrants pay relatively little in taxes, while requiring a lot by way of services.
(3) The most important costs and benefits of immigration are neither economic nor fiscal, but social and political.
(4) Among those social and political costs: the radicalization of politics that we see in so many developed countries. Brexit, the rise of the French National Front, the triumph of authoritarian populists in Italy and other European Union countries, and America’s own election of Donald Trump—all were fueled by many causes, but high levels of immigration provided the spark.
(5) The pressures of immigration are not going away on their own. Over the coming decades, more and more people in the global South will be able to afford to make their way—legally, illegally, or as asylum seekers—to the global North. Unless properly managed, this impending movement of people may destabilize democratic governments on an even greater scale than anything we have yet seen.
(6) Many of the benefits of immigration can be gained, and many of the harms minimized, by more strategic immigration policies, including stricter enforcement in the workplace to protect legal workers; faster removal of unfounded asylum claimants; more emphasis on skilled rather than unskilled immigrants; and lower total numbers of immigrants.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/david-frum-reacts-immigration-responses/585391/
Comments
then you numbered them
Nobody is learning
White working class which obviously favors restrictive immigration policies.
Immigrants and minorities (and neolibs) that favor more open immigration policies.
It never ceases to amaze me that they can continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths for decades and not be taken to task for it.
I really am hoping that Trump can manage to break the current intransigence of the system.
The militia groups will be increasing, more illegal immigration will happen, and our fucking sanctuary cities will continue, the press will continue as is. The future is not looking good.
Boy is it going to be ugly for the next 6-10 presidents and elections. I will be dead so won't care. Maybe I will just curl up on a sidewalk in Seattle when I go so no one will
have toclean up after me.That works for me.
Hard to spend all day at the bar with a bunch of chores hanging over my head.