Presidential candidate Barack Obama claimed that most Americans' ancestors would never have been allowed into the country under the new proposed merit system-ignoring how previous waves of immigrants, such as those during the so-called Great Migration of a century ago, had come to America with skills in demand at that time.
National Review executive editor Reihan Salam makes a new appeal for compromise in Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, a short but thoroughly argued book that cuts through much of the misunderstanding and misinformation about the immigration debate, and offers a new path to a solution.
What distinguishes the book is Salam's perspective as not only a child of immigrants but also "The brother, neighbor and friend of immigrants," many of whom find President Donald Trump's rhetoric "Frightening." Salam can see both sides: on the one hand, he's sympathetic to immigrants' challenges; on the other, he's distressed by open-borders advocates, who refuse to acknowledge the problems that masses of low-skilled immigrants present to government budgets and social cohesion.
The American economy is far different today, and research on the current generation of immigrants shows an incompatibility between their skills and labor-market demands.
Not all immigrants, Salam explains, are low-skilled workers; some 45 percent of immigrants from India come from the country's most educated classes.
"The average male Mexican immigrant arrives in the United States with 9.4 years of schooling. That rises in the second generation, but to only 12.6 years," Salam writes.
Salam's grand compromise involves offering amnesty to longtime illegal residents, moving to a merit-based legal system that favors immigrants likely to contribute to our economy, and investing in social programs aimed at helping end what's turning into an intergenerational poverty problem among low-skilled immigrants and their offspring.
https://www.city-journal.org/immigration-16210.html
National Review executive editor Reihan Salam makes a new appeal for compromise in Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, a short but thoroughly argued book that cuts through much of the misunderstanding and misinformation about the immigration debate, and offers a new path to a solution.
What distinguishes the book is Salam's perspective as not only a child of immigrants but also "The brother, neighbor and friend of immigrants," many of whom find President Donald Trump's rhetoric "Frightening." Salam can see both sides: on the one hand, he's sympathetic to immigrants' challenges; on the other, he's distressed by open-borders advocates, who refuse to acknowledge the problems that masses of low-skilled immigrants present to government budgets and social cohesion.
The American economy is far different today, and research on the current generation of immigrants shows an incompatibility between their skills and labor-market demands.
Not all immigrants, Salam explains, are low-skilled workers; some 45 percent of immigrants from India come from the country's most educated classes.
"The average male Mexican immigrant arrives in the United States with 9.4 years of schooling. That rises in the second generation, but to only 12.6 years," Salam writes.
Salam's grand compromise involves offering amnesty to longtime illegal residents, moving to a merit-based legal system that favors immigrants likely to contribute to our economy, and investing in social programs aimed at helping end what's turning into an intergenerational poverty problem among low-skilled immigrants and their offspring.
https://www.city-journal.org/immigration-16210.html
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