Americans have always been ambivalent, if not downright hostile, toward immigrants. Benjamin Franklin grumbled about all the German-speaking newcomers. The Irish, the Chinese, the Italians and the Slavs were all once seen as too "alien" to assimilate into American society. Today's immigration angst is just as mistaken.
In coming weeks, Congress will wrestle with immigration legislation ranging from visas for high-skilled workers to permanent resident status for Haitian refugees. The political forces and factual arguments vary from issue to issue, but the fault line in the immigration debate remains the same: Are immigrants good or bad for America?
In sheer numbers - a million new Americans per year - the flow of immigrants today is high by historical standards. But as a portion of our population, the annual rate of immigration - four immigrants per 1,000 people - is only about one-third the peak rate at the turn of the century. The share of Americans who are foreign-born, 9.7 percent, is still far below the 14.7 percent of Americans who were foreign-born in 1910.
Immigrants keep America young and dynamic. The typical immigrant is in his or her late 20s. The payroll taxes paid by these young immigrants is postponing the day of financial insolvency for federal programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
Because of their mobility, most immigrants tend to fill gaps in the work force rather than compete directly with native workers. On the low end of the pay scale, immigrants fill jobs that most Americans shun, while on the high end they concentrate in such specialized fields as research and engineering. The proportion of legal immigrants with an advanced degree is three times higher than among the native-born. By some estimates, more than one-third of research engineers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born.
In a comprehensive study of immigration released in 1997, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that immigrants contribute a net $10 billion to the U.S. economy each year. Not surprisingly, well-educated immigrants contributed more than low-skilled immigrants, but the greatest payoff for America is not the immigrants themselves but their children.
