Palo Alto, Calif. -President Barack Obama has encouraged Americans to start laying a new foundation for the country - on a number of fronts. He has stressed that we'll need to have the courage to make some hard choices. One of those hard choices is how to handle immigration. The U.S. must get serious about the tide of legal and illegal immigrants, above all from Latin America.
It's not just a short-run issue of immigrants competing with citizens for jobs as unemployment approaches 10 percent, or the number of uninsured straining the quality of healthcare. Heavy immigration from Latin America threatens our cohesiveness as a nation.
Do I sound like a right-wing "nativist"? I'm not. I'm a lifelong Democrat, an early and avid supporter of Mr. Obama. I'm gratified by his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I'm also the grandson of Eastern European Jewish immigrants and a member, along with several other Democrats, of the advisory boards of the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Pro English.
The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.
The health-care cost of the illegal work force is especially burdensome and is subsidized by taxpayers. To claim Medicaid, you must be legal, but as the Health and Human Services inspector general found, 47 states allow self-declaration of status for Medicaid. Many hospitals and clinics are going broke because of the constant stream of uninsured, many of whom are among the estimated 12 million to 15 million illegal immigrants. This translates into reduced services, particularly for lower-income citizens.
The U.S. population totaled 281 million in 2000. About 35 million, or 12.5 percent, were Latino. The Census Bureau projects that our population will reach 439 million in 2050. The Hispanic population in 2050 is projected at 133 million - 30 percent of the total and almost quadruple the 2000 level.
Latinos have contributed some positive cultural attributes to U.S. society, such as multigenerational family bonds. But the same traditional values that lie behind Latin America's difficulties in achieving democratic stability, social justice and prosperity are being substantially perpetuated among Hispanic-Americans.
