America’s Secret Weapon
My niece Emily and her husband Paul live in Maryland and work for (two different) companies which have one client: the CIA. What they do is classified. All they can tell is they study things for the CIA.
However, Emily, knowing I love economics, about 10 years ago gave me an economic prediction(s) report that had been declassified.
It stated that in the world’s advanced economies, birthrates were low and declining and within the near future (like now), there would not be enough workers to sustain the advanced economies. These include the European Union with it generous social benefit programs; Japan, whose declining population means it plans to live off external investment; China with its one-child restriction which now is biting back; and so on.
The report said that this gave the United States a crucial edge. The reason: our immigration policy. At that time, no matter how tough the U.S. was on immigration, it still was much easier to gain residency (including permanent residency) than any other advanced country. As for the idea that illegal aliens drain our economy, it is exactly the opposite. They pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and income taxes, but unless they have legal status, they receive zero federal benefits except for life-saving situations (like emergency treatment in a hospital).
Further, new immigrants are younger than existing citizens, work harder, and create more new jobs than our citizens—in economic terms, they are more “productive” than the average U.S. citizenry. There is a reality behind this. You do not abandon your own home and country unless you are desperate. Migrating from Central America is an extremely dangerous and long journey, the equivalent of walking from here to Chicago.
So, the CIA report stated our immigration policy was our secret weapon. It would continually supply us with young and hard-working newcomers who would keep the U.S. an economic powerhouse.
This today is particularly important vis-à-vis China. Recent reports from “The Economist” state China’s population is both aging and declining. This is putting to test the idea that China can continue to manufacture goods with it own cheap labor, which is dwindling; so China is casting about in other, poorer, countries to hire their cheap workers. This is causing international political destabilization and an unwelcome competitor for the U.S.
In our country, there always have been waves of anti-immigration movements. The Know Nothing party of the mid 1850s was opposed to immigration, particularly Catholics. A decade later, Germans and Scandinavians, stymied by Western prejudice, settled in Kansas (the Germans) and Minnesota (the Scandinavians). In the 1860-70s, the Brooklyn Bridge was built; it used new technology with an extremely high casualty rate; the most dangerous jobs went to the Irish because they were considered so inferior they were expendable. Later, the Italians faced the same prejudice; they were dark-skinned and deemed dangerous. The Chinese were imported to build the great railroads, but forbidden all else and consigned to “Chinatowns.”
In all anti-immigration cases, the “purity” of the Anglo-Saxon race was considered the American “ideal” and therefore at risk.
The current anti-immigration movement began during the Clinton Administration, ameliorated somewhat under W, accelerated like crazy under Obama (who deported more people than Trump during a similar time period), and turned verbally ugly under Trump.
Now that the economy is accelerating again, the lack of new labor is a problem (and do not blame extra government payments to the unemployed—that is a temporary phenomenon). Our population is under compression; birthrates are declining and aging workers are retiring, all sped up by COVID-19. Our country needs continual replenishment or will face economic stagnation and permanent decline. It’s as simple as that.
Michael is co-founder of Orange County School of the Arts and The Discovery Cube.
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