What would my life be had my parents not emigrated to America, my mother, uncle and grandparents in 1907 and my father in 1925? Where would I be living, what would my family be like, and what would my career path have been?
Many of my friends are first generation American citizens. The list of their parents’ homelands includes one parent each from Canada, England, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Ukraine and three from Germany. One friend is an immigrant himself from Poland. What would my friends’ lives be like had their parents not emigrated to America?
I’ve been wrestling with a sometimes-testy string of back-and-forth emails within our local Braver Angels group of 30 people. The emails contain facts, opinions, beliefs, cryptic comments and misinformation about immigration. I think we can all agree that in recent decades immigration has been seen through an increasingly partisan lens. While the United States continues to rely on immigration to bolster population growth, for family reunification, and to fill job needs, the system no longer keeps pace with these demands. The country’s present-day immigration framework was mostly constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. The last major legislative reforms occurred in 1996. Since then, immigration has become a partisan wedge issue within Congress and the country, with fights chiefly concentrated on the fate of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, one of the largest such populations in the world, and enforcement measures at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Presidents from both parties have employed anti-immigrant rhetoric to appeal to their political base. Republicans like Reagan and Donald Trump have framed Hispanic immigrants as criminals while white nationalism has emerged as an ideological pillar of the Republican Party. That said, the current moment of open racism and xenophobia could not have happened without Democratic acquiescence. For example, while lobbying for his 1986 immigration bill, Reagan framed unauthorized immigration as a “national security” issue. Then later presidents— including Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — used similar “security” rhetoric in their efforts to court Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform. In his 2013 State of the Union Address, Obama said “real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my administration has already made— putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history.”
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) seeks to improve immigration and integration policies through authoritative research and analysis, opportunities for learning and dialogue, and the development of new ideas to address these complex policy questions. MPI states “Although the foundational tenets of the immigration system have remained mostly unchanged over the past several decades, the immigrant population has grown significantly. As of 2019, 44.9 million immigrants lived in the United States — more than double the 1990 number — representing nearly 14 percent of the country’s total population, the highest share since 1910. Immigrant origins are also shifting, with recent arrivals from China and India outpacing those from Mexico, and the overall number of Mexican immigrants declining since 2010. And after peaking at an estimated 12.3 million in 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population has decreased and mostly leveled out around 11 million.”
A recent MPI analysis of our current immigration dilemma states: “The nearly 60-year-old U.S. immigration system was designed in response to factors that are increasingly disconnected from current economic and demographic realities. The U.S. population is aging, with the U.S. Census Bureau estimating that seniors over age 65 will outnumber children under 18 by 2034, potentially straining pension and health-care systems. Additionally, the gap between labor demand and the skills of U.S. workers is projected to widen. Demand for lower-skill jobs in health care, hospitality, and other fields is expected to grow, but U.S. workers’ rising education levels make them less likely to fill these jobs. And the U.S. population grew by the lowest rate on record, at just 0.1 percent, in 2020.”
Lost in all this data gathering is the human question. The same question many of my friends and I have. What would an immigrant’s life be like if s/he could make a new home in America? I don’t know what our nation’s capacity for new citizens might be. Or how much racism plays in our incapacity to come up with a humane border policy. If the wealthiest country in the world cannot find a way to salve the human pain caused by our current immigration practice, it will become our nation’s lasting legacy.
“Connecting the Dots” is published every other Saturday in the Recorder. It first-generation author is a contributing writer for Green Energy Times. He is the editor of a new children’s book about the 1960 Olympics entitled “After the Race,” available at https://silverstreetmedia.com and Amazon. Comments and questions may be emailed to jbos01370@gmail.com.