Back Words to “Forward” on Hispanic Immigration

E-mail makes it easy for anyone to forward messages to dozens of strangers via friends of friends. About one in every ten is genuinely uplifting and one more is genuinely clever. Others are just sentimental or standard talk-radio generalizations. But two recent messages stand out for ugliness. It took one minute of thought and two minutes on Google to de-bunk it. I’m going to deal with one of them here, now, and save the other for later.


One email began (in HYSTERICAL CAPITAL LETTERS) “IF YOU THINK HISPANICS ARE HERE FOR WORK..... YOU'RE NUTS!!” and cited the LA Times for statistics that are supposed to alarm us. For example, “ 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.” Granted, murder warrants are alarming, but we can relax, because there’s a healthy murder rate among non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, too. My search of the LA Times web archives, which go back to 1985, did not confirm this guy’s 95%, and he lost all credibility.

Besides, he has no historical memory. The author of the email tells us that “21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking,” and goes on to scream “WAKE UP AMERICA!” I suggest a little review of history. We’ve had this kind of hysteria every twenty years since the “Alien and Sedition Act” of the John Adams administration. News media in other national languages have had a large audience in American cities since the mid-1800s and have always been part of the system that eases new generations into the USA. I suppose this is someone who failed high school Spanish and is affronted by people who don’t just speak good ol’ English. I, for one, am excited to hear more than one language when I walk through a public place, and enjoy the ingenuity that it takes for me and, say, a waiter, to communicate.

I thought I’d check out Google for more balanced reporting, and found refutations for the rest of the ugly email in an article by Larry Kudlow, National Review’s Online Economics Editor, host of CNBC’s Kudlow & Company and author of the daily web blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$. I’m reprinting pieces of his article, with my comments in italics:

Until Mexico’s economic malaise is cured, millions will continue to seek economic opportunity in the United States. Can you blame them?

Once these immigrants get here they work hard. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic unemployment is only 5.5 percent, compared to 4.8 percent overall.

...As Center for Equal Opportunity chairman Linda Chavez [George W. Bush's first choice for labor secretary] has been pointing out, Hispanics are great entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and job creators. According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening new businesses at a rate that’s three-times faster than the national average.

People who take risks, endure privation, work hard and long, and keep for themselves little of what they earn to benefit their families – aren’t these the ideal Americans, paragons of “family values?”

Kudlow shoots down some other accusations:

As for the claim that illegal workers don’t pay taxes, Princeton professor Douglas Massey estimates that roughly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants pay the FICA payroll tax. Overall, illegals have fed $7 billion to Social Security and $1.5 billion to Medicare. They are contributing to our wealth, not reducing it.

And what do they take from the system? According to Forbes magazine, only 10 percent of illegal Mexicans have sent a child to an American public school and just 5 percent have received food stamps or unemployment benefits. A U-Cal Davis study also shows that more immigrant workers leads to more economic growth. This is standard economics. Multiply an enlarged workforce times existing productivity and you get more economic growth.

He points out the shameful mismanagement of wealth in the corrupt Mexican government, a sad old story; and he points out the way the USA has opened our borders when it was convenient, and then closed our borders when alarmists like this emailer get the upper hand.

The only way to reduce illegal immigration, therefore, is to raise the unskilled H-2B visa level and bring it in line with job openings in the United States. This is the only feasible economic solution to the chronic problem of illegal immigration. The idea worked forty years ago with the successful Bracero program for farm workers. It can work again.

Today’s low visa limit of only 140,000 has caused illegal flows to skyrocket. This must be changed. Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute estimates that U.S. labor-market conditions can absorb about 400,000 Mexican immigrants per year. This would balance labor supply-and-demand conditions and illegal immigration would plummet.

He concludes:

Proper reform should combine stronger border security with higher visa levels and a path to citizenship. Yes, illegals should pay fines and go to the back of the citizenship line. Yes, employers must aggressively cooperate with the new rules. But compassion must coexist with free-economy principles and the rule of law.

Before he passed away, Pope John Paul II quoted Matthew 25:35: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” That is precisely the spirit America should seek when it comes to immigration reform.

Next time you feel like forwarding ANYTHING in CAPITAL LETTERS that purports to uphold good old American values by ripping into someone else – just delete my name from your list.

Find Kudlow’s essay and more recent articles with other thoughtful opinions at NationalReview.com

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