Immigrants Benefit U.S. Economy Now as Ever

The Fourth of July weekend seems like a good time to examine some of the heat and rhetoric lately surrounding one of the basic building blocks of our society: immigration.

There is widespread concern that too many immigrants are coming in and, worse, that waves of unskilled workers will form a permanent underclass and change the historic dynamic of American society.

These are serious matters. Immigration is part of the DNA of America, and it’s as necessary today as ever. The belief in social mobility, that the children will have better prospects than their mothers and fathers, is a benefit to any economy, and has been a mainstay of ours.

But no question -- today’s immigration statistics are arresting. Almost 36 million foreign-born people live in the U.S., some 12% of the population. The last time the foreign-born percentage was that high was 100 years ago, when immigrants from Europe flooded into the cities of the East and Midwest. That era marked the rise of American industrialization as Henry Ford and those hard-working newcomers found ways to combine machines and factory labor to change the economy.

Today, however, some experts argue that we don’t have jobs for unskilled immigrants as we had back then and that immigrants are imposing a burden on the economy. Professor George Borjas of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University recommends that the U.S. should emphasize bringing in high-skilled immigrants and otherwise restrict immigration to 500,000 entrants a year instead of the 1 million or so legal newcomers each year at present.

The word “legal” raises the issue that causes most of the fears about immigration -- the fact that roughly 700,000 illegal immigrants annually enter the country and remain here. The Pew Hispanic Center concludes in a recent report that 10 million residents are here illegally, 57% of them from Mexico. This has aroused political passions and demagoguery from some -- notably California’s onetime immigrant Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who cried out, “Close the borders!” a while back.

But cooler heads are seeking real solutions to the problem. A group of U.S. senators and representatives has proposed legislation, called the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005. The bill would reinforce border protections while also authorizing work permits for up to six years, during which time former illegal immigrants could undergo medical tests and criminal background checks to attain resident status and move toward citizenship.

The aim of the bill, according to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of the sponsors, is to “address the labor needs of this country” while improving enforcement of the borders and the laws. Both are necessary.

One cannot be in favor of illegal immigration, because it is unfair to the legal immigrant who waited in line. It is also bad for the economy, because it induces employers to break the law and distorts wage levels of other employees. And it is unfair to the illegal immigrant who often risks life to get here but remains vulnerable to exploitation.

But the problem should not be overstated. The nation has dealt with illegal residents before on many occasions --most recently in 1994 by allowing employed people who had entered illegally to adjust their status to legal resident.

And there is little doubt that there are labor needs in this country that need addressing. There is a shortage of truck drivers in the U.S. and a shortage of all sorts of workers in hospitals such as nurses and clean-up staff. In many industries, including modern warehousing, education is needed to cope with computer-rich work environments.

Unfortunately, that shift in the nature of work has led many to believe that less-educated immigrants are no longer what America needs. It is from such thinking that worries arise about an “underclass.”

But such logic confuses education with intelligence. The poor and under-educated have always constituted the bulk of immigrants. They have always come for jobs and the promise that their children will get a better education and better work than they had.

That is as true today as it ever was. And current studies that compare educational attainment of grandparents, parents and children confirm that the promise of life and education in America is being fulfilled today as it always has been.

For example, James P. Smith, senior economist at Rand Corp., last year completed a study, “Immigrants and Their Schooling,” that showed Mexican immigrants progressing in education even faster than earlier generations. “The conventional view regarding Hispanic immigrants’ ability to secure a better life for their kids and grandkids was pessimistic,” Smith wrote. But second- and third-generation Latinos have made great strides. The “fears are unwarranted,” he wrote.

The truth is, immigration to America hasn’t changed much since early in the last century, when one of the greatest sources of poor, unlettered immigrants to the U.S. was Ireland.

Eighty years ago James Flanigan, my father, immigrated to New York from County Clare. He was 21 years old with just seven years of schooling. He found work loading trucks in a warehouse. In 1927, Jane Whyte arrived from the same little town of Lahinch. She was 23 with six years of education. She went to work -- as most of the Irish girls of that day did -- in live-in domestic service.

They married during the Great Depression, when he and a handful of Irish and Italian immigrants founded the Grocery Warehousemen’s Union -- a local of the Teamsters. They never made much money, but they and their friends sent $100 home to Ireland every Christmas, to brothers and sisters who had less than those who had come to America, and found work and education for their children.

And with the education, their children got better work. As it was then, so it is now and will be. As the Irish say, God bless the work.

The work of writing this column has been a blessing indeed. Writing for the readers of the Los Angeles Times has been an honor and a joy. Thank you all.

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This is James Flanigan’s last column for The Times’ Sunday Business section. He is retiring after 48 years in the news business. He plans to continue writing, and can be reached by e-mail at jimflanigan1@aol.com.