Here’s an Idea: Hold Off on Immigration : There’s nothing ‘nativist’ about pausing to assimilate the swell of recent newcomers.

It’s fashionable these days to label the growing public concern about immigration as “immigrant-bashing.” In fact, there is a whole vocabulary of words and phrases routinely used to stifle discussion about immigration control-- nativism, xenophobia and racism, to name just a few.

Lately, these labels have been plastered on both conservatives, like Gov. Pete Wilson, whose recent proposals for cracking down on illegal immigration earned him scorn from the nation’s media elite (and a big boost in the public-opinion polls), and liberals, like Sen. Barbara Boxer, who prompted a “Boxer Rebellion” among her former buddies on the left.

These attacks come thoughtlessly and routinely from professional advocates and predisposed journalists. It is virtually impossible to find an opinion piece in a major paper in the past 10 years supporting current policy that does not contain one or more of the above labels for anyone who disagrees. They are a convenient way to avoid dealing with the substance of tough issues surrounding immigration. This tactic was effective for a time. It worked when legal immigration rates were low and the voting public was by and large distracted with other issues. But that is changing. Immigration is now a hot-button issue. And by engaging in invective and epithet, these vigorous advocates for the ill-managed status quo are unwittingly launching what may become a backlash of tragic proportions.

The problem is, no matter how you feel about immigration, it is an issue that must be grappled with, and soon. We must seriously and thoughtfully reach a consensus on such questions as whom to admit, how to enforce the rules and even whether we should have a moratorium on immigration for a while. But questions like these can’t be addressed until people stop the name-calling and start talking seriously.

Another favorite tactic of proponents of high immigration is to deploy a selective reading of American history. This version, which many of us received as schoolchildren, holds that all moves to reduce immigration are rooted in an irrational hysteria derived from religious and ethnic prejudice. Attention is focused on flash-in-the-pan groups like the pre-Civil War “Know-Nothings,” while ignoring the social, political and economic factors that gave rise to popular support for immigration restrictions.

The usual versions of these events, rendered totally out of context, are intended to persuade us that if the nation never had any controls on immigration, we would be better off today. The not-so-implicit distortion is that no political impulse to restrict immigration has ever been shown to have had any validity.

This is not true. Put simply, we are all the beneficiaries of earlier moves to limit immigration. If we like what our country is today, we should acknowledge that it is the product both of periodic waves of immigration and periodic moves to reduce it.

Immigration levels have historically been far below those of the past three years, averaging less than 300,000 annually through most of our history. In this century, the long hiatus in large-scale immigration (from about 1925 until 1970) provided a crucial window of opportunity for the children of the great turn-of-the-century wave to be educated, assimilated and integrated. The long pause enabled the United States to invest in our own workers and improve American productivity.

Understanding this cycle of our history is key to grasping why the United States now needs another immigration hiatus. Immigrants tend to concentrate in urban areas where public resources are finite. They can contribute to the overloading of school systems, housing, public health facilities and the infrastructure generally. Without a pause or moratorium on legal immigration soon, and better management of illegal immigration, we risk revisiting many of the immigration-related social problems of the turn of the century.

And without free and constructive discussion of this important issue, we risk creating the very backlash that opponents of reform claim they want to avoid.