Community Comment : Our ‘Ancestors Knew English Was Necessary’

One of the hottest issues in Orange County, as elsewhere in California, is immigration. Immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, are widely seen as a drag on the economy. If this perception is accurate, there is substantial evidence that the fault lies not with the immigrants themselves, but with institutional factors, especially government policies.

Perhaps the main reason that immigrants are seen by many as a problem in Orange County is that the anti-social behavior of a few grab the headlines. The fact is, nearly one in four Orange County residents is foreign-born and the great majority plays by the rules.

As noted recently by Chapman University President James Doti, Orange County’s median income is 39% above the national average, even though the percentage of immigrants nationwide (about 9%) is much smaller than the percentage in Orange County (24%). Clearly, one reason for Orange County’s economic strength is that the vast majority of immigrants here work.

And by “work” we’re not referring only to the low-paying manual labor usually associated with immigrants. According to economist Joel Kotkin, more than 40% of the CEOs at Orange County manufacturing firms were born abroad.

If evidence is lacking that those who cross our borders today compare unfavorably to those who did so in previous generations--and it is--the drastic increase in popular alarm over immigration must be blamed on institutional factors.

First, the forces for assimilation have lessened. Previously, government welfare benefits were virtually nonexistent for immigrants. As a result, immigrants were forced into the workplace for survival. This powerful incentive has virtually disappeared in our new age of “entitlements.”

As another example, our immigrant ancestors knew that a working knowledge of English was necessary to get along. This motivation to learn a common language, and become a part of a common culture, was enhanced by a public education system exclusively run in English.

Now, we have the cult of bilingualism, operating under the false idea that the modern-day immigrant is too stupid to learn English.

Second, previous generations of immigrants found plentiful job opportunities under economic conditions that more closely resembled free-market capitalism than the over-taxed, over-regulated economy we have created.

Our drift toward socialism has not only closed job opportunities by increasing the costs and risks of hiring an employee, it has also created a perception of the economy as a zero-sum situation, in which one can advance only at the expense of others.

Thus, the fear that our ancestors felt toward immigrants as potential competitors for economic opportunities has been transformed into reality by our governing class.

In short, the perceived burden on society created by immigrants may be more imaginery than real. To the extent that this burden exists it is a natural consequence of political policies for which the immigrants themselves are largely blameless. As James Doti has semi-seriously predicted, unless we correct these policies, “We’ll all be migrating to Mexico.”