Immigration

More on the immigration front, great op-ed piece on Washington post regarding same subject.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

"In 2005 the Border Patrol stopped 1.19 million people trying to enter the United States illegally; 98.5 percent of them were caught along the southern border. Of those who got through and stayed (crude estimate: some 500,000 annually), about two-thirds lack a high school education. Even a country as accepting of newcomers as the United States cannot effortlessly absorb infinite numbers of poor and unskilled workers. Legal immigration totals 750,000 to 1 million people annually, many of them also unskilled."


"Fewer jobs and genuine border control ought to curb illegal immigration. Good. Naturally, there's another point of view. It is that the United States needs more unskilled workers to fill jobs native-born Americans won't take. One solution is to admit more unskilled workers legally. By this view, Hispanics are assimilating economically and culturally as fast as some groups in the past."

"But common sense and available evidence suggest skepticism. If there are "shortages" of unskilled American workers, the obvious remedy is to raise their wages."

"Since 1990 about 90 percent of the increase in people living below the government's poverty lines has come among Hispanics. That has to be mainly immigrants and their U.S.-born children. In a report, the Pew Hispanic Center notes:

· Residential segregation is increasing. In 2000, 43 percent of Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with Hispanic majorities, up from 39 percent in 1990.

· The median net worth of Hispanic households is about 9 percent of that of non-Hispanic whites (net worth is what people own minus what they owe).

· Only about a quarter of Hispanic college students graduate compared with about half for non-Hispanic whites."

These are all very telling stats and show the type of labor force we are employing. Unskilled labor is good to a point, but when it is non skilled we begin to run into problems. The other more important question in looking at the above numbers is, "Are these immigrants taking advantage of the oppurtunity that they seek?" The short answer appears to be know as there is little evidence to support the idea that they are improving their situation upon arrival. If all they seek to do is maintain a low level of living than the oppurtunity is wasted.