If you think excess immigration is America’s biggest problem

Look at this graph of our dropping fertility rate. We Americans are dying faster than replacements can be born.

You might be surprised to learn that Americans believe immigration is one of the most important issues facing the nation.

But, it’s not too little immigration that is of concern; it’s too much immigration.

One would think we would understand that the nation’s economy needs more workers, not fewer.

After all, we see repeated articles falsely claiming Social Security and Medicare are running into crises because fewer young working people are supporting more older, retired people who collect Social Security.

And these older people tend to collect more Medicare, too.

Although the notion that workers’ FICA payments fund SS and Medicare is wrong, it’s commonly believed, so why the common antipathy to immigration?

Some would say that immigrants take jobs from citizens, but clearly that is not the case.

If it were, we wouldn’t worry about SS and Medicare losing funding because we lack FICA payments.

Undocumented mmigrants pay FICA, and the more young immigrants (the vast majority are young), the more FICA is collected.

Further, being young, they use less Social Security and less Medicare than the average American.

It’s not the lack of documentation that bothers Americans.

Much of the problem is the vast misinformation being spread by the right-wing “news” media.

They claim immigrants are criminals, rapists, murderers, lazy, non-working takers, etc. — i.e. generally lawless people whose very presence ruins neighborhoods.

None of it is true.

Statistically, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

And they surely are not lazy. They take the meanest, toughest jobs native-born Americans refuse.

Immigrants are less prone to committing crimes than are U.S. citizens, and they do pay taxes.

They take back-breaking jobs U.S. citizens don’t want, and their buying increases consumer demand, which in turn increases the number of available jobs in America, lowering our unemployment rate.

So why are they despised by some, especially by Republicans?

Like all dictators, Donald Trump needs scapegoats. Hitler had Jews. Trump has immigrants.

He has made the fear and loathing of immigrant families a fundamental part of the MAGA movement.

There even are Republicans who wish to unconstitutionally eliminate birthright citizenship and to deport “Dreamers,” children whose only crime was to have been brought to America undocumented.

Dreamers are the good young people America needs. Many know no other country than America and no language other than English.

But Trump has parlayed lies and fear into a distinctly unAmerican bigoted mass hatred of brown-skinned people.

To solve the self-made “crisis,” we must acknowledge several things.

1. 1. Immigrants are people. They are men, women, and children desperate for a better life. They have made an often dangerous, often fatal, journey, willing to work for America just to flee the crime, corruption, and hatred in their native lands.
      In this way, they resemble our own ancestors, who came here to escape the poverty and bigotry of Europe and Asia and contributed to building America.
   2. The difference is that our ancestors were welcomed across the border, while today, we try to close the border. It’s not as though America is too crowded for them. We have plenty of room.
      It’s because we have forgotten our roots and now have adopted an “I’ve not mine; to hell with you,” unAmerican attitude stirred up by a hate-mongering, Hitlerian psychopath.
   3. Immigrants risk the dangers of illegal immigration simply because we have made legal immigration so difficult. We spend money on walls and guards rather than spending the same money on prompt and legal hearings to admit the good people and reject only the bad.
      The poem inscribed on the statue of Liberty has been turned into a sad joke.

America’s new reaction to things we don’t like or understand seems to veer toward cruelty and punishment rather than humane solutions.

We prefer to lock up juvenile criminals (and then, when they are released, give them guns) rather than curing the poverty that instigates crime.

Reduce poverty (which the right-wing invariably rejects as “coddling the lazy”), and crime is greatly reduced.

Similarly, we prefer to deport, then deport again, and then again, rather than make the immigration process easier for the good people and difficult only for the bad minority.

Today, most lawful means of entering the country take years because of overwhelmed immigration agencies, rising levels of global migration and a limit on the number of certain visas, all of which have culminated in a massive backlog of people trying to get to the U.S.

• • Around 9 million people are awaiting green cards, and those wait times have skyrocketed from just a few months to years, possibly decades, according to the Cato Institute and other researchers.
  • In 1991, only 3% of preference immigrants, or those seeking visas through family members already in the U.S., had to wait more than 10 years. By 2018, 27% of applicants experienced that wait time.

None of this is necessary or beneficial. America has the resources to create a fast, accurate system for importing valuable working families to build America.

America needs more good people, yet we reject thousands every year. It’s self-harming, verging on suicide.

We can blame immigrants. We can blame Trump. But the fault is ours for following his crazed lead and for not understanding our own history and growth.

There are lessons aplenty. Look at WWII Germany and Italy. Look at Russia. Look at North Korea. They followed fear-peddling, hate-mongering, bigoted leaders down to hell.

Can you understand the irony of an anti-immigration program claiming it will “make America great again” when it was immigrants who made America great?

“Build the wall,” is not a call for greatness. It is a siren call of ignorance.

Learn.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY