Consider the facts about Legal Immigration before deciding
You may have seen the ads on TV that whine about legal immigration to the US. As a legal immigrant, I view them as a troubling throwback to unhappier times here in Cincinnati, when Germans rioted against the Irish or Protestants and Catholics were at each other’s throats. Xenophobia always rears its ugly head when times are hard, but I would urge you to consider the facts before falling for the emotional claptrap.
Firstly, allow me to put the “problem” in perspective. Only 3% of the world’s population is first generation immigrants. Think about that. That number includes all the people that move from Africa to Europe, from Europe to Latin America and everyone who moves within continents. It also includes people who move here, which is a small fraction of that 3%. In addition, only 10% of the world’s population will ever leave their home country. So let’s forget the fear mongering that is put out by certain politicians and extremist groups about the US being inundated by immigrants. It simply is not true.
Secondly, let us never forget the benefits of immigration. People born in foreign countries were behind 52.4% of all Silicon Valley firms launched between 1995 and 2005. In addition, nearly one-third of all US Nobel Laureates are immigrants, including all four in 1999. A study by William Kerr from Harvard concluded that 40% of all US patents filed by Intel in the US were done by people of Chinese or Indian origin. Finally, fully one-fourth of the nation’s technology and engineering companies founded between 1995 and 2005 were founded by immigrants, which provided Americans with 450,000 jobs.
Oh, but don’t worry. Some of our fellow citizens will have none of that! The young lady in the TV ads will magically obtain a job so she won’t need Daddy’s help with the car payments, if we just shut the door to those pesky foreigners. Yeah, shutting the door on the nation’s largest group of entrepreneurs and engineers will be the miracle cure she is looking for, and her bank account will swell as if filled with magic beans as each immigrant is turned away. Yes, the campaign preaches sentimental falsehoods to an audience that it hopes is as benighted as the organization that spawned it.
The truth is this: We need more engineers and scientists. We need more people willing to start small businesses and we need more productive citizens paying fair taxes. Trying to curb legal immigration will dry up one of the primary sources of engineers, scientists and technicians on which this country has ALWAYS depended: Immigrants. Sure we have American scientists and engineers - and good ones as well. Just not enough of them. And as for entrepreneurs, it is a fact that immigrants are a prime source for those as well. New York, San Francisco and Miami are some shining examples of this. As was Cincinnati, when, and not by coincidence, immigrants were the lifeblood of this town.