What is the present rate of immigration?
In 2001, more than one million aliens settled in the United States (about 1,000,000 legally and an estimated 500,000 illegally). This is nearly four times as many immigrants as we were receiving only 30 years ago. In the next 50 years, the population is projected to increase from 289 million to over 400 million people, and over half of that growth will be directly due to post-2000 immigration. Another large share will be due to children born here after they arrive.
Who is immigrating?
In the past, most immigrants came as workers with similar skill levels and from comparable societies. Since the 1965 changes in immigration law, most immigrants come as relatives and from Third World nations. As a result, most immigrants are poor and low-skilled and have trouble integrating into our society.
How does this affect the job market?
This large influx into the labor market depresses wages and working conditions for native, low-skilled workers (who are often the young, minorities, and other recent immigrants). It blocks our native poor from entry level opportunities, contributes to the widening gap between rich and poor in our society, and increases business’ dependency on cheap labor instead of innovation and modernization.
How does immigration affect welfare?
Despite the attempted ban on welfare to new immigrants and illegal aliens, immigrants are nearly twice as likely to be on welfare as natives, and the annual cost of public benefits to recent immigrants is estimated at $75 billion a year. Furthermore, welfare use rises when native Americans are underemployed or are displaced from their jobs by immigration.
How does immigration affect crime?
Not only does immigration contribute to the poverty that breeds crime, but many aliens have criminal careers: 29 percent of the inmates in federal prisons are aliens, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2002). In a study comparing high immigration cities to low immigration cities, the high immigration cities were found to have twice as much violent crime as low immigration cities (Tale of Ten Cities, FAIR, 1999)
What are the overall costs of so much immigration to society?
Estimates of the net cost of immigration run from $30 billion to $50 billion a year. And this is only the quantifiable deficit to local, state, and federal budgets; the deterioration in our quality of life caused by immigration-driven population growth cannot be measured.
How can we say no to immigrants?
America’s need for immigration ended a century ago when the frontier was closed and we reduced immigration correspondingly. The new, heavy immigration flow harms both our country and the countries that are sending immigrants here. According to studies, at least 400 million people in the world would move to the U.S. tomorrow, if we let them. The only hope for these societies is for their people to work to improve their own countries, not to move here.
What do other Americans think?
For several years now, the polls on immigration have been very consistent: at least two-thirds of Americans think that the level of immigration to this country should be reduced.
What can we do?
Unwise immigration policies, geared toward pleasing special interests instead of serving our country, are bringing in too many immigrants a year, and Congress is responsible. We must demand that Congress enact a moratorium on most forms of legal immigration and crack down on illegal immigration.
Updated 9/03
