Quotes from Other Notables
A
Abbey, Edward
Author, Commentator, Polemecist
“In the American Southwest, where I happen to live, only sixty misles north of the Mexican border, the subject of illegal aliens is a touchy one — almost untouchable. Even the terminology is dangerous: the old word wetback is now considered a racist insult by all good liberals; and the perfectly correct terms illegal alien and illegal immigrant can set off charges of xenophobia, elitism, fascism, and the ever-popular genocide against anyone careless enough to use them. The only acceptable euphemism, it now appears, is something called undocumented worker. Thus the pregnant Mexican woman who appears, in the final stages of labor, at the doors of the emergency ward of an El Paso or San Diego hospital, demanding care for herself and the child she’s about to deliver, becomes an ‘undocumented worker.” The child becomes an automatic American citizen by virtue of its place of birth, eligible at once for all of the usual public welfare benefits. And with the child comes not only the mother but the child’s family. And the mother’s family. And the father’s family. Can’t break up families, can we? They come to stay and they stay to multiply.
What of it? say the documented liberals; ours is a rich and generous nation, we have room for all, let them come. And let them stay, say the conservatives; a large, cheap, frightened docile, surplus labor force is exactly what the economy needs. Put some fear into the unions: tighten discipline, spur productivity, whip up the competition for jobs. The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause.”
“…it occurs to some of us that perhaps ever-continuing industrial and population growth is not the true road to human happiness, that simple gross quantitative increase of this kind creates only more pain, dislocation, confusion, and misery. In which case it might be wise for us as American citizens to consider calling a halt to the mass influx of even more millions of hungry, ignorant, unskilled, and culturally-morally-generically impoverished people. At least until we have brought our own affaiirs into order.”
“To everything there is a season, to every wave a limit, to every range an optimum capacity. The United States has been fully settled, and more than full, for at least a century. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by allowing the old boat to be swamped.”
(One Life at a Time Please, 1978)
Aleinikoff, T. Alexander
Former INS General Counsel
“A healthy economy and the end of the election cycle present an opportunity for a well-crafted immigrant legalization proposal. A large-scale legalization program, coupled with enforcement directed against illegal employers, would represent a remarkable change in fortune for the millions of undocumented workers who just a few years ago were the targets of the harshest immigration policies of the past half-century. “
(The American Prospect, Dec. 4, 2000)
Anderson, Stuart
Cato Institute
“Throughout our history, immigrants have come to America, established themselves and been joined by other members of their families. That process has brought us energetic individuals and strong families who have enriched our economy and way of life.”
(The Los Angeles Times, February 1996)
Asimov, Issac — Overpopulation
Author
“It’s going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. …But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren’t you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies.”
(Bill Moyers interview on A World Of Ideas: transcript, October 17, 1988)
Attarian, John
Economist, Scholar
“The implications of these effects for Social Security revenues are obviously negative. It follows that massively increasing immigration will not necessarily improve Social Security’s cash flow much, and may even adversely affect it.” (p.4)
“A large increase in the labor force due to massively greater immigration will cause wages to stagnate or even decline. Immigration advocates have essentially conceded the point by lauding immigration for relieving wage pressure on inflation. However, stagnting or falling wages will translate into stagnating revenue for Social Security, unless offset by equally massive but unlikely increases in investment.” (p.42)
(“Immigration: Wrong Answer for Social Security,” American Immigration Control Press, 2003)
Avendano, Ana
Associate General Counsel, Immigrant Worker Program
“We’re seeing a destruction of the good, solid, middle-class job in the United States in general. So what we’re seeing with these temporary worker programs are that just as much as employers are outsourcing certain aspects of their work right now, they were trying to use these temporary worker programs, these aid programs, as a way to insource exploitable workers. And that will create a secondary class of workers, and the more that these programs grow in size, grow in scope, the bigger that secondary class of workers gets. Whenever you have a class of workers that can be easily exploited, that has a downward negative impact on all workers’ wages, regardless of citizenship status, regardless of gender, race. Workers as a whole suffer.”
(“To the Contrary” PBS TV show transcript, December 2, 2007)
Avina, Julieta
Mayor of Palomas, Mexico
(On a lawsuit by a Columbus, New Mexico group to stop U.S. schooling of Palomas residents)
“The people behind the lawsuit must have come from someplace else. If they don’t like Mexico they ought to move to Canada.”
(Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1993)
B
Beardall, Bill — Exploitation of illegal alien workers
Exec. Dir. Equal Justice Center, Austin, Texas
“In almost every category, the wages paid to undocumented workers are one or two rungs lower than the prevailing market rate for native-born workers.”
(The Austin American Statesman, July 6, 2008)
Bendor-Samuel, Peter — H-1B Ageism
Founder of Everest Group (outsourcing consulting firm)
“Also, while it’s politically incorrect to say so, people with 10 to 30 years of [tech] experience are having trouble. Employers are under financial pressure to hire cheaper workers coming out of college.”
(“The H-1B Visa Lull Is Only Temporary,” Businessweek, November 2, 2009)
Bernstein, Jared, senior fellow Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — On H-1B visas
“The [H-1B visa] looks to me like an inelegant solution to what I don’t even know is a problem. Inelegant because there’s no labor market test. The evidence is that it creates downward wage pressure.” (National Journal, July 19, 2012)
Blaska, David — Racism
Former Reporter & Editor, Capital Times (Madison, WI)
“Calling someone a racist is the left’s way of short-circuiting an honest discussion. It’s the ultimate political flame, today’s McCarthyism.”
(Wisconsin Interest, “Mugged by Reality; Crime hits liberal Madison”), Nov. 2009
Borjas, George — Immigration’s impact on U.S. workers
Harvard Prof. of Public Policy, Author
“No immigration policy will make everybody happy. Any immigration policy you pick will leave in its wake a group of winners and a group of losers. If it’s set up like it is now, the winners are the employers; the losers are the low-skilled workers. Employers in the U.S. gain about 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, or $430 billion, annually under the current system, while workers lose 2.8 percent of the GDP, or $400 billion, annually. So, immigration actually increases national wealth. That distributive conflict is at the core of immigration. It’s really a distributional debate.”
(The Tribune [Greeley, CO], February 3, 2009)
[Commenting on the “open-border” proposal of Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox] “Research that I conducted with my Harvard colleagues Richard Freeman and Larry Katz showed that the large-scale immigration of low-skill workers during the 1980’s and 1990’s, by increasing the pool of low-skill workers, reduced the relative wage of native workers with less than a high school education by 5 percentage points. This group’s wages would be further eroded under Mr. Fox’s proposals.
Some may say that Mexican immigrants take jobs that Americans do not want, but a more sensible statement is that Mexican immigrants take jobs that Americans do not want at the going wage. The service sector remains alive and well even in those parts of the country that have not been penetrated by heavy immigration. It just costs more to have a manicured lawn in New England than in Southern California.”
“…enacting Vicente Fox’s proposals now would limit the economic opportunities available to America’s less advantaged and would cause a higher level of immigration than the United States could comfortably sustain.”
(“Mexico’s One-Way Remedy,” Op-Ed New York Times, July 18, 2000)
“The evidence suggests that American would be better off if immigrants were more skilled. And it can be plausibly argued that a smaller number of immigrants would be beneficial for the country. But major changes in immigration policy occur only rarely. Therefore, the road ahead is long and fraught with dangers. But the adverse effects of the ‘Second Great Migration’ will not go away simply because some do not wish to acknowledge their existence.”
(Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy, from The Milken Institute Review)
Boscan, Saul
Natl Assn. of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials
“I hear Latinos saying, ‘We have enough.’ That’s amazing. We are trying to get more citizens, gain more power.”
(Source: ?)
Briggs, Vernon M. Jr. — Protect jobs of poor U.S. workers
Economics Professor, Author
“Too often immigration debates focus on the beneficiaries of immigration policies (that is, the immigrants themselves, employers, and sometimes consumers) while failing to acknowledge that there are always losers too, which is especially important since the losers are disproportionately those already on the bottom rungs of society€s economic ladder as well as the taxpayers in general who often are required to support or to supplement the financial needs of unskilled immigrants and refugees. One of the strongest reasons for the existence of immigration policies that limit the number of immigrants is that they protect those citizen workers who are most vulnerable to the increased job and wage competition of immigrant entry.” (“Immigration policy in free societies: Are there principles involved or is it all politics?” in The Effects of Mass Immigration on Canadian Living Standards and Society, ed. Herbert Grubel, 2009)
Brinton, Henry
Presbyterian Pastor
“Predominantly white mainline churches are declining in membership, but growth will come if they open their doors to the Africans, Latinos and Asians moving into their neighborhoods.”
(Washington Post, Mar. 16, 1997)
Brower, David — U.S. population and immigration
(RIP) former UCLA astronomy professor and former Exec. Dir. Sierra Club
“Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.” (May 18, 2000 message of resignation from the Sierra Club)
“The population problem is the worst problem we’ve got. If we don’t solve that, we’ll solve nothing. Immigration and over-immigration is an important part of that.
One of the places that suffers a great deal from the immigration problem is California. I was born here when there were 2 million people; now there’s something like 34 million and counting [in 2000].
The question of population is two-faced, our own population increase and that of immigration. We can ignore neither of those two aspects. We have to address them both.”
(Statement at an August 2000 population/environment conference at USC organized by Californians for Population Stabilization)
Bucha, Paul W.
Pres. Cong. Medal of Honor Soc.
“All of us owe our freedom and our prosperity to the sacrifices of immigrants who gave of themselves so that we might have more. We are fortunate and we are forever indebted to those who have gone before.”
(CMHS Press Release, Nov. 7, 1996)
Burke, B. Meredith
Demographer
” Alas, there is no socially cost-free path to secure our environmental future. Short-term generosity is misplaced as it will ultimately destroy the future physical fabric of both this nation and the world. Policies aimed at restoring a viable population/environmental balance to this country while reducing our demands upon others will necessitate a closing of our borders to all but the immediate family of citizens.
“The moral path will entail reducing our resource consumption while broadening our obligation to the world’s poor. We may have to endure an era of receiving nasty epithets such as “racist xenophobes” or “Hitlers” intended to silence those who will not overlook the reality of ecological constraints. We must reiterate that throttling our population growth is the most loving act we can perform for all peoples on this finite globe.”
(The Paradox of Clashing Values, 2000)
C
Cafaro, Philip — Ethics of Immigration
Philosophy Professor, Colorado State University
“…the real purpose of an economy is not to grow ever larger, but to provide for people’s sustenance, security and well-being. We need to create economies that accomplish this without depending on [population] growth.”
(New York Times, “Room for Debate,” October 16, 2011)
“In the middle of the greatest sustained increase in overall wealth in the nation’s history, meatpacking companies successfully drove tens of thousands of American workers, performing grueling, necessary work, from middle class prosperity into poverty. It never would have been possible without the 1965 Revisions to the Immigration and Nationality Act. The packing companies could not have replaced tens of thousands of locked-out union members without the ready availability of tens of thousands of poor immigrants desperate for work. …we have no right to pursue immigration policies that sacrifice the vital economic interests of poor Americans in order to help poor foreigners.”
(“The Economic Impacts of Mass Immigration into the United States and the Proper Progressive Response,” Progressives for Immigration Reform, December 2009).
Chamie, Joseph — Population Stabilization
Demographer, Research Director Center for Migration Studies, Former Director of the United Nations Population Division
“According to Ponzi demography, population growth — through natural increase and immigration — means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while — but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable. When the bubble eventually bursts and the economy sours, the scheme spirals downward with higher unemployment, depressed wages, falling incomes, more people sinking into debt, more homeless families — and more men, women and children on public assistance.
…Moving gradually towards population stabilization, while not a panacea for the world’s problems, will make it far easier to address problems such as climate change, environmental degradation, poverty and development, human rights abuses and shortages of water, food and critical natural resources. …The sooner nations reject Ponzi demography and make the needed gradual transition from ever-increasing population growth to population stabilization, the better the prospects for all of humanity and other life on this planet.”
(“The Globalist” E-zine, March 4, 2010.)
“…decisions and policies on US immigration, including future levels, priorities, high-skilled migration and illegal immigration, effectively load the demographic dice for America’s future. Contrary to popular thought, the dominant force fueling America’s demographic growth is not natural increase, but immigration. This is because immigrants not only add their own numbers to the nation’s overall population, but also contribute a disproportionate number of births whose effects are compounded over time. …Obviously, immigration trends have non-trivial implications for the future financial well-being of social security and health care systems for the elderly. However, immigration is not a solution to population ageing insofar as the immigrants themselves also age and eventually retire. …Moving toward population stabilization would contribute significantly to America’s ability to solve its domestic problems as well as many of those abroad, especially energy and resource consumption, climate change and environmental sustainability.”
(YaleGlobal, July 30, 2009)
Chang, Michael — Ethnic change
Mayor of Cupertino CA
(Representing a population grown from 7% Asian in 1980 to 23% in 1990 to 29% now, with 42% Asian school population)
“Everyone knows that change creates anxieties.”
(San Jose Mercury News — July 3, 1998)
Chisti, Muzaffar
National Immigration Forum
“We reformed the [asylum] system to address the awful practices of the past. The reforms were well intentioned, thoughtful, humane. But they led to a considerable amount of fraud… [In 1991, immigrants began] shopping for airports. J.F.K. was seen as particularly porous. There are asylum-seekers from all over the world there whose claims are fraudulent. So we have a mess.”
(New York Times, Apr. 25, 1993)
Coleman, David A. — Why borders cannot be open
Prof., St. John’s College, Oxford
“Too easy an access to immigrant labour can create distortion and dependency in an economy. Any large modern society which finds that it in some way ‘needs’ constant flows of immigrants, …over a long time, is suffering from problems with its society or labour market or economy which it ought to rectify by reforming itself, not depending on the rest of the world.”
“The suggestion that some unattractive jobs must in future be done by foreigners implies a permanent ethnically distinct underclass. That notion should be contrary to the principles of any society which favours equality of opportunity and opposes ethnic or racial discrimination.”
“Migration distorts economies and creates dependence on futher migration. It allows obsolete low-wage, low-productivity enterprises to continue in poor conditions, which otherwise would have to raise the wages of their workers, introduce more capital intensive processes or export the function to the countries where it could be performed more cheaply for everyone’s benefit.”
“ ‘Open borders’ is urged as a parallel to ‘free trade’, as though people were goods. But goods do not go where they are unwanted, goods have no rights or feelings, goods do not reproduce or vote, goods can be sent back or scrapped when no longer needed. Immigration concerns people, not objects, and consequently (depending on its scale) its political and social importance is potentially much greater than any economic effects it may have. The inability of economic models to accommodate political, social and cultural effects underlines the fact that immigration policy is far too important a matter to be left to economists.”
(Why Borders Cannot Be Open Int. Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 8/24/01)
Cornelius, Wayne A.
Dir. Studies & Programs, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, U.C.-S.D.
“IRCA had the unintended consequence of stimulating permanent emigration to the U.S. once a family head had legalized himself under the SAW program, or under the general amnesty program that was also created by the 1986 law, wives and children soon followed him to the U.S., whether or not these dependents could actually qualify to enter legally.”
(“Potential Impacts of the New Economic Crisis on Migration to the United States” Revista NEXOS, Mexico City, supplied by the author, Apr. 1995)
D
Dewey, Arthur E. — on U.S. refugee admission
Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration
“The rest of the world combined takes less than half as many refugees as the U.S. does; this year, some 20-25,000 vice 53,000 for the United States.”
(Testimony to Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship
Washington, DC, September 21, 2004)
Dyson, Tim — Malthus wasn’t wrong
Prof.of population studies at the London School of Economics
“People who say Malthus is wrong usually haven’t read him. He was not taking a view any different than what Adam Smith took in the first volume of The Wealth of Nations. No one in their right mind doubts the idea that populations have to live within their resource base. And that the capacity of society to increase resources from that base is ultimately limited. …Ultimately there has to be a balance between population and resources. And this notion that we can continue to grow forever, well it’s ridiculous.”
(National Geographic, June 2009)
E
Erlich, Paul and Anne — Population and the environment
Authors, environmentalists
“The United States today presents the bizarre picture of a country that debates immigration policy without having a population policy. That is roughly like trying to design an airplane that can load a certain number of people per minute without deciding what its passenger capacity should be.”
(“Demography and Policy: A View from Outside the Discipline,” Population and Development Review, 2008)
“We can never have a sane immigration policy until we have a sane population policy. The ideal mix of births and immigrants is a difficult question that must be solved by public debate. Our view is that immigration adds important variety to our population and permits the United States to give refuge to people who really need it. So our preference would be to maintain a reasonable level of immigration and compensate for it with fewer births.
“The immigration issue is extremely complex and ethically difficult, but it must be faced. Equally daunting, after a decision on levels of immigration has been made, will be monitoring the flow and enforcing the quotas. Badly needed now is a wide-ranging discussion, first, of population policy, and then of immigration within the context of that policy.”
(Quoted in Elephants in the Volkswagen, Lindsay Grant, 1992
Audubon Activist, November 1993
“If the critical job of stopping U.S. population growth is to be accomplished, something must be done about immigration. Improving conditions in poor countries is certainly one of the most important steps toward accomplishing that. There can also be little doubt that many immigrants become successful and quickly adopt U.S. life styles, thus increasing the pressure that this country and other rich nations contribute to deforestation and general environmental destruction in poor countries. The United States must develop a population policy leading toward shrinkage, and that means the number of births plus immigrants must be slightly below the number of deaths plus emigrants. Basically, for every immigrant admitted, a birth must be foregone. How the mix of births and immigrants is achieved is not a scientific issue, but one to be decided by democratic choice. Immigration is a very complex and ethically difficult issue. I agree that not all environmental groups should become involved with immigration. But I believe that every environmental group does have an obligation to make the obvious need to reduce U.S. population size, lower our levels of wasteful consumption, and develop more efficient, environmentally benign technologies part of its policy stance. And part of that stance should be to point out the necessary trade-off between births and immigrants.”
Estrada, Richard — Affirmative action/immigrant assimilation
Journalist, Associate Editorial Page Editor Dallas Morning News
“The problem in which the current immigration is suffused is, at heart, one of numbers; for when the numbers begin to favor not only the maintenance and replenishment of the immigrants’ source culture, but also its overall growth, and in particular growth so large that the numbers not only impede assimilation but go beyond to pose a challenge to the traditional culture of the American nation, then there is a great deal about which to be concerned.”
(The Christian Science Monitor, “The US must be a melting pot — not a salad bowl” by Lawrence E. Harrison citing a letter from Estrada, February 26, 2008)
(Review of Peter Skerry’s Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority)
“Though hardly all Mexican-Americans welcome new arrivals, Mexican-American leaders covet newcomers because they replenish their political base. Mexico is the largest country of emigration on earth. It comes as no real surprise that African-Americans, confronting their own pending displacement as America’s largest minority group, rue the extension of their own hard-won affirmative action gains to just-arrived non-citizens clogging the ranks of the unskilled in a society with ever less need of them.”
(Wall Street Journal, Nov. 24, 1993)
“In the final analysis, the interests of the country will be served not just by asking how many immigrants we should take, but also by arriving at an agreement as to who should come and how we should enforce the law. There should be three basic areas of agreement. First, there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration. Second, the immutable characteristics of individual immigrants – e.g., skin color, ethnic origin or religion — should not be a factor in choosing who should come. Third, the numerical levels of immigration should be ratcheted up or down according to the labor force needs of the United States.
(“Are past trends a guide for the future?” Dallas Morning News, 1992)
“It is the numbers that are proving problematic, not the Hispanic-ness (or the Asian-ness) of the new immigration. ..if francophone Quebec can bring the Canadian confederation to the brink of disintegration even though France lies an entire ocean away, should there not at least arise a certain reflectiveness about our Southwest, which lies contiguous to an overpopulated Third World nation?”
(Focus, Vol. 2, #3 1992, p.27 “From El Paso to Plymouth: Hispanic Contributions to American Culture,”)
“Current U.S. immigration policy helps impede assimilation, tribalist politics, prolong labor intensiveness, and undermine productivity and competitiveness.”
(Chronicles, “The Impact of Immigration on Hispanic-Americans;” July, 1991)
F
Frank, T.A. — Social impact of immigration
Writer and editor
“If I have a plea to my fellow liberals more broadly, it’s that they focus more of their empathy on fellow Americans being left behind. Because we increasingly live in bubbles, many of us are at best only abstractly aware of how cruelly circumstances of unskilled Americans have deteriorated over the past few decades. Even as these Americans have lost their well-paid manufacturing jobs, Washington has looked the other way while millions of low-skilled unauthorized immigrants have competed with them for low-skilled service jobs. The insouciance of privileged Americans toward the effects of this on life among less-privileged Americans is, in my view, a betrayal of citizenship.
If we are to have any hope of regaining any control over our own immigration policy-which is to say, our destiny as a nation — then we must ensure that everyone has an incentive to follow the laws on who gets to be here and who does not. Otherwise, we will shred the few remaining safety nets we have, and the dream of dignity for all American citizens will slip farther and farther, perhaps permanently, out of reach. No matter how magnificently [Sen.] Chuck Schumer claims the contrary.”
(New Republic, June 27, 2013)
Freere, Greg — Day labor hiring sites
Trade Union Official
“What it [the day laborer hiring site] basically does is put a legitimate contractor at a disadvantage. You get non-union contractors who don’t work by the rules, don’t offer worker’s compensation and pay with cash.”
(Contra Costa Times, October 21, 2002)
Feld, Charlie — High-tech. workers
CEO of The Feld Group
“There’s no shortage of IT workers, there’s a shortage of IT leadership.”
(Computerworld.com, “Darker Days Ahead for IT workers,” Sept. 25, 2000)
Fix, Michael
Urban Inst.
“The United States now admits roughly 800,000 legal immigrants annually who are eligible to become citizens: more than to all nations in Western Europe combined and more than at any previous point in our history.”
(with Karen Tumlin, Urban Inst. publication “Welfare Reform and the Devolution of Immigrant Policy,” Oct 1997
“It is increasingly apparent that document fraud is the rock on which employer sanctions could founder unless the government is willing to tackle some very nettlesome issues.”
(New York Times, Feb. 19, 1992)
Fragoman, Austin — Visa overstayers
Immigration Lawyer
“It’s a dilemma. These do tend to be hard-working and entrepreneurial people. But we’re being inundated with such people looking for economic betterment. From a public-policy standpoint, we have to regulate this. Otherwise, we might as well take the walls down and let the world redistribute itself.”
(“A Harder Look at Visa Overstayers,” Christian Science Monitor, February 05, 2002)
G
Geyer, Georgie Anne — Amnesty
Columnist
“Before the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens, the United States had had only three official amnesties: in 1865 and 1868 after the Civil War for supporters of the Confederacy, and in 1977 for draft resisters who had gone abroad….In short, the 1986 amnesty turned out, by the INS’ own findings, to have been simply a giveaway of American legitimacy.”
(Washington Times, Feb. 22, 2001)
Gimpel, James
Academic, Author
“To the extent that immigration widens the gap between rich and poor, it undermines our goals of equality and integration. The good news is that immigration levels are subject to clear policy control.
A temporary slowdown in the flow of immigrants into the United States would go a long way toward realizing the longstanding goal of residential integration.”
(“Migration, Immigration, and the Politics of Places,” Backgrounder, Center for Immigration Studies, Oct. 1999)
Gilliam, Harold
Environmental Writer
“The time has come to risk being politically incorrect, to take off the blindfolds, to think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable: There are too many people coming into California.
Immigration must stop.” [water supply, soil productivity, air quality, health services, school system, tax base are over-burdened]
(San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 21, 1993)
Glazer, Nathan
Sociologist, Author, Journalist
(author Ethnic Dilemmas, editor Clamor at the Gates: The New American Immigration, co-editor, The Public Interest)
“Not only do the [immigrant] groups change, but the United States changes, too, and what it [the U.S.] accomplished in the past it may not be able to accomplish today: its economic circumstances are different, its culture is different, its politics are different. Concerns and fears arising from these differences are what drive restrictionism today and make it quite different from the restrictionism of the 1920s, which was fueled by ethnic and religious prejudice. Today the chief fears guiding immigrant restriction are concern over the shaky state and future of the U.S. economy, fears over welfare dependency, and concerns over our new multiculturalism, abetted by the general feeling-evident among many environmentalists-that the county has enough people and more will only lower the quality of life. These current fears … cannot be dissipated by rewriting U.S. history into a pleasing myth in which all the difficulties and problems involved in creating an immigrant society are obscured and by insisting that immigration is not a problem but rather our destiny and our salvation.”
(“Governmental and Nongovernmental Roles in the Absorption of Immigrants in the United States”, Paths to Inclusion, eds. Peter Schuck and Rainer Münz, 1998)
“Undoubtedly the legislators who passed, in those same wonderful years of 1964 and 1965, both the civil rights laws and the new immigration law that abolished quotas and racial preferences were fulfilling a great American promise, opening opportunity to all without consideration of race or ethnicity. Ironically, the wider gates to immigration helped undermine the promise of the civil rights law. In the absence of new immigrants, employers might have raised the wages of the jobs they had, and the real wages might then have come closer to matching the “reserve wage” of the children of the black Southern migrants.”
(The New Republic, Dec. 16, 1996)
“The debate over immigration should be informed by better research in numbers, costs, impacts. But this will not I believe offer decisive guidance in the debate and will certainly not settle it. Passions and interests will and must come into play, but beyond passions and interests there will have to be choices, moral choices certainly as to our obligations as a nation to the large numbers who wish to enter and make their lives here, and choices as to what kind of nation we want to be.”
“My own conclusion is that when, on the basis of legitimate and nonracist judgments, for a variety of reasons, a majority of Americans think the scale of immigration is too large, there is a good reason to consider ways of reducing it.”
“I think it is simplistic to say that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, since immigrants define our character as a nation, since we have overall been a success as a nation, we must and should remain a country of immigrants.”
(Pacific Research Inst., April 14, 1994)
“When one considers present immigration policies, it seems we have insensibly reverted to mass immigration, without ever having made a decision to do so. Few Americans believe our population is too low, our land too lightly settled, our resources unexploited, our industries and commerce short of labor. But our policies, the result of various pressures operating within a framework of decent and generous ideals, end up looking as if we believe all this is true.”
(The New Republic, Dec. 27, 1993)
“Filing a claim is essentially costless to the alien, who thus has much to gain and little to lose by doing so. The social costs, however, are high. The policies of interdiction and return of potential asylum claimants on the high seas, and the mass incarceration of asylum claimants who arrive here — policies that reverse a long-standing, judicially ratified preference for admission under parole — raise urgent legal, moral, and policy issues. They grimly contrast the abstract, traditional principles of sovereignty, consent-based obligation, and restrictive national community with palpable, poignant, compelling human claims for protection, the kinds of claims that bureaucracies can usually resist but courts often cannot.”
(“Immigration Law and the Problem of Community,” Clamor at the Gates, 1985)
Gleick, Peter
Co-founder Pacific Institute
“[We can’t continue to build without regard to available resources. In the 20th Century our approach was] build it and we will figure out a way to get the water there….It’s not going to work in the 21st Century. There isn’t any more water. We’re at the limits of our resources here….We can’t grow indefinitely without running up against limits.”
(WHYY report on NPR, November 27, 2007, “Report on a Looming Water Crisis”)
Goldsborough, James
Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune
(columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune)
“If the United States owes its very identity to immigration, it is time to recognize the hazards of unreasonable and uncontrolled immigration. Instead of being a source of strength, upwardly spiraling immigration has begun to create imbalances in education, income distribution, employment levels, and welfare demands. It is creating tensions between immigrants and natives, between immigrant and nonimmigrant states, and among state, local, and federal governments.”
(“Out-of-Control Immigration,” Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2000)
Gordon, Robt. J.
Academic
“Imports have contributed to the decline in well-paying jobs in U.S. manufacturing, and immigrants, particularly low-skilled immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean and Asia have helped to push down incomes and salary scales at the bottom of the income distribution in both manufacturing and in services.” … “Most economists share my view that open trade is a good thing for consumers, and that immigration not only provides benefits but is hard to cut off by legislative fiat. So, to the extent that there is a solution to growing inequality, it must be in the direction of upgrading the skills of the unskilled.”
(Testimony, House Cte. on the Budget, June 8, 1994)
Gorelick, Jamie
Former Dep. Atty. Gen.
(former Deputy Attorney General, former General Counsel at the Pentagon, former partner D.C. firm, and President of the D.C. bar)
(Regarding Proposition 187 in California)
“It told me people want respect for the rule of law. I think there was just an overwhelming fear of being literally overrun. That was a vote of anxiety — an anxiety about our schools, and anxiety of a realization of limited resources in a state that has always felt boundless in its ability to absorb and grow.
“I think that’s why it’s so important that we do what we can do — to secure the border. Because if people feel secure, and if we can make the Border Patrol our cops and not our children our cops, I think all Americans would prefer that as a solution. …for decades, we as a country did not put the resources in place to enforce the law as it was written.”
(Los Angeles Times, Jan. 19, 1995)
Gutierrez, Marcos — La Raza ascendancy
Journalist, Talk-show Host, Professor
“I have only one loyalty and that€s to the immigrant community.”
(Newsweek, November 29, 2010)
H
Hardin, Garrett
Scientist, Ecologist and Author
“…population policy must be policy for a nation, not for the whole world, because there is no world sovereignty to back up a global policy. We can, and should, seek to persuade other nations to take steps to control their population growth; but our primary focus should be on the population growth within our own borders. This means that overpopulation can be avoided only if borders are secure; otherwise poor and overpopulated nations will export their excess to richer and less populated nations.”
(Living Within Limits, 1993)
“Any suggestion that we might put an end to immigration is met with the anguished cry, ‘But we are a nation of immigrants’ But so is every nation [emphasis in original].The natural history of a nation is simple: first, outsiders move into a land virtually vacant of people; the land fills up; congestion is felt; then, the residents close the gates. Unrestricted immigration characterizes a new nation; restrictions are the mark of a mature nation.”
(“There Is No Global Population Problem,” The Humanist, July 8, 1989)
“Prosperous nations can remain prosperous only by controlling their borders. When a border is a sieve, wealth leaks out of a prosperous nation with little benefit to the poor. Those of us who want to see America continue in the role of a helping nation should support the control of our borders; by this mean, am wealth can be sustained. A moratorium on immigration will give us time to do better by all our people, both the most recent immigrants and the birthright residents. Out of our prosperity we can then try to help other nations — on their own turf.”
(“American Needs a Moratorium on Immigration,” American Immigration Control Foundation Report, June 1988)
“A democracy can survive only if it has an irreducible minimum of consensus in many areas — political ideals, social customs, ethical ideals, and a mutually understood language. Much as we may admire diversity, it is a fact that most immigrants from cultures markedly different from our own impose high acculturation costs on society. (Businesses and individuals who benefit from immigration pay few of these costs.) The public purse is not bottomless, and we can stand only so much disorder.”
(“Uncontrolled Immigration: a Threat to National Unity,” Santa Barbara News Press, November 21, 1982)
“There are those who say that the legal quota of immigrants per year is too low, maintaining that a higher limit would meet the economic “need” better. This proposal misses an important point: illegality is part of the “need.” Many employers say that our minimum wage is too high. Menials are often employed to do the dirty work of industry at subminimum wages. The fortunate (and unfortunate) people who take such jobs know that if they inform on their employers they will be turned over to immigration authorities and deported. That is why illegality is an essential part of the “need” for immigrant labor.”
“How we are to control our population by acceptable means is still not clear, but of this we can be sure: population control is impossible without immigration control.”
(Naked Emperor’s, Essays of a Taboo-Stalker, 1982)
“An even larger issue is missing in the thinking of ‘compassionate’ people: the threat of the tragedy of the commons. Since 1833, when the English economist William Forster Lloyd first pointed out the logical consequences of uncontrolled access to common property, it has been clear that shortages cannot be solved by sharing. Given uncontrolled population growth, wealth cannot be shared. Were we to dismantle all barriers to migration, the gains one nation might make by adopting a zero population growth policy would be totally absorbed by in-migration from neighboring nations not committed to population control.”
(Naked Emperors, Essays of a Taboo-Stalker, 1982)
“ ‘Isn’t it better to do a little for others than to do nothing?’ As the question is worded, one would have to answer, Yes. But let us not forget that every action is a message. By drawing off the excess population of other countries as immigrants into our own we send a message to the rulers of those countries that we feel responsible for the problems they have generated. Rulers will henceforth be less inclined to try to solve their own problems. A ‘liberal’ immigration policy by the U.S. delays the acceptance of responsibility away from them. Such was the error of colonialism. That is also what is wrong with a ‘liberal’ immigration policy. This brand of liberalism destroys the roots of reproductive responsibility in other countl1es and the basis of democracy in our own.”
(Testimony to U.S. Senate Subcommittee, 1979)
“But a nation that fails to enforce its sovereign rights to exclude others from the exploitation of its internal resources (as by permitting uncontrolled, or insufficiently controlled, immigration) thereby converts its own resources into a commons, with the inevitable tragic ruin. Poor extranationals will seek to satisfy their needs by moving into a rich nation, sharing its wealth which it diminishes in the process of sharing. Uncontrolled immigration will not come to a halt until the wealth of the receiving country is reduced to the level of the nation supplying the immigrants, i.e., until the poor would-be immigrants perceived no more possibility of satisfying their need by migrating. ‘Share the wealth’ is an illusory goal: only poverty can be shared.”
(World Issues, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions; The Limits of Sharing, 1978)
“Environmentalists have emphasized the image of the earth as a spaceship — Spaceship Earth. Kenneth Boulding is the principal architect of this metaphor. It is time, he says, that we replace the wasteful ‘cowboy economy’ of the past with the illegal ‘spaceship economy’ required for continued survival in the limited world we now see ours to be. The metaphor is notably useful in justifying pollution control measures.
Unfortunately, the image of a spaceship is also used to promote measures that are suicidal. One of these is generous immigration policy, which is only a particular instance of a class of policies that are in error because they lead to the tragedy of the commons. These suicidal policies are attractive because they mesh with what we unthinkingly take to be the ideals of ‘the best people.’ What is missing in the idealistic view is an insistence that rights and responsibilities must go together. The ‘generous’ attitude of all too[emphasis in original] many people results in asserting inalienable rights while ignoring or denying matching responsibilities. For the metaphor of a spaceship to be correct the aggregate of people on board would have to be under unitary sovereign control. A true ship always has a captain.”
(Living on a Lifeboat. in Managing the Commons, 1977)
“Curious [is the silence enveloping immigration policy], but understandable — as one finds out the moment he publicly questions the wisdom of the status quo in immigration. He who does so is promptly charged with isolationism, bigotry, prejudice, ethnocentrism, chauvinism and selfishness. These are hard accusations to bear. It is pleasanter to talk about other matters, leaving immigration policy to wallow in the cross-currents of special interests that take no account of the good of the whole — or the interests of posterity. We Americans have a bad conscience because of things we said in the past about immigrants… Because the implied inferiority of foreigners was then the justification for keeping them out, it is now thoughtlessly assumed that restrictive policies can only be based on the assumption of immigrant inferiority. This is not so [emphasis in original].”
(Living on a Lifeboat. in Managing the Commons, 1977)
Hanson, Victor Davis
Author, Academic
“The argument that alien unskilled labor is a new phenomenon in America is not entirely accurate. This country has always welcomed in cheap foreign workers when the economy was sound and menial labor short….Yet the moral quandary we face is clear when we acknowledge that denying residence to impoverished illegal aliens — a move that would end their hopes of freedom and economic betterment — would benefit enormously the Mexicans who are already here legally.” (p.36)
“Besides the stabbings, the drunk-driving arrests and the risk of driving at high speed on the interstate without more than a few days of automobile experience, there is, of course, the plague of alcohol. Latinos die from cirrhosis of the liver at a rate higher than any other ethnic group, and twice the rate of whites. The rates of gonorrhea, herpes, chlamydia and venereal warts are epidemic in the immigrant population of young adult males — and rarely discussed. HIV infection is also generally recorded at twice the percentage found in the native white population. Our social health industry — which daily publishes a myriad of details about farm workers’ mental health problems, the pathologies of a newly acquired diet of fatty processed food, and the lack of good dental care — ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of young Mexicans suffer from an array of venereal diseases.” (p.41)
“Yet through multiculturalism, cultural relativism and a therapeutic curriculum our schools often promote the very values from which new immigrants are fleeing — tribalism, statism and group rather than individual interests….There is a reason, after all, why those in a rather cold and inhospitable Canada, north of the Dakotas and Minnesota, do not cross into America by the millions, while others from a temperate, naturally beautiful, oil-rich, mineral-laden and fertile Mexico do.” (p. 87)
“Race, chauvinism, ethnicity creep hourly back into social life if not battled by citizens of strength and vision. A few malicious people can undo the work of centuries….The work of cultural unity is of the ages; advancing racial and ethnic separatism is a gesture of the moment.” (p.122)
(Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2003)
Heinberg, Richard — Limits to U.S. energy consumption
Senior fellow Post Carbon Institute, author
“At the end of the day, we have to somehow make peace with the fact that the earth is not just a giant cookie jar that is going to give us everything we want. We have to moderate our demand for energy and everything else so that it’s commensurate with Earth’s ability to supply our wants and needs.”
(Interview regarding his new book, Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, March 27, 2013 at www.alternet.org.)
Hesburgh, Rev. Theodore — Investor visas and immigration limits
Chair U.S. Commission on Immigration, Former Pres. Notre Dame
On Investor Visas — (recommended in Commission Report)
“It smacked of being able to buy citizenship.” “I think I was the only one who voted against it. I just didn’t feel right about it.” (Baltimore Sun, Feb. 20, 2000)
“The open society does not mean limitless immigration. Quantitative and qualitative limits are perfectly compatible with the concept of the open society.” (Testimony May 5, 1981 before U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee)
Hing, Bill Ong
Law Prof. & Dir. Imm. Legal Resource Center
“Yet, racial difference has played a role throughout the United States; in San Francisco housing project clashes, in conflicts between Vietnamese and Latinos in Denver, Latinos and Africans in Wisconsin, Pacific Islanders and Latinos in East Palo Alto. The existence of linguistic and cultural separatism about which many Euro-immigrationist and cultural assimilationists complain, is undeniable. Latino barrios, Chinatowns, little Italys, and llittle Saigons, have grown dramatically in size and number in the past couple of years.”
(“Conference Proceedings on California Immigration 1994”, p.25, April 29, 1994)
Hoff, Derek S. — Population and the economy
Associate Professor, Kansas State University
“Conservatives and liberals alike generally assume that population growth drives economic growth. But until the triumph of the new laissez-faire economics in the 1970s and 1980s, most economists agreed that what mattered was not the size of a population but its human capital and its savings, investment and consumption practices. Indeed, many mainstream economists argued that a smaller but more productive population would enhance growth and lead to a more just society. It is strange that we talk on one hand about an innovation- and knowledge-based economy while still thinking about economic growth in terms of sheer body count. Moderate levels of immigration can help us maintain a highly skilled work force, but so, too, can investing more in educating our young.”
(“The False Alarm Over U.S. Fertility,” New York Times, April 17, 2013)
Huntington, Samuel
Harvard Prof. of Govt. and Author
“Mexican immigration poses challenges to the U.S. in a way nothing else has in the past. … And the longer [this] immigration continues, the more difficlut politically it is to stop. … The invasion of over 1 million Mexican civilians is a comparable [to an armed invasion] threat to American societal security, and Americans should react against it with comparable vigor.”
(“The Special Case of Mexican Immigration,” The American Enterprise, December 2000)
I
Izumi, Lance T. — Cost of Educating Children of Illegal Aliens
Dir. Education Studies, Pacific Research Inst.
“Although almost three-quarters of the children of illegal immigrants were born in the United States and are therefore citizens, had their parents not entered the U.S. illegally these children likely wouldn€t be in U.S. public schools and wouldn€t require taxpayer funding. Thus, it€s fair to say that their education cost stems from their parents€ illegal entry into this country.”
(Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 17, 2010)
J
Jacinoski, Jerry
Pres. NAM
“While we support efforts to enhance enforcement of our immigration laws and control illegal immigration, we continue to support legal business immigration and family reunification…”
(Letter to Rep. Henry J. Hyde, September 19, 1995)
Jacoby, Tamar
Columnist
“…No survey in 40 years has shown anything like a majority in favor of easing quotas, as virtually all reformers believe is necessary to bring policy into line with U.S. labor needs; and the share of the public that would like to see ceilings lowered, in bad economic times as large as two-thirds, never runs below 40%.”
(The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2004)
Jensen, Lief and Yoshimi Chitose
Pennsylvania State Univ. researchers
“…by nearly every measure circumstances appear far worse among children of more recent immigrants and children who were born abroad. In fact, in many instances children of earlier arrivals (those arriving 1965-1974 or before 1965) are better off than native children. While some improvement in the circumstances of recent arrivals can be expected as their parents adjust to the U.S. labor market and climb the age-earnings profile, they cannot be expected to readily overcome their parents’ comparatively low levels of education and lower status occupations.”
(“Today’s Second Generation: Evidence from the 1990 Census,” International Migration Review, Winter 1994)
Johnson, James H. Jr. & Oliver, Melvin — Immigration and blacks
Academics
“Competing for similar jobs in the unskilled and service sectors of the city’s economy [Liberty City, Miami — May ‘80], blacks found themselves losing to Cubans at an alarming rate. Cuban faces soon replaced blacks in such competitive sectors of the economy as hotels, hospitals and restaurants. Employers claimed to find the Cubans more willing to take menial jobs for minimum and below minimum wages. Blacks felt an extreme sense of injustice in the way in which they were being passed by, economically and socially, by the more recent Cuban arrivals.”
(Illegal Immigration: An Unfolding Crisis, p.85, by Daniel James, 1991)
Jones, Gen. James L.
NATO Supreme Commander
“…[W]e have to do better at controlling things if we want to be effective — knowing who comes into the country and why.”
(Parade Magazine, January 19, 2003)
Jones, Peter — Collapse of the Roman empire
Author
“The collapse of the Roman empire in the West in the fifth century was not due to anything like a planned, concerted barbarian assault. Various Germanic tribes, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not, many driven out nomadic Huns from Mongolia, had taken up residence within the western Roman empire from the late third century. Since the Romans could not keep these tribes out, they often accommodated rather than fought them., giving them lands and federate status within the empire. Many of these Germans served Rome well…some German tribes had become thoroughly romanized in Roman territory well before the Roman empire broke up. But other tribes kept on coming and full assimilation proved impossible. Rome never solved the problem of ethnic disunity. When the Goths…sacked Rome…the tribes simply established their new, autonomous, individual kingdoms within what was once the mighty western Roman empire. In truth, many had already done so.”
(The Intelligent Person’s Guide to the Classics, page 22, 1999)
K
Kennedy, Paul
Yale Prof.
“As Earth adds to its total population by nearly 95,000,000 people each year, the pressure upon environments and resources grows greater, the pace of illegal immigration quickens, and entire societies in the developing world collapse under the strain.”
(Financial Times, ? date)
Kennedy estimates that of the extra 8.5 billion to 9 billion people to be added to the global population (now 5.4 billion) by the year 2025, 95 percent will be born in the poorest of the poor countries. Africa’s population is expected to soar from 680 million to 1.6 billion, exceeding China’s 1.5 billion, but less than India’s 2 billion.
Kitt, Eartha
Entertainer
“You have no idea how angry this country is. We have a Third World going on right here, and the politicians don’t want to admit it. Of course, once you stick your head in and say ‘It hurts,’ you get shot down.”
(“A Third World,” Washington Post, July 2, 1994 — Quote-Acrostic p.E9)
Krauthammer, Charles
Doctor and Pulitzer Prize-winning Syndicated Columnist
“American unity has been built on a tightly federalist politics and a powerful melting pot culture. Most important. America chose to deal with the problem of differentness (ethnicity) by embracing a radical individualism and rejecting the notion of group rights. Of course, there was one great, shameful historical exception: the denial of rights to blacks ….We are now, however, in the process of throwing away this patrimony. Our great national achievement — fashioning a common citizenship and identity for a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-racial people — is now threatened by a process of relentless, deliberate Balkanization. The great engines of social life — the law, the schools, the arts — are systematically encouraging the division of America into racial, ethnic and gender separateness …Stanford capitulated to separatist know-nothings and abandoned its ‘Western Civilization’ course because of its [the course’s] bias toward white males. (You know: narrow-minded ethnics like Socrates, Jesus and Jefferson).
(“The Tribalization of America,” Washington Post, August 6, 1990)
L
Lehman, Thomas E.
Economics Prof
Economics Professor, Indiana Wesleyan University
“A policy of open immigration would indeed force unskilled American laborers to compete for their jobs at lower wages. However, far from being an evil, this is a desirable outcome, one which should form the basis for a new immigration policy. By inviting competition into the American labor markets, artificially inflated labor costs could be eliminated and a greater level of labor efficiency could be achieved.
(“Coming To America: The Benefits Of Open Immigration,” The Freeman, Vol. 45 No. 12, Foundation for Economic Education December 1995)
Leticia [last name withheld]
An illegal alien perspective
“I’m never going back to El Salvador. I’m still safer and better off cleaning a home here than I would be working at a factory in El Salvador. I’ll hide if I have to, but this is where I want to live.”
(San Diego Union-Tribune, Mar. 15, 1993)
Lind, Michael
Journalist, Harpers
“The unpleasant truth is that the present rate of legal immigration has been a boon to employers—and a disaster for low-income workers. It is time for progressives to take the issue back…and advocate an immigration policy that keeps the interests of the working class, not the business class, in mind. By demanding equal rights for legal immigrants, humane treatment for undocumented ones, and continued legal immigration at reduced levels, progressives can oppose mass immigration without being perceived as anti-immigrant—or even anti immigration. Lower rates of immigration would reduce middle-class taxes and raise working-class wages. And the costs of immigration reduction would fall chiefly on the professionals, corporate executives, and investors who have benefited for a generation from an ever growing pool of cheap immigrant labor.”
(Mother Jones, August, 1998)
Lowell, B. Lindsay, PhD. — on amnesty legislation
Director at the Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University
“It’s hard to see how a large legalization program would do anything but increase the outflow of migrants from Mexico.” (Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2012)
M
McClay, Wilfred M. — The middle class
Academic, Historian
“Even when they do not set out with that in mind, comprehensive portraits of American culture and society almost always end up turning into studies of the middle class. There are good reasons for this. While the United States has never been a universally or uniformly middle-class society-a truism that social scientists continue to trumpet as if it were a pathbreaking discovery-the values and aspirations of the middle class have dominated the American moral landscape for most of our history.” “…the main point is this: middle-class status is as much a matter of shared sensibility as of shared socioeconomic prospects.”
(Commentary, May 1998, p.68 [reviewing One Nation, After All by Alan Wolfe])
Mahathir bin Mohamad, Dr. Dato Seri
Former Prime Min.Malaysia
“The North can gain much by recolonising. But we do have the ultimate weapon. People are more mobile now. They can go anywhere. In a borderless world we can go anywhere. If we are not allowed a good life in our countries, if we are going to be global citizens, then we should migrate North. We should migrate North in our millions, legally or illegally. Masses of Asians and Africans should inundate Europe and America. If there is any strength that we have, it is in the numbers. Three-fourth of the world is either black, brown, yellow or some combination of all these. We will make all nations in the world rainbow nations.
“This is how we will ultimately challenge globalisation. I hope we don’t have to resort to this. But we will if we are not allowed a piece of the action, a piece of the cake; if we are not allowed to prosper in a borderless world.”
(Speech delivered at the First Southern Africa International Dialogue at Kasane, Botswana, May 5, 1997 [text furnished by the Embassy of Malaysia in Washington, DC]
Maibach, Michael
Former VP Intel Corp.
“Today’s immigrants might not come here with much money, they might look different and speak strange languages, but their entrepreneurial spirit and desire to achieve is 100 percent American. … People migrate to places where they can be free and permitted to succeed. Our company is better, our industry is more competitive, and our nation is more prosperous because of immigrants.”
(San Diego Union-Tribune, July 19, 1996)
Marshall, Jack
President of Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle [VA] Population (ASAP) – on population
“If you want to assure that you have adequate supplies of a finite resource, you can’t have an endless exponential increase in population.” (Daily Progress, June 08, 2012)
Martin, Phil
Prof. Ag. Econ. UC-Davis
(On ‘brain drain’) “Brain drain can make it harder for a country to develop, both because successful migrants encourage others to leave and because the absence of professional workers can discourage the investment needed for economic growth.” …
(On U.S. immigration policy) “The US accepts about 3,500 legal immigrants a day, or 1.3 million a year, more than the rest of the world combined. Most Americans want immigration reduced.” …
(On deterring illegal immigration) “Most people agree that a key to reducing unauthorized migration is closing the labor market door to illegal workers. Northern European countries such as Sweden do this much better than the US, as do Singapore, Japan, and many other industrial countries.”…
(On immigrants’ impact on population growth) “Immigrants have a higher fertility rate than the US-born population and they are relatively young, in the child-bearing years, so the percentage of births to foreign-born women is higher than their share of US residents. About 24 percent of the 4.1 million US births in 2004 were to immigrant women, and 63 percent of births to Hispanic mothers were women born outside the US.”…
(Population Reference Bureau, “Interview with Philip Martin on Managing Unauthorized Migration,” March 25, 2008)
“…during the 22-year Bracero program, both legal and illegal Mexico-U.S. migration increased — there were more apprehensions than Bracero admissions over the 22-year program (both apprehensions and admissions count events, not unique individuals). …growers were not dissatisfied with the Bracero program — they fought very hard to continue it in 1963… [The] argument of inevitable Mexico-U.S. migration assumes that migration continued illegally when the Bracero program stopped, but between 1965 and the late 1970s there was little illegal immigration, which is one reason why Cesar Chavez and the United farm Workers were able to raise some California farm workers’ wages to twice the minimum wage in the late 1970s.”
“Ending the Bracero program showed that there is flexibility on the U.S. demand side of the labor market — the demand for low-skilled Mexican labor could be curbed sharply in U.S. agriculture, construction, and services, with few consequences for the average U.S. consumer.”
(“A Flawed Analysis of Mexican Migration,” The Social Contract, pp. 142-43, Winter 2002-3)
“In 1987-88, when there were about six million adult men in rural Mexico, the United states legalized one million Mexican men under the SAW [Seasonal Agricultural Worker] program. The fact that many of these men did not do the qualifying farm work but nonetheless became immigrants taught rural Mexicans that being an unauthorized worker in the United states can bring immigration Benefits. This encouraged more rural Mexicans to migrate to the United States, as indicated by the rising number of apprehensions: 1.6 million during the 1960s, 8.3 million during the 1970s, 12 million during the 1980s, and 14 million during the 1990s.”
(“Promise Unfulfilled: Why Didn’t Collective Bargaining Transform California’s Farm Labor Market?” Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, January 2004.)
Meese III, Edwin — the Job Magnet
Former U.S. Atty. Gen.
“As long as the American job market remains open to them, illegal aliens will continue illegal entry, smuggling, fraudulent visas … We continue to support effective methods to require employers to share in the responsibility to help solve this problem.”
((H.R. Rep. No. 99-682(I), at 103))
Moore, Sam — Border insecurity
Multi-Grammy Award-winner and Member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame
N
Newsom, David D.
Academic
“As long as policies on asylum are vague or loose, those in less-fortunate economic circumstances will be tempted by the lure of a better future and subject to being victimized as were the Chinese cast this month upon American shores.”
(Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 1993, p.19)
Nier, James E.
Cmdr. VFW
“We are a nation created and nurtured by immigrants from all over the world. The greatness of America is merely a reflection of their efforts and their contributions.”
(VFW Press Release, Nov. 7, 1996)
Norquist, Grover
Pres. Americans for Tax Reform
“For 300 years, America has been a nation of immigrants. To abandon that tradition now would be a tragedy.”
(Letter to Members of Congress, Mar. 18, 1996)
P
Papademetriou, Demetrios
Immig. Program, Carnegie
“…not all Europeans have population registries. The United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Turkey do not. Neither do the other major English-speaking countries (Canada and Australia).”
“…there are some things on which virtually all of us can agree. Two come most readily to mind. The first is that effective control of illegal immigration is the indispensable other side to fair and generous immigration policies. Only by controlling illegal immigration can we hope to maintain public support for a generous immigration policy whose benefits are not always self-evident to many Americans. …The second is that…employers should continue to be offered affirmative protection for verifying the legal employment certification of each hew hire, not its accuracy. …Of course, under any of the options…employers should continue to be subject to sanctions if they have no record of employability verification — an investigating and enforcement function which should be turned over exclusively to the country’s labor market agency, the Department of Labor.”
(Statement to Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs Roundtable Discussion on “Options for an Improved Employment Verification System,” Aug. 11, 1992)
Parker, Richard A. & Rea, Louis M. — Cost of immigration in CA
Researchers
(Authors of CA Auditor Gen.’s Report on cost of illegal aliens)
“…it is time to stop talking about all immigrants when a report is issued or a statement is made about undocumented immigrants. These two populations are becoming increasingly different from one another in terms of skill level, income generation, and net public costs and revenues. To cite conclusions drawn about the entire immigrant population when the subject is undocumented immigration can be a dangerous misuse of data and can do harm to what must become a very serious, very reasonable and very clear discussion of an increasingly critical public policy issue.
“It is vitally important to note that the Los Angeles County study cited as indicating a positive fiscal contribution by immigrants in the county of $1.85 billion omits a very large number of expenditures which could very possibly convert the positive $1.85 billion to a negative sum. The study includes revenues to the federal government, the state, Los Angeles County, and other local tax recipients, but it deducts from that sum only Los Angeles County costs and public education costs. The study omits all immigrant-related expenditures by the state in L.A. County, all such expenditures by the federal government in the county, and all such expenditures by cities within the county and therefore, must be quoted advisedly.”
(Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1992)
Pasco, Jim
Exec. Dir. Fraternal Order of Police
“At a time like this in particular, we welcome the opportunity [for local police departments to become involved in enforcing immigration laws]. Every member of the Fraternal Order of Police is a sworn law enforcement officer. We don’t make judgments as to what laws are appropriate to be enforced.”
“He said it does not make sense for local police to enforce other federal laws and not immigration laws.”
(Associated Press, April 4, 2002 AP-NY-04-04-02 0012EST)
Pimentel, David, Ph.D.
Prof. Insect Ecology and Ag. Sci. Cornell University
“Each person that we add to the U.S. population requires about one acre of land for urbanization and highways.”
(“Farms and Greenbelts,” National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education, October 1997.)
Pinkerton, James P. — The environment
Academic, Former White House Advisor on the Environment
“Only in this century has economic expansion provoked-or permitted-the rise of an earth-first politics. Many people have become aware that unbounded cultivation, extraction, and construction have disastrously degraded the ecosystem of the planet.”
(Foreign Affairs, May/June 1997)
Plumb, George E. — Steady-state economy
Prof. population studies London School of Economics
“The problem with the growth economy as an economic model is that it conflicts with the principles of physics and ecology. There is a limit to economic growth, and there is mounting evidence that global economic growth is having negative effects on the long-term health of the environment, resulting in climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution of our air and water. Fortunately there is an alternative economic system: the steady state economy as first envisioned by economist Herman Daly [Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications]. The key features of a steady state economy are: (1) sustainable scale, in which economic activities fit within the capacity provided by ecosystems; (2) fair distribution of wealth; and (3) efficient allocation of resources. A steady state economy can be compared to a mature and healthy Vermont forest ecosystem where a wide variety of fauna and flora living in healthy balance, but the volume is not growing.
(“New economic model helps Earth,” Burlington Press, March 9, 2009.)
Benedict XVI — National Sovereignty
“…states have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers, always guaranteeing the respect due to the dignity of each and every human person.” (New York Times, October 26, 2010)
Pope, Carl
Exec. Dir. Sierra Club, Former Lobbyist for ZPG
“Immigration is a sentimental symbol whose day is long past. We could take in 100,000 immigrants and still serve that symbol.”
(The New York Times Magazine, September 16, 1973 — in an article entitled “Should we pull up the gangplank?” by Leslie Aldridge Westoff citing Pope when he worked for NPG as saying “…we can’t hope to absorb all those who want to come in; filling a few holes in the labor market is not good enough reason to invite so many in, and we can reduce immigration substantially [from the 1973 level of 400,000] without interfering with our humanitarian goals.”)
Porritt, Jonathon — Looming resource shortages
Author and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission
[Since oil prices came down with the advent of the Reagan era] “The consequence of which has been hardly any serious discussion about economic growth and sustainability since then. Unbelievable, in retrospect, as even a fool could tell you that if you continue to grow both the number of human beings and the volume of goods and services consumed by each of those human beings, on a planet with limited resources and stressed-out life support systems, then you are heading inevitably for a bust. Sooner or later.”
(Porritt blog, March 31, 2009)
Portes, Alejandro
Prof. Sociology and Dir. Ctr. for Migration and Development, Princeton
“If the United States wants to keep indulging its addiction to cheap foreign workers, it had better do so with full awareness of what comes next. For immigrants and their children are people, not just labor, and they cannot be dismissed so easily when their work is done. The aftermath of immigration depends on what happens to these children. The prospects for many, given the obstacles at hand, appear dim.”
The American Prospect, April 8, 2002.
R
Reder, Melvin W. — Immigration restriction benefits poor Americans
Economist, Author
“Immigration policy inevitably reflects a kind of national selfishness of which the major beneficiaries are the least fortunate among us.” (The Economic Consequences of Increased Immigration. Review of Economics and Statistics, 1963)
Rector, Robert — fiscal impact of illegal and other low-skill immigrants
“…low-skill households are net tax consumers even during their working years. It is important to note, these families are rarely idle; they consistently work and pay taxes. However, the taxes they pay are seldom, if ever, sufficient to cover the cost of the government benefits they receive. In consequence, these households must be continually subsidized by other taxpayers…. Metaphorically, while low-skill immigrants make the American economic pie larger, they themselves consume most of the pie slice their labor adds.” (“The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer,” May 22, 2007)
Rockefeller, John D. III
Philanthropist, Founder Population Council
(On findings of the Rockefeller Commission- when the U.S. population was just above 200 million)
“After two years of concentrated effort, we have concluded that, in the long run, no substantial benefits will result from the further growth of the Nation’s population, rather that the gradual stabilization of our population would contribute significantly to the Nation’s ability to solve its problems.”
(“Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future,” Mar. 27, 1972)
Rodriguez, Gregory — Assimilation
Columnist Los Angeles Times
(Los Angeles Times columnist) — on Assimilation
“[I]mmigrant issues are considered synonymous with minority rights. In Los Angeles, the major Latino organizations are more concerned with rights and representation than with constituent services. This orientation can be traced to the 1960s, when the country’s largest philanthropic foundations, most notably the Ford Foundation, abandoned their traditional strategy of building lasting institutions in favor of funding organizations committed to challenging existing ones. … The new strategy eventually undermined the historically successful notion that immigrants are best helped by facilitating their assimilation into U.S. society.”
(Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2000.)
Rubin, Howard
Former Technology Advisor to Clinton Administration
“Labor dynamics are changing. Major companies can now hire people with top skills for $60,000 a year. We don’t need people on H-1Bs anymore. We can replenish staff from our own population.”
(Diane Rezendes Khirallah, “Where Does H-1B fit?” InformationWeek, February 4, 2002.)
Ryscavage, Fr. Richard — Immigration and the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S.
Jesuit
[Immigration] “is the growing edge of Catholicism in the United States.” [It is] “the key to our future and the key to why the church is going to be very healthy in the 21st century.
(National Catholic Register, Nov. 8, 1992)
“If you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to have legal, just channels for immigration. If you shut those off, then more people will just come illegally.”
(The Arizona Republic, B.1, Feb. 12 1994)
S
Saenz, Thomas A.
V.P. for Litigation, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Referring to the federal judge’s ruling on California’s Proposition 187, [it was a] “vindication” of the constitutional principle “that we can’t be one country with 50 different immigration policies.”
(New York Times, November 15, 1997)
Salzman, Hal, PhD. — H-1B visa increase
Public policy professor, Rutgers Univ.
“The incentives are all aligned to create massive downward pressures on the labor market” [should ‘stapling’ a green card to the degree of a STEM graduate become a reality]. It will lower costs in the labor market and effectively disincentivize people to go into [STEM] fields. It diminishes the quality of the jobs. The good Americans [will] go elsewhere. …Wages in IT have been flat for about 12 years. Wages today are what they were in 1998–99.” (Science Magazine, April 5, 2013)
Samuelson, Paul — Labor supply and wages
Economist, author
“After World War I, laws were passed severely limiting immigration. Only a trickle of immigrants has been admitted since then… By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high. Let us undeline this basic principle: Limitation of the supply of any grade of labor relative to all other productive factors can be expected to raise its wage rate; and increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates.”
(Economics, 1964)
Samuelson, Robert J. — Immigration, poverty & PC
Syndicated Economics Columnist
[A candid presidential candidate would say] “Finally, let’s discuss poverty. Everyone’s against it, but hardly anyone admits that most of the increase in the past 15 years reflects immigration — new immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border, legally and illegally, we won’t reduce poverty. Period.” (Washington Post, May 14, 2008)
“Whether or not the bias is ‘liberal,’ groupthink is a powerful force in journalism. Immigration is considered noble. People who critically examine its value or worry about its social effects are subtly considered small-minded, stupid or bigoted. The result is selective journalism that reflects poorly on our craft and detracts from democratic dialogue.”
(Washington Post, May 31, 2006)
“Perhaps it is naive to expect presidential candidates to address an issue fraught with political hazards, ethical ambiguities and uncertain social consequences. But if this isn’t about the future, what would be?”
(Washington Post, “Ignoring Immigration” May 3, 2000)
Sanneh, Kelefa
Columnist — on immigration enforcement
“Polls in Arizona and other states show that most voters want tighter enforcement of immigration laws. Still, it’s often in politicians’ interest to ignore these voters, because there’s so much money and muscle on the side of legalization. Stand-alone enforcement provisions are invariably opposed by an unusual and powerful coalition of liberal activists and conservative business groups, all of whom want the Latino workforce to remain undisturbed.
… The inclusive logic of the immigration-rights movement suggests that everyone in the country has a right to be here – which implies that everyone not in the country has the right to come here, too, preferably without being made to run a potentially lethal obstacle course in the Arizona desert. On what reasonable basis could anyone be excluded? Proponents of reform often call for compassion, but it’s hard to imagine any immigration restriction that could be considered truly compassionate.” (New Yorker Magazine, May 28, 2012)
Slavin, Denise N. — Asylum fraud
Vice President, National Assn. of Immigration Judges
“Fraud in immigration asylum is a huge issue and a major problem.”
(New York Times, July 11, 2011)
Small, Larry
Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae
“Immigrant demand [for homes], if it keeps up, could underpin vibrant growth in the housing market for the rest of the decade. Largely because of immigration, the U.S. population by the year 2000 is expected to number 25 million more than it was in 1990. That’s the equivalent of having Canada move to the United States. We’re looking at one of the largest decades of population growth in United States history.”
(Reuter — Wash. DC, Sept. 5, 1995 “Immigration Seen Giving Boost to U.S. Homebuying”)
Smith, Wayne — Cuba Policy
Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy
“The reasons Cubans continue to come here — and let’s face it, the Cubans are not nearly so desperate as the Haitians — is because they know that if they make it to the beach, chances are that they’ll be allowed to stay.”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Sept. 21, 2000.
Soros, George
Investor, Philanthropist
“Legal immigrants — refugees fleeing religious and political persecution, family members wanting to be reunited with loved ones, young entrepreneurs with talent and drive — have long come to America seeking a fair chance to contribute and, in the process, have enriched our culture and strengthened the nation. … Immigrants have always pulled their weight.”
(New York Times, “Immigrants’ Burden,” Oct. 21 1996)
Sowell, Thomas — Assimilation
Economist, Hoover School, Stanford Univ.
“The other main thing though is that if we don’t control the borders, we don’t have an immigration policy because regardless of what policy you put on paper, if people can just walk across the border when they darn well please, then your policy means nothing. The other thing that bothers me is the Republicans seem to think we will give — illegal immigrants citizenship if they do a, b or c. Democrats say x, y and z. I don’t know why we need promise anybody citizenship before we get control of the borders and have time to sit down and think and look at the facts, and then try to draw up some rational policy.”
(Interview, Laura Ingraham radio show, July 16, 2013)
“Too much of our current immigration controversy is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as “We are a nation of immigrants.” Of course we are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes. Does it follow that we should admit anybody who wears shoes? The immigrants of today are very different in many ways from those who arrived here a hundred years ago. Moreover, the society in which they arrive is different.”
(National Review, June 4, 2013)
“A nation and a people is more than simply the sum total of the individuals who happen to live within its borders. For a multi-ethnic society like the United States, especially, it is a population which shares certain cultural traditions and moral values. Protecting those traditions and values means limiting how many people can enter, under what conditions and with what commitment to becoming American rather than remaining foreign.”
“Immigration is a virtually irreversible decision-and it is receiving nothing like the kind of careful scrutiny that irreversible decisions deserve.”
(Forbes, June 2, 1997)
“Immigrants who come here from around the world with every desire and intention to become Americans may be hi-jacked by those activists who are ideologically committed to keeping them speaking foreign languages, loyal to foreign valuse and — if possible — taught to feel historic grievances against the country that is welcoming them today.”
(Future depends on our response, Washington Times, Sept. 15, 2001)
Spendal, Ron
Oregon Refugee Coordinator
“It is critical that the legislation for domestic resettlement [of refugees] be reexamined. The structure of domestic resettlement as established by the Refugee Act of 1980, is sagging badly. Several years of fiscal neglect, coupled with several years of increasing admissions, have poorly served this program…The period of time available for newly arriving refugees to transition into economic self-sufficiency has just been reduced to 32 weeks. Ironically, this reduction occurs at a time when the federal government is considering the extension of unemployment benefits from 26 up to 46 weeks. In other words, the thousands of refugees coming to the United States who do not know English, who do not know the day-to-day operations of American life, who do not have any or very limited vocational skills, who likely have not had access to adequate health care, these refugees will be expected by the federal government to achieve economic self-sufficiency in a shorter period of time than would be allowed for Americans to transition from one job to another.
(circa 1993, source unknown)
Stewart, David W.
Educator, Author
“The level of immigration is so massive, it’s choking the urban schools.”
“It’s bad enough when you have desperate kids with U.S. backgrounds — we require massive resources. In come kids with totally different needs, and it creates crushing burdens on urban schools.”
(Immigration and Education: The Crisis and the Opportunities, Mar. 1993)
T
Teitelbaum, Michael S. — on High-Tech labor shortage
Demographer, fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program
“Many of the claims of [high-tech worker] shortages that are general across all fields and across the whole country are coming from employers in those particular narrow fields where there actually probably are shortages. So what they’re doing is saying, ‘I am having trouble hiring the people that I want to hire here in Silicon Valley or here in this particular rapidly growing field, and therefore there are general shortages.’ The evidence doesn’t support the general shortage argument.”
(WVTF Public Radio, January 6, 2014)
“No one who has come to the question with an open mind has been able to find any objective data suggesting general ‘shortages’ of scientists and engineers.”
(Testimony. Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives. November 6, 2007)
“[To attract] workers, the employer may have to increase his wage offer. … So when you hear an employer saying he needs immigrants to fill a “labor shortage”, remember what you are hearing: a cry for a labor subsidy to allow the employer to avoid the normal functioning of the labor market. …”[Proposed] provisions to rectify a ‘labor shortage’ have the perverse effect of assuring continuation of such ‘shortages’ ”
(1990 Congressional Testimony)
Thomas, Cal
Nationally Syndicated Columnist
“What should not be debatable is that lax enforcement of our immigration laws leads to more disrespect for those laws and serves as an incentive for more people to enter the country illegally. This is what occurred following the “comprehensive” immigration reform under Ronald Reagan and it would happen again unless our borders are fully secured and something is done about those illegal immigrants already here. Granted, they won’t all be deported, but they should not be allowed to escape punishment for breaking the law. Otherwise, the law is meaningless.”
(“In My Opinion,” Charlotte Observer, October 12, 2010)
“If we do not toughen immigration laws and stop granting amnesty to those who break them, we will encourage more people to come to America by any means possible. That’s what occurred following previous amnesties.”
“There is no constitutional right to come to America. It is a privilege to be admitted. It is disgraaceful, as well as harmful to our personal safety and national health, that we have allowed 9 million people to come here illegally.”
(“Purging the Evil from Among Us” World Jewish Review, Jan. 26, 2002)
Trumka, Richard — High-tech workers
Pres. AFL-CIO on high-tech workers
…We worry about corporations firing or passing over qualified American workers in order to import temporary foreign workers at lower wages. We worry about a declining middle class as corporate profits reach record highs.
… High-tech companies say there are “too few” American high-tech workers, but that’s not true. Today there are 20,000 fewer African-American computer programmers and system analysts employed than in 2008. In the fields of computer and information science and engineering, U.S. colleges graduate 50% more students than there are new hires.
Basic supply and demand suggests that if there were too few qualified tech workers, their average salaries would be going up. But tech wages haven’t risen since Bill Clinton was president. Clearly, high tech is not looking to bring in H-1B visa holders for a few years at a time because there is a shortage of tech workers. They want a massive expansion of H-1B visa holders because they can pay them less. This is not about innovation and job creation. It is about dollars and cents.
(USA Today, May 28, 2013)
Trump, Donald
Real Estate Tycoon
Trump said he would support the reform party’s position on restricting immigration if he runs for president and added:
“Too many people are flowing into our country; we have to take care of our own first.”
(“Meet the Press,” Oct. 24, 1999)
U
Unz, Ronald — Immigration’s impact on the middle class
Former IT Businessman and Candidate for Cal. Governor
“It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that this 40 year period of economic stagnation for most Americans coincides exactly with 40 years of rapidly rising immigration levels. After all, the concept that a huge influx of eager workers would tend to benefit Capital at the expense of Labor is hardly astonishing, nor does it require years of academic research into the intricacies of economic theory.”
Ron Unz, “Republicans and the End of White America,” American Conservative, October 2011
V
Vos Savant, Marylyn — Population and Economy
National Columnist
“Economic growth refers to escalating productive transactions from the use of natural resources, technology development, labor, etc. It doesn’t correspond to population growth. A “growing” economy is one in which more and more of these buy-and-sell activities occur, regardless of the number of people involved. In other words, an economy can grow with a stable population.”
(Parade Magazine, November 20, 2011)
W
Waldinger, Roger
Chair, Dept. Sociology, UCLA and Michael Lichter, SUNY
“…employers perceive immigrants as far more desirable employees than blacks, largely because they see the immigrants as ‘different’ from Americans, hence more likely to accept managerial authority without question. Any managerial propensity to favor immigrants is likely to be reinforced by the attitudes of the predominantly Latino workforce, as inserting a black worker in a predominantly Latino crew is not likely to increase productivity, given the hostility between the two groups.” (pp. 226-7)
How The Other Half Lives, U. Cal. Press, 2003
Walker, David M.
Former U.S. Comptroller General
“… while we at the General Accounting Office do not develop budget projections, during the past 10 years we have prepared long-term budget simulations semiannually which are based in large part on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. Our long-term simulations go out more than 50 years and are not projections. Rather, they seek to illustrate the likely fiscal consequences of the coming demographic tsunami and rising health care costs unless policies are changed.”
New York Times Letter to Editor, December 16, 2002
Wattenberg, Ben
Sr. Fellow, Amer. Enterprise Inst.
“What to do? The right thing is to get tougher on illegal and semi-legal immigration….A consensus is growing to bolster the border patrol with Mexico. Sen. Alan Simpson’s plan for a national tamper-proof identification card also looks better these days, as a forgery industry undermines the law that punishes employers for hiring illegals. Sen. Pete Dominici, New Mexico Republican, suggests that Mexico should do more on its side of the border, as a pre-condition to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But we still engage in what Los Angeles Supervisor Mike Antonovich calls ‘de facto legalization.’ Court decisions and federal legislation have provided that illegal immigrants, or their children, may receive welfare, medical care, education and housing subsidies. That’s illegal?
Mr. Antonovich, and others, are calling for better deportation procedures, more immigration judges, better border fences and some temporary federal reimbursement to local areas picking up the social costs of federal policy.
That makes sense…The big problem is that illegals are illegal. That drives the public crazy, and with some merit.”
(Washington Times column, July 22, 1993)
Wheeler, Charles
Ex.Dir. Nat. Imm. Law Ctr.
“Undocumented immigrants tend to compete unfairly for low-skilled jobs, and they can sometimes bring down the level of wages and working conditions.”
(U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 3 1994 - p.39)
Whitty, Julia — population
Environmental Correspondent for Mother Jones
“Voiced or not, addressed or not, the problem of overpopulation has not gone away. The miracle of the Green Revolution, which fed billions and provided the world a sense of limitless hope, also disguised four ominous truths about Earth’s limits. First, the revolution’s most effective agents, chemical fertilizers of nitrogen and phosphorus, are destined to run out, along with the natural resources used to produce them. Second the fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that grew the food that enabled our enormous population growth in the 20th Century bore expensive downstream costs in the form of polluted land, water and air that now threaten life. Third, crop yields today are stubbornly stable and even beginning to fall in some places, despite increasing fertilizer use, in soils oversaturated with nitrogen. The Green Revolution’s duplicitous harvest€giving life with one hand, robbing life-support with the other, also masks a fourth ominous truth. We’re running out of topsoil…”
(“Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis?” Mother Jones, May-June, 2010)
Willox, Norman A. Jr. — National Security
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Critical Information Network
“Congress needs to make authentication of non-U.S. citizens entering the U.S a top priority within the broader homeland security discussion and also a priority for promoting global commerce. It is arguably the largest, most gaping hole in our efforts to protect the country from a host of ills including drug trafficking, money laundering, identity theft and most importantly, a repeat in some form of the tragedy of September 11th.”
(CNSNews.com — commentary, July 31, 2002)
Wolfe, Alan
Sociologist, Author
As the middle class goes, so goes America.”
(Opening sentence of One Nation, After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About: God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other, Viking Press, 1998)
X-Z
Yglesias, Matthew
columnist and correspondent for Slate magazine
“To do better, Republicans don’t need a different immigration policy or better Hispanic outreach strategy, they need an overall policy that’s more compelling to the middle class and will help them do better with voters of all kinds. In fact, endorsing immigration reform now might make things worse for them, by enlarging an electorate that’s fundamentally hostile to their worldview.”
(Slate Magazine, November 7, 2012)
Yzaguirre, Raul
Nat. Council of LaRaza
“Every other group has higher income than Latinos. Hispanics are the only group that dropped in median income. We are the poorest.”
(News accounts of NCLR’s preparation for its national meeting in July, 1997)