"Historically, there has often been a correlation between national anxiety and insecurity and the desire to limit immigration. The “know-nothings” of the 1850s genuinely feared that U.S. democracy was in danger of being subverted by the wave of Irish and German Catholics who, they alleged, took their orders directly from that great “ally of tyranny,” Pope Pius IX. Proponents of Asian exclusion in the early 1900s feared that Japanese immigrants were, among other things, an advance guard for the coming invasion by the “yellow peril.” And it wasn’t a complete coincidence that the most severe crackdown on immigration came in the 1920s, when Americans, disillusioned by their involvement in World War I and suspicious of a chaotic world, turned determinedly inward. Part of shutting ourselves off from the world included shutting our borders to the world’s refugees....And we do benefit. Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has convincingly argued that the right kind of immigration reform can “raise the pace of economic growth by nearly a percentage point over the near term, raise GDP per capita by over $1,500 and reduce the cumulative federal debt by over $2.5 trillion.” washingtonpost/opinions/immigration-reform-can-prove-us-strength-and-security/2013/06/14/a3a9df70-d517-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:59:41 +0000
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