Nearly 190 million people, about three percent of the world’s population, lived outside their country of birth in 2005. A look at the flow of people around the globe.

Since the early 1800’s, immigration has been both a crucial component of America’s growth and a periodic source of conflict, and in recent years it has become one of the most contentious issues on the nation’s political agenda.

In 2003, President Bush called for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, the first since the mid-80’s. His proposal focused on creating a guest worker program that would allow immigrants to legally enter the country temporarily to fill jobs that employers say would otherwise go unfilled. The plan was overshadowed by the opening of the Iraq war and was set aside during the campaign season of 2004.

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By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Posted 5/27/07

We are all immigrants. Some of us, I grant you, can claim descent from native Americans, some from the immigrants who 400 years ago on May 14 stepped ashore in Virginia from the Susan Constant and the two other sailing ships from England. Everyone salutes the first Virginians and the Pilgrim Fathers to the north, but the curious thing is that over many generations we have gotten into the habit of acknowledging the more recent immigrants only in retrospect. They have to wait until they have proved themselves by working, raising a respectable family, achieving citizenship, and maybe even winning a Nobel Prize. Until then they are “a problem.”

The hot-button issue now is whether the proposals from the Senate solve the problem or make it worse. The weaving and dodging of all the candidates on this issue, but especially by the Republican candidates, is the eighth wonder of the world.

There is nothing new about the “problem.” Immigration is central to the American narrative, but in real time the country has always been anxious about it. The concern over the current wave of Hispanic immigration is similar to that over those other waves-the ones from the past 150 years involving people from Catholic and Jewish enclaves in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean who came to a basically English-speaking Protestant country. Could they ever assimilate? Short answer: Yes, they did. Wouldn’t they be a burden on the state? Short answer: No, they weren’t.

Larger scale. The tide of Hispanic immigration today has similar roots, with two important differences: The European waves were legal, and immigration from the south of America, especially Mexico, is mainly illegal. The numbers are also on a wholly different scale from the immigration of the 20s and 30s. These factors understandably raise apprehensions, but so far the evidence shows that the new immigrants largely behave in positive ways similar to their predecessors. They are family oriented, they value education, and their children are learning English. Over time, they are intermarrying among growing numbers of other ethnic groups. They are people of faith. They are energetic, looking to move up in life through better jobs-they work hard and for long hours.

In fact they often take jobs many Americans simply no longer wish to do. By and large the most recent surge of immigrants is made up of people who are young and mobile and who work in the least desired sectors of the U.S. economy-such as agriculture and service industries-for relatively low pay. If these immigrants weren’t here, this kind of work would have to be done by more skilled Americans, and they would only do it for much more money-which could be seen as a cause of inflation and a misuse of skills.

There was a very different situation in the 1960s. Then, half of all American men dropped out of high school to look for unskilled work. Today only about 10 percent of white males leave high school for a job, and high school graduates simply won’t take the menial jobs that many immigrants are happy to take on. So for the most part, the new immigrant and the settled American are not competing for the same jobs. Even when they do compete more directly with low-skilled U.S.-born workers, the job preference is different. Immigrants find work in agriculture, while less educated natives often end up in manufacturing.

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