Amy Taylor

What We Should Be Worrying About

Anyone who keeps up with the news has seen how the immigration question has taken a central role in many congressional campaigns this season. A lot has been written about how the real issues have been obscured as candidates attack each other and the Bush administration for not being tough enough on immigration. Security is the central theme. Sure, security is important for any comprehensive reform of our immigration system. But, I would bet that most voters are probably equally concerned about the economy, taxes, jobs and our country's ability to remain competitive in a rapidly globalizing economy. These issues, and how they are intricately connected to immigration, have been completely obscured this campaign season.

High-skilled immigrant workers are crucial to our place as a competitor in the world economy. Since 1990 more than half the U.S. Nobel laureates in the sciences were foreign-born. One in five doctors are foreign-born, along with two of every five medical scientists, one of every five computer specialists, one of every six persons in engineering or science occupations, one of every four astronomers, physicists, chemical, and material scientists, and one of every six biological scientists. Since currently there is no direct route for high-skilled visa holders to stay permanently they may be pulled to other places who are actively recruiting such high-skilled workers. All of this talk of border security does not address how our economy and global competitiveness would be put at risk were we to lose our immigrants.

No one is talking about how we need immigrants to maintain our country's economic growth either. Our economy relies on immigrants as workers, entrepreneurs, consumers and taxpayers whose taxes support our schools, hospitals and public services. Immigrants work in every sector of the economy. Immigrant consumers stimulate demand for products produced in our economy. No one is talking about what we would do in this idealized world without immigrants when the baby boom generation retires. Immigrants are, on average, younger and have more children than the native born. We will increasingly rely on them to support our aging population. We need them to keep our Social Security system robust. Immigrants are also crucial consumers in the housing market making up 12% of first-time homebuyers in 2001. Many other industrialized nations are now facing the dilemma of how they will support their own aging populations --but we are "younging" as we age, according to William H. Frey a well-known demographer, and immigrants are to thank for that. While immigrants are told daily to be grateful they are here, we are not hearing about how grateful we should be that they are.

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Posted at 9:33 AM, Oct 25, 2006 in Immigration
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