Women in industrialized nations are no longer delivering the average of 2.1 babies needed to replace their current population. At the same time, people in these countries are living much longer. As explained last week, the situation is a crisis in the making because these countries will soon lack an adequate supply of youthful laborers to fuel their economies and support their elderly if nothing changes.
The reality is that maintaining a country’s infrastructure, supporting the elderly, and creating demand for new goods and services requires the ingenuity, strength, and energy of a youthful labor force. Leaders of these industrialized countries know that the status quo is unsustainable. They face a dilemma. Either they somehow convince or force desirable women to have more babies, they allow their population and economies to dwindle into eventual oblivion, or they welcome immigrants from foreign countries and foreign cultures to prop up their economies and support their elderly.
Until recently, the consensus was that our government’s policy of welcoming the wealthy as well as the most talented and the highly motivated from every nation, has served us well. But as these immigrants have become increasingly people of color, white nationalists have grown wary of the demographic shift. The unspoken reality is that our country has long benefited from the brain-drain of poor developing nations, making it more difficult for them to make economic progress. But individuals will do what they believe is best for themselves if given the chance and migrating to countries that offer greater freedoms and more economic opportunities is a temptation too difficult to resist. The U.S. university system was a preferred destination and great immigration opportunity for the privileged few for many years. Only recently have other countries enhanced their universities and begun to recruit international students as well. This includes China.
It is not surprising that many people seeking safety, freedom, and economic opportunity find Europe, Canada, and the United States an attractive destination. With the exception of native Americans, certain Mexican Americans, and the descendants of slaves, every American or their descendants arrived at the U.S. border for one of these reasons. The words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are an invitation unique to the United States: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
But there are those who would erase those words if they could. I’m referring to Donald Trump, his advisors, and his followers who would close the doors particularly on those who are risking everything to come here because they are largely people of color from what Trump calls, “shit hole” countries. He is correct to say that these countries aren’t sending us their best and brightest because we poach their best and brightest every chance we get. However, they are sending us able bodies willing to work.
It is time that we acknowledge that our foreign policies, including brain drain, and our demand for cheap labor as well as illegal drugs have caused economic hardships, dangerous conditions, and political instability in those “shit hole” countries, making them poorer and more dangerous. What nation wouldn’t allow highly motivated uneducated laborers to migrate to the U.S. where they can work and send money back home to help boost their economy? Both individual humans and desperate countries are just trying to survive.
As a person who spent a career dealing with the U.S. immigration system in a higher education setting, I know that the immigration system in the United States has been broken and underfunded for many years. There is a relatively easy and fast path to citizenship for the wealthy, talented, and well-educated. And each October or November, high school graduates and those with work experience from countries with low immigration to the U.S. can apply for one of 50,000 green cards in a lottery system run by Homeland Security. There is also a path through family connection. Depending on the actual relationship, the annual cap limits, and a crazy backlog of cases, the wait for family unification can be 6 months to 20 years.
Everyone else is out of luck. The pathway for people outside these categories who are willing and able to work involves too few temporary worker visas to meet the demands of both industry and would-be migrant workers. And so, the failure of Congress to pass adequate legislation has created a situation where desperate people from unstable countries cross our border and claim asylum while others sneak in illegally. The Republican House purposefully fails to adequately fund our border patrol and immigration processing systems to meet the demand while simultaneously broadcasting to the world that our border is completely open. Of course, the system is completely overwhelmed. Republicans want Americans to experience the crisis they perpetuate in order to blame Biden for it and re-elect Trump or some other Republican.
The reality is that we need these workers. We need people with expertise in IT, healthcare, and the sciences. We need labor for jobs that few Americans are willing to do. The problem for white Christian Nationalists is that the workers who want to come here are people of color from “shit hole” countries with cultures and religions they fear will reshape the country. It’s not enough that their policies have stifled the fertility rates of minority women to a degree that absent immigration, the nation will become whiter. But White women simply aren’t having enough children either.
So, they stoke fears. Fears that immigrants are stealing jobs that black people should be doing (wow!). Fears that immigrants are bringing drugs. Fears that immigrants are committing violent crimes. Fears that immigrants are bringing diseases. Fears that immigrants are draining our healthcare, welfare, and education systems. And worst of all, Trump repeated the hateful words of Adolf Hitler by saying they are “poisoning the blood” of our people.
Contrary to conservative political rhetoric, illegal immigrants do not vote. They are less likely to commit crimes and have a positive net contribution to our economy. Their labor and spending contribute to the bottom line of Social Security and to local economies. In particular, the undocumented are doing jobs for lower wages and sub-standard working conditions that no American would bother to do. Their cheap labor contributes to lower prices for the goods and services we all enjoy.
The problem for white “Christian” nationalists who fear being replaced by people of color from “shit hole” countries is that the white people from other industrialized countries, whom they wish to attract, don’t find the United States particularly attractive beyond our interesting wealth of diversity and the creativity that it brings. They love our food, our music, our movies, our sports, and our parks. We’re good for the occasional vacation. But our healthcare system, our education, our childcare policies, our gun violence, and our politics are less attractive than their own. And so, Republicans can’t escape the changing demographics that immigration will bring.
So, in preparation for the coming demographic shifts, they must attack the equal rights and democratic powers granted to every American citizen under the law by our current Constitution. They are willing to throw out the Constitution and start over if it will allow them to retain their political power, wealth, and cultural status as the standard bearers of the nation despite their diminished numbers. They wish for a return to a boss to subordinate relationship with people of color. The question is whether we will fall for it.
Not surprisingly, it makes white nationalists feel better to hear their candidates promise to round up and deport all illegal immigrants. Imagine the chaos and labor crisis that policy will bring. It also makes white nationalists feel better to hear their leaders claim that this is a “Christian” nation and that all the laws should be made in accordance with their beliefs. The push to force births isn’t really a moral issue, but one of survival for people who look and think like them. It is not lost on the Republicans leaders that women of color are having fewer children and that when they do, they and their babies are more likely to die in childbirth than white women and their babies.
The solution is an acceptance of the reality that more people of color are being born into this world, particularly in poor nations and to accept the fact that every rich industrialized nation will depend on their labor to survive. We must also acknowledge and mitigate the damage our demand for drugs, our brain-drain policies, our wars, and our climate destroying activities have inflicted on countries so as to drive mass migration. The solution is not to have more babies as the planet cannot support more people, but to redistribute the people we already have and provide them with the dignity, rights, and respect their humanity deserves. Keep the words on the Statue of Liberty!
It is time for we as citizens to pressure our lawmakers to build and fully fund a new immigration system that meets the demand for labor and processes people for entry in a timely way that also ensures our border security.