6/7/2016 - Michael Barone Townhall.com
No
contemporary political issue has been more controversial, or has been subject
to more dubious analyses, than immigration.
Take Donald Trump's endlessly repeated promise to
build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. As I've pointed out, that is
attacking a problem that no longer exists or that has diminished greatly. Net
migration from Mexico to the U.S. was around zero between 2007 and 2014.
But Trump's critics also miss something. Walls can
actually work. The wall along the border near San Diego worked well enough a
dozen years ago that many migrants crossed into the Arizona desert instead. It
may not be feasible to build a wall along the Rio Grande in Texas, but the
border there can be patrolled more effectively than it is now.
Trump's pointing out that some illegal immigrants
from Mexico have been rapists drew harsh criticism. But it's true: Some have
been rapists, and on average, immigrants from Mexico have had lower skills and
less law-abiding backgrounds than immigrants from any other country. That makes
sense when you consider that it's easier to cross a 2,000-mile
land-and-shallow-river border than an ocean.
But it's important also to understand how the flow
of immigration has changed. Data from the Census Bureau's American Community
Survey has shown how the picture changed from the pre-recession years of
1998-2007 to the most recent two-year period, 2014-2015.
In the earlier period, immigration from Mexico
averaged 429,000 a year, nearly one-third of total immigration. More recently,
it averaged 170,000 a year, just 11 percent of the total. But immigration from
the rest of Latin America has increased significantly, from 269,000 annually
pre-recession to 439,000 most recently. That leaves total Latin migration down
by some 90,000.
Immigration from East and South Asia has more than
made up for this, rising from a pre-recession average of 337,000 to 566,000 in
2014-2015. Immigration from Africa and the Middle East is also up, from 101,000
to 205,000.
The ACS data does not categorize these immigrants
by skill level. But past patterns suggests that current immigrants on average
have higher levels of education and skills than was the case in the surge of
immigration in the quarter-century from 1982 to 2007. In that respect it may
resemble more closely the Ellis Island immigration of 1892-1914.
That suggests less need for a wall on the Mexican
border. But perhaps not. The Census data don't show how many non-Mexican Latin
illegal immigrants make their way across America's southern border. The surge
of "children" from Central America across the border in summer and
fall 2015 suggests that this number is substantial -- and could grow much
larger.
What should be done about this? Standard polling
questions suggest most voters don't want to see mass deportations of the
estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. But veteran political reporter Thomas
Edsall, blogging in The New York Times, notes that those polls don't explain
the resonance of Trump's immigration stands. Edsall quotes Berkeley scholar
Lefteris Anastasopoulos as saying that polls provide "a significant
underestimation of the backlash against newly arriving immigrants and an
overestimation of the support for immigration among the public."
If that's right, Hillary Clinton took a grave
political risk by agreeing with Bernie Sanders and promising that she won't
deport "children" or any immigrants who don't have criminal records.
As Center for Immigration Studies Director Mark Krikorian writes, Clinton is
"embracing what amounts to Angela Merkel's immigration platform."
Clinton was one-upping the Obama administration's
policy of letting illegal immigrants who claim to be "children" and
their parents remain in the United States indefinitely. In effect she is
calling for open borders, something that goes even beyond Barack Obama's executive
action, which has been ruled illegal by a Texas federal judge and appeals
court.
There's a strong argument for a revised immigration
policy, like those of Canada and Australia, which would prioritize high-skill
immigrants and reduce the number of low-skill people admitted under extended
family unification provisions.
The reduced flow of migrants from Mexico and
increased flow from South and East Asia is producing results closer to such a
policy than what we saw during the 1982-2007 surge of immigration.
Trump's incendiary statements don't point directly
toward that kind of immigration reform. But Clinton's advocacy of what amounts
to open borders for the unskilled points in the opposite direction -- and it's
far from clear that's what most voters want.
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