Every US citizen reading this article is a descendant of an African, Asian, or European immigrant. Most of our immigrant ancestors came here with very little, yet they are the reason the US is one of the best places to live on Earth. Millions of immigrants enter the US every year, while only a few thousand people leave. This immigration-based population growth has been the status quo in the US for centuries, the same centuries that saw the US become one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries. For that, we have our immigrant ancestors to thank.
The more people that come here, the stronger we become. This was true in the past and it will always be true in the future, as long as we do not subsidize the immigrants after they get here. For instance, if we provide welfare to immigrants, many will choose not to work. In this case, the immigrants would not improve the country, but would effectively drain it of resources. Thankfully, this is not common today. Nearly every immigrant that comes here, comes here to work, and most of them work impressively hard. Their hard work builds and grows our great country, yet our government actively tries to prevent most of them from entering.
Of the two major parties in the US, the one that supports immigration the most is the Democratic Party. Or at least, Democrats pay lip service to the idea that immigration is good. The lip service never materializes though. Democrats have controlled both chambers of congress and the White House in four of the last fifteen years. Yet in all four of those years, they chose not to act. They could have made it easier to legally immigrate into the US, but they chose not to. Instead, they were and are content to leave our southern border in chaos.
The Democrats ignore our broken immigration system whenever they are in power likely because they believe the problem is politically beneficial for them. The Republicans’ more restrictive immigration position makes many immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, hostile to the Republican Party. This hostility can remain for generations, so even if an illegal immigrant cannot vote, their children can, and they are more likely to vote for Democrats. If the Democrats made it easier to legally immigrate to the US, the issue would likely fall out of the headlines and Republicans might be able to win over our predominantly Christian and conservative immigrants. Democrats would rather keep the issue alive than lose the large, non-progressive, Latino voting bloc.
Another reason the Democrats do not address our immigration problem is that, at least some of them, realize that a solution would damage their progressive policies. A country with large entitlements, like welfare, food stamps, social security, and Medicaid, cannot support a large influx of poor, legal immigrants. Many of these programs are highly strained with our current population. Quickly increasing the legal population would devastate the programs unless higher work requirements were put into place. And higher work requirements are one item that the Democratic Party is not willing to consider. Illegal immigrants cannot apply for most entitlements, so some Democrats would rather keep the immigration problem in exchange for safer entitlements.
The Republican Party is also unwilling to solve our immigration problem, but their motives are clearer. Republicans are largely anti-immigration, or at least anti-illegal-immigration. Their ideal outcome is to leave our legal immigration system largely as is and prevent all illegal immigration. This is a bad solution for two reasons. One, our country and its boarders are too big: it would be immeasurably costly to prevent most immigration and deport everyone that makes it through. Two, our legal immigration system is too costly for most potential immigrants, takes too long, and filters out some of the people we need most.
The Republicans’ hard-on-immigration solution is no solution at all. The reality is that our country’s economy would likely crumble if we kicked out and kept out all illegal immigrants. They tend to work in highly laborious industries that US citizens do not want to do, like low-technology farming and construction. The solution is not to kick them out, but to bring them out of the shadows so that they can move freely around the economy to find the jobs where they are needed most. Today, many illegal immigrants get stuck working in harsh or illicit jobs because they fear that looking for other work will put them in contact with someone who will report them, which could result in a deportation. Allowing them to move freely would help them get out of bad positions and let them fill open jobs that the country needs the most.
The solution is simple: decrease our barriers to legal immigration and add work requirements for all entitlements. Anyone that wants to be a US citizen should go through a background check to validate that they are not a violent criminal, verify that they do not have any deadly diseases, and have them pass a basic civics exam. Anyone who can clear these basic hurdles should be welcomed with open arms because they are going to make this country greater, just like our ancestors did before.