OPINION:
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Almost all Americans know that President Biden’s open border immigration policy has wreaked havoc on the country and especially our large cities where millions of migrants are now residing. If former President Donald Trump wins the election, it will be in no small part due to voter anger and frustration with what is now feeling like an unregulated invasion.
Americans are a welcoming and generous people, but this policy of laying out a welcome mat to anyone who wants to come has stretched the bounds of our compassion to the breaking point.
The vast majority of the current asylum-seekers are not criminals or drug runners, or potential terrorists - though some are. Most are simply coming here for the reason our parents and grandparents came: A better life and economic opportunity for themselves and their children. They are not villains. They are the victims of Mr. Biden’s inhumane and ruinous “let ‘em in” border policy.
It is going to take years — maybe decades — to figure out how we are going to deal with the 8 million or so migrants. Mr. Biden will not be president, and he likely won’t even be alive as we work to undo the damage he’s done to our immigration system.
But there’s an even larger casualty to this mindless policy. Mr. Biden has contaminated the historic public support for legal immigration. He has done so at the very moment in time we need to continually increase legal visas.
Right now, America issues roughly one million legal visas a year. Out of a country of 330 million people this is below our historic rate of immigration (percent of population).
Most economists agree that immigration has been a source of strength for our economy as it allows us to import bright, productive and ambitious people from around the world. It’s doubtful that the U.S. would have accomplished the commanding heights of technology, medicine, the internet and now artificial intelligence without immigrant talent and brainpower - the “brainiacs” as Larry Kudlow calls them.
But what is also true is that at no time in history have immigrants been more necessary than today. This is because of decades of lower birthrates. The number of births per 1,000 people has fallen from 24 in the 1950s to a record low of 12 today. The fertility rate for women of child-bearing age has fallen steadily from 3.5 to 1.75 over the past 70 years. A rate of 1.9% is the rate that keeps population size stable.
Immigrants are contributors in many ways, but three stand out as particularly beneficial. First, most immigrants arrive between the ages of 18-35, so other nations bear the child-rearing costs and they arrive in their prime working years.
Second, immigrants have higher labor force participation rates than most Americans, and for the most part, they are complimentary to rather than in competition with American workers. And third, immigrants have historically higher birthrates than Americans of the same age group.
America currently has between 8 and 10 million job openings. Without immigration, it’s going to be difficult to fill those jobs - especially in industries like agriculture, construction, high-tech, home services, and health care. It isn’t just a cliche - immigrants fill jobs that Americans often don’t find desirable.
This means we must increase legal immigrant visas from roughly one million today to two million as soon as possible. We are about the only nation that has the capacity to do this, and to pick and choose who should come. Mr. Trump had a policy proposal that would have shut down illegal immigration while selectively taking more legal immigrants.
He recognized that you can’t have public support for valuable legal immigrants before you close off the illegals.
But this brings us back to Mr. Biden’s planned chaos border policy. His policy is hurting everyone: The migrants who are coming illegally, the immigrants who are waiting their turn to come, and the American economy by imposing high costs and denying our industrializes the immigrant workers they need.
Mr. Biden keeps saying we need a “comprehensive solution” - including an amnesty that few Americans will support today given the waves of illegals he’s willingly allowed in.
No president in American history has undermined our valuable legacy of immigration more than Joe Biden. It’s time for him to go.
• Stephen Moore is an economist with Freedom Works and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
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