Rethinking Immigration Assumptions

Compared with native-born Americans, immigrants are more likely to start a business, more likely to launch a hugely successful one, more likely to work, and less likely to commit crime. They’re also willing to take jobs many Americans refuse to do. …

Americans who resent having to compete with immigrants for jobs suffer from a double delusion. First, they assume the supply of jobs is fixed and that we would all be better off with a smaller population. That’s flatly wrong. Immigrants are not just employees; they are also employers and consumers. Second, talk of immigrants taking “our” jobs implies some people have prior claims to jobs they have not yet been hired for. The term for that is “entitlement mentality.”

But aren’t immigrants driving up crime rates? Nope. Take Arizona, the Ground Zero of anti-immigration sentiment. As a 2010 piece in The Washington Times noted, “In the past decade, as illegal immigrants were drawn in record numbers by the housing boom, the rate of violent crimes in Phoenix and the entire state fell by more than 20 percent, a steeper drop than in the overall U.S. crime rate.” As Arizona goes, so goes the nation: A 2007 study found that “for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants.” The Immigration Policy Center, which produced that report, elsewhere has said that “a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes … than the native-born.”

58 Notes/ Hide

  1. michaelangerlo reblogged this from laliberty
  2. silverfoxin reblogged this from laliberty
  3. conclusiveevidence reblogged this from nothingsinister
  4. vexedstressedboredtodeath reblogged this from statehate
  5. kifflom reblogged this from statehate
  6. sugashane reblogged this from statehate and added:
    America was once the most successful country in history because we allowed the best of the best to immigrate into our...
  7. guessingagain reblogged this from statehate
  8. pauliorra reblogged this from wheretheroadnarrows and added:
    My father is an immigrant, and in his lifetime he started five businesses.
  9. m-e-s-t-i-z-a reblogged this from tomorrow-starts-today
  10. nothingsinister reblogged this from statehate and added:
    Interesting thoughts here, so the real lesson is illegal citizens are more obedient to the state?
  11. wheretheroadnarrows reblogged this from laliberty
  12. tomorrow-starts-today reblogged this from xzeta
  13. xzeta reblogged this from becauseithinktoomuch
  14. chronic-nostalgia reblogged this from amphigoryglory
  15. seekercranny reblogged this from pablo-jose-666
  16. pablo-jose-666 reblogged this from laliberty
  17. simplyscott said: super article! i live in Baltimore, and is it the massive Latino population causing all the trouble? no, they open businesses and play soccer in the park and do family things with little kids. they are not the problem at all.
  18. amphigoryglory reblogged this from statehate
  19. j4s0nd4v1s reblogged this from statehate
  20. theshaunsnow reblogged this from roewoof
  21. iambinarymind reblogged this from laliberty
  22. statehate reblogged this from laliberty
  23. roewoof reblogged this from the-altar
  24. the-altar reblogged this from laliberty