Published: February 29, 2008 10:00 pm      

Immigration threat myth survival kit

Most of us descend from immigrants who arrived to this land 150 years ago in search of new opportunities. We should not forget that old remedies prevail throughout time; just like that honey-bourbon remedy that has been passed on generation after generation. Immigration is still a good remedy for a weak economy.

Misinformation, conflict of interests and political agendas seem to flood the majority of the information regarding immigrants. If truth is relative and dependent upon context, a serious look at everything surrounding this issue needs to be considered. Immigrants, contrary to what we are normally told to think, are not dangerous, they add to the economy and most importantly, we need them.

Immigrants are not dangerous. I will focus on the Latino community, which is the main lighting rod on immigration issues. As a matter of fact, several studies quoted in the research paper “The Myth of (Latino) Immigrant Criminality” by Commissioner Dr. Brian L. Rich that is accessible at Kentucky.gov quotes several studies that prove the point. These studies show that: “Immigrants are a very law-abiding group when compared to the native-born.

Prior large studies of the relation between immigrants and criminality show that in recent decades immigrants are far less likely to engage in violence than native-born residents and that n 2000, male young adult immigrants are institutionalized at one-fifth the rate of comparable native-born Americans.”

The only exception of a higher arrests rate are those related to traffic-violations, which just adds to the imminent need to provide these community members a driver’s license so they can abide to the rules. One cannot buy an insurance policy without a valid driver’s license.

A report published by the National Research Council (NRC) shows that immigrants not only diversify the American economy, but also immigrants add to economic growth. In many cases, immigrants cause prices to fall, which benefits all consumers, and allow the economy to produce a wider variety of goods domestically than natives on their own could.

An integral immigration reform that favors a more open and controlled immigration would definitely force workers with low skills to compete for low wage jobs. Nonetheless, this is actually desirable since competition would reduce and hopefully, eliminate the artificially inflated labor costs.

Labor efficiency would increase as a result of this and we could all benefit from that. Another collateral effect would be that the population on the low wage would be encouraged and aid by the governmental mechanisms to increase their education to have access to better jobs. In the end it would build up a better human capital base for our country that makes better decisions, is better educated, has access to better jobs and inevitably lives better lives.