USA Today Sugarcoats ‘Diversity’

While this second wave [of immigration] brings tensions and battles over school districts, religion, public spaces, law enforcement and affordable housing, it also brings new energy: The immigrants have higher birth rates, ensuring a steady supply of workers for future generations. They bring new role models, new foods and traditions, new sports, a tremendous entrepreneurial energy and, perhaps most significantly, intact, religiously devout families that place a heavy emphasis on education. – USA Today, “Second Wave of Immigration Lifts Diversity to Record High” by Gregg Topo and Paul Overberg, 10/21/14

Fact Check: The passage above is typical of the corporate media cheerleading for mass immigration. The elites of America want more immigration for profits and power, so their mouthpieces in the media try to sugarcoat the resulting “diversity” to keep the rank and file of Americans from becoming upset about their displacement by “diversity.”

The passage employs a common tactic of this kind of writing. Because the downsides of excessive immigration are impossible to ignore, the writers acknowledge them, but only as a dismissive introduction to the cheerleading and sugarcoating.

Just a little analysis exposes this hype. To begin, we might inquire why high birth rates and more foreign workers are necessarily a good thing. Our rapidly rising population, largely driven by immigration, is on target to reach 401 million in the next 35 years, an increase of almost 25 percent over the current population of 317 million. Could this rise have a negative impact on crowding, resource depletion, and the environment? We can be sure that USA Today isn’t going to ask or answer.

And do we really need so many more foreign workers when immigration is already suppressing the wage levels of American workers, particularly those who are already poor and disadvantaged? Also, many indicators suggest that demand for labor will decline as machines do more of our work. A study done at Oxford University predicts that automation will replace almost half of U.S. jobs during the next twenty years.

Yes, immigrants are bringing new traditions, but are all of those traditions good? To cite an example, should we welcome the habits of immigrants from countries where the rule of law is much less respected than here? As their numbers grow, will we be able to assimilate them to our way of thinking?

Immigrants are not, on average, more entrepreneurial than native-born Americans, contrary to the stereotype suggested by USA Today. About the same percentage of natives and immigrants are self-employed. Immigration also shifts attitudes against free enterprise. Hispanics, almost 60 percent of whom are immigrants or second generation, have a strongly negative view of capitalism.

USA Today’s image of “intact . . . devout families,”—one commonly associated with Hispanics—is flawed, as evidenced by the 53 percent illegitimacy rate among them, compared with the national average of 41 percent. Also, the Hispanic abortion rate slightly exceeds the national average.

The USA Today article provides little analysis and insight because that was not its purpose. Like many “mainstream” articles on immigration these days, the aim was to pitch feel-good fantasy to hide unpleasant reality.

 

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