The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“[I]t seems that most Americans don’t understand where the U.S. fits in the world economy, how American dominance in global markets is declining and how our anti-immigrant attitudes hinder our ability to compete.
“Highly educated and skilled legal immigrants could help America become more competitive if Americans changed their attitudes about immigration.
“In 1960, the U.S. economy accounted for 40 percent of the worldwide gross domestic product, while China’s global share was 4 percent. Fast-forward nearly 60 years to 2019, and the U.S. is down to 24 percent, while China has risen to 16 percent. This pattern does not appear to be changing anytime soon. . . .
“If education is the key to financial success, things are not looking good for Americans. China, for example, is graduating three-times more doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
“Many Americans consider U.S. companies to be globally dominant, yet in reality these companies have a very small international market share. The U.S. market is not as desirable as many think, and we see huge companies choosing to skip investments in American markets altogether.
“The American exceptionalism argument has been discussed on the political right for years. This ideology may be something to strive for, but our standing as a nation has declined in recent years. Becoming involved in military conflicts around the globe has come at an enormous cost to our worldwide reputation.
“This is why immigration can help lift our nation of immigrants.
“One of the most effective ways we can improve our ability to compete in the world economy, add to our research and development prowess, and reverse our shrinking tax base is to vastly increase the number of legal immigrants we allow into the U.S. with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds. . . .
“It’s time we stop looking at immigrants as a threat to the American way of life. We need to embrace these immigrant stories as part of our own and an integral part of our future. Our success as a society and economy depends on it.” – Immigration Can Help Lift Our Nation of Immigrants, Matt Rexroad, The Seattle Times, 7/20/22 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: Like the old-time snake oil hucksters, immigration enthusiasts peddle immigration as a magic elixir. No matter what our national problems, their immigration snake oil will cure every one of them. Interestingly, this editorial presents information which undermines the message it’s trying to sell. The writer notes that the U.S. economy was wildly successful back in 1960 when we accounted for 40 percent of the world’s GDP. But if immigration is so essential to economic success, how could that have occurred? In 1960, we had been deprived of mass immigration for 36 years. But in 2019, after 54 years of mass immigration, our percentage of world GDP had dwindled to 24 percent. During roughly the same period, China’s share of world GDP soared from 4 percent to 16 percent. But how could that have happened when the country received extremely few immigrants?
What happened was that China placed her bets on the talents of the Chinese people, and those bets paid off. It’s a shame America can’t do the same. Unfortunately, we have many companies that prefer to hire foreign workers, particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), because they can get away with paying them less than Americans while subjecting them to harder working conditions. The companies claim that there are not enough qualified Americans to do the jobs they offer, but this explanation is flawed. As evidence, almost 75 percent of native-born STEM graduates in the U.S. have had to find work in other fields.
As long as this situation continues, fewer and fewer talented American students will seek STEM degrees in the first place. Then, no doubt, the companies will cry even louder about a shortage of qualified Americans. Instead of mass immigration, our country needs a policy like the one we had from 1924 to 1965, a policy which limited immigration to benefit U.S. workers. Contrary to this article, immigrants are a threat to our American way of life when excessive numbers of them overwhelm our job markets, exclude Americans from employment, and drive down wages.
Our cheap labor interests will certainly keep on fighting genuine reform. To deceive the public, they and their media accomplices will keep on churning out manipulative propaganda about “nation of immigrants” and the like. What they peddle is pure snake oil.