The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“We need good immigrants, not a human rights disgrace at our southern border. When the 118th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, members of the House and Senate will reach a fork in the road.
“Bad fork: This choice leads to ignorant pursuits of federally legalized pot, softer-on-crime justice reforms, climate reparations and politically motivated witch hunts that turn congressional committees into kangaroo courts. It’s a road of spike strips Congress should avoid.
“Good fork: This choice leads to a full-force, bipartisan, successful effort to maximize America’s economic and cultural potential. The key is immigration reform, to fix a broken system that has undermined us for generations. The time is now. Take this road. Get it done right and let both parties claim victory.
“If we continue doing nothing, our future looks bleak.
“We enter the winter holidays with inflation rates unseen for the past 40 years. That pertains directly to an economy trying to function with three million fewer workers than in 2020. A worker shortage means lower supplies of goods, services and commodities — which drives up prices.
“Meanwhile, as we grapple with a labor shortage and associated price hikes, the population ages and birth rates decline. This threatens long-term shortages of workers, goods, services and commodities. We increasingly have fewer working aged people to support pensions and services for aging baby boomers. , , ,
“High-quality, hardworking people from Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay and other regions south of the U.S.-Mexico border hope to hope to live in the United States because they seek the rewards of an economy that needs them.
“Immigrants yearning to live and work here include physicians, nurses, scientists and all varieties of skilled workers. Culturally, people south of our border have much in common with average Americans. They want meaningful, honest work that supports the needs of households.
“Quite simply, we must replace border chaos with a system that welcomes motivated workers and professionals who will benefit the United States. The same system should grant entry, and a pathway to citizenship, to those who meet our country’s rigorous standards for asylum from persecution. It should grant amnesty and opportunities for citizenship to ‘dreamers’ brought here illegally as infants and young children. . . “.— Its Far Past Time to Fix Immigration, The Gazette Editorial Board, The Denver Gazette, 12/5/22 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: This editorial tells us that “We need good immigrants.” Well, that may be. Immigration can be helpful if the number and quality of immigrants serve our national interest. Thus, we need to ask: How many “good immigrants” do we need, once we decide what qualities make them good? The Gazette’s editorial writers don’t address these issues. Instead, they indulge in happy talk about south-of-the-border immigrants having a lot “in common” with Americans. But if this were the case, why would these “high quality” people need to come here in the first place? Surely, they could stay where they are and create homelands just as free and prosperous as the U.S. Perhaps their quality isn’t quite what the editorialists suggest.
Immigration, under our current rules for admission, will do little to reverse the aging of our society—even if the present massive numbers were significantly higher. Many immigrants are not young, and their average age has increased during the past two decades. Also, their fertility rate has declined significantly in recent years and is converging toward the rate of U.S. natives.
The main reason we have high inflation now is not a “worker shortage.” Rather, it was the government’s extravagant printing of money during the COVID pandemic. Restricting immigration can cause prices rise by increasing wages, but that’s not a bad trade-off when the higher wages go to low-income American workers. Increasing their wages in fact has little impact on prices because they account for a very small share of our gross domestic product. These workers gained ground when the Trump Administration limited immigration. Now they are losing it due to a renewed surge of immigration under Joe Biden.
Tired of low salaries and poor working conditions, many Americans have just given up on seeking employment. They are not counted in the official unemployment tally. Among them are seven million men of working age. Cutting immigration would push up wages and help to attract these Americans back into the workforce. This, in turn, could provide the workers that employers say they need. An immigration policy designed to benefit Americans is the proper way to “fix immigration.”