The Case Against Legal Immigration

[Gerard]

http://american-rattlesnake.org/2012/06 ... gration-2/

The issue of immigration-or even the mention of immigration enforcement-has been wholly neglected by the presumptive nominees of this country’s two major political parties. Even as prominent politicians find new ways in which to exploit ethnic divisions for the sake of political expediency, the perverse incentives of America’s federal immigration policies remain unaddressed. While Democrats seek to harvest what they expect to be a political windfall from Hispanic voters, Republicans pander, or hispander as some deem it, to what they view as an ascendent voting bloc, even going so far as introducing a bill eerily similar to one the GOP staked its reputation opposing during the final hours of a Democrat-controlled Congress.

That’s why the speech delivered by David North-seen above-at the Penn Club last month-the final one in this year’s lecture series sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies-was such a welcome relief, especially for those of us who are looking for reliable, empirical data which illuminates the dimensions of the problem we’re facing. A former Labor Department official, Mr. North is currently an expert on legal migration patterns and processes for CIS. In that capacity he’s demonstrated just how immigration reforms enacted by Congress, from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, to the mass amnesty of 1986 known as Simpson-Mazzoli, to the Immigration Act of 1990-which introduced the horrifying concept of the Visa Lottery-have irreparably altered the demographic future of the United States.

Although long on statistical analysis and number crunching, North’s speech was anything but dull, especially to those interested in how the mechanics of American immigration dovetail with the politics, which often seem inscrutable to people not immersed in this field. One of the most trenchant observations made during the course of his speech was an explanation of how the patterns of legal immigration have changed over the past several decades. Just over half of legal immigrants today get green cards as a result of Adjustment of Status, i.e. they are already in the United States when they become permanent legal residents. This marks a sea change in immigration policy, yet one that is barely scrutinized by the mainstream media, which seems intent upon intentionally misrepresenting the issues at stake, if they examine those issues at all. A good place to start is with the Immigration Yearbook, a compilation of statistical data examining foreign nationals who became legal residents, were newly naturalized, or applied for asylum during the previous fiscal year...