U.S. Needs Immigrants To Maintain Global Economic and Political Power

"Demography is destiny," supposedly said 19th-century French philosopher Auguste Comte, noting that increases in population enhance the political and economic power of a region or nation, while decreases in population reduce the economic or political power of a region or nation. China and Russia are losing population, so is India and Japan, partly due to …

Immigration in America: A Mini-Course

I've posted a 10-part mini-course on immigration to my Substack. "Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Is Historic. And ignorant, against U.S. interests. Can we break with the past?" is part one, which has been e-mailed to subscribers. Click. It begins with a link to a NYT series on new state laws in 10 states restricting Chinese nationals from purchasing …

GOP Infighting Blocks Tough Immigration Bill

Sen. James Langford (R-OK), one of the Senate's most conservative members, was the lead negotiator in getting Democrats to make major concessions in a bill to regulate the border with Mexico. But his Republican colleagues, on advice from Donald Trump who wants to run on the issue of immigration, have apparently killed it. But Sen. …

While Immigration Is Up, Crime Is Down

"It's funny how immigration and crime are trending in opposite directions," writes David Drezner on Substack He also cited a Brookings Institution study that noted "faster population and labor force growth has meant that employment could grow more quickly than previously believed without adding to inflationary pressures."  

Do Migrants Smuggle Fentanyl Across the Border?

LATimes: "Two unrelated facts combined with a lie form a powerful and dangerous piece of misinformation that is spreading virally. The facts are that a drug overdose epidemic is killing more than 100,000 Americans a year and that far more migrants are crossing the country’s southern border than ever before. The lie is that the migrants are …

Is GOP Sabotaging Itself By Rejecting Bipartisan Immigration Reform? Election Will Decide

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma calls overhauling U.S. immigration -- which hasn't been done since the 1980s -- a "Rubik's cube." He was the principal author of a bill to, in the words of the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board, "tighten the legal standard for migrants claiming asylum in the U.S., while allowing an emergency …

How Many ‘Illegals’ Has Biden Let Into US? Does US President Have the Authority to Close the Border?

Donald Trump and his supporters assert, falsely, that President Biden has let in between 10 million and 13 million illegal aliens into the country. They also assert falsely that the President has the authority to close the border, and Biden has chosen not to do so. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post's fact-checker clarified that …

Immigration and Border Controversies: Democrats Hope Public Opinion Is Shifting

In public opinion polling, Donald Trump engendered higher confidence on immigration and border issues in late 2023 and early 2024. But Democrats hope that with congressional Republicans' rejection of a tough immigration bill, the special election victory of their candidate for Congress to fill the seat of the ousted George Santos on Long Island, and …

E-Verify to Block Undocumented Immigrants From Employment: Some U.S. Business Interests Oppose It

Congressional immigration proposals that would require all employers to use E-Verify, an electronic verification system of legal status for employment, run into difficulty from certain U.S. business interests. Currently, just 10 states require all employers to use E-Verify: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. E-Verify's problems include outdated …

Border Crackdowns Won’t Solve America’s Immigration Crisis. Migrants Come Because the U.S. Has Plentiful Jobs

Hein de Haas, a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, a founding member of the International Migration Institute, and the author of “How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics" in The Wall Street Journal: "The dominant narrative on the right has compared illegal immigration to an invasion, …