American attitudes toward immigration are hardening, according to a new Gallup poll. Half of all Americans say immigration should be “decreased” – up 11 points from 39 percent last year.
Anti-immigration sentiment is growing across all major political groupings. Some 61 percent of Republicans say they would like to see immigration decreased, up from 46 percent in 2008, compared to 46 percent of Democrats, up from 39 percent; and 44 percent of Independents, up from 37 percent.
Southerners show the greatest anti-immigration sentiment with 54 percent saying they would like to see immigration decreased, followed by easterners (51 percent), midwesterners (48 percent), and westerners (44 percent).
The poll also saw a shift in American attitudes toward whether “immigration is a good or a bad thing for the country” with more than a third (36 percent) saying it is a bad thing.
Gallup notes that this marks “a return to the attitudes that prevailed in the first few years after 9/11.”
Immigration in America has gone in great cycles over the past century or two. While immigration has typically fallen during economic crises, the U.S. has prospered from its relative openness to global talent. America saw an influx of leading scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and musicians during the Great Depression which helped bolster its position at the frontiers of science, technology, entrepreneurship, and the arts during the long post-war boom.
Economic crises are transformative periods when talent flows can be reset and countries and regions rise and decline. The future belongs to those countries and regions that can attract the best and brightest across the entire world.
Growing anti-immigrant sentiment, should it continue, is bad news for American technology, entrepreneurship, and the economy in general. Let’s hope it turns around.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Highly skilled immigration is good, low-skilled immigration is not. So in essence, we have had it backwards – slowing the flow of the highly skilled while welcoming those with little skills. The highly skilled are also far more likely to assimilate into American society with regard to language, culture and interests. So rather than being a net drain on resources, they are a net gain.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Many professions have been trashed by outsourcing, H1-B, and the like. Yes I agree that high skill immigration is a good thing. But support for it has been destroyed by the predatory manipulations of corporations seeking low wage labor.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Disagree with Iark. Few American firms seeking H1-B’s to bring in foreign talent — and many of those bringing in lower skilled, lower wage workers for that matter — would do so if they could find Americans to do the jobs at any price. The costs of acquiring H1-Bs, recruiting abroad, relocating people and their families, and turn over as many return home or can’t adjust is very high.
The alternative for American firms is relocating operations outside the US — and not in necessarily low wage places. Look at Microsoft. It couldn’t hire enough Americans, or bring enough foreigners to Redmond WA, so it opened a facility outside Vancouver BC (2 hours from Redmond) to hire Canadian and overseas talent. It’s not cheaper to operate in Vancouver than Seattle.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I am not so sure immigration is ever a bad thing, high or low skilled.
I know this for sure, my grand and great grand parents were not highly skilled when they entered the U.S and from what I understand, neither were pretty much any of their friends or neighbors. Yet, their children and their children’s children certainly are. They could not speak english well if at all and didn’t want to lose their “old world” culture, much like their modern counterparts. Yet again, their children and their children’s children have become totally “Americanized” and quite skilled. Considering the waves of other German, Polish, Italian, Irish, ect. immigrants who were very much like my family was, I think that unskilled immigrants in the past have served the U.S. economy extremely well. As well, the skilled immigrants arriving post WWII were a big part of the American Hegemony that developed following that period.
With that said, are wages brought down by immigration, skilled and unskilled alike? I think the answer has to be yes. If the supply of labor increases, wages must fall ceteris paribus. Even if basic economic theory is wrong and wages don’t fall, competition for each job has to increase. But being afraid of that competition seems almost “unamerican” to me, if there is such a thing.
Further, if we shut the door, we may keep wages higher than they would have been for a while, it might be easier to find a job for a while. But… the competition will come from other places just the same, except the new stuff that was created will be in places other than the U.S. The immigration of unskilled labor does not cause outsourcing. Outsourcing occurs because of a lack of cheap labor, not the presence of it.
With American citizen birthrates as they are relative to the rate of retiring (and social benefit receiving) workers, our entire social spending system is going to collapse on itself sooner or later. Seems to me that we have two options, decrease the size of the benefits or increase the number of workers paying in.
How many societies that have closed their doors have benefitted from that compared to how many that have been open to it?
August 7th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Much of economic growth is a simple numbers game. More people equals more growth. If we’re not increasing our population through reproduction, then we’re going to need massive immigration to keep the economy growing.
There is a preception that certain immigrants are gaming the system, especially illegal immigrants. If you fixed those deficiencies in the system, got control of the illegal immigration, I personally think that anti-immigrant sentiment would die down.
One thing that I notice traveling to such dying cities as Buffalo, Detroit, and Cleveland is how few immigrants there are. It’s a contrast to Chicago, which has huge Mexican, Korean, Polish, and Indian populations.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:28 am
This is bad news, the U.S. needs to look at immigration as part of its future growth.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Much of the commentary on this subject is remarkably poor. Any serious analysis shows that mass immigration is a massive loser for the American people. Doubt it? Take a look at California, immigration ground zero our country.
What has immigration done to California? Freeway gridlock, unaffordable wages, crippled public education, rock bottom wages (adjusting for the cost of living), state bankruptcy, etc. California was once the American dream. Now it is the American nightmare, our failed future. American’s (and immigrants) are now fleeing in large numbers… to places like Kentucky.
See http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.immigration/msg/fc1f786d40b500db for a harrowing article about illegal aliens are fleeing life in hell (California), a grim reality they helped to create.
To get some idea of how bad public education in California really is, check out the NAEP stats. California now ranks behind Mississippi by some measures. That’s right, dead last.
The following stats from http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/2009/02/la-county-and-welfare.html should provide some realword perspective about immigration realities, not Statue of Liberty nostalgia.
Los Angeles and Welfare
Having lived in California for a long time, I followed the budget crisis there with some interest. Last night, I ran across this item in Instapundit: “20% in Los Angeles County receive public aid.”
I am sure that I’m not the only one who’s noticed how almost all of the discussion over California’s budget problems managed to avoid using such words as “immigrant” or “illegal”. So I decided to do a few calculations using the 2008 Current Population Survey to follow up on Instapundit’s remark. Well, here are some interesting results for your perusal–no remarks are needed:
All statistics give the fraction of households in the LA metro area that receive some type of assistance–either cash, food stamps, or Medicaid:
All households: 20.9%
Native households: 12.7%
Immigrant households: 33.2%
Immigrant households with a citizen head: 26.4%
Immigrant households with a non-citizen head: 40.1%
Just to put things in context, 40% of households in the LA metro area are immigrant households.
(For the computing geeks amongst you who want to see the documentation, here is the computer file summarizing the results. The data is the publicly available 2008 March CPS file from IPUMS. A household is defined as a native or immigrant household based on the status of the household head.)
August 8th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
The US needs more immigration, just not illegal, Mexican immigration. Look at the benefits of substantial rich Chinese immigration in Vancouver, or middle east immigrants/residents in London. Unfortunately, most Americans, like those in the surveys, are ignorant fools, quick to hate “the others”, and wave the flag.
August 8th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Wil,
You have shown us the light. Now we know how to understand immigration issues…
Just shout “racism”, “bigotry”, “hate”, etc. and everything will be perfectly clear.
Americans are ignorant?
August 9th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Peter, Sorry I touched your patriotic nerve.
August 9th, 2009 at 10:13 am
My parents and half their town population in italy immigrated to Canada 40-50 years ago, the towns they created were vibrant, manicured and full of life. What I hear and what I see around me is that the more we become cosmopolitan, the more we congregate to own culture (ex. italians sticking with italians). I don’t hear any patriotism for Canada just where they come from. In a way I agree with American way in that once you immigrate, you take on the role of an american, period! Call me whatever you like but I believe that Canada will become so bastardized to the point of not having a culture any longer.
August 13th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Great post!
As with most polls, the trick is asking the right questions.
The question “should immigration be increased” is vague.
Does it refer to an increase in legal immigration (which is about 1 million people a year), or does it refer to legalization of undocumented immigrants already in the country (about 15 million people), or both?
A better question might be whether our immigration system should grant entry to more job-creators?
Creating jobs for Americans should be the mantra at this point in the debate — we should design an immigration system that places greater emphasis on economic development of the country.
Our immigration system is antiquated and dates back to the Immigration Act of 1965— which installed nationality and category quotas (for employment/skill based immigration) that now impose a disincentive for immigrant talent considering the U.S. as a destination.
These nationality categories mean that the same number of employment-based green cards are available to citizens of Malawi (country of 10 million people) as there are available to citizens of India (a country of over 1 billion people).
Because of these antiquated quotas, high-skill immigrant talent from India and China sometimes wait 7 or 8 years for a green card?
Many are returning the home country to take advantage of new research and entrepreneurial opportunities, rather than suffer the uncertainty of immigration status in the U.S.
Countries like China and India are trying to recruit their talented diaspora back home.
Canada is recruiting disgruntled immigrant talent in the U.S., offering quicker avenues to permanent residency and citizenship.
Singapore scours the planet for research talent to fill up its Biopolis and Fusionopolis lab/live centers.
And America shuns foreign-born talent.
About 9% of the 1,000,000 U.S. green cards issued each year are allocated to the highly skilled, extraordinary ability, and investor immigrants.
The vast majority of green cards are issued under the family based category, which has no skill requirements.
Is this the best way to build the most powerful innovation teams in the New Economy?
Clearly immigrant talent provided much of the fuel behind Silicon Valley — over 50% of the tech companies there were founded by immigrants. Immigrants helped innovate and commecialize the companies behind the IT revolution.
In terms of the Green Economy, one only has to look in the labs at advanced engineering programs at U.S. universities to guess who will play key roles in creating jobs for Americans in emerging clean tech industries.
We need more New Economy talent, risk-taking entrepreneurs and investors — whether they are Ph.Ds working on alternative energy projects or neighborood entrepreneurs contributing to urban revitalization.
You might be interested in my recent article and posting on immigrants creating jobs for Americans — and preparing to build New Economy factories in the rust belt.
http://www.ilw.com/articles/2009,0812-herman.shtm
http://www.immigrantinc.com/2009/08/immigrant-battery-power-building-new.html
The administration needs to help America look differently at immigration and immigrants. And at talent.
Major League Baseball (30% foreign born), the NBA (20% foreign born),and the National Hockey League (80% foreign born) do not care about the passport of their teammates.
If we really want to win in the serious game of the global economy, why should we?
August 27th, 2009 at 2:14 am
No culture is static, and no culture is above serious critique. Culture is in fact formed as all people adapt to events and environments. For instance, even the most “traditional” groups of people can embrace new possibilities. Think Amish who don’t drive cars but today can take a ride if someone else drives! Fearing “bastardization” of culture is like fearing that tomorrow the sun will rise.
As a group, some of the most patriotic people in the United States, if you consider military service as an ultimate patriotic act–have been and continue to be African Americans. At the same time, as a group of people historically excluded from becoming “American,” many African Americans have critiqued that injustice and died for a nation that did not consider them equal citizens.
The space created by dissent, and the work of demanding equal treatment is probably what most defines the United States as a nation of conquered, enslaved, and immigrant peoples– Americans. We’re still learning that our strength is in our diversity and that there has never a time when becoming “American,” meant the same thing to everyone.