LatinaLista — For too long the issue of immigration, illegal or otherwise, has been the catalyst that pits conservatives against liberals. Yet a new report warns that people need to get over their hang-ups about the whole issue of immigration and start facing a reality that is going to bring with it three new crisis that this country has never before faced.
The Reform Institute released a report today by demographer Dowell Myers titled Old Promises and New Blood: How Immigration Reform Can Help America Prosper in the Face of Baby Boomer Retirement .
The report outlines how the Baby Boomer generation dominates the current electorate and how its retirement over the next ten years will severely impact three precise areas and produce a crisis in each of them: An Entitlement Crisis — more retirees means greater demands on Social Security and Medicare; Workforce Crisis — more retirees means more open positions but there won’t be enough of the younger generation to fill them; Home Sellers Crisis — more Baby Boomers downsizing means more homes on the market but a smaller-size younger generation won’t be able to absorb all the homes for sale which will lead to an unstable housing market.
While the report goes on explaining how immigrants and their children will be able to fill the gaps and basically ease these inevitable crisis, it also reveals that the issue of immigration is looked at in such a wrong way by politicians, policy makers, pundits and extreme conservatives that instead of planning for the future success of this country, these people are laying the groundwork for significantly weakening it.
The author of the report points out that there exists a term known as the Peter Pan fallacy. It’s the erroneous belief that immigrants never assimilate, never grow older or advance economically. Because of this perception, immigrants are seen as forever being burdens on society when that’s not the case.
We have ample proof that immigrants do advance, when US law lets them. And when they do, they become home owners, their children attain college degrees and they pay into Social Security and Medicaid while also contributing to their local economy through volunteerism and their buying power.
The narrow viewpoint held by politicians and policy makers on immigration has real and serious implications.
The aging of our society, as expressed by the ballooning senior ratio and the impending retirement of the baby boomers, represents a singular event with severe implications for long- term economic growth and prosperity. Immigration will play a critical role as we seek to confront this epic challenge.
The next president and congress will have to deal with immigration reform and the retirement of the baby boomers. In order to deal effectively with both they must not be viewed separately. As policy makers address fixing our broken immigration system, they must be cognizant of the perils presented by the retirement of the boomers and the vital role of a rational and forward-looking immigration policy for mitigating these threats and making America more resilient.
We don’t need a crystal ball to see what the future holds for us. We need leaders and a citizenry with common sense, not colored by irrational fear or prejudice.
And we need a new way of asking a very important question about immigration:
Comment(10)
Evelyn
The author of the report points out that there exists a term known as the Peter Pan fallacy. It’s the erroneous belief that immigrants never assimilate, never grow older or advance economically. Because of this perception, immigrants are seen as forever being burdens on society when that’s not the case.
We have ample proof that immigrants do advance, when US law lets them. And when they do, they become home owners, their children attain college degrees and they pay into Social Security and Medicaid while also contributing to their local economy through volunteerism and their buying power.
This fact is the reason why Eurocentricts dont want Hispanic Immigrants to be here.
They know that one day these people will be the majority and they will have hell to pay for the way they have treated people of color for the last 500 years.
Sandra
Most legal “immigrants” do assimilate. Look to Miami though for a good example of non-assimilation of some immigrants who became citizens. As for those in our country illegally, for the most part they do not assimilate. Legal immigrants are not a burden to our society for the most part.
Most non-hispanic citizens do not have a problem with hispanic citizens.
So you are still living in the Civil Rights Era and blaming all white people alive today for the racism of the past that they never even played a role in?
What are you saying, that in the future that people of color are going to rise up against whites (who never did a damned thing to them) and start a war or act like racists themselves?
BrownViews
As always, great writing, excellent perceptions and pointed perspectives. That’s why Latina Lista is appropriately named and my favorite read!!
Gracias, Marisa!! Keep up the good work!
Marisa Treviño
Wow, thank you for the kind words.
Texano78704
In keeping with both the topic of immigration and the Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a column by Rick Casey. It’s sort of regional in nature, as it pertains to Texas, but I think it is quite appropriate for all.
I give thanks for illegal immigrants
COMMENTARY
By RICK CASEY
Houston Chronicle, Nov. 25, 2008
This year, as we gather for the feast, I am giving thanks for illegal immigrants.
I have a particular group of illegals in mind, but I confess that my gratitude to them does color my view of most other illegals.
I refer to the liars, debtors, opportunists and criminals who flooded into Texas in the first half of the 19th century, and then wrested the land from Mexico.
Their story is told in A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. The author, Timothy J. Henderson, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin and his doctorate at one of those well-regarded institutions back East.
He is now a professor of history at Auburn University Montgomery.
Best of intentions
So he brings both experience of Texas and an academic distance from it.
Stephen F. Austin, who brought many Anglo families to Texas, is not numbered among the illegals. Henderson describes him as “likable, handsome, hardworking, and well educated, with cultivated manners, a moderate temperament, and a sometimes unfortunate tendency to assume the good intentions of others.”
He traveled to Mexico City to negotiate a pact under which he pledged to bring Anglo settlers into Texas according to rules set out by Mexican authorities.
Austin, writes Henderson, “from the outset made plain his intention to do everything by the book, and for most of his adult life he never wavered from his commitment to be a good citizen of Mexico.”
He negotiated a generous deal. A head of an immigrant family would get 4,438 acres for farming and another 177 acres for livestock. For every 200 immigrants he or other impresarios brought in they would receive 66,774 acres.
There were a few rules. They had to pledge loyalty to Mexico. If they weren’t already Roman Catholics, they had to convert.
Despite Austin’s best efforts, Henderson says, Anglos came pouring in and most “had no intention of abiding by their end of the bargain.”
Mexican law, for example, stipulated that any slaves would be free as soon as they entered Texas.
Anglo immigrants “elected to assume that this referred only to the buying and selling of slaves and did not apply to slaves brought by colonists for their own use,” writes Henderson.
One Mexican general wrote that the colonists “commit the barbarities on their slaves that are so common where men live in a relationship so contradictory to their nature: they pull their teeth, they set dogs upon them to tear them apart, and the mildest of them will whip the slaves until they are flayed.”
Some illegals came to escape debts or domestic obligations. Some were simply adventurers.
Some were fugitives from justice, “sporting brands on their faces marking them as miscreants.” (Think gang tattoos, only not voluntary.)
Some of these, not surprisingly, continued their criminal careers in Texas. Colonists who caught them at it considered the Mexican prohibition of the death penalty to be inconvenient and carried out executions.
These immigrants not only entered illegally or violated the terms of their legal entry, but rather than keep their heads down and try to fit in, they lived in active defiance of the law.
So much so that the Mexican government in 1830 passed a law barring all new American immigrants from entering Texas.
Among the illegals violating that particular law were David Crockett, William B. Travis and Sam Houston.
For the fact that tomorrow we celebrate the particularly American holiday of Thanksgiving in Texas, we owe them and the thousands of other illegals whom they joined our enthusiastic gratitude.
I also give thanks for those illegals who have worked hard to clean up the Galveston area in the past weeks, and have shown no interest in importing slaves or overthrowing our government.
Our history shows that immigrants — even illegal ones, especially when laws are out of whack — often make things better.
Link
Sandra
Any American who gives thanks for illegal activity is no American in my eyes.
Texano78704
Well, it is a good thing then that Sandra not the one who determines US citizenship. Otherwise, there would be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that engaged in civil disobedience while protesting Jim Crow laws and advocating for civil rights that would now be disenfranchised.
Sandra
Texano, the Civil Rights Era was about AMERICAN CITIZENS, not ILLEGAL ALIENS!
Texano78704
Then perhaps you should amend your statement to say, “any American who gives thanks for illegal activity by undocumented workers is no American… ” So, how exactly did you determine that their activities were illegal? By reviewing a court ruling? Or are you presuming guilt?
By the way, “American citizen” is really a generic term that is applicable to any citizen of North, Central or South America.
Sandra
Oh, get off it! American citizen is the common term for those who are citizens of the U.S. only and you know it! Do Mexican citizens call themselves Americans? No, they do not, they call themselves Mexicans! There is no such thing as being a citizen of a continent!
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