I think you identify well many of the interrelated social catastrophes that are coming to bear in American society. I do not think it's hyperbole to use that word catastrophe either, what we're witnessing is nothing short of the coming apart of the social compact that heretofore has bound disparate and disagreeable Americans together; in particular the elites to the commoners but also owners to workers, families to each other and citizens to the future members of the republic. Your solutions though, or ethical stances towards workable solutions, are where I take issue with your analysis. They are, it seems, a doubling-down on the very neo-liberal consensus that brought us to this point in the first place and would thus serve to only exacerbate the problem. Mass, low-skill immigration, similar to the "legal, flexible and generous" standard that you advocated, is of a piece with a larger program of 'freedom of movement' that has been propagated by the neo-liberal establishment for the past 50 years. Members of that establishment, whether they have been Progressives, Centrists or Conservatives (particularly the Neoconservatives), while disagreeing on social issues, foreign policy and the size and influence of government, have nevertheless managed to maintain consensus on the basic fundamentals of the economy. Namely, that lower taxes, tariffs and regulations coupled with a tightly managed monetary policy will drive the economy to new heights of prosperity while a generous welfare state will be there to support those that get left behind. Republicans and Democrats have become remarkably adept at pretending that their ideological differences are vast and irreconcilable but with respect to the economy, they are merely two sides of the same coin; they may fight over the size of tax cuts, the amount of regulation and the kind of welfare offered but it would be anathema to them to upset the establishment consensus in any meaningful way. Sohrab Ahmari says it most succinctly, writing in the April issue of First Things:RZehr wrote: I don't consider the boost I'm talking about as a boost from a healthy standpoint to a excellent standpoint. It's more of a boost needed to simply stay healthy. At this point we aren't trying to raise all ships, a boost needed simply to keep the boats off the sea shore because the tide is moving out.
As far as the past 40 years, I don't know who benefited most but I suppose the richest did the most. If that is true, my solution or blame isn't the immigration, but rather taxes and other reasons.
I'd like to see immigration made easier for both low wage immigrants and high wage immigrants. Even if most are low wage that come, I think that is fine. Let them come. It's normal for a first generation to have it tough and then the second generation thrives. I'm guessing if I moved to Central America, even with my larger pile of money, my lack knowledge of the culture and nuances and business, would make it tougher for me to make a living there. But I suppose my children would grow up their and take to it like a fish to water. There are thousands of second generation Americans who became well to do in ways their immigrant parents only dreamed.
I'll try to expand on my thinking.
I don't see the US birth rate being able to keep up with the demand for dependable employees. American businesses are scrapping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to employees. Much of the time we are down to decidedly unqualified people. A large part of this is because of the decline in normal families and values. The American society doesn't properly raise and teach children anymore how to think or work. With a high unemployment rate, business simply doesn't employ these people, they sift them out. In a tight job market like we have now, we have no choice but to hire 10 people for 2 jobs, hoping to find two that will work out long term. That is not a figurative number, that is actually what we have done. Unqualified employees are terrifically inefficient, which in turn is not good for the countries industry. How do you compete globally with expensive, inefficient people?
Also, with our tilt toward more government benefits, a growing social security deficiency, who will pay for all this? I think it is not realistic to think that this direction is ever going to change in any sort of meaningful way. So, with more people on government programs, and a flat or perhaps eventually falling birth rate, what's the solution? I think for good reason countries are concerned when their population growth is flat or falling.
Beginning in the 1990's especially, this economic neo-liberalism took on a global dynamic as we began to see the opening up of free-trade zones, first in the Western Hemishpere and then in Asia and Europe. Since the era of NAFTA, the American public has been told repeatedly by the elites of both parties that the free movement of people, goods, ideas, currency and cultures will be wholly beneficial not only to our country but to any country that has the good wisdom to participate in free-trade. Jobs and whole sectors of the economy may be lost, communities dislocated, cultures denatured and currencies devalued but in the final analysis market competition will reward winners, punish losers and slowly raise all ships. We will all, and by degrees, benefit economically if we just ride this wave. Thus, if you don't like what's happened to your town, move. If you are unwilling to follow the jobs or are a low-skilled, inefficient product of the failed families and schools that this economy helped breed, we will simply import hard-working, foreigners willing to work for less and displace you. You are now a global citizen and disposable.The consensus is characterized by a desire to maximize freedom and usher in a new global culture in which individuals are emancipated from tradition, culture, and community....The liberal, technocratic consensus has lent America a dynamic economy, world-winning entertainment, famously irreverent mores, and sundry technological marvels. People around the world have admired and shared in the material rewards it has brought. But the downsides are increasingly hard to ignore...Without a shared vision of the common good, society devolves into consumerist cliques and warring tribal factions. With the eclipse of the metaphysical ideals that underlie their conception of reason, America and the West can barely address other civilizations, much less win them over...I wish the mainstream parties and politicians had been more alert to these and other discontents associated with technocratic liberalism. But the “responsible” center wasn’t up to the task, not least because journalists and intellectuals jealously guarded every element of the consensus and treated any deviation from it as heretical...raising a peep about unrestricted mass migration was treated as phobic....economic growth, interconnectedness, and openness were treated as the only ideals worthy of the name.
I see echoes of that sentiment in your post - the rationale that you offer is purely economic in scope. "Why have a generous immigration policy? Because our birth rate is dropping, we need low-skilled workers to fill the gap in entry level positions, we need new sources of taxation to pay for our ever-burgeoning welfare state, we need to remain globally competitive, our own fellow-citizens are lazy". This has been the rationale and justification for the neo-liberal endorsement of mass immigration since the 1980's and it's rotten. The economy has been rigged by many in the establishment to create massive new amounts of wealth at the expense of families, communities, civic organizations, and stable jobs. Thus we find ourselves with the spectacle of being at once, fabulously wealthy and living at a level of comfort that no other society has ever even imagined, while at the same time producing a growing underclass of under-employed, under-educated and maladjusted, poorly developed man-children that find themselves adrift in a sea of endless, meaningless, plastic, wish-fulfillment who manage to make a living by gigging. The subtext of your post is that your fellow citizens are of no use to you in any economic sense, so let us import some efficient human resources that have not yet been exposed to the vicisitudes of liquid modernity, late-stage capitalism and radical individualism so that our economic engine can keep on churning. What happens then when the children of these immigrant work-horses become acculturated by twitter, the Kardashians and the American educational system into the failed and extended adolescence of many American youth? What then, do we simply import more?
I am not opposed to immigration tout court and the economic health of a country is manifestly important for a host of reasons. The neo-liberal establishment though, and in particular the Republican Party, has reduced the standard for the well-being of the country and its citizenry to the vitality of Wall Street, the GDP and the price index. It's no wonder then that such a shallow calculus, implemented in the form of economic and monetary policy, has helped to eviscerate the sustaining institutions of middle America. What's particularly galling though is to see establishment types like Bill Kristol, Kevin Williamson and Ben Shapiro stand up and either mock their fellow citizens or offer them trite and platitudinous tropes about personal responsibility and the importance of education.
I do not mean to attack you or ascribe to you neo-liberal thinking, rather I see the failed economic consensus coming through in both your and Appleman's posts. In short I disagree with the economics of your rationale, I do not think it is simply a question of what best drives the economy for such reductionistic explanations inevitably degrade the humanity of the people we're writing about. Many, many people are clearly being ground into fodder so that this economy can keep on growing. Finally, I really think the economics of immigration, positive or negative, is a secondary consideration to the larger issue of how mass immigration affects society at a more basic, cultural and legal level. That's a conversation that is not being had here and it strikes me as odd that it hasn't been raised.