[MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] David Brooks on immigrants

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I stumbled across this article and didn't realize until this minute that 
it was two years old.  It still has some valid points.  What do you think 
of it, Vern?  --Mike

  ---


http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/opinion/30brooks.html

N.Y. Times
March 30, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Immigrants to Be Proud Of

By DAVID BROOKS

Everybody says the Republicans are split on immigration. The law-and-order 
types want to close the border. The free-market types want plentiful 
labor. But today I want to talk to the social conservatives, because it's 
you folks who are really going to swing this debate.

I'd like to get you to believe what Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas 
believes: that a balanced immigration bill is consistent with conservative 
values. I'd like to try to persuade the evangelical leaders in the tall 
grass to stop hiding on this issue.

My first argument is that the exclusionists are wrong when they say the 
current wave of immigration is tearing our social fabric. The facts show 
that the recent rise in immigration hasn't been accompanied by social 
breakdown, but by social repair. As immigration has surged, violent crime 
has fallen by 57 percent. Teen pregnancies and abortion rates have 
declined by a third. Teenagers are having fewer sexual partners and losing 
their virginity later. Teen suicide rates have dropped. The divorce rate 
for young people is on the way down.

Over the past decade we've seen the beginnings of a moral revival, and 
some of the most important work has been done by Catholic and evangelical 
immigrant churches, by faith-based organizations like the Rev. Luis 
Cortés's Nueva Esperanza, by Hispanic mothers and fathers monitoring their 
kids. The anti-immigration crowd says this country is under assault. But 
if that's so, we're under assault by people who love their children.

My second argument is that the immigrants themselves are like a booster 
shot of traditional morality injected into the body politic.  Immigrants 
work hard. They build community groups. They have traditional ideas about 
family structure, and they work heroically to make them a reality.

This is evident in everything from divorce rates (which are low, given 
immigrants' socioeconomic status) to their fertility rates (which are 
high) and even the way they shop.

Hispanics and Hispanic immigrants have less money than average Americans, 
but they spend what they have on their families, usually in wholesome 
ways. According to Simmons Research, Hispanics are 57 percent more likely 
than average Americans to have purchased children's furniture in the past 
year. Mexican-Americans spend 93 percent more on children's music.

According to the government's Consumer Expenditure Survey, Hispanics spend 
more on gifts, on average, than other Americans. They're more likely to 
support their parents financially. They're more likely to have big family 
dinners at home.

This isn't alien behavior. It's admirable behavior, the antidote to the 
excessive individualism that social conservatives decry.

My third argument is that good values lead to success, and that 
immigrants' long-term contributions more than compensate for the 
short-term strains they cause. There's no use denying the strains 
immigration imposes on schools, hospitals and wage levels in some markets 
(but economists are sharply divided on this).

So over the long haul, today's immigrants succeed. By the second 
generation, most immigrant families are middle class and paying taxes that 
more than make up for the costs of the first generation. By the third 
generation, 90 percent speak English fluently and 50 percent marry 
non-Latinos.

My fourth argument is that government should be at least as virtuous as 
the immigrants themselves. Right now (as under Bill Frist's legislation), 
government pushes immigrants into a chaotic underground world. The 
Judiciary Committee's bill, which Senator Brownback supports, would 
tighten the borders, but it would also reward virtue.  Immigrants who 
worked hard, paid fines, paid their taxes, stayed out of trouble and 
waited their turn would have a chance to become citizens. This isn't 
government enabling vice; it's government at its best, encouraging 
middle-class morality.

Social conservatives, let me ask you to consider one final thing.  Women 
who have recently arrived from Mexico have bigger, healthier babies than 
more affluent non-Hispanic white natives. That's because strong family and 
social networks support these pregnant women, reminding them what to eat 
and do. But the longer they stay, and the more assimilated they become, 
the more bad habits they acquire and the more problems their subsequent 
babies have.

Please ask yourself this: As we contemplate America's moral fiber, do the 
real threats come from immigrants, or are some people merely blaming them 
for sins that are already here?
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