The US is an immigrant nation and we are richer in every way because of it. We are all the beneficiaries of the contributions of other cultures. I always thought we had an advantage against other countries because of our long immigrant tradition, despite the ongoing racism and xenophobia that has plagued us from the beginning but now I’m not so sure.
Anyway, I thought this tweet storm by Ali Velshi concisely spelled out why we should be welcoming of immigrants on an economic basis, which is even more important than it used to be for different reasons:
One thing many of us have learned in the last year is how productive we can be when we aren’t spending an hour or two commuting to and from work. The pandemic has made us efficient, if nothing else.
All this working from home didn’t break the internet so, with a laptop & a phone or 2, we sure get a lot done. In fact, even before Covid, the American worker was about as productive as we have ever been.
As business picks up & unemployment falls, all that productivity is going to be a problem. It’s an economic concept but it’s Sunday so I won’t give you equations and stuff.
In lay terms, once you have an economy running at capacity, with almost everyone employed – like we were before the pandemic, the only way you can actually grow an economy is with people.
America doesn’t actually do that. Virtually no developed nation does, because we have families where every parent works, and we have very few children compared to the olden days.
In a modern society, the birthrate isn’t high enough to replace workers who retire from the workforce. Hence, America has what we call a “negative replacement rate.” Simply put, we don’t give birth to enough new humans to replace those retiring.
There’s really only one way to fix that: more immigrants to make up the difference, both to do the jobs we need done and to sustain the economy with the money they earn, and to pay taxes to help pay for our future retirement.
After 4 years of an administration that conflated our Southern border issues with actual immigration policy – which is a lie – some Americans believe immigration should be severely curtailed or shouldn’t exist at all.
The idea that America has been a prime example of innovation and creativity is, in large part, because America has always attracted the best and hardest working immigrants from every corner of the world.
But bad immigration policy is narrowing the innovation gap between the U.S. and other countries. The good news is, despite being unwelcoming to immigrants for the last few years, surveys indicate that most would still choose the U.S. over other countries.
I could easily make the case that America’s immigration is what makes America great. There’s a 135 yr. old statue 7 miles southwest of me near where the Hudson River meets the Atlantic Ocean dedicated to the idea but over time, bad politics has eroded that idea.
Bad politics. And bad policy. Despite that, it’s important to remember America is, historically, really good at immigration and immigration has been really good to America.Originally tweeted by Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) on April 11, 2021.
The “negative replacement” issue shows just how stupid Tucker Carlson and his Great Replacement Nazies really are. They’re signing America’s economic death warrant.