HUDDLED EXCESSES (NPG Footnote)
- Michael Lind
- October 1, 1996
- Forum Papers
- Forum Paper
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HUDDLED EXCESSES
An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote)
by Michael Lind
October 1996
Sooner or later America must face reality. It is going to be painful. … What America is fighting is a piece of poetry. … The poetry is thrilling. It is on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….” The trouble is that huddled masses need jobs.
Patrick Buchanan?
No, Richard Strout, the eminent liberal journalist who wrote this column for several decades. Since Strout wrote those words in 1980, more than 10 million people have immigrated to the United States legally. The number of new immigrants and their higher-than-average birthrate recently forced the Census Bureau to revise its 1989 estimate of U.S. population in 2080 [sic: should be 2050] upward, by an additional 100 million — to 400 million.
But it is not numbers alone that should convert liberal immigration defenders. As Strout observed, the “huddled masses need jobs.” According to a 1995 Bureau of Labor Statistics study, competition with immigrants has accounted for roughly half the recent decline in wages among unskilled American workers. According to University of Michigan demographer William Frey, competition for jobs with poorly paid Latin American and Asian immigrants is driving low-income whites and blacks out of high-immigration states like California and high-immigration cities like New York. No wonder Steve Forbes and Dick Armey favor high levels of immigration, and The Wall Street Journal has proposed a five-word amendment to the U.S. Constitution — “There shall be open borders.” It’s great for business.
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