Horowitz: America is Not Full

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

“Our County is full,” is one of President Trump’s favorite recent refrains on immigration. The president uttered variations of this phrase in a visit to a US Border Patrol station in California, in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, and in a tweet. Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition, for example, that we can’t take any more immigrants through the Southern border: “Can't come in - our country is full. What can you do? We can't handle anymore. Our country is full - can't come in. I'm sorry. It's very simple.”

Leaving aside the tone deafness of talking about how our country is full to a Jewish audience, given the well-known history of the turning away of Jewish refugees during World War II, the president’s repeated assertion is simply untrue. In fact, the opposite is the case; for our economy to continue to thrive we need more immigrants to fill the gap created by a declining birth rate.

While the need for more effective border security and a more orderly way to process asylum requests is evident, the president’s sweeping and false negative portrayals of immigrants and his administration’s ill-advised proposals to cut legal immigration not only fail to uphold our values, they are economically ill-advised. As the Brookings Institution’s noted demographic expert William Frey recently wrote, “If anything, the nation is sputtering from historic demographic stagnation. We recently registered the slowest national growth rate in 80 years due to declining natural increase—as births lower and deaths rise. In the near future, we will become increasingly dependent on immigration and racial minorities— particularly young first and second generation Hispanic and Asian Americans—to infuse growth and vitality into our population and our economy.”

Frey goes on to assert that without recent mainly Latino and Asian immigration we would be already experiencing the same ‘extreme aging” as Japan and certain Western European countries. The well-respected demographer also noted that the solvency of Social Security and Medicare are dependent in large measure on attracting and ensuring the productivity of more immigrants--the new workers needed to contribute into these programs to fund the growing number of older Americans as the baby boom retires in larger and larger numbers.

Additionally, immigrants are a well-documented source of new entrepreneurs. A study by the Center for American Entrepreneurship reports that more than 4-in-10 of American Fortune 500 companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. For the top 35 companies, the results are even more striking with immigrants or children of immigrants founding nearly 6-in-10 of these most successful companies. The study finds that parts of the nation that attract more immigrants do better economically.

Our nation is improved by people coming here to seek a better life for their children, succeeding in doing so, and enriching us all at the same time. We must reject President Trump’s false assertions and counter-productive immigration policies and demand ones that reflect this enduring truth. For the plain facts are that our economic future depends on attracting more immigrants-not less.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is as an Adjunct Professor.