Immigrants Have Enriched American Culture and Enhanced Our Influence in the World

Daniel Griswold

 1. 

Immigration always has been controversial in the United States. More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin worried that too many German immigrants would swamp America’s predominantly British culture. In the mid-1800s, Irish immigrants were scorned as lazy drunks, not to mention Roman Catholics. At the turn of the century a wave of “new immigrants” — Poles, Italians, Russian Jews — were believed to be too different ever to assimilate into American life. Today the same fears are raised about immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but currentcritics of immigration are as wrong as their counterparts were in previous eras.

 2. 

Immigration is not undermining the American experiment; it is an integral part of it. We are a nation of immigrants. Successive waves of immigrants have kept our country demographically young, enriched our culture and added to our productive capacity as a nation, enhancing our influence in the world.

 3. 

Immigration gives the United States an economic edge in the world economy.Immigrants bring innovative ideas and entrepreneurial spirit to the U.S. economy.They provide business contacts to other markets, enhancing America’s ability to trade and invest profitably in the global economy. They keep our economy flexible, allowing U.S. producers to keep prices down and to respond to changing consumer demands.An authoritative 1997 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded that immigration delivered a “significant positive gain” to the U.S. economy. In testimony before Congress last year, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said, “I’ve always argued that this country has benefited immensely from the fact that we draw people from all over the world.”

 4. 

Contrary to popular myth, immigrants do not push Americans out of jobs.Immigrants tend to fill jobs that Americans cannot or will not fill, mostly at the high and low ends of the skill spectrum. Immigrants are disproportionately represented in such high-skilled fields as medicine, physics and computer science, but also in lower-skilled sectors such as hotels and restaurants, domestic service, construction and light manufacturing.

 5. 

Immigrants also raise demand for goods as well as the supply. During the long boom of the 1990s, and especially in the second half of the decade, the national unemployment rate fell below 4 percent and real wages rose up and down the income scale during a time of relatively high immigration.

 6. 

Nowhere is the contribution of immigrants more apparent than in the high-technology and other knowledge-based sectors. Silicon Valley and other high-tech sectors would cease to function if we foolishly were to close our borders to skilled and educated immigrants. These immigrants represent human capital that can make our entire economy more productive. Immigrants have developed new products, such as the Java computer language, which have created employment opportunities for millions of Americans.

 7. 

Immigrants are not a drain on government finances. The NAS study found that the typical immigrant and his or her offspring will pay a net $80,000 more in taxes during their lifetimes than they collect in government services. For immigrants with college degrees, the net fiscal return is $198,000. It is true that low-skilled immigrants and refugees tend to use welfare more than the typical “native” household, but the 1996 Welfare Reform Act made it much more difficult for newcomers to collect welfare. As a result, immigrant use of welfare has declined in recent years along with overall welfare rolls.

 8. 

Despite the claims of immigration opponents, today’s flow is not out of proportion to historical levels. Immigration in the last decade has averaged about 1 million per year, high in absolute numbers, but the rate of 4 immigrants per year per 1,000 U.S. residents is less than half the rate during the Great Migration of 1890–1914. Today, about 10 percent of U.S. residents are foreign-born, an increase from 4.7 percent in 1970, but still far short of the 14.7 percent who were foreign-born in 1910.

 9. 

Nor can immigrants fairly be blamed for causing “overpopulation.” America’s annual population growth of 1 percent is below our average growth rate of the last century. In fact, without immigration our labor force would begin to shrink within two decades. According to the 2000 Census, 22 percent of U.S. counties lost population between 1990 and 2000. Immigrants could help revitalize demographically declining areas of the country, just as they helped revitalize New York City and other previously declining urban centers.

 10. 

Obviously, taking a lesson from Sept. 11, the U.S. government should “control its borders” to keep out anyone who intends to commit terrorist acts. But border security and immigration are two separate matters. Immigrants are only a small subset of the total number of foreigners who enter the United States every year. Only about one of every 25 foreign nationals who enter the United States come here to immigrate. The rest are tourists, business travelers, students and Mexican and Canadians who cross the border for a weekend to shop or visit family and then return home with no intention of settling permanently in the United States.

 11. 

Therefore, the problem is not that we are letting too many people into the United States but that the government has failed to keep the wrong people out. We can stop terrorists from entering the United States without closing our borders or reducing the number of hardworking, peaceful immigrants who settle here.

 12. 

It would be a national shame if, in the name of security, we closed the door to immigrants who come here to work, save and build a better life for themselves and their families. Immigrants come here to live the American Dream; terrorists come to destroy it. We should not allow America’s tradition of welcoming immigrants to become yet another casualty of Sept. 11.

【译文】

移民丰富了美国文化，增强了我们对世界的影响

丹尼尔•格里斯沃尔德

1. 

移民问题在美国一直备受争议。两个多世纪前，本杰明•富兰克林担心太多德国移民会湮没在美国占主导地位的英国文化。19世纪中叶，爱尔兰移民被奚落为懒汉醉鬼，更不用提罗马天主教徒。本世纪之交，人们认为这拨“新移民”——来自波兰、意大利和俄裔的犹太人——与美国人差别太大而无法融入美国生活。而今，人们同样担忧来自拉丁美洲和亚洲的移民，但是当前批评移民的人士犯了其同行曾犯过的同样的错误。

2. 

移民并不会削弱美国实验，而是其不可或缺的一部分。我们是一个移民大国。接连不断的移民潮保持了人口的年轻化，丰富了我们的文化，增强了国家整体生产力，随之提升了我们在全世界的影响力。

3. 

移民使美国在世界经济中占尽优势。他们给美国经济带来了创新理念和进取精神。他们带来了和其他市场的商业往来，提高了美国在全球经济中的贸易和投资盈利能力。移民让我们的经济保持灵活，让美国生产商以低廉的价格应对不断变化的消费需求。1997年由（美国）国家科学院发布的一项权威研究指出移民给美国的经济带来了“可观的积极收益”。在去年的国会证词中，美国联邦储备委员会主席艾伦•格林斯潘说：“我一直强调这个国家由于吸引了来自世界各地的人而受益无穷。”

4. 

与大众偏见恰恰相反，移民不会导致美国人失业。移民可以填补美国人不能或不愿意从事的一些职位空缺，通常是技术密集型和劳动密集型两类工作。移民在行业中分布不均衡，主要分布在诸如医药、物理和计算机科学等高技能领域，以及在诸如旅馆餐饮、家政服务、建筑和轻工业等低技能行业。

5. 

移民还提高了商品的需求量和供应量。在20世纪90年代长时间的经济繁荣期，尤其是在90年代后期，全国失业率下降到4%以下，在移民相对多的那段时期，实际的薪水随着收入等级而上下浮动。

6. 

移民在高新技术和其他知识领域的贡献表现得尤为明显。如果我们愚蠢地拒绝那些精通技术又受过良好教育的移民入境，硅谷和其他高科技部门将无法正常运行。这些移民所代表的人力资本可以提高我们整个经济生产力。移民研发出的新产品，比如Java计算机语言，为数百万美国人创造了就业机会。

7. 

移民不会导致政府财政耗竭。国家科学院的研究发现，一个典型的移民和其后代一生中支付给政府的税比他们从政府那所获得的要净多80,000美元。以拥有大学学位的移民为例，他们的净财政收益是198,000美元。诚然，低技能的移民和难民们享受的福利可能比典型的“本土”家庭多，但是1996制定的福利改革法案使得新来的移民越来越难以领到福利。因此，近几年来移民享有的福利随着福利领受者总数的减少而逐年下降。

8. 

反对移民的呼声很高，尽管如此，如今的移民潮并没有超出历史水平。在过去的十年中平均每年有约100万人移民美国，绝对数量很大，但每年1000名美国居民中只有4位移民，这个比率连1890-1914年大移民时期的一半都不到。今天，约10%的美国居民出生于国外，比1970年的4.7%有所增长，但仍远低于1910年的14.7%。

9. 

将“人口过多”归咎于移民也站不住脚。在美国，每年的人口增长率为1%，低于上个世纪的平均增长率。事实上，若没有了移民，我们的劳动力将在二十多年内出现萎缩。据2000年的人口普查，在1990到2000之间，美国22%的县的人口有所减少。移民能让人口下降的地区恢复元气，正如移民使纽约和其他曾人口减少的城市重获繁荣。

10. 

显然，鉴于9•11事件的教训，美国政府应“控制其边境”，把那些试图实施恐怖行动的人拒之门外。但是，边境安全和移民是两个截然不同的问题。移民仅占每年进入美国的外国人总数的一小部分。大约25个进入美国的外国人中只有1个人是来移民的。其余的多为游客、商务旅行者、学生和一些周末过境来购物或探亲的墨西哥和加拿大人，他们购物探亲后就返家，并不打算在美国永久定居。

11. 

因此，问题不在于我们让太多人进入美国，而是政府未能把好关把坏人拒之门外。其实，我们可以不用关闭边境或减少那些勤劳而爱好和平的移民人数就能阻止恐怖分子进入美国。

12. 

如果以安全的名义，把那些来美国工作、赚钱和为自己及家人创造更美好的生活的人拒之门外，那将是我们的国耻。移民来这里是为了实现美国梦；恐怖分子是来毁灭它。我们不应该让美国接收移民的传统成为9•11事件的又一个牺牲品。