y displacement may be occurring. But in normal times, any job loss is more than offset by the creation of new jobs stemming from the immi-
The Economic Cost of Immigration
grants  own work. The immigrants  new spending creates demand for housing, groceries and other necessities, and their employers invest their expanding profits in new machinery and jobs.  It is called competitive capitalism,  says Tony Carnevale of the American Society for Training and Development,  and it works. It s how America got rich. 
Two forces, however, have recently helped to undercut the benefits of immigration: the welfare state and the steep decline in the skill levels of immigrants since 1970. In the last great decade of immigration, 1900 to 1910, public education and a little public health were the only services provided to those migrating to New York and other Northeastern cities. One third of the new immigrants simply failed and moved hack home. Today dozens of welfare programs from food stamps to unemployment compensation  cushion failure and attract immigrants who might otherwise stay home. In California, children bom to illegal parents now account for one in eight beneficiaries of one program alone, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The state-run Medicaid program provided $489 million in health care to more than 400,000 illegal aliens last year. Legal aliens got hundreds of millions more.
Donald Huddle, an immigration expert at Rice University, recently calculated that the 19.3 million legal, illegal and amnestied aliens accepted into the United States since 1970 utilized $50.8 billion worth of government services last year. They paid $20.2 billion in taxes. So the net burden on native-born taxpayers was $30.6 billion a social-welfare cost per immigrant of $1,585. Huddle projects these immigrants will cost taxpayers another $50 billion a year on average over the next 10 years.
A decline in the skills of new immigrants helps to explain these numbers. Ninety percent of current immigrants arrive from Third World countries with income and social-service levels one tenth or even one twentieth those of the United States . Their education levels relative to those of native-born Americans are steadily declining. So are their earnings. George Borjas of the University of California, San Diego, says that in 1970 the average immigrant actually earned 3 percent more than a native-born American but by 1990 was earning 16 percent less.  Each year the percentage is heading downward,  says Borjas. What s more, welfare dependency has steadily climbed and is now above that of native-boms. In 1990,7.7 percent of native Californians received
NEWSWEEK POLL
Was immigration a good thinj or a bad thing for this country in the past?
59% Good thing
31% Bad thing
Is immigration a good thing or a bad thing for this country today?
29% Good thing
60% Bad thing
Is the U.S. still a melting pot, or do immigrants today maintain their national identity more strongly?
20% Still a melting pot
66% Maintain identity
THE NEWSWEEK POLL. JULY 29-3O. 1^93
public assistance vs. 10.4 percent of new immigrants.
The welfare costs of immigration should dramatically decrease as the California and U.S. economies recover. The long-term benefits of immigrant labor and business enterprise will then be more apparent. But the age of innocence in the American immigration experience is over. The rise of the U.S. welfare state has placed a cushion under the immigrant experience and diminished the benefits of immigration to the countiy at large.
Rich Thomas with Andre w Murr in Los Angeles
Golden Venture or the young Latinos *ho scale the fence at Tijuana every night.
Bill Clinton s goal, like that of most defenders of continued large-scale immi-gration, is to drive home the distinction between legal immigration (good) and 'begal immigration (very, very bad). Hle-831 immigration is undeniably out of control. Congress tried to stop it in 1986 with a law called IRC A, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which was based on a two-pronged strategy. IRCA
offered amnesty and eventual citizenship to an estimated 3.7 million illegal aliens and, at the same time, aimed at shutting down the U.S. job market by making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented aliens. The act has failed. Despite the amnesty, the estimated number of illegals has once again risen to between 2 million and 4 million people.  For the first two years there was a significant drop . . . because folks thought there was a real law here,  says Lawrence H. Fuchs, acting chair of the
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.  But the word got out  that IRCA had no teeth, Fuchs says, and the influx resumed. Fuchs concedes that as many as 500,000 illegals now enter this country each year, though he admits it is impossible to know for sure.
The concern over illegal immigration is fueled, in part, by two conflicting fears. Illegals are vulnerable to exploitation by employers and are often victimized extorted, kidnapped, raped, tortured and sometimes killed by crimi-
211
9. UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL PLURALISM
1820-1870
The potato famine of the mid-1840s sent the Irish scurrying to the promised land, while economic depression in Germany triggered an exodus
start a family and invest in the next generation. Immigration is for the young: it takes courage, stamina and determination to pull up your roots, say goodbye to all that is dear and familiar, and hit the long and difficult trail to El Norte. Illegal immigration, with all its hazards, is for the truly daring: the Latino men who wait on Los Angeles street corners, hoping for daywork, have faced more risk than most Americans will ever know. .
You can argue, then, that t tion between legal and illega tion is nearly meaningless. I are immigrants: how they go detail. And, in fact, the area  regulation created by the 19( gether with its amendments; ments since, implicitly ac argument. The law recognize sons to award immigrant skills, especially those that match the needs of the U.S. t demonstrable reason to seek i
nals and smugglers. At the other extreme, in cities like Los Angeles, they flood the labor market and set off bitter competition with American workers and legal immigrants for jobs.
But the real problem is the subversion of U.S. law and policy, and that creates two dilemmas for the federal government. The first is what to do about the undocumented aliens who have made their way into this country since IRC A: another amnesty, obviously, would only encourage more illegal immigration. The second dilemma is worse. There is no particular reason to believe that the current influx of illegals cannot rise from 500,000 a year to 600,000 a year or even beyond. This is conjectural but not necessarily alarmist: as Fuchs says, the word is out. Looking around the world,  one can t find the natural forces that will bring down the flow,  says Harvard University sociologist Nathan Glazer.  The first impact of prosperity will be to increase it. Look at China. These people don t come from the backward areas, they come from the progressive parts. As they learn how to run a business, they say to themselves,  Why not go to the United States and do even better?   
The same applies to Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Mexico or the Philippines. The dynamic, as Fuchs says, is rooted in powerful macroeconomic forces now at work all around the globe rising birthrates and the conquest of disease, prosperity or the hope of prosperity, even modern telecommunications. (The glittery materialism of American TV shows is now being broadcast everywhere.) Much as Americans tend to regard the new immigrants as poor, uneducated and less skilled, the vast majority are surely enterprising. What they seek is opportunity the opportunity to hold two jobs that no Americans want, to buy a television set and a beat-up car, to
n
|?CALIFORNIA\ 1	735, 732
war or political persecution, to an American citizen or a This triad of goals replaced tl origin quota system of h heavily favored immigrants f
(40%)
I
CALIFORNIA
When Los Angeles erupted in rioting last year, tensions grev between the black community and immigrants; roughly 2,(XX owned businesses were among those looted or damaged by 1
IMMIGRANTS BY COUNTRY
Mexico 69% 
Philippines 4%
El Salvador 3%
Vietnam 3%
China 2% 
Othere19%'
TEXAS
Texas and Mexico share some 1.200 miles of porous border, along which the INS has apprehended about 380,000 illegal aliens so far this year.
IMMIGRANTS BY COUNTRY Mexico 80%  El Salvador 4% Vietnam 2% Others 14% -
America s Legal Immigr
The United States accepts more immigrants than allot industrialized nations combined. In fiscal 1991 the UniStates government granted 1,827,167 people legal pern
'4'

ARIZONA
Although many are just passing through in search of opportunities, Arizona s Mexican immigrants often feel at home amid the state's Hispanic heritage
IMMIGRANTS BY COUNTRY Mexico 86%
Vietnam 2%
Other* 12%---:
40,624 (2%)
212.600 (12%)
212
46. America: Still A Melting Pot?
ern and Western Europe and severely restricted immigration from everywhere jjse. it is a matter of lasting national shame that Congress, throughout the 1930s and even after World War II, re-fosed to adjust the law to admit the victims of the Holocaust. That shabby record outraged Jews and had much to do with the passage of [the] act of 1965. So did the old law s bias against Slavs, Poles, Italians, the Chinese and the Japanese.
But all three of these goals have been steadily distorted chipped at, twisted out of shape by the realities of immigration since 1965. Kinship to U.S. citizens, known as the  family-reunification policy,  has become the overwhelming
Who They Are and Where They Go residence. Seventy-nine percent of these legal immigrants, looking for everything from freedom to financial opportunity, chose the seven states below as their new homes.
ILLINOIS	NEW YORK
More Poles live in Chicago than any other city in the world except Warsaw. The Polish community continues to draw new immigrants to the Windy City.
Immigrants by country Mexico 54% Poland 9%  India 5%
Philippines 4% Former Soviet Union 4% Others 24%-------
NEW JERSEY
(3%)
ILLINOIS 73.388 (4%)
wave of
 mnagrants to Miami, but record numbers of Cubans continue to cross the 90-mile stretch on makeshift rafts.
FLORIDA
fleeing Haitians are the latest
Emigrants by country
Mexico 30% Haiti 21%  
Cuba 6%.___
Jamaica 4% Colombia 4%
Others 35%
1880-1920
Persecution and poverty throughout Europe unleashed the greatest flock of immigrants ever; no fewer than 12 million sought refiige here
favorite of visa seekers and the primary reason the pattern of immigration has shifted so hugely to the Third World. It was never intended to be: given the fact
Ellis Island dosed as a port of entry in 19S4, but New York City still lures more immigrants
.WWK
(10%)
than any other U.S. city. IMMIGRANTS BY COUNTRY Oom. Republic 12%  i
Former	J
Soviet Union 10%
Jamaica 6% i
China 5%-----1
India 5% i
Others 62%---------
J
NEW JERSEY
