Thank the immigrants among us for a good U.S. economy

“In October of (1717), a Philadelphia Quaker named Jonathan Dickinson complained that the streets of his city were teeming with ‘a swarm of people… strangers to our Laws and Customs, and even to our language.’ These new immigrants dressed in outlandish ways. The men were tall and lean, with hard, weather-beaten faces. They wore felt hats, loose sackcloth shirts closebelted at the waist, baggy trousers, thick yarn stockings and wooden shoes ‘shod like a horse’s feet with iron.’ The young women startled Quaker Philadelphia by the sensuous appearance of their full bodices, tight waists, bare legs and skirts as scandalously short as an English undershift. The older women came ashore in long dresses of a curious cut.”

— David Hackett Fischer, “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways In America”

Jonathan Dickinson was staring down his Quaker nose at Scots-Irish immigrants, an early contingent of more than a quarter-million people who would arrive at our shores in waves through much of the 18th century. (Many would find their way into Appalachia and eventually to Texas.)

Farmers, laborers, craftsmen and smallbusiness people for the most part, they came from the war-ravaged borderlands of Great Britain, and as Fischer notes, they faced intense prejudice from ethnic groups that arrived earlier. He quotes one writer who described them as “the scum of two nations.” An outspoken Anglican clergyman called them “the scum of the universe.”

Through the centuries, this nation of immigrants, this nation that from the beginning has relied on the energy, hard work and ingenuity of its newcomers, has struggled with the fact that the “golden door” remains open, inexplicably, long after we and our own folk are safely inside. The culmination of our fear and apprehension was the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 barring all future Asian immigration and setting racebased quotas for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. ( Johnson-Reed was the law for more than four decades.)

A hundred years later, the same nativist fears and xenophobic inclinations are not only roiling the nation but also threatening to undercut a growing economy. Now that Donald Trump has laid bare his ambitious plans for border security and immigration policy, it’s time to review basic facts about immigrants among us, documented and otherwise, and their effect on the economy.

Climbing out of the pandemic aberration the past couple of years, many Americans feel bad about the economy and too many experience real hardship, but we’ve avoided a recession, added hundreds of thousands of jobs month after month and are gradually getting a handle on inflation. The share of native workers between 25 and 54 years old is somewhat higher than pre-pandemic employment levels. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Stasticis, however, all of the net job growth since the pandemic — all of it — is the result of foreign-born workers who’ve made their way back into the economy after the Trump administration threw sand into the already troubled gears of the immigration system.

“We don’t set immigration policy. We don’t comment on it,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley in February. “I will say, over time, though, the U.S. economy has benefited from immigration.”

As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell noted recently, immigrants are willing to take jobs that nativeborn Americans simply won’t do. We see it all around us: Immigrants are the ones taking care of the elderly, harvesting fruits and vegetables, busing restaurant tables, building houses, cleaning hotel rooms. (Remember those six workers who died while filling potholes on the night that Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge came down? They were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.) Immigrants also are filling high-tech positions that would otherwise go unfilled, because not enough of us have the necessary skills.

Here’s another immigrant fact we see with our own eyes: Immigrants start new businesses, thereby creating jobs, at a much higher rate than native-born Americans do. That food truck parked in an inner city gas station parking lot or a little Tex-Mex eatery in a dusty Texas town are obvious examples, but they’re not the only ones. According to a 2022 study by the National Foundation for American Policy, 55% of U.S. startup companies valued at more than $1 billion were founded by immigrants.

Ruth Ellen Wasem, an immigration expert formerly with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin, points out in a 2020 report that immigration has added “trillions to the gross domestic product each year.” But do immigrants displace native workers? The research shows they’re “complementary,” not competitors, leading to net positive job creation, though the earning power of some native workers is “stunted.”

So let’s just wipe out those advantages to our nation, shall we? That’s effectively what Trump proposes to do if he wins a second term in the White House.

In a recent Time magazine cover story — a story that set off warning signals on numerous fronts — the former president vows he’ll round up every suspected undocumented man, woman and child in this country, an estimated 11 million people.

He would rely on local law enforcement and the National Guard to track them down and then — if he follows the advice of former aide Stephen Miller, the anti-immigration zealot — relocate them to massive internment camps along the border until they can be deported. (Would any person in this country with brown skin or an accent, whatever their immigration status, feel safe if Trump is reelected?)

Despite the fear-driven prejudices that Trump cynically stokes, towns and states around the country are recognizing the vitality of newcomers and are working to accommodate their presence.

Utica, N.Y., for example, old and tired and emptying out for decades, is one of several Rust Belt cities that have developed strategies not only to attract immigrants but also to help them adapt to their new communities. As Susan Hartman writes in her recent book “City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town,” the effort has been successful. The newcomers, about a quarter of the city’s population of 60,000, “have been an economic engine for the city,” Hartman writes, “starting small businesses, renovating down-atthe-heels houses, opening churches and other places of worship — and injecting a sense of vitality to its streets.”

Closer to home, Dallas is the first city in Texas to earn the Certified Welcoming status awarded by a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization called Welcoming America. Wasem, the former LBJ School professor, led a recent study of the Dallas effort and found, as she summarizes in The Hill, “immigrants boosted all Dallas residents.”

That hasn’t stopped Gov. Greg Abbott from hosting preening Republican governors from other states eager to take selfies at the border and denounce the Biden administration’s handling of immigration. We agree with the governors in this respect: Americans should not have to tolerate an unremitting crisis at the border or a disastrously organized, poorly managed immigration system or a Congress that plays politics year after year with that broken system. Local jurisdictions, especially those close to the border, should be compensated. for the extra burden they bear. Like cities and states around the country, the United States of America should be able to welcome newcomers fairly and efficiently, with an eye to border security. Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that has done nothing to fix the border, is certainly not our way, but we have to admit that the golden door is tarnished and broken.

The nation desperately needs people of good will to tackle the problem like one Republican elected official many of us remember. On Jan. 19, 1989, he spoke these words about immigration: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our strength from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams, we create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to the land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to new frontiers. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

They called him “Dutch,” but his ancestry was Irish on his father’s side, Scottish (and English) on his mother’s, not unlike those immigrants who offended a proper Quaker in the City of Brotherly Love 271 years earlier. Ronald Reagan’s paean to our immigrant past — and future — was his final speech as president of the United States.

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