Our real problem: too few immigrants

We could use some more people. Make that a lot more.

That’s a point worth bearing in mind in the larger immigration debate unfolding in Congress. The Trump administration’s policy of forcibly separating migrant Latin American children from their parents was a moral outrage that, had it not been belatedly terminated on Wednesday, would have taken its place in the annals of American ignominy.

We still need real immigration reform, and not simply as an act of decency toward so-called Dreamers brought to this country as children by their undocumented parents. America’s immigration crisis right now is that we don’t have enough immigrants. Consider some facts.

First: The U.S. fertility rate has fallen to a record low. In May, The New York Times reported that women ‘‘had nearly 500,000 fewer babies than in 2007, despite the fact that there were an estimated 7 percent more women in their prime childbearing years.’’ That’s a harbinger of long-term, Japanese-style economic decline.

Second: Americans are getting older. In 2010, 40 million Americans were over 65. By 2050 it will be closer to 90 million, or about 22.1 percent of the population. That won’t be as catastrophic as Japan, where 40.1 percent of people will be over 65. We’ve only avoided Japan’s demographic fate so far by resisting its longstanding anti-immigration policies.

Third: The Federal Reserve has reported labor shortages in multiple industries throughout the country. That inhibits business growth, and not just due to shortages of certain skills. The New American Economy think tank estimates that the number of farmworkers fell by 20 percent between 2002 and 2014, accounting for $3 billion a year in revenue losses.

Fourth: In hundreds of rural counties, more people are dying than are being born, according to the Department of Agriculture. The same Trumpian conservatives who claim to want to save the American heartland are guaranteeing conditions that over time will turn the heartland into a wasteland.

Fifth: The immigrant share (including the undocumented) of the U.S. population is about 13.5 percent, high by recent history but below its late 19th century peak of 14.8 percent. In Israel, the share is 22.6 percent; in Australia, 27.7 percent, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and it’s another indicator of the powerful correlation between high levels of immigration and sustained economic dynamism.

Finally, immigrants — legal or otherwise — make better citizens than nativeborn Americans. More entrepreneurial. More church-going. Less likely to have kids out of wedlock. Far less likely to commit crime. These are attributes Republicans claim to admire. Or at least they used to, before they became the party of Trump — of his nativism, demagoguery and penchant for capricious cruelty. It was nice to hear Republican legislators decry the familyseparation policy.

This isn’t a party that’s merely losing its policy bearings. It’s losing its moral sense. If anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, then opposition to immigration is the conservatism of morons. It mistakes identity for virtue, entitlement for merit, geographic place for moral value. In a nation of immigrants, it’s un-American.

I’ll be accused of wanting open borders. Subtract terrorists, criminals, violent fanatics and political extremists from the mix, and I plead guilty to wanting more-open borders. Come on in. There’s more than enough room in this broad and fruitful land of the free.