GOP presidential wannabe Donald Trump has repeatedly denigrated undocumented immigrants, especially those from Mexico, as being rapists, bringing drugs and bringing crime.
If elected, he has promised to deport millions of unauthorized immigrant families and to roll back birthright citizenship for children of such immigrants who he proudly calls “anchor babies.”
About three months ago, the Washington Post fact-checked and totally debunked “Donald Trump’s false comments connecting Mexican immigrants and crime,” and gave him and his claims a whopping “Four Pinocchios.”
But that was the Washington Post, not the Washington Times, so why should we believe the story, some will say.
Well, hold on.
Would those “some” believe it if the Wall Street Journal published an editorial, supported with facts and authoritative studies, proving that these immigrants commit less crime, assimilate, learn English and are not welfare moochers?
The Journal did just that in an editorial today that starts as follows:
Sorry to break the good news to some of our conservative friends, but it turns out that most immigrants to America are assimilating as their forebears did. That’s the gist of a new 400-page report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which looks at everything from English proficiency, education levels and family structure to health, crime and employment.
In what the Journal calls “the Money sentence,” we read “Across all measurable outcomes, integration increases over time, with immigrants becoming more like the native-born with more time in the country, and with the second and third generations becoming more like other native-born Americans than their parents were.”
The Journal emphasizes:
Across all measurable outcomes. That bears repeating, especially when so many are painting immigrants who come here to work as criminals or welfare mooches. To take one example, the Donald Trump brain trust at the Center for Immigration Studies [CIS]recently found “significantly higher welfare use associated with immigrants.”
The Journal points out how CIS had to measure households “to get to the headline-grabbing result…the political spin.”
Some more highlights from the report according to the Journal:
The report finds that roughly 85% of America’s foreign-born populations speak a language other than English at home. For most of these, that language is Spanish. But that’s not the whole story. English-language proficiency, it says, may be happening even “faster now” than it did for earlier waves of mainly European immigrants. Today many people arriving already speak English, and second and third generations grow in proficiency.
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The report also finds that the “increased prevalence of immigrants is associated with lower crime rates—the opposite of what many Americans fear.” The incarceration rate for the foreign born is only a fourth of that of the native born.
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As for working, the report notes that “the least educated immigrants” are “more likely to be employed than comparably educated native-born men, indicating that they are filling an important niche in our economy.” In other words, “immigrants appear to be taking low-skilled jobs that natives are either not available or unwilling to take.”
As to “all the hollering over ‘anchor babies,’” and notwithstanding it, “the report frets that the naturalization rate among U.S. immigrants is relatively low at 50%: The U.S. rate remains ‘well below many European countries and far lower than other traditional receiving countries such as Australia and Canada.’”
The journal says, “millions who come to America to live or work don’t want to be citizens.” They come here because the jobs are here and it suggests that a guest-worker program would go a long way towards solving the problem. But, the flip side, the Journal adds is “that we should reform the system for those who do want to become citizens so that we attract immigrants based more on the skills and talent than family connections as under current law.”
As to the phobia that we are being overrun by “hordes who will turn us into Mexico,” the Wall Street Journal — the national newspaper of record and far from a “liberal rag” — concludes that “The Academies study reassures that most newcomers are doing what they’ve always done: becoming Americans.”
Read more here
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.