Americans are on the brink of falling victim to a dangerous myth of our own making

An increasing number of Americans are becoming concerned about immigration.  As am I. And I am an immigrant. But my concern isn’t tied to the specter of hordes of criminals crossing our borders, as Donald Trump and many of his supporters insist, or to immigrants causing the cost of urban housing to soar, or to low-skilled or unskilled workers driving down wages. 

I’m worried instead that our changing attitudes about immigration, our rhetoric and our behavior, will ultimately curtail immigration policy to the point where we cause serious damage to our nation. In a fast-developing, fast-urbanizing world in which a fierce global battle for labor and talent is well underway, America is already underperforming. We have one thing going for us, though: robust immigration rates. And we’re about to give it up.

Post 9/11, America reframed the debate about immigration to be one of national security and borders, rather than economic imperatives, growth or national prosperity.

In terms of sheer numbers, America has more people living in it who weren’t born in the country than any other nation in the world, by a lot. The Pew Research Center estimates that there were 50.6 million people who are not native-born in the United States in 2020. That’s more than the immigrant populations of the next four largest nations combined. But, as a percentage of its population, America now ranks 25th among nations with populations greater than 1 million; roughly 1 in 7 of America’s residents are foreign-born. For the world’s pre-eminent “nation of immigrants,” that number isn’t all that high. As many as 1 in 5 of Canada’s residents are foreign-born, and in Australia foreign-born residents make up almost 30% percent of the population.  

What is behind this shift? Post 9/11, America reframed the debate about immigration to be one of national security and borders, rather than economic imperatives, growth or national prosperity. It’s telling that unlike most other countries, in the U.S., immigration now falls under the Department of Homeland Security, rather than economic development, or the Commerce Department or under a department called, say, “Immigration.”  

Nearly a quarter century later, this reframing has left us with an enduring misunderstanding about what immigrants contribute to this country. Without reversing this narrative, and a strong national strategy for maintaining — and likely increasing — high immigration numbers, America could soon start to suffer irreparable economic harm.  

The myth that immigrants, documented or otherwise, drive wages lower seems to be petering out. Much of the mythology around this stemmed from a largely debunked 2015 Harvard study written by George Borjas called “The Wage Impact of the Marielitos,” which argued that Cuban refugees who formed the 1980 Mariel boatlift caused a large drop in wages for native-born workers in Miami. This proved false. And on a much larger scale, our national unemployment rate of under 4%, with wages rising faster than inflation, lays waste to the idea that an influx of workers hurts the economy in general, or wages in particular. 

And then there is the spreading notion, racist-but-effective, of “migrant crime.” While crime is of course committed by every demographic group, Americans who are not native-born commit less of it than native-born Americans, perhaps in some part because they have a unique disincentive — deportation — to do so. In fact, since the 1960s, immigrant men are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S. The data proves that rampant migrant crime is a feeling, not a fact.

When we mainstream these counterfactual notions, we distance ourselves from meeting the long-term imperative of maintaining America’s position as the world’s top destination for immigrants. Our continued economic success hinges on growing our levels of immigration. We simply can’t afford to mess this up.  

As a percentage of its population, American immigration numbers lag behind competitor nations, like my home country of Canada, which have long understood the benefits of strong immigration and have taken great pains to make themselves attractive destinations for immigrants (as Canada did for my parents, who emigrated from Kenya). We want — we need — our working-age population to grow; more labor means a better, stronger economy. In the face of an imminent drop in those numbers as the baby boom generation retires, immigrants are more critical than ever. Immigrants will fill in this worker gap. 

Prioritizing immigration will keep our population from stagnating and possibly shrinking. More than three-quarters of immigrants in the U.S., according to Pew Research, live and work in this country as a result of following normal immigration channels. Given new U.S. Census Bureau data, Brookings estimates that high immigration will allow us to counter an aging populace and help build our working-age population. 

With each slip of the tongue when referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals,” we are not simply perpetuating a myth among Americans but, perhaps more dangerously, we are solidifying a reputation as a country that is unwelcoming to the very migrants we so desperately need.

Immigrants also help to alleviate critical worker shortages in a wide range of American industries, filling in the gaps by doing jobs that native-born workers either don’t want to do, or aren’t educated to do. Foreign-born workers comprise 22% of all workers in the U.S. food supply chain, 38% of home health aides, 29% of doctors, 23% of pharmacists and 15.2% of nurses. In STEM fields, more than one-fifth of workers are foreign born, and foreign-born migrants are responsible for more than 75% of patents from the top 10 patent-producing U.S. universities. Those patents lead to startups. Those startups lead to jobs. The workers in those jobs pay taxes and consume, and often launch startups of their own.  

The data is clear. In the words of Alexander Hamilton — (or at least the version of him written into the eponymous play by Lin Manuel Miranda), — immigrants get the job done.  

With each passing day, each slip of the tongue when referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals,” we are not simply perpetuating a myth among Americans but, perhaps more dangerously, we are solidifying a reputation as a country that is unwelcoming to the very migrants we so desperately need. In doing so, we are putting our future in peril.

I’m not the only immigrant in my family. Every member of my family for four generations and over the last 125 years has ended up becoming an immigrant, from India, to South Africa and Mozambique, to Kenya, to Canada and the United Kingdom and, in my case, to America. We know what it’s like to look for and, ultimately, to find a home. And we will fight to make that home a better place for our children and for those who come after us.

Immigrants are not our problem in America — yet. Let’s make sure we don’t get there.

This is an adapted excerpt from Ali Velshi’s newest book, “Small Acts of Courage.”

Ali Velshi

Ali Velshi is the host of “Velshi,” which airs Saturdays and Sundays on MSNBC. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting for “How the Wheels Came Off,” a special on the near collapse of the American auto industry. His work on disabled workers and Chicago’s red-light camera scandal in 2016 earned him two News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations, adding to a nomination in 2010 for his terrorism coverage.