Image by Tomas Castelazo (License CC BY-SA 3.0)
The American Dream is dying. People on the left and right agree on that. Economic statistics prove that these concerns are frighteningly real. If we want to have any hope of bringing the dream back, we have to understand what’s killing it. Despite what many politicians and talk radio hosts claim, it isn’t being strangled by immigrants. The people with the power to kill the American Dream are the people who have power.
There definitely are people living in America that are responsible for your economic problems and the collapse of the middle class. They’ve suppressed your wages, crushed labor power, dodged the taxes they should have paid, and benefited from countless billions in welfare. Corporate welfare. There is no immensely powerful lobby of undocumented immigrants that bought out your government to keep you down for their own economic benefit.
Your government has absolutely been bought out to enact policies against your economic interests. But it wasn’t undocumented immigrants, working their asses off to build a life, who were responsible. It turns out it was a cabal of billionaires, collectively pumping billions of dollars into the political system. Several of those billionaires are now (or soon will be) cabinet members for the Executive Branch of the US government. Instead of ‘draining the swamp,’ actual, experienced public servants have been replaced with folks devoted to looting the country. Meanwhile, the administration blames immigrants for all of our problems.
“There are empirical studies about rates of crime among immigrants, undocumented and otherwise. It turns out, according to literally every peer reviewed study, the crime rate of people born in America is substantially higher.”
Trump launched his campaign by saying the Mexican undocumented immigrants were rapists and thieves. Mexico wasn’t sending their best. First off, Mexico isn’t ‘sending’ anyone, and if you think they are, I’m selling a line of tinfoil hats to block mind control rays.
There are empirical studies about rates of crime among immigrants, undocumented and otherwise. It turns out, according to literally every peer reviewed study, the crime rate of people born in America is substantially higher. One study cited by CBS News – “According to analysis of the 2010 census and the American Communities Survey done by the non-profit American Immigration Council, immigrants to the United States are significantly less likely than native-born citizens to be incarcerated. The authors found that 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born.”
Studies show an even lower crime rate for the undocumented, who have additional reasons to stay out of trouble. If you want to focus on crime rates to make America safer, it would make more sense to deport everyone born here and leave the first-generation immigrants. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that these are people motivated and disciplined enough to take an enormous risk and endure real hardship to improve their circumstances. These people uprooted themselves to build a better life for themselves and their families- just like earlier American immigrants. They didn’t make that difficult trip, planning to throw away their shot.
But there is that persistent argument – they’re competition to the people born in America. Yes, there is some downward pressure on wages from their participation in the labor pool. However, that’s more than balanced out by increases in demand from the consumer market. And when it comes to the budget, they’re a net plus.
They aren’t actually eligible for the overwhelming majority of government programs, and most actually pay into things like Social Security that they won’t ever benefit from. They also pay income tax without being eligible for refunds. When it comes to health care and education, we do enough to keep them alive and literate. Most of them work well over standard full time hours. If hospital care and public schooling is too much to ask in response for that, we’re truly screwed.
But they’re competing against people born here!
And yet the unemployment rate is historically low. Anything around or under 5% is considered ‘full employment,’ accounting for the churn of businesses adapting to changing conditions and employees seeking better opportunities. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people hurting right now. But the undocumented aren’t getting the good, solidly middle class jobs, because they can’t. There are no undocumented CPAs, lawyers, and so on, because those positions absolutely require valid paperwork, certification, and post-secondary education.
Most undocumented immigrants are doing jobs where there aren’t nearly enough American applicants. Given that our unemployment rate is at a historic low, deporting them won’t lead to a labor renaissance, it will just hamstring our economy.
During the last major border crackdown, under George W. Bush, billions of dollars in crops ended up rotting in the fields because there wasn’t a labor force willing to harvest them. It was, in reality, a catastrophic event for the agriculture industry. If anyone was wondering why the GOP suddenly got on board with comprehensive immigration reform, that was less about the politics and more about the economics.
Leaving aside the moral horror of rounding up 11 million people, including those brought to America as infants who have known no other home- there is the simple fact that our unemployment rate is at levels economists consider to be just about right. 5% isn’t called ‘full employment’ because everyone has a job. It’s because much less than that actually harms the economy.
If you deport 11 million people, who are virtually all either 1) employed or 2) the minor children of employed people, when a lot of the children are US born citizens, you’re going to wreck the economy. Badly. You’re also going to wreck our communities, and punish a lot of innocent people. And you’ll gain NOTHING! In fact, you’ll pay – heavily.
America might get a little whiter, so, for the people who consider that their top priority, regardless of the cost, I guess it’s a win. But not for the rest of us- The 95% on the left and right who aren’t focused on Making America White Again, including the great majority of Trump voters.
If you snapped your fingers and instantly deported every undocumented American, a currently growing American economy would plunge into a depression overnight. Obviously, your produce, meat, and hotel rooms would get much more expensive. The businesses that provide them would also be crippled. But beyond that, countless people born in America would lose their jobs. That’s what happens when the country shoots itself in both feet with a double-barreled shotgun. On the bright side, there would be a lot of job openings in migrant labor.
And yet, there are people responsible for a very real collapse in American opportunity. I wonder who it is? On a totally unrelated note, the rich and corporations are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, reaping the increases in GDP and productivity, while capturing our government. But a lot of folks are willing to ignore that as long as there are immigrants to blame.
Even if you don’t give a single damn about innocent kids raised in America with a work ethic and sense of responsibility surpassing most native-born, you should still reject this. Pursue your self interest, but do it well. Otherwise, you’re like a bull, repeatedly wounded and blinded by rage, who chases the red cape instead of the matador. Yes, you really are bleeding. But instead of confronting the real problem, you’re charging after an innocent target because its bright color draws your attention, while the person with the sharp weapons cutting into you dances away, immune to your aggression. That dude is sapping your strength, distracting you, so he can feast on you.
The only bulls that ever ‘won’ a bullfight were the ones that looked past the brightly colored cloth placed in front of them and figured out who was orchestrating their misery. If you’re looking to blame someone for why you’re working harder than ever and not getting ahead, don’t look down- Look up.
Travis Hepburn was a Top 25-ranked debater on a National Championship-winning team at Creighton University. He currently manages an Assisted Living Facility for the mentally ill. Politics and policy have remained an unhealthy fixation for him for over 20 years.
Something it would be worthwhile to remember is the context of the American Dream, where the original notion came from and what it has become –
Historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book Epic of America:
But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
And later he wrote:
The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.
The American Dream is something that not only applies to individuals but to the country as a whole. If we cannot aspire to it as a people we will never attain it as individuals.
Well said. Just as damaging as the collapse of the middle class, and deeply tied to that, is the collapse of the meritocracy. It isn’t dead, not entirely. But just like the middle class, it’s severely wounded. America became great, in part, because we rejected an inherited aristocracy. Now, we’ve elected a mediocre billionaire heir to immense wealth who is appointing others who inherited billions, who advocate terrible policies that enrich the rich.
One example – An heiress who never attended public schools, who sent none of her family to public schools, who plagiarized her answers to senate questions, is in line to run our public schools. Despite the failures of her reforms. Only because she inherited enough money to buy her appointment. And she isn’t even the worst…
It’s a tough game to try and figure out which of Trump’s appointments are the worst. It’s a shell game in which one of the shells has ebola, another shell has nuclear winter and the third has civil war. Not a pea to be found unless you ask the Russians.
Has America ever been close to a meritocracy? To quote Hughes:
We’ve always had a racial aristocracy and that has often been part of the (white) American dream, be it having black servants or a Latino gardener. The suburbs are unimaginable without white flight. Our economics, which is tied closely to the American dream, can’t be explained separate from our racism.
In other words, I’m not sure Trump voters didn’t vote to preserve their American dream. Nor am I certain Trump’s policies wouldn’t benefit whites economically. For instance, I’m from upstate New York where prisons with mostly minority inmates bring a lot of jobs to mostly white towns. Many of Trump’s policies would similarly keep minorities in their place while benefiting whites.
We may fear growing economic inequality. I suspect many Trump voters fear an increasing equality–economic and otherwise.
Very well put! I always look forward to reading your take on things. Thanks for all the writing that you do, this blog included.
Thanks so much for the thanks! I appreciate the appreciation.
Great article. The bullfight metaphor is inspired.