RALEIGH – North Carolina has experienced one of the most rapid rates of growth in illegal immigration in the United States, according to a new report. The Tar Heel State can now claim to host about three percent of the nation’s illegal-alien population.
This is clearly news, though media accounts that dwell on the rate of growth alone will tend to exaggerate the significance of the trend (it is easy to outpace the nation in percentage growth if your starting base is relatively low).
The real question is: does North Carolina’s role as one of the nation’s magnets for illegal immigration constitute good news or bad news?
It depends on what factors you are examining, and the relative importance you place on them. On the plus side, rapid rates of illegal immigration into North Carolina suggest that attractive opportunities still exist despite recent and wrenching structural changes in the economy. Also, there is a very-real improvement going on here in the standard of living of many thousands of fellow human beings. Obviously, those who come to America from impoverished foreign climes realize significant gains (even if the official data show them increasing the “poverty” rate).
But less obviously, native North Carolinians also experience sizable gains in living standards as new enterprises start up, new entrepreneurial energies are unleashed, and labor costs moderate in competitive service industries that pass along much of the savings to consumers in the form of lower prices.
On the other hand, there are some entries on the cost side of the ledger, too. Some native-born workers face intensified competition for jobs, driving down their wages. Because immigrant families tend to be younger and have more children, their presence somewhat strengthens the finances of federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare but they worsen the finances of school systems, public health departments, and Medicaid. There are some adverse social and cultural consequences, much of them having to do with language differences and what many believe to be an inadequate commitment to rapid and effective assimilation of immigrants by public and private institutions.
A basic problem is the “illegal” part of the moniker. The illegality of current waves of immigration means that we don’t have an effective means of distinguishing honest, hard-working people looking for economic opportunity from would-be criminals, welfare dependents, and perhaps even terrorists. Because they fear arrest and deportation, illegal aliens are less likely to assert their rights, less likely to obtain insurance and other necessities of modern life, and have fewer options for bettering themselves and their children’s prospects.
The fact that illegal immigration is so widely recognized and tolerated isn’t helpful, either. Like other laws on the books but enforced only at the margins, our immigration rules breed contempt for the law and condone its evasion. Whatever your view about the optimal rate of immigration, it is critical that illegal immigration be significantly reduced.
The question, of course, is how to do that. As two able debaters will explain at a Thursday forum on immigration policy to be held by the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, you can reduce illegal immigration either by 1) getting serious about enforcing current immigration laws, including sanctions for employers who hire illegals, or 2) increasing the annual quotas for legal immigration. You can even mix the two approaches.
One thing you can’t do is ignore this complex, critically important issue.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.