Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration argues that today’s society is vastly different, and low-skilled immigrants actually harm America. “[Today’s] immigrants aren’t that different from the past but we’ve changed,” said Krikorian. “High levels of immigration on incompatible with the goals of modern society.”
And one of the goals of modern society, Krikorian argued, is the creation of even wages and a fair labor market. Immigration actually threatens the jobs of teens and blacks.
“Certain groups of American workers most directly in competition [with immigrants] are in fact seeing their employment rates decrease,” said Krikorian. “They’re being crowded out of the labor market.”
Besides threatening jobs, Krikorian argues that illegals are not assimilating into the American culture, because technology connects today’s immigrants to their old cultures.
“Conflict between the cultures is very serious. Modern technology makes transnational lives possible… for the immigrant to not lose touch with the old society,” said Krikorian.
Not losing touch with the old society means not attaining a patriotism for America, Krikorian argued. However, massive waves of immigration pose a major national security threat.
“The immigration service today is utterly incapable of screening out people we want to screen out,” said Krikorian. “However effective and efficient [they are], when they have to screen well over a million legal immigrants a year, they can’t do their job [as] effectively.”
Fred Siegal, a member of the Cooper Union, and a long-time resident of Brooklyn, New York, said he witnesses the problems created by immigrants, especially second-generation immigrants.
“We have enormous investment in immigrants that are already here,” said Siegal. “People don’t adapt to the labor market; they adapt to niches.”
Siegal said that mass immigration creates a servant class.
“America was built on high-wage labor,” said Siegal. “Despite massive immigration, wage levels have not gone down. We have to import skilled immigrants.”
At the forum, Krikorian supported importing highly skilled immigrants and refugees. He said that low-skilled immigrants are an extreme and unnecessary burden to the people of the United States.
“There’s no way to prevent large social costs, unless you’re going to have a guest worker program, [but] I don’t know how you prevent creation of children,” said Krikorian. “If children are brought here that’s an enormous cost.”
Immigrants also harm social security, Krikorian said.
“Immigrants will be a drain on social security,” said Krikorian. “It’s based on an unrealistic assumption that immigrants will pay taxes at the level of natives, and it’s obviously untrue.”
Siegal argued that low-skilled immigrants not only drain social security, they drain the American public. ”Importation of poor people puts a greater demand on public services. Crime explodes dramatically,” said Siegal. “[America] will face the loss of social mobility.”
Melinda Zosh is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
