'Crisis on the border' is only a crisis in logistics. The U.S. needs immigrants

One of these days, maybe, we'll figure out what a blessing immigrants are, and we’ll build turnstiles instead of walls. For now, we are fortunate that immigrants are apparently smarter than immigration officials and definitely more tenacious, so as they continue to stream across the border they are saving us from ourselves.

The (at any given time) “crisis on the border” is a crisis only in logistics. There are thousands of willing workers that could be easily matched with much-needed work were it not for policies requiring them to sit in camps instead of resupplying critical labor shortages.

Politicians in Texas and Florida do not want to see this, because they prefer the storyline of “Mexican rapists,” a dependable stream of votes and campaign cash.

In a poll released recently, MAGA respondents said the quiet part out loud — 71% oppose immigration reform. Yes, oppose. This could be because they do not understand what immigration reform does (a distinct possibility), or it could be that they are addicted to the drama.

Immigrants stoke fears in people living in, say, Minnesota, for whom the next Latino they see in person will be the first. But immigration has always been the lifeblood of this country, and there is evidence that in the coming decades we will need it more than at any time since the Industrial Revolution.

For all the economic policy chatter — Keynesian, trickle down, deficit spending, supply side, stimulus — the financial fortunes of a nation can be described in one word: demographics. Population increase = economic growth.

It doesn’t take an economics degree to understand why. More people mean more production, more consumerism, more business, more tax revenue, more investment, more energy, more ideas.

It explains why some nations such as the U.S. are continually spiraling up, while others such as Venezuela are continually spiraling down. No one is emigrating to Haiti, and their loss is our gain.

It has always been so. In colonial times, merchants begged Western Europeans to come to these shores; railroads begged settlers to move west; mines and mills begged Eastern Europeans to come lend a hand. People are money. Retailers hung out signs that said “No Irish Need Apply” until no one else would do the work, at which point they began throwing parades for those arriving from the auld sod.

And increasingly, in developed countries around the world, what demographers call the “natural increase” in population (births over deaths) has slowed, sometimes to alarming degrees.

In 1990, virtually every American business large and small was trying to emulate Japan’s industrial success — largely attributed to its embrace of Edwards Deming's management preachings.

These principles may have helped, but so did a population surging in that country from 84 million in 1950 to 123 million in the early ’90s, when a banking crisis caused the bubble burst. What followed has been referred to as the “Lost 30 Years.” This corresponded to a leveling off and then a decline of 5 million in the Japanese population.

China today is about where Japan was in 1990 — at the top of a population trend line that is in for a steep decline. Incredible as it seems, the U.N. projects that by the end of the century, China’s 1.4 billion will be halved.

Those who fear China may do so for the wrong reasons. It is dangerous not because its economic power will overtake ours, but just the opposite; Chinese leadership may see war with Taiwan as a way to goose its economy and distract its people from acutely worsening economic conditions.

The U.S. population meanwhile has been growing at 2.3 million per year since 2010 and while the rate is expected to slow, the population will continue to increase. In 2021, the U.S. natural increase in population, births over deaths, was only 148,000. Luckily for us, immigrants picked up the slack, and for the first time, our population increase was driven more by immigration than by American births.

This may be horrifying news to a white nationalist, but that very same white nationalist will in future years depend on these immigrants to fund his social security check, to keep his taxes lower than they would be otherwise, to harvest the food that is on his table and to provide his care when he’s in the hospital being treated for diabetes or in the nursing home.

One day an immigrant may save his life by helping discover a cure for cancer.

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An increasing number of people coagulating at the southern border are Chinese, who represent close to a half million of the unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today. No Americans are waiting at the border to get into China.

So before condemning immigrants and immigration, answer this question: Which nation would you bet the future on?

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: MAGA's opposition to immigration reform is a major mistake