Gradual by Greg Berman

Author:Greg Berman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

All told, immigration policy in the United States is an example of hidden incrementalism. If you look beyond the political and culture war headlines, it is even possible to find things to feel good about.

Selection, Selection, Selection

“As I tell my students, immigration in the United States is all about selection, selection, selection,” says Kaushal.10

The most remarkable feature of the US immigration system is the broad dispersion of responsibility for who gets selected to come into the country. College admissions officers are a good example. There is a well-established system by which individuals from foreign countries can come to an American university. They have to apply and be selected to attend. For universities, foreign-born students are attractive because they often pay full tuition and thus can help subsidize domestic admittees.

Another example are employers, who have an obvious incentive to sponsor individuals who will be a good fit for their companies. Recruiting highly skilled software engineers has been crucial to the success of Silicon Valley, for example. Foreign-born citizens who are legal residents of the United States also sponsor family members and support them when they arrive.

Perhaps equally important, many immigrants control their own destiny. This is particularly true for undocumented workers, who bear enormous expense and risk to come into the country. Individuals willing to make the arduous trip to the United States typically do so because they believe there’s going to be a job when they get there; they want to work and can make much more money here than in their home country. There is a fundamental link between immigration and the health of the economy: immigration flows pick up when the economy is strong and decline when it is not.

In sum, the United States continuously attracts talented people legally from across the globe. This is supplemented by the technically-illegal-but-mostly-tolerated process of bringing lower-skilled workers into the country at times when they are most needed. This is a description of a system that would likely not please anyone in the abstract, but it does have some important practical benefits, including for immigrants themselves who are seeking a better life.

The refugee crisis at the border understandably captures the public’s attention and likely defines the mental image that many people have of the typical immigrant. But this ignores the usual way in which foreign-born people come to this country. “The stereotype of the illiterate, poor and rural migrant reaching the borders of affluent countries has to be abandoned,” writes Francesco Castelli, a professor at the University of Brescia in Italy. “The poorest people simply do not have the means to escape war and poverty and remain trapped in their country or in the neighboring one.”11

Foreign-born individuals in the United States help fuel our economy. They also help keep the overall US life expectancy from plunging to the level of poorer and more troubled countries like Ecuador and Tunisia. That is the conclusion of a study published in September 2021 by lead author Arun Hendi, an assistant professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

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