My children’s ancestors came to the New World over a period of almost 300 years, the first that I know of for certain arriving on the Mayflower in 1620 and the last being Poles arriving from the border region between Russia and Poland around 1915. In between their ancestors were primarily English, Dutch, and German Protestants, but a fair proportion were German Catholics coming right after the Civil War.
The successive waves of immigrants that have come to the New World have faced some sort of prejudice and discrimination, either more or less, either in the New World or in the Old World. This prejudice and discrimination has been based on religion, ethnicity, language, skin color, gender, political affiliations, economic status, and a whole host of other distinctions.
As one minor example from my own family history, many of my German and Dutch Protestant ncestors lived in an area called German Valley in New Jersey in the late 1700’s, early 1800’s. During the height of anti-German sentiment during World War I, around 200 hundred years after it’s founding, German Valley’s name was changed to Long Valley.
My German Catholic ancestors during the early 1900’s had their loyalty to our country questioned not only because of their German ethnicity but also because of their Roman Catholic faith, the accusation being that their loyalty was to the Pope in Rome, not their adopted homeland. My wife’s Polish Catholic ancestors, along with other Slavic peoples, likely faced similar and unique prejudices of their own.
Questioning the loyalty and motivations of recent immigrants is a recurring theme in the New World. In time though, over the course of generations, these successive waves of immigrants have seen their ties to their various motherlands weaken and their ties to their new homes strengthened. Some families and individuals have maintained ties to their motherland longer than others, but the undeniable trend for all new peoples immigrating to the United States is to become Americanized, for better and for worse.
We are a nation of immigrants, and despite protestations to the contrary, I believe that fact, along with our great natural bounty, is a source of our greatest strength. The great diversity of peoples populating this nation, from every corner of the world, from virtually every cultural, religious, and ethnic background, has added to our strength, not weakened it.
The United States is also a nation that not only can afford more immigrants, but arguably needs more immigrants. The world is seeing a drastic decline in birth rates, and the United States is as well. The rate in the United States in 2020 was a record low 1.6 births per woman in her lifetime, appreciably below the 2.1 births per woman needed for the population to remain steady. Without immigration or a upward change in the birth rate, this greatest of nations will inevitably decline in population.
And we can accommodate more immigration. One measure of a country’s ability to feed itself is arable hectares per capita. Arable land is land used or suitable for growing crops. A hectare is 100 acres. In simplistic terms, arable hectares per capita is a rough measure of how much land is available to grow food to feed everyone in a country. All things being equal, the more arable land per capita the more secure the food supply.
The arable acres per capita in the United States in 2011 was .513, 14th highest in the world. By comparison, the arable acres per capita in the other largest economies in the world are as follows. China, the number 2 largest economy, has .083 hectares of arable land per capita, ranked 140th in the world. The number 3 largest economy, Japan, had .033, ranked 170th. The European countries of Germany (4), the United Kingdom (6), France (7) and Italy (8), have .145 (97th), .097 (128th), .281 (24th) and .112 (116th), respectively. India, the number 5 largest economy with .129 acres ranked 105. Only Brazil, the 9th largest economy, approaches the United States with .365 hectares, ranked 30th. The number 10 economy, Canada, beats all the largest economies with 1.25 hectares per capita, ranked 3rd in the world.
The point of the matter is that the United States can afford a greater influx of people and can feed and support those people. As the other developed countries are shrinking, the potential benefits to the United States from immigration outweighs the potential risks.
I personally don’t agree with what I see as the two main proponents of immigration, Democratic politicians seeking to import voters and businesses seeking to import workers to undercut the wages of existing workers. Those who believe that immigrants will inevitably vote Democratic over time ignore our history. The whole nation has made dramatic shifts from election to election and different loyal constituencies of both parties have shifted over time as their loyalties have gone unrewarded. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1936 Presidential election with 61% of the vote and Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won with 57% a generation later, in 1956, all after President Roosevelt was credited with ending the Great Depression and “winning” World War II.
An interesting example of these dramatic shifts in voting patterns is the change in a county near where I live, Ashtabula County in the northeast corner of Ohio. In 2008 and 2012, Ashtabula County, which is 82% white, voted 55% for Democrat Barrack Obama. In 2016, the county went for Republican Donald Trump with 57% of the vote, and in 2020 with 61%. The demographics hadn’t change dramatically, but the voting patterns had.
I’m more sympathetic to those who are critical of importing workers to drive down wages, but the question really is, in my mind, whether we want to import workers or export jobs. Those are the two choices we realistically have. Factories go were the workers are. In the long run creating or maintaining as much of the productive capacity as possible in the United States by immigration benefits all of us.
In an era of rapidly declining birth rates, the desire to maintain some sort of demographic status quo in the United States, and many other developed countries, is simply not possible. Welcoming more peoples into our great nation, people with the drive and ability to make it even greater, will only make us more secure in the future, not less secure.