The recent radio and TV advertisements in Kansas attacking immigration in the United States were short on facts and long on tactics that misled Kansans about the impact legal immigrants have on the United States. The facts reveal that immigrants make important contributions to the economic and social fabric of our nation, and, in so doing, strengthen it.
Numerous scholarly studies have concluded in recent years that legal immigration helps our nation rather than hurts it, and that immigrants integrate into the United States without much difficulty.
First, legal immigration is a plus for our nation economically. A 1998 study by the Libertarian group the Cato Institute, for example, reported that in 1997 immigrant households paid an estimated $133 billion in direct taxes to federal, state and local governments. A study that same year by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences found that immigrants raise the incomes of U.S.-born workers by at least $10 billion a year. Additionally, immigrants contribute significantly to the Social Security system: The Cato study concluded that, given current trends, immigrants will contribute a net benefit (taxes paid over benefits received) of $500 billion to the Social Security system over the next 25 years.
Secondly, immigrants also are quick to assimilate into American society. A recent report authored by Gregory Rodriguez of Pepperdine University and published by the National Immigration Forum stated that within 10 years of arrival, more than three- quarters of immigrants speak English with high proficiency. Second- and third-generation immigrants speak English well, very well or exclusively. The study also found that immigrants eventually become homeowners: Within 20 years of arrival, more than 6 out of 10 owned their own homes in 1990.
These studies confirm what many of us already know: Immigrants are, by and large, hardworking and law-abiding persons who contribute positively to their communities. Many simply desire what most Americans take for granted: an opportunity to work and support their children in an environment free of persecution and danger. Legal immigrants long to be accepted on the basis of their contributions and not judged upon their race, ethnicity or country of origin.
These anti-immigrant advertisements distorted the truth and left an impression that our nation's social ills can be attributed primarily to immigrants. In reality, we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants, many of whom built this nation into the world's lone superpower. We must not forget that basic fact.
Mike Farmer is executive director of the Kansas Catholic Conference. He was formerly a Kansas House representative from Wichita.
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