Telling the Migratory Truth

NO TOPIC OF CONVERSATION ignites American passions more than immigration. Like nearly every other topic, opinions divide along ideological lines,librals being more amenable to welcoming the stranger, conservatives less so, evangelical Christians less still. No matter how often we are reminded that the United States was largely founded upon the migrations of and populated by illegal fair skinned immigrants from Europe, the left - right ideological schism proceeds unabated. When Donald Trump clumsily articulated his opinion that the U.S. would benefit more from receiving immigrants from, for instance, Norway than, as he put it, "shit hole countries" in Africa, it became apparant that the chief complaint about North American immigration policies and circumstances has more to do with racism than anything else. This is no less true of Trump's generally white Christian conservative followers. All other expressed concerns about immigration into the United States can be viewed as cover stories for underlying racism. White protestant Canadians come and go across America's northern border, often illegally, at a prodigious rate, without American complaint. Correcting and dispelling these common negative assumptions about brown skinned immigration from the south is the purpose and theme of a seminal new volume on the topic, "The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers", by Wharton School of Business professor Zeke Harnandez. If the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania rings a bell, it may be because it was attended by Donald J.Trump, descrbied by two of his still living professors as "the dumbest son of a bitch I ever had in my classes". Zeke Hernandez is of an entirely different ilk. Intelligent, knowledgeable, himself the son of immigrants, his book is a model, as one reveiwer described it, of presuasive, lucid, fact based prose. He weaves together a convincing fact based, data driven narrative, oriented towards economic realities, with a compelling personal narrative, to prove that not only are all the prevalent negative sterotypes about immigrants simply incorrect, but that, quite the contray, immigration into the United States from Latin America and all other places is not only harmless to the United States, but actually greatly increases its health and well being, economically and otherwise. The prevailing negative misconceptions are; that immigrants steal jobs and reduce the wages of native local workers, that they contaminate, pollute, and forever change the culture and cultural values of the indigenous population, and that they contribute to an increase in the crime rate in America. Or, as Trump falsely stated in his announcement for the presidency, that they are "sending" us (as if by design) rapists, drug dealers, and other types of criminals, including murderers. In fact,immigrants from Latin American countries pay a disproporationate share of taxes, from the very beginning of their entry into the U.S., they create the jobs with which they are employed, thereby greatly expanding the economy and American prosperity generally, and not only do they strengthen and enrich cultural diversity, they tend to blend seamlessly into the existing cultural context, especially second and third generation immigrants. Perhaps most surprisingly of all to some, they commit crimes at an actually far lower rate than "native Americans", including their white conservative Christian detractors. Hernandez provides a litany of fact based reasons supporting the efficacy of "welcoming the stranger", but cannot by himself overcome the ignorance, bias, hypocrisy, and sheer hatred of those who falsely proclaim themselves witnesses of Christ, in particular, the above mentioned "Christian" conservative community.