.... Or Not

Huckabee's campaign just released a statement:

I do not support an amendment to the constitution that would prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. I have no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship.

Well, well. It looks like Huckabee's "top immigration surrogate" got carried away in that interview with the Washington Times reporter.

Huckabee wants to end birthright citizenship

According to the Washington Times:

Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced.

Birthright citizenship may, at the margins, encourage a few more illegal immigrants to come to the United States. However, the vast majority of immigration decisions are made from a more immediate economic calculation: a comparison of wages in the source and destination countries (ie, immigrants come to America because they can earn more money here).

Most European nations do not have birthright citizenship. In the past few decades, Europe has received an unprecedented number of immigrants. Large-scale immigration to Europe has provided the continent with large economic benefits, but at the cost of significant unrest. Europe has a great deal of difficulty assimilating immigrants into its societies. America, on the other hand, has traditionally been able to reap the economic benefits of immigration while assimilating immigrants. One of the reasons that we're so good at assimilating immigrants is birthright citizenship. The sons and daughters of our immigrants (including, yes, the illegal ones) become full-fledged members of American society. Ending birthright citizenship wouldn't end illegal immigration. It would simply result in the growth of a marginalized, discontented, unassimilated underclass.

First every candidate and their grandmother was proposing a guest worker system. (Ask the Germans how well that worked out for them.) Now Mike Huckabee wants to end birthright citizenship. I have an idea for the candidates: Don't propose any immigration policy "solution" that has proven to be a disaster in multiple European countries.

Spain is NOT about to be overrun by Muslims.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Take this article by Aaron Hanscom at PajamasMedia, claiming that Spain is just another European country that is "hollow at its core," about to be overrun by Muslims.

Why do I say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Well, the fact is that Hanscom is clearly not ignorant about Spain. His wife is Spanish, he has visited Spain, he has spoken to quite a few Spaniards, and he is aware of current trends in Spanish politics. However, he has mistakenly let anecdotal evidence (like a conversation with his wife's uncle) convince him that Spain is going to be overrun by Muslims. Now he is afraid to move to Europe:

Then there was the discussion I had with my other brother-in-law and his girlfriend in Madrid. They asked my wife and me if we ever considered moving to Spain. We told them that our fear about the future of Europe was a main reason we never gave it serious thought. They agreed that tensions with Muslim immigrants would only increase in the future. However, they both still clung to the idea that Spain would be safer if it continued to keep its distance from the United States.

Hanscom, please reconsider your decision! The numbers simply don't support the theory that Muslims are going to take over Spain any time soon. According to the latest municipal census by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (Jan. 1, 2007), the largest, and fastest growing, group of immigrants in Spain are Europeans from other EU countries.* This is largely due to a surge of immigration from Eastern Europe following the recent entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU. These Europeans recently overtook the second largest group of immigrants, South Americans, in size. Together, EU nationals and South Americans account for about two-thirds of all the immigrants in Spain. Let's not forget that South Americans tend to be heavily Catholic, have a high fertility rate, and speak Spanish (except for the Brazilians).

Immigrants from countries outside the EU, like Moroccans, actually make up a shrinking percentage of the immigrant population. Even if all Africans were Muslims, which they aren't, they make up less than 20% of the Spanish immigrant population.

Spain is not being overrun by Muslims. Now, I don't mean to dispute that Islamic radicalism is a problem. Look at Britain. Nor do I think Spain does a particularly good job integrating immigrants (it doesn't.) And it's true that Europe's low birthrates are causing lots of problems. But Hanscom's overheated article shows how easy it is to let a compelling narrative-- Europe is collapsing! The Muslims are coming!-- convince us of something that simply isn't true.

*The reason I am so intimately acquainted with Spanish immigration statistics is that I am a summer research fellow at Ursinus College, writing a paper on immigration in Spain and its effects on the Spanish economy.

On the Immigration Compromise

Congress has reached a compromise on a bipartisan immigration bill. From the NY Times:

Senate negotiators from both parties announced Thursday that they had reached agreement on a comprehensive immigration bill that would offer legal status to most of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants while also toughening border security.

If the bill becomes law, it would result in the biggest changes in immigration law and policy in more than 20 years. That would provide President Bush with a political lift and a tangible accomplishment for his second term. It would also be a legislative achievement for the new Democratic leaders in Congress, though they said they would seek changes in the measure.

At the heart of the bill is a significant political trade-off. Democrats got a legalization program, which they have sought for many years. Republicans got a new “merit-based system of immigration,” intended to make the United States more competitive in a global economy.

First, let me say that there are many good aspects to this bill, like the legalization program, the increased border enforcement, and the "merit-based" system (favoring English-speakers with needed job skills.) It also, however, contains a provision that is guaranteed to fail spectacularly:

The bill includes a temporary-worker program, under which 400,000 to 600,000 foreign workers could be admitted to the country each year.

Guest-worker programs have been a failure in Europe over the past thirty years. Germany is the most prominent example. The idea behind such programs, the "buffer theory" of immigration, is that workers can be imported in times of labor shortage and exported in times of labor surplus. The problem: it simply doesn't work. Guest workers put down roots in the country and work illegally, while their "guest" status discourages them from integrating socially. Representative Xavier is precisely correct when he predicts that the guest worker program will create “a permanent underclass of imported workers to fill American jobs.”

Bush has been pushing this for a long time:

As the governor of Texas, Mr. Bush had seen firsthand the challenges of border security and the lengths to which impoverished Mexicans were willing to go to enter this country illegally. What he depicted as “a rational immigration system” — one that would offer a temporary-worker program and a way for those who have set up working lives here illegally to become citizens — was a major part of his “compassionate conservative” agenda.

A guest-worker system requires immigrants to work in America and then return home, while a legalization program provides a gigantic incentive for workers to remain in the country illegally. Isn't it obvious that the two main parts of such a "rational" system are at odds?