1/This article highlights two issues that I've definitely struggled with as an advocate for immigration: newrepublic.com/article/147087…
2/First: Does highlighting the contributions of exceptional or high-skilled immigrants detract from the contributions of blue-collar immigrants who don't cure diseases or win Olympic medals?
3/Ideally it should not. We should value the contributions of hard-working everyday people. Both native-born and immigrant.
4/However, there's strong evidence that selective immigration - choosing immigrants based on education levels and other skills - is economically advantageous to our country.
5/Skilled immigrants are much bigger net contributors to government budgets, for example. bloomberg.com/view/articles/… 
6/There's also evidence that skilled immgration raises the wages of native workers. www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsi… 
7/Selective immigration carries obvious economic benefits, but advocating for it can seem to devalue the contributions of working-class immigrants - or working-class people in general.
This has always been a difficult needle for me to thread.
This has always been a difficult needle for me to thread.
8/The second difficult issue is whether to use the *children* of immigrants as evidence of the value of immigration.
9/Lots of people do this. A lot of us love telling stories about people whose parents came from a foreign country to give their kids a better life, and whose children then succeeded in achieving that better life. It's a classic American fairytale.
10/I myself have often highlighted the success of groups statistically likely to be descended from recent immigrants - Africans, Asians, & Middle-Easterners - as evidence in favor of immigration.
1. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
2. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
3. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
1. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
2. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
3. bloomberg.com/view/articles/…
11/But one problem with doing this is that it can make native-born Americans feel "othered" - excluded from the American mainstream - because of their race.
And that's very bad.
And that's very bad.
12/Asian-Americans in particular suffer from the stereotype of being "perpetual foreigners".
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
13/Imagine constantly being asked "Where are you from?", and having people not believe that you're from Tennessee, or Wisconsin, or Texas, but rather some foreign country.
planamag.com/so-where-are-y…
planamag.com/so-where-are-y…
14/Trump famously pulled this bullshit: vox.com/world/2018/1/1…
15/When making a rational, policy-proposal-type case for immigration, it makes sense to show that immigrants' descendants do well. But that should never be done in a way that makes descendants of immigrants feel like outsiders.
So this, too, is a difficult needle to thread.
So this, too, is a difficult needle to thread.
16/I see America's current political and social conflict - what I call the Cold Civil War - mainly as a conflict over identity. Over who gets to feel like a "real American", and who does not.
17/In order to win that struggle - to build a common, shared, consensus American identity that is not contingent on race - we have to defeat Trump and Miller and their plans for racial engineering.
If we write racism into law, we lose.
If we write racism into law, we lose.
18/But immigration, for all its economic benefits, won't win the battle for a polyracial American identity.
To win that battle, we need more. We need to create a fully inclusive culture that doesn't "other" people of any race or background.
Never forget that.
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To win that battle, we need more. We need to create a fully inclusive culture that doesn't "other" people of any race or background.
Never forget that.
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