The central premise of the letter to the editor “We should welcome immigrants with open arms,” published June 18 in the Summit Daily News, is that if we cease to import legal immigrants at a rate of 1 million per year “the economy will suffer.” I would ask letter writer Bill Reed which component of our economy he believes will suffer: capital or labor?
I completely agree that corporate profits and gross domestic product increase with immigration. But the wages of American workers will suffer as multinational corporations pit American labor against the new arrivals. The billionaire classes of the left and the right — Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and George Soros along with the Koch Brothers, Paul Singer and the Chamber of Commerce — unite to march lockstep in demanding more immigration.
Reed points to an economic catastrophe if our population shrinks. I share a different vision. Traffic on Interstates 25 and 70 becomes bearable. Rents fall. Real wages, stagnant since 1973, finally increase. The shrinking labor market absorbs the 3.5 million truckers and 1.5 million taxi and ride-share drivers slated for automation. Colorado reclaims our green space and halts suburban sprawl.
Too many economists bemoan falling Western birthrates while failing to point the finger at our usurious economy that intentionally traps young working people in a cycle of debt. We can stabilize the population with our own babies. Let’s spend our money on paying off the student loans, mortgages and credit card debt that is preventing young American couples from having kids. Instead of Small Business Administration-subsidized immigrant business loans, let’s give newlyweds a low-interest loan, enough for a mortgage down payment, with a portion forgiven for each child they have.
Don’t support international billionaires who mask their desire for a new exploitable labor force in humanitarian buzzwords. Anti-immigration environmentalists like Joe Guzzardi and I are the men speaking for the rights of the American worker.