Speech #980145830

Mr. President. the historic generosity of the American people is well known. especially with regard to immigration policy. Once a Nation of the open frontier. the United States embraced the worlds "tired and poor." irrespective of the number of people who wished to come here. We still treasure pluralism. but now our generosity may lead to a situation where both immigrants and American citizens suffer. Other nations have recognized that the era of mass migration is at an end. that human and population problems are just too large for mass migration to be a lasting solution: The frontier is closed. The United States has one of the fastest growing populations of the worlds industrial nations. Our Nation currently contains 234 million people. modest estimates show that figure approaching 275 million by the year 2000. and 300 million by the year 2030. Such population growth will exert immediate pressures on our resources. energy. water. environment. and economy. Yet despite these trends. the United States admits more legal immigrants for permanent residence every year than the rest of the world combined. Further. while most countries limit. even discourage immigration. the United States has yet to take firm measures to control the immigration it allows. Every other major country in the world has an immigration policy that they enforce. and a ceiling on the number of people who can enter. Some of these major nations have recently tightened their controls. For example. in 1983. Canada reacted to worsening economic conditions by reducing the number of immigrant workers it admitted. As a Nation. we must ask ourselves: Is it not time that the United States put a ceiling on legal immigration? Asking this question forces us to ask: What are the central assumptions upon which United States immigration policy has traditionally been grounded? In a 1980 for Foreign Affairs. Michael Teitlebaum posed the following questions: Is the concept of the nationstate legitimate? Is it legitimate for there to be a United States. for this country to have citizens. and to define all other people in the world as noncitizens? My answer to these questions is plain. I believe that nationstates are legitimate. that the United States has a right to exist. And. as a sovereign Nation. the United States has a moral right and an obligation to its own citizens to set a ceiling on the number of people who are allowed to migrate here. Recognizing that the United States is a sovereign Nation. which can control its borders. leads us to the next question. namely. for whose good do we have immigration? It is clear that immigration is not the panacea that many source nations seek. Even the United States is not large enough to solve the Third Worlds socioeconomic problems. many of which are generated by overpopulation. People are being produced at a much faster rate than we can take them. For example. if we raised our level of legal immigration to five times the ceiling in the law. and took only immigrants from Mexico to fill the whole quota. we would still be taking only half of Mexicos increase in population every year. Further. contrary to what we think less developed nations do not believe that the immigration of their people to the United States is totally beneficial to them. Rather. they see migration to the United States as a skimming off their best educated people. their skilled workers. and their most ambitious and hardest working laborers. Like the export of their raw materials. the "brain drain" is perceived as yet another form of Western exploitation of the Third World. I recently saw a cartoon from the Indian Express of New Delhi and Bombay. showing the Statue of Liberty and this inscription: Giver me your scientists. your doctors. your teachers. but keep your other exports to yourselves. We must stop pretending to ourselves that mass migration to the United States is viewed by the source countries as a humanistic gesture. or even as a useful "safety valve." As for the immigrants themselves. no one would deny that most immigrants to the United States have benefited. Indeed. part of the justification for being a Nation of immigrants is that it is beneficial for the migrants. I must argue however. that the good of the migrants is not the major reason for immigration. The good of the migrants is not the measure by which we should frame our limits on immigration. nor is it the absolute measure of the success of an immigration policy. The good of the United States and its people must come first. The good of the United States is the measure by which we must frame limits on immigration. This is not a new or startling proposition. nor should it be. Under the current preference system. immigration is not for the benefit of the individual immigrant. The preference system does not function on the "demand" of prospective immigrants. Rather. immigrants are accepted into the United States as a result of petitions filed by their relatives in the United States or by businesses that want them as employees. In the days of the open frontier. we could give away free land to immigrants. Our grandparents could come to America without limit. without any ceiling on numbers. The interests of the American people and the prospective immigrants coincided. That was wonderful: It was a good time in our history. However. we cannot continue to be controlled by the past because we can no longer provide that way of life. I do not believe we should feel guilty about the end of unlimited immigration anymore than we feel guilty about the end of the land grants. In response to the increasing demands being made by immigrants. and because of our limited national resources. we must have a fair yet strong ceiling on legal immigration to the United States.