IMMIGRATION CAUSES POVERTY

Robert Samuelson makes the case, statistically, that immigration is the main cause of the increase in poverty in the past few years. This is 1) good because the analysis is surely right and dispels Kerry's bogus middle-class declinism, but 2) bad because it seems that, as with Lou Dobbs' protectionism on CNN, an iniquitous position is being injected into the mainstream by old big media. Here's the claim:

Compared with 1990, there were actually 700,000 fewer non-Hispanic whites in poverty last year. Among blacks, the drop since 1990 is between 700,000 and 1 million, and the poverty rate—though still appallingly high—has declined from 32 percent to 24 percent. (The poverty rate measures the percentage of a group that is in poverty.) Meanwhile, the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990. The health-insurance story is similar. Last year 13 million Hispanics lacked insurance. They're 60 percent of the rise since 1990... if the poverty persists—and is compounded by more immigration—then it will create mounting political and social problems. One possibility: a growing competition for government benefits between the poor and baby-boom retirees.

President George W. Bush and various Democrats have offered immigration plans that propose different ways of legalizing today's illegal immigrants. That's fine as long as the future inflow of illegal and poorer immigrants can be controlled.

This is an example of the apartheid mindset, by which poor people are a "social problem" if they're on our soil but not if they're abroad. Immigration will increase the number of people living below our (arbitrary) official poverty line, and that's fine, because the vast majority of people in the world live far below our official poverty line. Americans should adapt by increasing their physical and human capital to reduce their reliance on raw unskilled labor. Some native-born Americans will fall through the cracks and end up worse off than without the immigration, but that price will have to be paid. The net gains, to most Americans, to immigrants and their countries, to freedom will be far greater than the losses.