Our friend John Litland got this letter published in the (paywall) MDJ today. He nailed it. The original letter to which he replies is posted below. Letters to the editor make a difference and serve to counter the liberal, open borders media.
NOTE: We encourage everyone to take advantage of this no-cost way of going around the press ( especially the biased and agenda-driven AJC and Associated Press) to make your voice heard.
Marietta Daily Journal
Letters
August 17, 2016
DEAR EDITOR:
In his plea for “immigration reform,” MDJ letter writer and self-described “business leader” Don Aldridge of Roswell informs us that we have “an immigration problem,” a “labor shortage” and missed opportunities on business and more tax revenues. “Immigrants are good for our economy” he writes, as if the U.S. somehow has a shortage of immigrants. We don’t. Even after many years of D.A. King’s educational writing here, maybe there are still folks out there who don’t know the USA imports more immigrants than any nation in the world. We take in a million legal immigrants each year. My wife is one of them.
We also import almost that many guest workers every year and from what I can see, once they are here, we don’t make them leave as agreed. I learned from D.A. King and confirmed on my own that almost half the illegal aliens here now came as guest workers and fearlessly stayed past their visa expiration dates. Some of the 9/11 terrorists did exactly that.
Aldridge also says we should “reform to an expanded immigration system that “grants those who want to contribute to the economic success of America the ability to do so.”
It looks like Aldridge is spouting the same worn business demand for another immigration amnesty and for an unlimited supply of cheaper-than-now labor — open borders.
I disagree. The assimilation process of the often-cited great wave of immigration from the beginning of the last century came about due to a sharp reduction in immigration from about 1924 to the mid-sixties. This break not only allowed American wages to rise — thereby creating the now vanishing middle class [1]— but also created an atmosphere of common culture, language and patriotic unity in our country.
Aldridge’s’s letter came a day after federal data was released that Americans’ wages are still dropping [2]. The dramatic news was buried in an Aug. 9 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing yet another 2 percent drop in wages since December.
Ignoring howls from business leaders whose biggest expense is wages, most of us understand the laws of supply and demand. The concept that we have a worker shortage [3]is ridiculous and we resent the fact that all such “immigration reform” demands ignore the American — including immigrant — workers who are desperate for better jobs and higher wages.
We should reduce immigration, enforce our laws and protect our own workers.
John Litland
Marietta
HERE [4]
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Original letter from Don Aldridge in the (paywall) MDJ: [5]
Marietta Daily Journal
August 9, 2016
DEAR EDITOR:
Our country has an immigration problem. Over the last year, we’ve heard this rhetoric time and again. As a business leader, I have witnessed the collateral damage of our fractured immigration system, which in Georgia manifests as labor shortages, missed growth opportunities for businesses and lost tax revenues.
So what, then, is the solution? Immigration reform.
The political infighting on today’s campaign trail is missing a critical point: Immigrants are good for our economy. In fact, the strength of the U.S. economy and America’s ability to remain the global leader in innovation may even depend on an updated, streamlined and rationalized immigration system — one that grants those who want to contribute to the economic success of America the ability to do so.
Today, Georgia is home to nearly a million foreign-born individuals who came in pursuit of the American Dream and now contribute to some of our largest industries like agriculture and manufacturing. They often possess an entrepreneurial spirit and boost state and federal coffers through spending power and tax revenues.
Though they account for about 10 percent of the state’s population, Georgia’s immigrant workers make up nearly 14 percent of our workforce. Immigrant-led households in Georgia earned $26.1 billion in income in 2014, giving them purchasing power they could turn around and spend at community businesses. Those who founded their own companies saw their businesses earn more than $1.5 billion in annual income.
What immigrants don’t spend at local businesses or invest in their own ventures, contribute to taxes and federal programs. In 2014, immigrants paid almost $7 billion in taxes, over $2 billion of which went directly to state and local collections. This money is used to fund important municipal projects, like education and infrastructure, proving that foreign-born Georgians contribute to our community in tangible ways.
A strong immigrant workforce is partly the answer: Today, foreign-born workers contribute nearly $3 billion to Social Security annually, and this trend is likely to continue for years to come. Immigrants in Georgia are far more likely to be working-age than the native-born population: More than 75 percent of the foreign-born population falls into this category, compared to just 50 percent of the state’s native population. Streamlining our visa process would allow more foreign-born workers to fill labor gaps that are hurting key industries like farming and tech.
Ultimately, the effects of meaningful reform could be even more far-reaching.
Don Aldridge
Roswell