An otherwise wonderful piece about a new exhibit at the Tenement Museum by one of the writers whose bylines I most look forward to in the Times, Edward Rothstein (really!), is marred by the following passage:
There may always be some resentments of newcomers. But the passionate contemporary debates are not about immigration but about how to deal with large-scale violations of immigration law that dwarf earlier examples. As for legal immigration, since 2000 both the number of immigrants admitted to the United States and the number naturalized are stunningly greater than during any other period. The country is not wary of immigrants; it is welcoming them at an astonishing rate.
I agree that America welcomes immigrants (as it should). But Mr. Rothstein needs to look no farther than the op-ed page of his own newspaper to find passionate contemporary debates not about illegal immigration but about legal immigration policy; today's Times features an anti-immigration screed fretting about a bill that the Times op-ed contributor warns would "flood the job market with indentured foreign workers," and "damage the employment prospects of hundreds of thousands of skilled Americans."
What's more, Mr. Rothstein's statistics arguing that America in the past ten years is at some kind of "stunningly high" peak of immigration are highly misleading. In fact census data show that the number of foreign-born Americans peaked in 1890 at 14.8%; the levels in 1910 of 14.7% and 1870 of 14.4% are all higher than the 13% that was the level in 2010. In other words, while the absolute numbers of immigrants in the past decade have been high, the overall population of America is much greater than it was in the past, so as a percentage, the immigration levels aren't particularly high. Mr. Rothstein might have also pointed out that the number of immigrants deported from the United States are also at record highs, (as Robert Morgenthau has written), but that undermines his claim that the country is not wary of immigrants.
Even on an annual nominal basis, not as a percentage basis, the number of immigrants we are letting in nowadays isn't particularly impressive, at least not enough to justify Mr. Rothstein's self-congratulation about how welcoming America is. The statistics he links to in his article report that America welcomed 1.266 million new legal residents in 2006, the recent high point. That's lower than the 1.8 million who arrived in 1991 and lower than the 1.285 million who came in 1907. There are a lot more who would like to come but who were turned away or are languishing on waiting lists, which is something the Times and its critic may want to consider the next time they characterize this country as so welcoming rather than wary when it comes to immigration.