CROWDED LAND OF LIBERTY

A slender work that examines US immigration policies and offers suggestions on reducing legal and illegal immigration.

Eldredge (Ending the War On Drugs, 1998), a former Reagan campaign official, believes that current US immigration levels have “brought us to the precipice of ecological and psychic disaster.” He feels that immigrants with fewer marketable job skills are displacing the existing underclass as cheap labor, that they negatively affect the environment (due to “high fertility rates”), that skilled immigrants take away high-tech jobs from Americans (due to “H-1B” temporary visas issued to fill shortages, particularly in the engineering and computer fields), and that, in universities, foreign students are being educated at the expense of American ones. Eldredge places some of the blame for illegal immigration on the agriculture industry, chastising growers for not providing wages and living conditions that would attract American workers willing to migrate from crop to crop. In the high-tech fields, he argues that companies could train nationals rather than hire legal immigrants at lower wages. Ultimately, Eldredge would like to close US immigration for ten years, giving current immigrants time to assimilate. After a decade, he would end family reunification as the primary path of immigration and implement policies similar to Canada’s: each potential immigrant would be given a certain number of points based on age, education, job skills, and ability for self-support for at least six months after arrival. In addition, citizens would cast their votes (at the state level) regarding immigration policy, choosing the number of immigrants allowed into the state each year, their minimum education level, and ranking the qualities of desirable applicants.

Some ideas worth considering, though Eldredge’s rhetoric can leave a bitter aftertaste.