It has been a year since over a million immigrants took to the streets to demand immigration reform. This year, thousands will march again, many under the American flag that to them, as to generations of immigrants past, symbolizes opportunity and the hope for a better life. The deeply cherished belief that anybody can achieve the American Dream through hard work and perseverance is something that today’s immigrants, legal and illegal, have in common with most Americans. Unfortunately, as we have explored in the many posts on this blog, it is a dream that is quickly slipping from everyone’s grasp, citizens and immigrants alike.
How did we get to this point? Certainly, our nation’s history is replete with tales of immigrants who achieved success after arriving to these shores with little more than the shirts on their backs and a strong work ethic. Today, however, it seems unlikely that immigrants could expect to achieve the same success through hard work alone. Our newest arrivals and their children will have to cope with the increasingly harsh realities facing all working and middle class Americans–a fraying social net, deteriorating public schools, and the rapid disappearance of jobs that offer a bridge to the middle class.
As America heads into the 21st Century, we are exchanging many of the economic gains of the last century for economic insecurity and the growth of the working poor. The number of children living in poverty has risen steadily since 1979, meaning a greater likelihood that poor children–who have less access to health care, good schools and safe neighborhoods–will become poor adults. Homeownership—an important springboard to the middle class, is an impossibility for millions of Americans in today’s real estate market, and has been thrown into chaos for many due to the crisis in the subprime markets. And employer-provided health care and pensions are becoming scarce commodities, even as the number of uninsured Americans continues to climb and the average household savings rate hovers at around zero.
Because of these and countless other troubling statistics, experts warn that today’s immigrants may not be able to integrate as seamlessly as those of previous generations.
While last year immigrants in France, tired of forming a permanent and disenfranchised underclass, lashed out with violence in the Paris streets, U.S. immigrants have always expected—and for the most part received—better. Many of our institutions have been a trampoline for immigrant integration and upward mobility. But these institutions, as drivers of the American Dream, are in desperate need of retooling for the 21st Century. They can only be revived if our lawmakers put aside their bickering to create bipartisan policies that encourage homeownership and savings, provide our children with equal access to high-quality, affordable education, and accommodate the need of today’s workers for flexible, portable health care and retirement plans.
The focus on immigrants and the economic burden they may impose obscures the point that when this country has offered paths for the poor to become middle class, natives and immigrants alike have worked hard and prospered. The lack of opportunity in our current policies affects all working people, regardless of their birth country. We need to be having a conversation not just about immigration, but also about upward mobility and prosperity for all.
Today’s immigrants, like the many waves of immigrants before them, believe that by working hard they can achieve a better life, if not for themselves, then at least for their children. The question is not whether immigrants share American values, but whether America still shares theirs.
Amanda Levinson | Director of Policy Programs
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