Avishai Halev

12/1/14
On Immigrants and Education
On a plaque in the lower level of the Statue of Liberty there is engraved a poem,
powerful indeed, that seems to have been forgotten in recent decades. In five final,
ringing lines, Emma Lazarus lays out what America has stood for throughout its short
history:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Of course, Emma and her poem seem to have been abandoned nowadays, her words
nothing but a distant memory, a symbol of a past that is both gone and forgotten. The
current political rhetoric covering immigration focuses on what to do with these people,
not what these people can do for America. Immigrants are treated as a problem, a drain
on the economy. In reality, the opposite is true, yet the rhetoric acts as convenient
obfuscation to more pressing issues. The true impediment to American economic
dominance is a modern day, ulterior repression of the lower classes; in essence, a
negative trickle down effect. Available education and abundant opportunities allows those
at the top rungs of the de facto caste system in the United States to either replicate or
improve upon the economic fortunes of their parents, while those at the bottom are left to
fight for the scraps, struggling to maintain whatever level of wealth their parents had and

frequently failing in the process. The immigration discourse leads this latter group to
believe themselves to be competing with immigrants and consider them a threat to their
economic viability but this is not true. Through a rhetoric on immigration that does not
confront the main issues at hand, the differing opinions on immigration among
demographic groups, and the death of the American Dream, it is plain that the main issue
facing the United States lies not in what to do with those who were not born here but how
to help those who were.
The majority of Americans feel sympathetic towards illegal immigrants, at least to
a certain degree. They believe that something should be done to aid these people;
unfortunately, they believe for the wrong reasons. In a very recent poll (Nov 21-23, 2014)
exactly three quarters of those polled said they were either very or somewhat sympathetic
towards illegal immigrants; an even higher number stated that Republicans in Congress
should focus on immigration reform rather than overturning Obamas policies. The
problem herein is that asking such questions implies that immigration reform is doing
immigrants a favor; that they need America a lot more than America needs them. This
idea is how anti-immigration pulpits find fodder, arguing that immigrants take jobs away
from hard working, lower class Americans, that these ungrateful invaders come into this
country to drain our welfare and live for free off of the labors of the unwitting native
born. Of course, approximately 98.8% of this country is comprised of those descended
from immigrants; most of the so called native borns can easily trace their ancestry back to
a different country within a handful of generations. And as they will be happy to attest,
their forbearers worked hard and carved out a life for themselves in the States while

leaning on only themselves and their families; the current generation of immigrants only
wants the chance to do the same.
Nevertheless, America is discussing the problems with immigrants, no matter
the degree to which they truly exist. These aliens, who are generally poor and uneducated
are portrayed by the media as being in direct conflict with poorer native borns for jobs.
As a result, opinions on immigrants vary greatly between different demographic groups,
namely among income levels. In one study done by the Pew Research Center, only 25%
of those with a college degree said that legal immigration levels should be decreased; for
those with a high school degree or less, that number was 44%. The latter group is more
likely to believe themselves in competition with immigrants for work; it makes sense that
they view immigrants unfavorably. Similarly, those with a high school degree or less
were more likely to say that giving illegal aliens legal status was like rewarding them for
doing something wrong 41% versus only 30% of those with at least a college degree.
Of course, the logical assumption underpinning these beliefs that immigrants take jobs
from poor workers just isnt true. Nor do they reduce their wages in an analysis of the
Mariel Boat Lift, a huge influx of Cuban immigrants, it was found that the wages of
native borns were depressed only 0.6%. Given how beneficial immigrants are to an
economy even to the groups supposedly competing with them for work, as aliens
provide services and consume goods themselves immigration restrictions begin to make
even less sense.
And as to the question of whether immigrants are beneficial to an economy or not:
there is no question. The United States became a world power after years of almost
entirely unrestricted immigration; European immigration quotas and the arrival of World

War I led to the United States ascent to the worlds throne as its European counterparts
declined. Immigrants are indeed willing to work for lower wages and under poorer
conditions; while this may hurt the native born working class, however slightly, in the
short run, the competition forces them to work to earn raises and benefits from
employers. This is important, as labor in recent years has been moving to China not only
because it is cheaper but because laborers there are supposedly willing to work harder;
American workers have a reputation for laziness. Immigrants also provide services for
middle class Americans that would simply be out of the question if they were offered by
non-aliens; in this case, instead of taking work away from natives, immigrants are
expanding an entire sector of the economy that would otherwise be greatly diminished by
being willing to work for lower pay. Finally, immigrants also become consumers in their
own right, requiring goods and services of their own, and expanding their consumption
habits as they climb the socio-economic ladder in America.
Thus the problem does not lie at the feet of those looking for a new life in
America but for those already here looking for a better one. All of the discussion on the
so called immigration crisis diverts the eye from what is truly a crisis racial divides,
wealth disparities, and the current state of our education system all of which are
hopelessly intertwined. White privilege may be the uncomfortable reality in America
today especially when it comes to the criminal justice system but it is not the whole of
the problem. Poor whites may not be terrorized by the police like their black counterparts,
but their outlook on life is similarly bleak. While college is the great equalizer in
American society, not all Americans have equal opportunities in college; in all private
institutions in the States in 2006, only 37% of students with a family income of less than

$25,000 graduated within four years; for those with a family income greater than
$75,000, the number was 62%. Disparities exist even before these students arrive on their
respective quad: the average SAT score (out of 2400) of seniors with a family income
greater than $200,000 was almost 400 points higher than those with a family income less
than $20,000, with the numbers depreciating proportionally on the way down.
Warning signs are already present by the time babies are born with the
education of their parents. In one 1995 study of families with young children, researchers
found that children with parents in professional jobs heard on average 2,153 words per
hour while those with working class and welfare dependent parents heard only 1,251 and
616 words per hour, respectively. This was found to be strongly correlated with the
childrens vocabulary by age three, the vocabulary of those in the first group consisted
of 1,116 words on average, while it was only 749 and 525 words in each of the last two
groups. Within this study exists an unavoidable irony professional parents, better
educated and better read, are more likely to notice these findings and talk to their kids
even more; less privileged parents are disinclined to, widening the gap even more, and
making upward mobility ever more difficult.
This achievement gap only gets worse as children age, when professional parents
are more likely than others to encourage their children to do well, get them help when
they are struggling, and be available after school to organize extracurriculars and make
sure homework is done. In one study done by the US Department of Education, children
with professional class fathers dropped out 115 percent less often than so called low class
fathers; the child of a high school dropout was 337 percent more likely to dropout than
the child of a college graduate. Another study done for the National Institute of Health

discovered that both a childs educational aspirations and educational success were
correlated with the education levels of their parents, especially in males, who are less
likely to achieve higher levels of education. There was also a significant correlation
between those aspirations/success and a childs IQ an IQ influenced significantly by
how much their parents aid and talk to them in childhood, which in turn is predisposed by
their parents level of education.
All of this suggests a vicious cycle, with less privileged children most likely
replicating their parents position in life. If there is a different outcome, downward
mobility is far more probable than the opposite. Perhaps they fall as far down as into the
web of the welfare net that place that immigrants are accused of taking advantage of but
is rather populated by those who have tumbled down the socio-economic ladder through
a combination of their own failings and the failings of the society around them. These
people decry illegal immigration and worry about losing jobs; they do not know to decry
education and work for better ones. Nowhere in this cycle do immigrants exacerbate the
problem.
The solution lies in the education system. America consistently lags behind its
peers in the knowledge levels of its students; to combat this, it has implemented rigorous
standardized testing in an effort to single out substandard schools and teachers and bring
them up to par. While there is evidence to suggest that No Child Left Behind has
improved childrens scores, especially in math, it is likely that the increase has resulted
from teachers teaching to the test rather than students better comprehending concepts.
What No Child Left Behind did accomplish, at least temporarily, was an increase in the
allotment for education in the federal budget; money that was and is sorely needed.

Teachers in the United States are not paid particularly well, especially at public schools;
as a result, the field does not attract anything close to top talent; one is more likely to find
a community college graduate teaching high school as is unlikely to find an Ivy Leaguer.
America has problems but too much immigration is not even close to being one
of them. A reverse trickle down effect in which the poor are not able to move up the
socio-economic ladder and attempt to follow the American dream that has made this
country so popular with immigrants. In return, the native poor look down upon
newcomers; viewing them as competition for jobs and as having a negative effect on the
economy. In reality, immigrants could not be more beneficial; if they are taking jobs from
native borns, it is because those native borns are neither sufficiently educated nor
motivated to fill the highly skilled jobs currently in need of labor. Much of the discourse
on immigration is a convenient cover for more pressing, homegrown issues.
The people coming in are not the problem.
The fortunes of those already here, are.