Cambridge 02138
Niall Ferguson, Vladimir Putin, E.O. Wilson, Thaddeus Stevens
THE NEW IMMIGRANTS
The images of today’s poor, hardworking illegal immigrants (Ashley Pettus, “End of the Melting Pot?” May-June, page 44) excite our natural sympathies and are poignant reminders of earlier periods of immigration. However, absorbing large numbers of the poor and little-educated into our society today is much more burdensome and disruptive than it was in our country’s past, when our public benefits were much smaller, the standard of living and average education of our citizens was much lower, and most jobs required unskilled labor.
To the extent that there are public policy reasons for immigration, it would be of greater benefit to existing American citizens to select more educated and skilled immigrants as needed. They would add much more to the economic output of the country, pay much more in taxes, and use public services to a much smaller degree than our typical illegal immigrants. The more educated and skilled would also assimilate more easily, on the average.
If we do not stop their entry, our poor illegal immigrants can only greatly increase in number, so powerful are the incentives to come here. It is contradictory and nonsensical policy to make great and very costly efforts to eradicate poverty in this country and import much more poverty at the same time.
Peter A. Schulkin, Ph.D. ’70
Cambria, Calif.
Your article reflects the standard East Coast bias, mixing legal immigrants with illegal criminal aliens. Every minute that an illegal alien is in the United States, he or she is stealing something—jobs, property, lives, food, welfare aid. To call an illegal alien an undocumented worker is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist.
If you live near the border, as I do (and not in Cambridge limo-land), you can see the theft and destruction caused daily by the millions of illegal criminal aliens. We need to build a wall along the southern border and shut down the influx of illegals, and then prevent sleazy employers from giving jobs to illegals.
Park Weaver, M.B.A. ’60
La Mesa, Calif.
This article is really pretty appalling. It presents largely the anti-immigrant view, relegating the overwhelming majority view among scholars to a few paragraphs at the end. In fact, literally thousands of studies have shown that the “new immigrants” assimilate faster than the old ones and rise about as fast. More irritating are the photographs accompanying the article. I could probably find, with heavy searching, conditions like those shown for Mexican immigrants, but it would take work. I could much more easily find Mexican immigrants in large, beautiful, well-kept suburban houses. I could fairly easily find mansions.
I taught for 40 years at an overwhelmingly immigrant school. Almost all my students at University of California, Riverside, were first- or second-generation immigrants. They could almost never speak their heritage languages, and were immersed in southern California kid culture. On average, they outperformed the multigenerational-American students. More than 95 percent of Californian East Asian second-generation immigrants get to college sooner or later. The figure is lower for Hispanics, but is rapidly closing on white Anglo figures.
This bit of racist propaganda (I refer especially to the photographs) is too unsavory to let stand. You owe your readers an apology.
E.N. Anderson ’62
Lake Forest Park, Wash.
Politicians, academics, and generals wishing to camouflage problems frequently gussy them up and call them “challenges.” The subtitle of your article, “The new wave of immigrants presents new challenges,” is a case in point.
A Google search using “immigrants challenges” returns 1,190,000 hits. This strongly suggests that a million “challenges” have become a giant problem facing this country. Certainly the accompanying pictures suggest we have a popula- tion explosion in the making.
Perhaps when Harvard Magazine does its requisite issue on the greening of America, it can explain how the nation can make strides toward sustainability as we balloon to the one billion people the Census Bureau projects by the end of this century.
Tim Aaronson
El Cerrito, Calif.
HISTORIAN OF EMPIRE
Excellent article (“The Global Empire of Niall Ferguson,” by Janet Tassel, May-June, page 33). Very useful. American politicians and their advisors, regardless of party, should read it and won’t—a pity. National attention deficit disorder is truly our greatest liability and will be our downfall. Without a doubt.
Robert Sprinkel, M.B.A. ’59
President, Leaders for Liberty Institute
Sacramento, Calif.
The important question is what kind of world order is now optimal and achievable. The answer is more likely to come from the social and behavioral sciences than from history. Historians are overly concerned with defending or attacking past human actions. My concern—developed as an army officer in World War II, in postwar military government, and in a half-century in book publishing—is with building a better social order worldwide.
John M. Pickering, M.B.A. ’43
Albuquerque, N.M
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