The fresh take on the immigrant issue presented in this book deserves our attention

Contrary to what we often hear and read, the U.S. problem isn’t that “too many immigrants want to come here. It’s going to be that too few might want to”. So argues Seketu Mehta, U.S. immigrant from India, in his important new book This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto . The author’s position on immigration, well supported by multiple facts and stories, is so seldom heard in the current debate as to be shocking. Although the 2016 average income of the Indian immigrant to the U.S., at $110,026 annually, far exceeds that of the average “White” resident’s income, $61,349, the anti-immigrant policies and language today have already deterred some from coming to this country. Today, Mehta points out, Canada accepts three times as many immigrants per capita than the U.S. And Mexico in recent years is seeing more of its nationals return from the U.S. than cross the border for the “promised land”.

It is the demographic statistics Mehta cites that best bolster his argument for “Why They Should Be Welcomed” as the book’s final section puts it. As the “white nationalist” emphasizes in often hysterical fashion, the U.S. white population is declining and becoming increasingly older. By contrast, 80 per cent of the immigrants to the U.S. are under age 40 while half the U.S. population, white and persons of color, are over 40. We are now familiar with the Social Security statistics indicating that in 1960 there were 5 workers for every retired and disabled person enjoying benefits compared to fewer than 3 workers in 2013 supporting the system. In 2018 Social Security paid more in benefits than it received in payments. Important to consider also is the Social Security payments of $13 billion by undocumented immigrants in 2010 while seniors and the disabled without documents received only $1 billion in benefits.

Guyana Day is now an annual festival of food and culture in Schenectady, NY

This book should help convince anyone that immigration has contributed and will support even more in the future the economic stability and health of the U.S. Stemming from their younger age and their relatively recent arrival, immigrants today make up 40 % of the home buyers in the country while representing 13 % of the U.S. population. Dramatic revivals of U.S. towns have occurred due to the welcoming of immigrant settlers. Mehta describes how 10,000 Guyanese transformed the abandoned downtown of Schenectady, New York as they restored decrepit houses “with little or no government assistance”. Most of the Guyanese immigrants, now 12 % of the entire town population, had been renting housing in the New York City borough of Queens when the Mayor of Schenectady in 2002 invited them to settle in the northern New York town. Other New York upstate urban areas have experienced similar improvements thanks to welcoming over 40,000 immigrants to their towns.

U.S. immigration policies fall far short of recognizing and supporting the vital contributions of the newly arrived workers. Restricting the flow of younger workers into the country now holds sway in our policies. Since 2000 the number of Border Patrol agents has more than doubled to the current total of 20,000 and the budget for “border security” has grown four times as large as two decades ago. In 2017, of the 1.1 million permanent resident permits, “green cards”, issued by the U.S. authorities, only 12 % were employment related.

Seketu Mehta’s book issues a wake up call to Europe and the U.S. that the racism and white nationalist fervor of the colonial era are proving difficult to overcome in accepting and implementing the policy changes called for now. Statistics tell us that the population growth of Europe is below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman, and only 27 % of Europeans are under 25 while 60 % of Africans are in that age group. At current growth rates the population of Europe and Russia will decline from 740 million to around 700 million in 2050 while Africa’s will double to an estimated 2.4 billion persons.

Due to even more dire consequences of the climate crisis expected in the global South, the flight of migrants to Europe and North America will keep immigration issues in the forefront of our civic dialog and politics. This “Immigrant Manifesto” as the author subtitles This Land Is Our Land challenges us in the North to view the immigrant “invasion” as an opportunity to strengthen the economies and ideals of our nations. Failure to change our attitudes and policies will, this book argues convincingly, seriously undermine our economic strength and our quality of life.