100 years ago today, America committed its biggest immigration blunder when President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act. As we commemorate the anniversary, most of the conversation focuses on condemning the racist motivation of excluding Asians and Southern and Eastern Europeans. But almost nobody talks about two things. One is the self-harm the restrictions caused to America: significant job losses, obliterating innovation by American scientists and companies, lowering investment across our communities and giving rise to the border problems we still experience to this day, writes Zeke Hernandez.
Unlike in the past, we now have solid evidence that immigrants are net positive contributors to everything that makes for a prosperous society. It’s not just that immigrants fill job shortages — which is often the only favorable message about newcomers in the headlines. The truth, however, is much more positive and much broader than that! Immigrants foster investment, create jobs, make us more innovative, fill our public coffers, reduce crime and successfully integrate culturally.
Second, we must vote according to the facts instead of falling prey to the falsehoods advanced by politicians and repeated in the headlines. Not because that’s good for immigrants. But because it’s good for us.
So let’s be smart and embrace immigration as the gift that our country rejected 100 years ago.
