Thanksgiving is a good time to reflect on international migration. After all, the holiday began with immigrants giving thanks for what was then a pretty bleak survival.
That early migration to Plymouth Rock was one of many migrations that built our nation and economy.
Three things make me particularly mindful of immigration this week: A crew of six hard-working immigrants shingled our house. Milton Friedman, the most influential U.S. economist of the 20th century and the son of very poor immigrants, died after six decades of productive work. Finally, I received an e-mail from a distant cousin in the Netherlands inquiring about my immigrant grandparents and how they arrived here.
All reminded me how much our society owes to immigration.
The rich social, artistic and cultural diversity of our nation stems from the varied backgrounds of our immigrant ancestors. So do much of the nation’s economic dynamism, entrepreneurship, and willingness to innovate in technology and management of institutions.
Immigration has fostered academic and scientific excellence. Go down the list of Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics. Note how many of the U.S. prize winners were born in other nations, yet did their most significant work in the United States. Then add to the list all the scholars who, like Friedman, were born into immigrant families. No other nation has benefited as much as ours has from this research and scholarship from immigrants.
The effects of immigration are broadly based. With the exception of Native Americans, we all come from immigrant stock. The only variation lies in how long ago the migration took place. My mother, a little younger than Friedman, was born nine years after her parents arrived from the Netherlands. Friedman’s parents came at about the same time and apparently struggled as hard as my grandparents.
My neighbor Mark’s ancestors came from England much earlier; one of his ancestors fought at the Civil War battle of Chancellorsville, Va. Elena, who lives in the next house over, arrived here at age 14 from Argentina, where she was born a few years after her parents fled the oncoming Holocaust in Europe.
Monrique, the subcontactor who shingled my house, left the Mexican state of Michoacan less than two decades ago. But in that time he has become a licensed and bonded contractor with several thousands of dollars of equipment and five hard-working employees.
What is the economics of all of this? The United States is the nation it is because of who its residents are — both for good and for ill. From the initial landings four centuries ago, the population has grown with successive waves of immigration.
Deciding to immigrate is not a random process. Those who opt for this arduous, often painful travail of giving up one nation and culture for another tend to possess more ambition, more initiative and more willingness to change the status quo. Those characteristics helped shape our national character.
The United States is not the only nation based on immigration. Canada, Australia, Brazil and Argentina are alike in that the current inhabitants are largely of European, African or, increasingly, Asian origin. As in the United States, the aboriginal peoples who lived in these lands 400 years ago have been marginalized and reduced to a small fragment of the population.
Still, immigrant vigor is a major element in the societies and economies of all these nations.
We should appreciate the contribution of immigration but we should not be over-congratulatory. Our society has many problems. Some of these, in the United States as in Brazil, stem from the after-effects of forced migrations of Africans more than two centuries ago. Assimilation of immigrants has never been easy, and recent arrivals have suffered mistreatment throughout our history.
That said, immigration made our nation much of what it is today and we should be grateful for it.
© 2006 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.