Auburn, Al. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Author Zeke Hernandez’s new book is The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2024: $30.00). The author, an immigrant born in Uruguay, lived in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Argentina, before coming to the US. Hernandez received his B.A. and M.A. at Brigham Young University and was given a $25,000 annual stipend that allowed him to receive his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. Presently, Hernandez occupies the Max & Bernice Garchik Family Presidential Associate Chair in Wharton’s management department at the University of Pennsylvania, which he has held since 2013.
Immigrants today represent an intellectual, economic, and societal, challenge world-wide. Hernandez argues that immigrants bring a ton of investment. They are either magnets of investment from their home country or because immigrants disproportionately start businesses in the US. J. Daniel Kim, assistant professor of management at the Wharton School found that “immigrants are 80% more likely to start firms than native-born individuals. This pattern does not affect the size of the business. Also, firms founded by immigrants create jobs at a higher rate than ones founded by natives. Hernandez notes that immigrants are job creators and play outsized roles in US high growth entrepreneurship. The Society for Human Resource Management discovered that 101 of the year’s Fortune 500 companies were established by first generation immigrants. Hernandez remarks that the “triangle of immigration, investment, and jobs” is one of the greatest untold stories of immigration.
In Chapter Eight, Hernandez argues that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrations, commit fewer crimes than natives. A recent study by Northwestern University states that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated for a crime than natives born in the US. Between 2006 and 2015, the incarceration rate for undocumented immigrants in all fifty state was 33% lower than for natives. Moreover, legal immigrants were 61% less likely to be imprisoned than natives. Why so? Immigrants living in the US do not want to do something that would kick them out of the US. Relative to undocumented immigrants, natives or US born citizens are over two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 percent more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over four time more likely to be arrested for property crimes. Between 1870 and 2020, immigrants in the US have never had a higher rate of imprisonment than natives. In December 2018, statistics show that the total number of Americans killed in mass shootings in 2018 is 194. Yet the total number of Americans killed by illegal immigrants in 2023 is 29
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Fear of newcomers helped pass The National Origins Act of 1924, thus creating a discriminatory and xenophobic immigration system that lasted until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In 1965, the fertility rate was 3.23 and the population of the US came to circa 195 million people. Today, the population of the US comes to circa 330 million people and the fertility rate comes to 1.78. Also, the total population world-wide in 1965 amounted to a population of 3.3 billion and today it has eight billion people. Since 1990, every failed reform has been a continuation of the dismantling process that commenced in 1965. Surprisingly, the US never designed an immigration system that based itself on the notion that immigration should flow because it’s good for the US and its allies. At its current rate, immigration levels are insufficient in maintaining its present size. For example, the GDP has skyrocketed from $9 trillion in 1965 to today’s $28 trillion. The Wharton Budget Model estimates that doubling the number of legal immigrants would bring more employment and double the GDP once more.
Presently, businesses in the US look seriously to find workers of all skill levels. In a report by the US Chamber of Commerce in February 2004, stated that “for every unemployed person in the country who found a job, we would still have 2.4 million open jobs.” Small and medium sized companies hire undocumented companies, not large corporations like Apple. These business owners break the law because they lack the resources needed to navigate the immigrant system. These owners have it difficult to figure out a worker’s legal status because programs like E-Verify are unreliable since our government does not keep reliable records. What makes people move to another country? Less than a quarter of people who paid to move to another country did so. It comes down to a lack of safety. People experiencing conflict in Central America, for example, are more likely to move to another country if they experience temporary economic setbacks. And people migrate because they know someone else who previously migrated.
Hernandez gives four principles that form the basis for a manageable immigration system.1) Today’s system has intentional distortions, false intuitions, bad models, and enormous fear. Immigration ought to be framed in an economically and socially positive way. We need to have a Department of Immigration along with a Department of Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture. 2) We need to increase the so-called “Speed Limits” on our “Immigration Roads.” The flow of content must match the economic needs of businesses, the social needs of families, and the humanitarian conditions in our geopolitical neighborhoods.
3) We must undo the compromise of 1965 so that new lanes reflect economic needs without redesigning the number of family lanes. We ought to remove quotas by origin and the 7% per country limits that makes no sense at all. The US should move toward a skill-based system giving points for education, a job level, wage level, STEM skills, language proficiency and artistic ability. Skill does not automatically mean formal credentials, since some people without degrees bring skills in technical, artistic, and other domains. Unskilled immigrants often make native workers more productive. We must have faith in human potential since we do not always know what an individual brings to the table.
4) The system needs to be updated continually so that it is flexible. Congress should not make decisions about immigration because they fear losing the next election. Instead, we may need congressional leadership to determine the types of visas we give out, but the number need not be decided by an act of the legislature. For example, in October 2022, the Department of Homeland Security allowed an additional 65,000 H-2B visas for fiscal 2023 to meet the needs of US businesses. That involved a virtual doubling of the 66,000 limits. This decision was made in consultation with the Department of Labor in response to an unprecedented number of unfilled job openings. This decision would not have passed if it had to go through Congress.
Hernandez has marinated this book in his mind for about twenty years, and it shows. His data consists of 449 books and articles. China, Japan, and Israel have something in common: a need for more immigrants. China going back to the “One Child Policy” for families goes back to 1979. Presently, China has millions of seniors with very few young workers. Due to decades of falling birth rates and steeply rising life expectancy on the part of its seniors, China’s seniors will make up 32% of its economy in 2040. Japan has zero immigration and 28% of its population is 65 or older. About 46,000 Israeli businesses have shut down because the war began. There has been a 26% fall in construction investments because there are no Palestinian laborers. The labor shortage drags down the Israeli economy. In sum, I cannot recommend this book too highly. As the Latin phrase says “Optime exsecutum,” or “Carried out exceedingly well.”
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*A previous version of this essay contained a typographical error that misstated this statistic. The author and IC apologize for the error.
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