Commentary:
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
The Commanding rebel General was asked how he would take the capitol from the Loyalist/Communist/Socialist/Anarchist army inside the city of 900,000. He replied, my four columns surround the city and my 5th Column (spies, saboteurs and Nationalist sympathizers) is already in the city; hence, “5th Columnist.”
Ernest Hemingway published his play “Fifth Column” about the Spanish Civil War in 1938. Hitler’s Nazis perfected 5th Columns in their 1940 conquests around Europe.
There is a 5th Column in the United States of next-door-neighbor-harmless-looking non-Hispanic Whites.
They are led by pseudo-intellectual organizations founded by the country’s leading population restrictionist. He doubles as the country’s leading advocate against immigration. He is John Tanton, his organizations: The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and an ersatz “intellectual” publication named Social Quarterly.
This 5th Column that attacks the immigrant tradition of the United States is led by the tax-exempt Center for Immigration Studies that aims to destroy immigrants, their presence and contributions to America.
They outright lie, they lie by commission and omission – they simply, clearly, blatantly lie.
In their report, Immigrants in the United States, the CIS uses huge lies by omission – using selective statistics — that deserves objective treatment.
Native-born American children of immigrants are statistically conjoined with the immigrant population to show rates of poverty, public-benefits (education) usage, and lack of health insurance among the foreign-born. Concurrently, the alleged “study” ignores the gigantic economic contributions which immigrants make as consumers and entrepreneurs.
The CIS report neglects that immigrants, legal and illegal, pay taxes, form businesses, and create jobs for their families and fellow immigrants. For the CIS, it is a zero-sum game.
Many immigrants work in places like California’s Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles/San Diego Hi-tech and biotech capitol of the United States where they spearhead scientific discoveries that benefit us all.
CIS posits that “it makes more sense to include their (American-born) children with their immigrant parents because the poverty rate of minor children reflects their parents’ income.” Of course, CIS doesn’t count the same kids when they become educated working, taxpaying adults (UC Irvine grads?). When that happens CIS ignores them; CIS only categorizes them in the “immigrant” category when they are costly kids—as all children are.
The Kauffman Foundation concluded that “immigrants were more than twice as likely to start businesses each month, than were the native-born in 2010.” Nonetheless, CIS declares that there is no statistical difference between immigrant-business formations and those of Native-born Americans. Another BLATANT lie..!
The Fiscal Policy Institute reports what CIS doesn’t. For example: According to the Institute, 2007 Census data (the last year for which data was available), immigrant-owned small businesses employed 4.7 million people and had $776 billion in revenue. Immigrants made up18% of all small business owners in the United States – one in five, which was higher than the immigrant share of the population (13%), of the labor force (16%). Immigrants comprised the largest portion of small business owners in California (33%), followed by New York (29%), New Jersey (28%), Florida (26%), and Hawaii (23%). And immigrants comprised 65% of all taxi service owners, 54% of dry cleaning and laundry service owners, 53% of gas station owners, and 49% of grocery store owners. One finds no such statistics in any CIS report or “study.
Although immigrant consumer-purchasing statistics are not available, they are available for the two largest immigrant communities: Latinos (37% foreign-born) and Asians (67% foreign-born). Together, according to a University of Georgia study, the Latino/Asian consumer accounted for nearly 14% of the nation’s total purchasing power. The Latino purchasing power totaled $1 trillion in 2010 and is projected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2015. The Asian community purchasing power totaled $543.7 billion in 2010 and is projected to reach $775.1 billion by 2015.
The CIS portrayal of immigrants is a mile wide and an inch deep because it is not complete; it is done by “academic charlatans” criminally intent on besmirching any foreign born.
Economist Giovanni Peri: “Data show that, on net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity”—and “there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”
And, unlike most of the leaders of CIS and FAIR (John Tanton), many immigrants contribute and always have contributed to the defense of America. The very first Medal of Honor was awarded to a Spanish immigrant fighting for the United States in the Civil War. Entire Union divisions were made up of German immigrants. They hardly even spoke English – “I fight mit Schmidt” was the “pidgin” English they knew. Several Irish regiments (e.g. The Fighting 69th) were formed from Irish immigrants that stepped off the boat put on Union uniforms and fought for the United States.
Yes, immigrants do more than spend money. They work hard, start businesses, fight for the country and pay taxes. They are everything their critics are not.
Contreras’ books are available at amazon.com