Immigration Report Card

You are most likely familiar with the following selection from Emma Lazarus' sonnet: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."  Lazarus was more of a poet than a policymaker, but many people repeat this phrase as if it came from the Declaration of Independence itself.

I am one who believes that the United States of America has a moral responsibility to help those we can.  Immigration is critical for those in need and for our own well being.  But certain questions have to be answered (and then asked again, and answered again, and so on):

• Who gets to immigrate?
• Do we have an open-door policy or can we be selective?
• Can we tied the number of immigrants per year to GDP?
• What do we do about illegal immigration?
• Do we only allow the tired and poor?
• Do we allow the tired and poor?

Immigration policy aside, how are we doing?  If this is a report card, would you give the USA an A or would it be closer to an F?  Well, let's compare the USA to other countries.

Here's an interesting site.  They take the raw data from the United Nation population reports and average it into 5-year intervals to normalize inconsistent peaks due to short-term political instability and natural disasters.  As of this writing, the most recent data is up to 2005.

Which country allows the most immigrants?  The US comes in first at almost 5.7 million net migrants every year.  That's almost 24% of the world's immigrants.  That's more than the next 3 countries combined.

Now look at the path to citizenship.  The US comes in first for making these immigrants citizens.  In fact, the US allows more immigrants to become citizens than the next 9 countries combined.  Worldwide, almost half of all new citizens are American citizens.

Unless I'm missing something, the US gets an A+.  Way to go!  This isn't to say that we don't need immigration reform.  Let's secure the borders, but let's keep them coming in.

As a side note, which border do we secure first?  Answer: Which country emigrates 2.7 million every year?