Governor Abbott is Playing Right into Liberal New Yorkers' Hands
Much has been made of New York City Mayor Adams’ hypocritical pushback against Texas Governor Abbott’s policy of sending illegal immigrants to the city. In response, Abbott has doubled down: sending even more immigrants with no end in sight. What Governor Abbott doesn’t understand is that the urban liberal professional class desires more immigrants, particularly the poorest and least educated.
A number of studies have demonstrated that these immigrants keep wages lower than they would otherwise be for less skilled workers. This explains why the working class, including black and Latino workers, have much less sympathetic attitudes towards immigration than the liberal professional class. Indeed, to the extent they hire service workers — housecleaning services, gardeners, aids for their elderly parents — the professional class actually benefits. However, this probably is not a major reason for their support for the open border policies that seem to underpin the current administration’s approach.
Rather I would stress two other compelling reasons: religious upbringing and employment choices. The urban white professional class responses to immigration have been dominated by primarily those with Jewish and Catholic upbringings. They were raised in communities that stressed the need to help the poor and centrally heeded Emma Lazarus’ call etched into a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Jewish and particularly Catholic relief agencies have embraced these words — playing an outsized role in facilitating integrating illegal immigrants throughout the nation through less than transparent policies.
Even though many have left religious observance, they continue to embrace the overriding concern for the poor and less fortunate. Many, like myself, may believe there is a better immigration system, one that limits border entries and favors more skilled workers like the Canadian system. However, once they are here, we should allocate resources to aid immigrants’ American transition. As I have documented elsewhere, if we want Latino children to prosper, we must insulate their families from fears of deportation. Indeed, for many in the comfortable middle class, it is not value signaling but a responsibility that must be fulfilled.
The compassion for the youth who arrive should reflect their family reunification desires: uniting children with their parents or other relatives. Just over one hundred years ago, one of my grandfathers immigrated alone. A year later, he sent for his wife and three children. This is the sequence many Latino immigrants are trying to follow.
The problem they face is that illegal immigrants cannot rely on the government’s reunification policies. Instead, they send remittances to pay for coyotes to shepherd their children to the border. In addition, remittances are used to begin the migration of close relatives. How could a reasonable person not be sympathetic to these family aspirations, particularly when it reflects the history of their own family’s migration.
There is, however, another less edifying reason that many in the professional class desire poor, less educated immigrants: the employment impact. The liberal professional class substantially populates the “helping” professions, employed by government or nonprofit agencies. Any substantial reduction in the poverty population creates employment problems.
We see this attitude played out in certain domestic policies. The professional class opposed the institution of work or work-related requirements for adult food-stamp recipients who have no dependent children. When instituted in Maine, the number of such recipients fell by 80 percent. In addition, they have strongly opposed linking any portion of the refundable child credit with earned income, elimination that requirement in 2021 legislation.
Consistent with the unwillingness to place work or job-training requirements on any transfer programs, the liberal professional class favors universal income programs: those that provide a modest income to those who have no wage income. Through food stamps, child credits, universal income, and government housing, families may escape official poverty but will often be trapped in near poverty as wages earned will reduce the government benefits received. And without the ability to rely on wage income, these families will forever be dependent on the social service systems that these liberal professionals populate.
Despite the failure of liberal policies to focus on improving employment, many escape poverty through their own efforts. What sustained the size of the poor population in the past was immigration of the less educated. One of its most important roles is to maintain the size of urban public educational systems that employ millions of teachers, social workers, health aids, lawyers, and government bureaucrats.
New York City is a notable example where there has been a consistent decline in the number of students in the public school system, particularly in the lower grades. Looking at declining Chicago enrollments, Crane’s identified “slowing growth in Chicago’s Latinx community, due to declining birth rates among Latina mothers [and] falling in-migration from Mexico.”
While Abbott’s gambit may play well for his reelection campaign, it in no way conflicts with the aspiration and needs of the liberal urban professional class. Indeed, New York City has already announced an additional 1,000 migrant children will be enrolled. “Make no mistake — as more families arrive, we will be prepared to support their needs, be quickly enrolled in school, so that we are doing everything we can to preserve stability for them as they focus on education,” said Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins. The more immigrants, the better!
Robert Cherry is recently retired Brooklyn College economist and an American Enterprise Institute affiliate.
