Do We Want to Import 33 Million Mexicans? And If So, Why?

Numbers USA has done, to my knowledge, the first quantitative analysis of the implications of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, and the numbers are staggering. The Daily Caller reports:

The pending Senate immigration bill would bring a minimum of 33 million people into the country during its first decade of operation, according to an analysis by NumbersUSA, a group that wants to slow the current immigration rate.

By 2024, the inflow would include an estimated 9.2 million illegal immigrants, plus 2.5 million illegals who arrived as children — dubbed ‘Dreamers’ — plus roughly 3.4 million company-sponsored employees with university degrees, said the unreleased analysis.

The majority of the inflow, or roughly 17 million people, would consist of family members of illegals, recent immigrants and of company-sponsored workers, according to the NumbersUSA analysis provided to The Daily Caller.

That last point is key: under our current “chain immigration” system, whenever you let in one immigrant, you allow him to bring in his relatives. Then those people can bring in their relatives, subject only to overall caps on immigration. Advocates of immigration “reform” carefully avoid talking about these second and third order effects.

Virtually all of these 33 million people will be Mexicans. This is an obvious, but somehow under-acknowledged fact. We are not talking about refugees or asylum seekers. These tens of millions of people already have a country. They are Mexican citizens. To import 33 million Mexicans (approximately one quarter of Mexico’s population) would transform the United States in ways that we cannot begin to foresee. It would certainly have a greater impact on the United States than any event since the Civil War.

And why, exactly, would it be a good idea for us–not for the proposed immigrants, but for existing American citizens–to import 33 million or more Mexicans, the vast majority of whom would be either low-skill workers or welfare recipients? I can think of one category of Americans who would benefit from such an extraordinary influx: Democratic politicians. They would add millions of Democratic voters to the rolls; moreover, the addition of millions of welfare recipients would inevitably swell the size and scope of government. But if you are not a Democratic politician, why on Earth would you view this massive demographic change positively? It will inevitably drive down the wages of unskilled and semiskilled labor, to the grave detriment of existing Americans who are already struggling to make a living.

The Gang of Eight’s proposal is epically bad legislation, the baleful effects of which can hardly be calculated. We can only hope that as more voters learn what the bill actually entails, opposition will become irresistible, as it did in 2007.

UPDATE: It’s even worse than I said, because the relatives of the newly-legalized will be admitted en masse without regard to the overall caps on immigration that would otherwise apply:

The bill would also exempt wide swaths of people currently counted against immigration caps from any limits: The spouses and children of legal permanent residents would be allowed to come to the country on an unlimited basis, for example.

Thus, some combination of, perhaps, 7 million DREAMers, agricultural workers, and the newly legalized family members of current US citizens will be able to petition for their family members, further swelling legal immigration by an indeterminate amount.

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