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Immigration reduction

Immigration reduction refers to movements that advocate a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into their country. This can include a reduction in the numbers of legal immigrants, advocating stronger action be taken to prevent illegal entry and illegal immigration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas (such as H-1B and L-1 in the United States). What separates it from others who want immigration reform is that reductionists see immigration as being a significant source of social, economic, and environmental problems, and wish to cut current immigration levels. Many immigration reductionists support continued legal immigration, only opposing illegal immigration; some want legal immigration to be set at a percentage of current levels until no adverse affects are created by legal immigration.

Early history

Antecedents to immigration reduction or control exist in antiquity, notably in the Roman Empire, where high living standards were an attractant to poorer tribes at the edge of the Empire. Specifically the immigration of Germanic tribes from the northern European continent and Pictish peoples north of Hadrian's Wall in Brittania were viewed as unwanted population influxes to the more settled and civilized areas of the Empire.

Modern history of the immigration reduction movement

There are several discernible groups within the movement, with separate interests, origins, and aims. The modern immigration reduction movement has many antecedents. Some cite the nativist United States American Party (often called the Know Nothing movement) of the 19th century and the Immigration Restriction League of the early 20th century as antecedents.

Organized labor and parts of the political left have also had an ongoing debate over immigration levels into the U.S. going back to the 19th century. The National Labor Union (1866-1874) campaigned for immigration restrictions as well as the eight-hour workday, as did the American Federation of Labor under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. The AFL-CIO did not reverse its position on immigration restrictions until 1999. The early United States Socialist Party was split over the issue, with some Socialist leaders including Jack London and Congressman Victor Berger supporting immigration restrictions; the party as a whole never had consensus, and only went on record in opposition to the importation of strikebreakers.

A separate issue with some overlap was concern over overpopulation. The leading early influence on that issue was Paul R. Ehrlich, who both founded Zero Population Growth and published The Population Bomb in 1968. The popular book foretold alarming disasters that would inevitably occur in the next decades. Though some of his predictions did not come to pass, many believe his main points are valid, and they succeeded in inspiring a movement. Environmentalists including David R. Brower and David Foreman took the threat seriously. The Zero Population Growth organization did not involve itself, for the most part, in U.S. immigration policy, and a subset of the overpopulation movement grew which believed that immigration needed to be reduced, arguing that immigration was driving most U.S. population growth. These activists founded organizations separate from ZPG which would specifically address immigration issues. Among the important early organizations was Negative Population Growth, founded in 1972 by Donald Mann.

The leading inspiration for the modern movement is John Tanton, a self-described progressive and critic of neoclassical economics. Tanton founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979, the largest and best funded organization in the movement. Three years later, Tanton formed US, Inc. as an incubator and funding source to help form other organizations. According to public tax records, US, Inc, FAIR, and other Tanton organizations have received large donations from the Pioneer Fund and from the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife. Tanton created US English (an English-only advocacy group), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), ProEnglish (another English-only advocacy group), and The Social Contract Press. US, Inc and FAIR have provided funding and logistical support to other organizations, including American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF), California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), and the recent Protect Arizona Now (PAN) initiative, Proposition 200. FAIR points out that there is a relationship between lax immigration policies and terrorism such as the 9/11 attack, and it asserts there is no connection between itself and eugenics. The movement seemed to be triumphant in 1994 when California voters passed Proposition 187, an initiative which limited benefits to illegal aliens that had been authored and promoted by CCIR. However it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory. One federal judge enjoined implementation of parts of the law as unconstitutional, and Democratic governor Gray Davis refused to pursue an appeal of the lower court decision, abandoning Proposition 187. Residual resentment over the racially divisive campaigns on both sides of the issue made immigration a topic that politicians largely avoided dealing with. A notable exception has been Tom Tancredo, who was elected to Congress from Littleton, Colorado in 1994. Together with Patrick Buchanan and the Tanton network, Tancredo has emerged as the most conspicuous voice advocating immigration reform in Congress.

The immigration reduction movement was partly rejuvenated by The Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population coalition. In 1997 members from a range of immigration reduction and environmental organizations met to rededicate themselves to the effort of population stabilization. Organized by Population-Environment Balance, it included such diverse groups as:

Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND)
California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR)
California Wildlife Defenders (CWD)
Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS)
Carrying Capacity Network (CCN)

Another effort was the coalition formed under the name U.S. Sustainable Population Policy Project (USS3P) in 1996 by Douglas La Follette and David Pimentel. The USS3P membership contained many immigration reductionists of the time. In 1999 it sought cosponsors for a major national conference on immigration. A number of major individuals and minor organizations joined as co-sponsors, but no large national groups joined and it folded in 2000 without holding the intended conference.

The Internet offered new opportunities for communication by immigration reductionists, as it has with countless other movements. Peter Brimelow founded his VDARE writers collective in 1999. The year 1999 also saw the founding by Craig Nelson of ProjectUSA in New York City, which used billboards to advertise Census Bureau and other statistics about immigration in a campaign dubbed "Billboard Democracy," and publishes an ezine in which the term "Minuteman" was first used (2002) in connection with civilian border patrols. The NumbersUSA group founded by Roy Beck set up automated system for website visitors to send advocacy faxes to their legislators on immigration topics. Numerous websites, email lists, weblogs, and other resources furthered the effort.

The electoral success of Arizona's Proposition 200, PAN, indicates the support for immigration reductionism among voters. The PAN initiative qualified for the ballot following the expenditure by FAIR of hundreds of thousands of dollars for signature gathering, plus comparable sums for campaigning with some additional amounts raised locally. The initiative was adopted by the public by a significant margin and is likely to inspire similar efforts in other states. The success of Proposition 200 in Arizona was followed in April 2005 by the Minuteman Project, in which volunteers came to Arizona to help patrol the border, although this project did not have the support of the United States Border Patrol and generated some controversy. The organizers of the Minuteman Project have announced plans for similar projects in other states including Texas, California, and Michigan.

History references

A letter from Samuel Gompers, 1921
The Auburn University Plainsmen: ''It's always a Virginian" (profile of Brimelow)
Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population
SPLC The Puppeteer

Reasons for reducing immigration

Reasons for favoring immigration reduction given by supporters include:

The majority of the population growth in the U.S. was and is due to immigration. Advocates of zero population growth and others concerned with overpopulation and other environmental issues are often attracted to immigration reductionism because of this.

Continued strong population growth through immigration drives up demand for housing. Although various factors impact housing prices, high population growth conflicts with goals for "affordable housing."

High levels of immigration may be seen as providing a steady source of cheap or low-wage labor to corporations. This can be seen as detrimental to wage levels in the U.S., and as a threat to the ability of labor unions to organize workplaces, with the threat always present that if workers organize they can easily be replaced by cheaper legal or illegal labor.

Sometimes, the reason is cultural. Some believe the high levels of immigration into the U.S., whether legal or illegal, are at rates too high to allow recent immigrants to assimilate into U.S. society, and also discourages recent immigrants from learning the English language.

Illegal immigration is often seen as symptomatic of widespread lawbreaking by employers, who hire workers illegally in the country in order to escape wage, workplace safety, and labor laws. This is especially a problem in the agriculture sector, where it is estimated that over 80% of workers are in the country illegally. Supporters and critics of the movement debate over whether these workers could easily be replaced by legal workers being paid in accordance with wage laws.

Temporary work visas are often used to replace high-wage workers in industries such as computer programming and engineering with lower-wage workers imported from other countries. This is seen by many as closely related to the practices of outsourcing and offshoring of jobs.

Target immigration levels

Immigration reductionists differ on the ideal level of immigration they would like to see into the United States. Some believe the numbers should be set each year at whatever level would, in conjunction with the current fertility rate and emigration from the U.S., maintain zero population growth in the country. The most prominent immigration reductionist in government today is U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo R-CO. Tancredo has authored a bill that calls for limiting annual immigration to between 30,000 and 300,000. The organization, Population-Environment Balance (PEB), has issued a Immigration Moratorium Action Plan

calling for a "non-piercable" cap of 100,000 persons annually, which would be a 95% cut from current levels. Carrying Capacity Network (CCN), another small reductionist group closely related to PEB, shares that goal while repeating that it is not opposed to immigration.

There are also some who support a moratorium on immigration. The Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America claims that 43% of Californians polled said that a 3-year moratorium on immigration would be beneficial to the state (compared to 40% who said it would be unbeneficial). The America First Party calls for a ten-year moratorium, with only spouses and children of citizens allowed in. Other advocates for moratoriums include the Reform Party and 2004 Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka Robert Locke surpasses them by calling for a negative immigration rate. He has defined this as restricting immigration to the U.S. to what he calls the "normal" (i.e., pre-1965) average flow of immigrants throughout U.S. history, combined with the deportation of all illegal immigrants.

The Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) and Population-Environment Balance, two groups that both operate out of the same Washington, D.C. address, issue frequent statements that advocating for the numbers recommended by the Jordan Commission, 700,000 annually, is "counter-productive". In a National Alert the CCN warned that organizations supporting numbers higher than 300,000 undercut the movement, and they specifically criticize the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA.

Some groups not connected to the immigration reduction movement nonetheless support a reduction to legal immigration levels of around 500,000 to 600,000. In their 1997 book, Misplaced Blame, Alan Durning and Christopher Crowther of Northwest Environment Watch write that illegal immigration gets too much attention, and identify five main sources of population growth, including lack of access to family planning as well as a misguided legal immigration policy, and subsidies to domestic migration. They readily admit that immigation should be reduced by an unspecified amount, but they also show concern for the rights of existing residents. The AFL-CIO and some mainstream environmentalist groups used to be on record favoring lower immigration numbers, although most have quietly dropped this position in recent years.

Proposed methods of reducing illegal immigration

Border barriers

The focus of some immigration reduction groups is hindering illegal entry by building barriers on the border. The United States-Mexico barrier has been partially constructed to reduce the flow of unauthorized migrants into the United States. Presently, India is constructing a fence along the border to restrict migrants from Bangladesh, the 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) long Indo-Bangladeshi barrier; The stated aim of the fence is to stop infiltration of terrorists, prevent smuggling, and to bring a close to unauthorized migration from Bangladesh. The People's Republic of China is building a security barrier along its border with North Korea to prevent defectors or refugees from North Korea from entering the country illegally. On January 25, 2008 Egyptian security forces blocked almost all illegal entry points along the border with Gaza to try to stem the flow of Palestinians wanting to leave. Egyptian forces in riot gear erected barbed wire and chain-link fences along the border to prevent more Palestinians from crossing.

Intergovernmental cooperation

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin supports coordination with federal authorities through the use of Section 287(g) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Section 287(g) provides for the deputization of state and local law enforcement officers, for the purposes of reporting of immigrants who have violated immigration law. Morristown, New Jersey mayor Donald Cresitello (Democrat) has sought to deputize his police as immigration agents. Newark, New Jersey city councilman Ron Rice, Jr. has proposed a resolution mandating police to report felony suspects when they are found to be in the United State illegally. Furthermore, the Attorney General of New Jersey Anne Milgram has expanded officers power regarding illegal immigrants. She told the state police to inform federal authorities when an illegal immigrant is arrested in an indictable crime or for drunk driving. There are an estimated 380,000 people living in New Jersey without proper immigration documents. She said that she wanted local, county and state police to hand more serious cases directly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Legislative initiatives

Others focus on lobbying to lower future illegal immigration levels through congressional action, and to fight amnesties for existing illegal immigrants.

Many immigration restrictionists question the 1898 Supreme Court ruling U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that individuals born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents are U.S. citizens and guaranteed all the rights thereof. They feel that citizenship should be denied to the children of immigrants without valid immigration status. Thus they have sought to end birthright citizenship, through a constitutional amendment or a congressional act.

Denial of public benefits to undocumented individuals is believed to remove the incentives and rewards for illegal immigrants. The 1994 California Proposition 187 and the 2004 Arizona Proposition 200 Protect Arizona Now were written to require proof of legal status in order to receive non-mandated benefits.

Differences within immigration reductionism

Many who support reduced immigration numbers oppose association with the more extreme groups.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform has spoken out in 2004 against the views of another reductionist leader, Virginia Abernethy, calling her views "repulsive separatist views," and called on her to resign from the advisory board of Protect Arizona Now in Arizona. The two groups closely associated with Abernethy, Population-Environment Balance and the Carrying Capacity Network, have been issuing statements since 2003 accusing FAIR and NumbersUSA of being "reform lite" and "undermining real immigration reform." PEB and CCN are also critical of FAIR for FAIR's support of a national ID card, which PEB and CCN oppose. The Protect Arizona Now movement split, with two rival state-level organizations, one supported by FAIR, the other supported by PEB and CCN, working to support the passage of the ballot initiative.