It needs to be reaffirmed – immigrants add value to our nation

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More than two centuries ago, many Pennsylvanians feared their colony was in danger of being overrun by foreign hordes.

In this case, Germans.

Benjamin Franklin was at the front of this parade, proclaiming that German people were “boors” and asking, “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs…?”

Anti-German hysteria would pop up again in America history, but a century after Franklin was railing about Germans, the Irish were the objects of disdain and rage for many Americans. Later the home of the Kennedy political dynasty, Massachusetts was so vehemently anti-Irish that it forbade immigrants from voting until they’d been citizens for 21 years and it deported Irish people for the crime of being poor. Before he became one of the country’s worst presidents, Millard Fillmore blamed the Irish for his defeat in a New York gubernatorial election. Historian Christopher Klein pointed out that Irish immigrants were stereotyped as “ignorant bogtrotters loyal only to the pope and ill-suited for democracy.”

Panic over new arrivals is a longstanding feature of American life. But we need to remember a couple of things: First, people are drawn here from around the world for the abundance of opportunities America has to offer, its energy, and its freedom and openness; and, in return, immigrants bring value to our country.

It’s a reality that needs to be regularly reaffirmed.

In Pennsylvania, immigrants make up almost 10% of the labor force. They paid $11 billion in taxes in 2021. They have $30 billion in spending power and make up 10% of the commonwealth’s labor force. According to the American Immigration Council, they make up 13.4% of Pennsylvania’s entrepreneurs, 16.7% of its STEM workers and 7% of its nurses.

On a national level, immigrants are more likely to be of prime working age and start businesses and make contributions to programs all Americans rely on, like Social Security and Medicare. In 2019, immigrants paid almost $500 billion in state, local and federal taxes. One congressional report stated that their drive and sense of entrepreneurship “makes immigrants essential for encouraging future economic dynamism, innovation and long-term economic growth.”

On Tuesday, about 40 people from 22 countries became U.S. citizens in a naturalization ceremony at the Washington County Courthouse. They come from many points on the map – India, Syria, Bhutan, Germany, Nigeria, Canada, Jamaica, Vietnam and a host of other places. They were told by Jovann Day, the Pittsburgh field office director with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Pittsburgh, that they had made “an investment in the United States,” but this did not mean that they had to abandon their heritage.

Indeed, in America, we ideally can be both part of this country and acknowledge and celebrate our origins. This weekend in Washington County, for instance, an Italian festival is on tap, as is Canonsburg’s Oktoberfest. The region has many festivals, particularly in the summer and fall, that spotlight different ethnicities and regions around the world.

Given all the controversies swirling around immigration in our time, we need to keep in mind something Franklin Roosevelt once said: “Remember, remember always, that all of us. … are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

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