Commentary

Leave it to the tired and neo-conservative National Review to published a racist and unfounded piece by a neo-conservative visiting fellow at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute. Neo-conservatives!

That fellow, Alex Alexiev, is no specialist on U.S. immigration and has not written on the subject beforehand deciding, instead, to spend his time writing about the alleged jihad on Wall Street and other fear-mongering articles intended to malign Muslims and Islam. Alexiev is no expert on Islam either. But in the United States, especially in neo-conservative institutions, complete ignorance on a subject does not prevent people from posing as “experts” and bigoted writing does not prevent publication.

Maybe momentarily tired with Muslims, Alexiev has turned his wrath against Mexican undocumented or “illegal” immigrants. Surveying California’s woes - a dysfunctional legislature, the worst bond rating, and near-bankruptcy earlier this summer - Alexiev blames all of the state’s problems on Mexican immigrants whom he slanders as being nothing but the “poorly educated, the unskilled, and the illiterate.”

It is not California’s high taxes, extensive regulation, large bureaucracy and extreme partisan politics that is at fault for draining the state budget and create the climate for an annual exodus of 100,000 people. No, the non-voting immigrants are at fault. Why? Because they are so poorly educated, Alexiev argues, that they burden the burden the state budget by requiring special serves and are undermining the human capital in the state because Hispanic immigrants are poorly skilled.

First, California’s failing public schools are not the fault of immigrants. Most children put into a functioning school would learn English, if necessary, and be prepared for college. But the state’s teacher’s union has practically undermined all accountability and efficiency.

Second, California’s Mexican immigrants are a gain for the state economy and human capital.

. . . low-skilled immigrants actually enhance the human capital of native-born Americans by allowing us to move up the occupational ladder to jobs that are more productive and better paying. In a new study from the Cato Institute, titled “Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform,” this phenomenon is called the “occupational mix effect” and it translates into tens of billions of dollars of benefits to U.S. households.

Our new study, authored by economists Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer, found that legalization of low-skilled immigration would boost the incomes of American households by $180 billion, while further restricting such immigration would reduce the incomes of U.S. families by $80 billion.

Get that? Immigrants: Americans win $180B. No Immigrants: Americans have a net-loss of $260B.

Alexiev’s baseless, devoid-of-facts attack and bigoted scapegoating of Mexicans is not surprising. In recent years, neo-conservatives have always sought to find convenient enemies fabricated with empty accusations of being harmful to America mixed in with racist condescension against the targeted group. And National Review ceased being a serious publication years ago when it decided to give up integrity and become a Bush apologist rag.