America's Immigration Charade

The United States is not serious about immigration enforcement, argues Christopher Jencks in his recent article on immigration at the New York Review of Books.

Immigration "control" is all a charade, he argues. Unless the federal government is willing to seriously enforce workplace sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants, there will aways be demand for foreign workers, and no amount of border enforcement will do the trick in deterring alien newcomers.

Probably the most controversial measure in this year's failed immigration reform bill was the call for blanket amnesty (which supporters called legalization). Jencks notes why the amnesty issue is so important for the future of reform:

One reason legalization arouses such intense opposition among "law and order" advocates is that they see little evidence that the federal government will ever make a serious effort to prevent further illegal immigration in the future. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was supposed to be a compromise that linked amnesty to a crackdown on firms that hired illegal immigrants in the future. But once IRCA passed, the amnesty was implemented while the crackdown never occurred. As a result, the number of illegal immigrants kept growing. This history has sent out a worldwide message: if you are an unskilled worker who dreams of living in America, your best bet is to find a way into the United States, get a job, and wait for a new amnesty.

From this observation, Jencks delves into his analysis of workplace enforcement and border security (the two basic strategies of immigration control). The federal government overwhelmingly stresses border enforcement over employer sanctions because poor illegal migrants compose a weak interest group constituency (where business lobbies generate powerful demands for economic protection). Yet, some of the most perverse problems in immigration are found at the intersection of illegal employment and government economic policies, like taxation and Social Security. Notes Jencks:

Policing the places where immigrants work can...reduce the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, because it can reduce the number of jobs open to them and thus eliminate a principal reason for coming here. Nonetheless, the United States has never made much effort to reduce employers' willingness to hire illegal immigrants. Only fifteen firms were fined more than $5,000 for employing unauthorized immigrants in 1990, and the number dropped to twelve in 1994, two in 1998, and zero in 2004. The number of hours spent on worksite inspections also fell by more than half between 1999 and 2003. After September 11, 2001, inspections also focused more on airports, nuclear power plants, and other likely terrorist targets. Illegal immigrants who avoided such employers were therefore even less likely than before to be arrested on the job.

Inspections at workplaces did pick up after 2004. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made five times as many worksite arrests in 2006 as in 2004. But even in 2006 ICE made fewer than five thousand worksite arrests, so an illegal worker still had less than one chance in a thousand of getting arrested at work. (Once arrested, those with neither proof of American citizenship nor a valid visa are supposed to be deported, but it is not clear how often this happens.)

Under current law employers have to check a job applicant's documents, but they are not responsible for determining whether those documents are authentic. That seems reasonable. Yet as Peter Salins, a political scientist at the State University of New York, recently pointed out in The New York Times, the federal government could check the authenticity of workers' documents soon after they are hired without even visiting worksites. Informed estimates suggest that roughly seven million people are working in the United States illegally.

About half these men and women are thought to hold regular jobs, while the rest work off the books. To get a regular job workers must give their employer a Social Security number. Employers send these numbers to the Social Security Administration (SSA), so that it can credit workers' retirement accounts with both the worker's and the employer's contribution. When the SSA tries to credit an unauthorized worker's account, the number usually shows up as either nonexistent or belonging to someone with another name.

In 2002, according to Salins, the SSA took the unprecedented step of sending 950,000 letters to employers identifying such "mismatches." Employers and immigrant advocacy groups raised so many objections that the SSA cut back the program. As a result, "no-match" accounts now hold more than $586 billion. Some of these unmatched numbers can be traced to clerical errors, and some arise because people forget to tell the SSA that they have changed their name after a marriage or divorce. But the SSA believes that most unmatched numbers come from illegal immigrants using fake numbers to get work.

Read the whole thing. Jencks provides a balanced picture on the tradeoffs to businesses versus the country under a regime of tougher workplace regulation. But overall, the article is a penetrating analysis of the long-shot odds of achieving real reform in the foreseeable future:

The federal government's policy of opposing illegal immigration while refusing to enforce laws against hiring illegal immigrants has had huge costs. It has exacerbated popular distrust of the federal government (as indeed it should have). It has also increased hostility to foreigners, especially Mexicans, who are all suspected of having entered the country illegally. To many Americans Washington's failure to control illegal immigration, like its failure to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is just another example of how out of touch, duplicitous, and incompetent federal officials really are. In the short run such views are good for Republicans who want to discredit government and cut federal spending. In the long run, however, extreme distrust of government also precludes sensible policies that even conservatives should favor.

Regulars here will recall that I backed the Bush administration on reform, even with my concerns that the legislation would reward lawbreaking (see here and here). Yet, Jencks' article is having me rethink my position a bit. Legalization makes little sense when one examines immigration from the lense of interest group politics. As much as I support business, it's unhelpful to keep hammering away at tougher "border enforcement" without stringent controls against the employment of illegal aliens on the job.

A Reminder of the Immigrant Gang Plague

A street vendor and a newborn baby were killed Sunday in a vicious immigrant gang shooting in the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. Here's the background, from the Los Angeles Times:

The signs of progress are hard to miss in the streets around MacArthur Park.

A few aging buildings have been reborn as luxury lofts, new restaurants and an art gallery have opened, and a renovated band shell has brought concerts and family festivals to the park.

There's less graffiti on the walls, more police on the streets and crime is down significantly compared with a decade ago. Gone are the chalk lines on the sidewalks where gang members once marked their turf.

But the teeming neighborhood of mostly Mexican and Central American immigrants remains mired in poverty and urban crowding. The streets are filled with people day and night -- residents, shoppers, street vendors, drug dealers, transients and people selling fake IDs to illegal immigrants. And gang members, despite aggressive crackdowns, remain a powerful force in the district about two miles west of downtown L.A.

Los Angeles prosecutors on Tuesday charged a reputed gang member, Luis Silva, 19, for his alleged role in the shooting at an outdoor marketplace Saturday night on the corner of 6th Street and Burlington Avenue, injuring a vendor and killing a newborn. In the criminal complaint against Silva, he was charged with murder, attempted murder and extortion. An arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 2, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said members of the 18th Street gang tried to extort money from outdoor vendors Sept. 1. One vendor refused to pay. The gang members returned Saturday and opened fire, they said. A law enforcement source said the assailants were seeking $50 from the vendor they allegedly shot.

The shooting, residents and police say, is a reminder of the continuing pull of gangs, who prey on immigrants, many of whom are here illegally and therefore are reluctant to report crimes.

Read the whole thing. This is another brutal reminder of the new urban underclass developing in the nation's immigrant communities. See Heather MacDonald's "The Immigrant Gang Plague" for a full discussion of this growing threat.

There's been more attention to immigrant crime in recent months, in the aftermath of the Newark schoolyard murders, where the main suspect is illegal alien Jose Carranza. See also Michelle Malkin on immigrant crime and illegal alien sanctuary cities. Plus, see this Washington Post story on illegal alien crime and deportation.

More Californians Renouncing English at Home

Today's Los Angeles Times reports on data from the Census Bureau indicating that 43 percent of those in California, and 53 percent in Los Angeles County, speak a language other than English at home:

Bienvenidos. Huan ying. Dobro pozhalovat.

In California, "welcome" is more of an international affair than ever -- with nearly 43% of residents speaking a language other than English at home, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The trend was even more pronounced in Los Angeles, where more than 53% of residents speak another language at home.

Spanish is by far the most common, but Californians also converse in Korean, Thai, Russian, Hmong, Armenian and dozens of other languages.

The census numbers are likely to fuel a decades-long debate in California over immigrants continuing to use their native tongue. There have been battles over bilingual education, foreign-language ballots and English-only restrictions on business signs.

While immigration is the driving force for the state's linguistic diversity, experts said people often speak another language out of choice rather than necessity.

Some do so to get ahead professionally, while others want to maintain connections with their homelands.

The article provides this interesting example of the trend:

Yadira Quezada, 30, speaks mostly English at work, where she coordinates an after-school program for elementary students in Los Angeles.

But at home, she speaks only Spanish. She and her husband are fluent in English, but they don't want their four sons to lose their Spanish or to sound like "gringos" when they speak it.

There may be advantages to such practices, although the article notes unfavorable trends associated with insufficient language assimilation:

The downside is that many people who speak other languages at home are not proficient in English -- making them more likely to earn low wages and live in poor neighborhoods....

Among people living below the poverty line, 56% speak a language other than English in the home, compared with 41% for those above the poverty line, according to the census report.

"Isolation is problematic," said Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, chairman of UCLA's Department of Asian American Studies. "While it reflects the strong ties to the home country, it also suggests that folks in this situation are inherently more cut off from society and less able to participate and take advantage of opportunities here."

And the isolation is also felt by some English speakers living in areas where foreign languages are prevalent. Dental office administrator Mia Bonavita, 39, recently moved from San Diego to Monterey Park, where business at many stores is done in Chinese. Bonavita says the language barrier is difficult.

"I feel like an outsider," she said. "It's difficult to get to know your neighbors."

The linguistic diversity also affects the schools, where educators struggle to meet students' needs.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, there are more than 265,000 English learners who speak 91 languages. The district has a special translation unit, but must rely on parents and community members for some languages.

Southern California has numerous ethnic enclaves where speaking English is not a necessity, including parts of the San Gabriel Valley, Little Saigon, East L.A. and Koreatown. And some residents there say the lack of English hasn't diminished their lives.

I've written much on immigration issues and cultural assimilation.

My main concerns - amid our recent national immigration debate - have focused on illegal immigration (border lawlessness and the entitlement culture of immigrant rights activists) and threats from multiculturalism to the maintenance of a common national identity.

On the latter, I agree with Samuel Huntington, when he writes about the "Hispanic challenge":

The extent and nature of this [late-20th century] immigration differ fundamentally from those of previous immigration, and the assimilation successes of the past are unlikely to be duplicated with the contemporary flood of immigrants from Latin America. This reality poses a fundamental question: Will the United States remain a country with a single national language and a core Anglo-Protestant culture? By ignoring this question, Americans acquiesce to their eventual transformation into two peoples with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish).

I have tremendous respect for ethnic diveristy (and I live it daily in my classrooms and neighborhoods).

Yet, I remain convinced - like Huntington - that America's many strengths are rooted in the nation's Anglo-Protestant cultural heritage. That heritage is a powerful glue binding our disparate ethnic enclaves into one society, but at some point a fabric frays, and the binds that hold together may fail.

Importing Poverty: Immigration and the Poor

Robert Samuelson's one of those rare journalists who regularly cuts through all the baloney on any number of policy areas. His tightly-reasoned article today on immigration and poverty is an excellent example:

The government last week released its annual statistical report on poverty and household income. As usual, we - meaning the public, the media and politicians - missed a big part of the story. It is this: The stubborn persistence of poverty, at least as measured by the government, is increasingly a problem associated with immigration. As more poor Hispanics enter the country, poverty goes up. This is not complicated, but it is widely ignored.

The standard story is that poverty is stuck; superficially, the statistics support that. The poverty rate measures the share of Americans below the official poverty line, which in 2006 was $20,614 for a four-person household. Last year, the poverty rate was 12.3 percent, down slightly from 12.6 percent in 2005 but higher than the recent low, 11.3 percent in 2000. It was also higher than the 11.8 percent average for the 1970s. So the conventional wisdom seems amply corroborated.

It isn't. Look again at the numbers. In 2006, there were 36.5 million people in poverty. That's the figure that translates into the 12.3 percent poverty rate. In 1990, the population was smaller, and there were 33.6 million people in poverty, a rate of 13.5 percent. The increase from 1990 to 2006 was 2.9 million people (36.5 million minus 33.6 million). Hispanics accounted for all of the gain.

Consider: From 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty fell from 16.6 million (poverty rate: 8.8 percent) in 1990 to 16 million (8.2 percent) in 2006. Among blacks, there was a decline from 9.8 million in 1990 (poverty rate: 31.9 percent) to 9 million (24.3 percent) in 2006. White and black poverty has risen somewhat since 2000 but is down over longer periods.

Only an act of willful denial can separate immigration and poverty. The increase among Hispanics must be concentrated among immigrants, legal and illegal, as well as their American-born children. Yet, this story goes largely untold. Government officials didn't say much about immigration when briefing on the poverty and income reports. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group for the poor, both held briefings. Immigration was a common no-show.

Why is it important to get this story straight?

One reason is truthfulness. It's usually held that we've made little, if any, progress against poverty. That's simply untrue. Among non-Hispanic whites, the poverty rate may be approaching some irreducible minimum: people whose personal habits, poor skills, family relations or bad luck condemn them to a marginal existence. Among blacks, the poverty rate remains abysmally high, but it has dropped sharply since the 1980s. Moreover, taking into account federal benefits (food stamps, the earned-income tax credit) that aren't counted as cash income would further reduce reported poverty.

We shouldn't think that our massive efforts to mitigate poverty have had no effect. Immigration hides our grudging progress.

A second reason, notes Samuelson, is because we "import poor people" through our current policies, placing tremendous strain on public schools, social welfare programs, and health care:

We need an immigration policy that makes sense. My oft-stated belief is that legal immigration should favor the high-skilled over the low-skilled. They will assimilate quickest and aid the economy the most. As for present illegal immigrants, we should give most of them legal status, both as a matter of practicality and fairness. Many have been here for years and have American children. At the same time, we should clamp down on new illegal immigration through tougher border controls and employer sanctions.

Sounds good to me - I've been arguing this basic point in many of my posts on immigration (here and here).

San Diego Backcountry is Last Resort for Illegal Alien Entry to U.S.

This morning's Los Angeles Times has an interesting story on the immigration crisis in the San Yisidro Mountain wilderness, near San Diego, in Southern California, which has become a last resort entry point for illegal migrants to the U.S.

The article focuses on the work of "Team Gold," an elite unit of the U.S. Border Patrol, which is tasked with rough-country tracking of illegals aliens who have evaded the first barriers of U.S. border security:

The Black Hawk helicopter slips between craggy peaks looming over the U.S.-Mexico border and makes a lights-out landing in a barren valley.

Five agents of the U.S. Border Patrol's elite Air Mobile Unit jump into the darkness and take a narrow trail, their night vision goggles illuminating the treacherous terrain.

For an hour, they climb giant boulders, careful to stay away from the trail's edge, which spills into a steep canyon five miles into California.

Then the order comes over the radio in whispers. A motion sensor has been tripped. Migrants may be coming. Split up and take positions along the path.

From a steep perch, team leader Steve McPartland keeps watch on a rocky gap between two peaks across the canyon.

"If it's aliens, they'll probably come through that saddle," he whispers.

The agents lie back on the rocks, waiting in silence as a fog bank rolls in, shrouding the mountains in mist.

Illegal immigrants who make it this far inside California have beaten the front line of border defenses. The only things between them and the freeways are these mountains -- and the mobile unit's Team Gold. Its members are responsible for flushing out smugglers and migrants from some of the border's most rugged terrain.

These scrub-covered peaks in the backcountry east of San Diego are becoming the illegal entry point of last resort as beefed-up enforcement in urban areas and Arizona pushes migrant routes toward more rugged terrain.

Since the agency's San Diego area sector launched the unit four years ago, its 50 agents have apprehended more than 20,000 migrants and 347 suspected smugglers. The unit, divided into three teams -- Gold, Blue and Green -- is the only one of its kind in the agency.

Read the whole thing. The Team Gold membership is something of a thrillseeker's set, and while no members of their unit have died in the line of duty, the daunting challenges of the the job result in regular stress and frequent injuries. Unfortunately, the unit's work is often not always appreciated, with some arguing that this "gold line of border defense" detracts from more central missions of the Border Patrol:

Some Border Patrol brass initially opposed the unit's formation precisely because of such dangers. Others questioned whether the squad was a wise use of resources, saying that it drained staffing from traditional assignments directly on the border.

But because thousands of migrants kept taking mountainous routes without interference, officials decided that the benefits outweighed the potential risks.

Considering the great centality of illegal immigration on the national policy agenda, I see the work of the Team Gold as a vital element of a comprehensive national approach to immigration policy and border security.

Debating Sanctuary Cities

Kimberly Strassel's Friday Wall Street Journal essays are among my current favorites in mainstream press commentary. Her article this week is a disappointment, however.

Like the newspaper for which she writes, Strassel leans toward open borders advocacy. In her piece, she's critical of the debate erupting between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giulilani over illegal alien sanctuary cities, and she argues that the Republican Party risks alienating Hispanic voters, perhaps for decades:

A vocal Republican minority is demanding tough talk on an issue that has inflamed its passions for most of this year. Who are these two front-runners to refuse? Immigration gives them an easy way to talk up their security credentials, while simultaneously keeping the conversation away from thornier questions about social issues, or Mormonism, or unsupportive children. It also allows them to distinguish themselves from that dastardly immigration reformer, John McCain.

Unfortunately for their party, what neither man can do is keep the rest of America from listening. And for every base Republican who is gratified by talk of ID cards and border patrols, there's an entire family of Hispanic immigrants who are absorbing the mean language of "sanctuary cities," "lawbreakers" and "deportation." Many of these folks are religious, entrepreneurial, and true believers in the American dream; as such, they're the biggest new voting potential the Republican Party has seen in ages. But a growing number, just like those Catholics of yore, are angered by the recent rhetoric and wondering why they should pull a lever for any party that would go out of its way to tag their community as the source of America's problems.

I've written here many times that the great strength of the United States is our assimilationist culture and robust diversity. Yet, for the life of me I cannot understand how analysts can dismiss people's legitimate unhappiness with the breakdown of law and order on the issue of immigration.

Out of pragmatism, I supported the comprehensive immigration reform bill moving through Congress earlier this year. That support put me at odds with most partisans in the GOP base. But the idea of sanctuary cities goes against our reputation as a nation of laws, and I think it's an issue that just makes people mad. Strassel's wrong about this one: The sanctuary controversy is a debate the GOP presidential hopefuls want to raise.

Sanctuary for Illegal Aliens Dividing GOP

Ronald Brownstein's column this morning addresses the issue of illegal immigration "sanctuary cities." Mitt Romney, one of the GOP frontrunners for the 2008 presidential nomination, has denounced these sanctuaries, and his policy proposals have generated some controversy at the top tier of the Republican field:

Let's say the 7-year-old daughter of illegal immigrants working in a big American city wakes up this morning with a high fever and a rash.

Is it in that city's interest for the little girl to receive treatment at a local public clinic or hospital? Or is that community better off if the child's parents try to treat her at home because they fear a doctor will ask about their immigration status -- and report them to the federal government if they can't prove they are here legally?

Before you answer, recall that in the 1982 Plyler vs. Doe decision, the Supreme Court ruled that children of illegal immigrants have a constitutional right to public education. That means whether or not that child is examined to determine if her illness is contagious, she will soon be back in a classroom of other 7-year-olds -- many, in all likelihood, American citizens.

In most places, for most people, this would not be a hard call. Leaving aside any question of compassion toward the girl, the community's public health is clearly served if she is treated before she infects anyone else.

Likewise, most people would agree that communities are safer if illegal immigrants who have been the victims of crime, or possess evidence that can help solve a crime, can talk to police officers without fear of being quizzed about their status. Or if illegal immigrants enroll their children in school (as the Supreme Court allowed), rather than keep them at home for fear admissions officials will investigate the parents' status.

These are the judgments that have prompted Los Angeles, New York and dozens of other major cities to adopt policies that in varying ways discourage municipal workers from assessing the immigration status of people using local services and sharing such information with federal immigration officials.

They also are the judgments that have provoked the sharpest clashes yet between the two leading GOP presidential contenders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Romney charges that these city policies encourage illegal immigration by offering the undocumented "sanctuary." He proposes to cut off federal funds for cities that adopt them and calls New York's approach under Giuliani especially egregious. "New York City was the poster child for sanctuary cities," Romney insists. On Tuesday, he launched a radio ad condemning these city initiatives and, by implication, Giuliani.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently, when Giuliani was mayor of New York, the city adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the issue of cooperating with federal authorities investigating aliens under criminal suspicion, which included welfare fraud cases. City officials were allowed to provide information to federal officials, but they would not be able to make inquiries regarding the immigration status of city residents receiving public services.

How do we explain this? Is this just being practical?

The more I read about the down and dirty details of enforcing our immigration laws, the less confident I am that the country will ever get serious about securing our borders and respecting the rule of law.

Well, maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic: Federal officials did arrest and deport Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigrant who had evaded deportation for a year by seeking religious sanctuary at the United Methodist Church in Chicago. Not a day too soon, I might add.

Murder Stalks Poor Minorities in L.A. County

This morning's Los Angeles Times details the findings of the paper's "Homicide Report," a study of the distribution of homicides in Los Angeles County for 2007. Here's an excerpt from the main summary:

An online project of The Times called the Homicide Report has tracked Los Angeles County homicides, as they have happened, since the beginning of the year. The project has yielded a vivid statistical outline of the county's current homicide problem -- at least 520 killings by early August. It also has chronicled some of the damage that rippled through families and communities rent by deaths that happened before their time.

Homicide is not fair, hitting hardest among Latinos and especially among blacks. Latinos are killed at more than three times the rate of whites, while blacks succumb to homicide at three times the rate of Latinos, the Times analysis shows.

Adult males are the eye of the storm. The national homicide rate is about six deaths per 100,000 people each year. But for Latino men in their 20s in Los Angeles County, the rate is 52 deaths, and for black men, 176 deaths. In human terms, that means that losing a son to homicide, a remote possibility in some neighborhoods, looms as a daily threat in others.

In South Los Angeles and Athens this year, for example, there have been at least 20 homicides within a single ZIP Code in just seven months. A few miles away, in the Woodland Hills, Tarzana and Brentwood ZIP Codes, months go by without any.

People living close to frequent violent death find refuge in denial. On the same streets where sidewalks are stained by the melted wax from homicide shrines and young men loiter in wheelchairs, people talk about being "caught slippin' " (letting one's guard down) or about friends having "passed" (not having been killed). Bereaved parents describe years of obsessively protective behavior -- children locked indoors, hourly cellphone calls to check in. Then, in the next breath, they avow that they never thought their child could be murdered.

Be sure to read the story, and check out the chronicles of the victims at the homicide report blog.

I recently posted on the tragedy of America's urban crisis.

I am deeply troubled by these statistics. Urban violence is a national crisis, and the 2008 presidential hopefuls need to address this issue more forcefully. Remedies to the crisis are not to be found solely in the realm of law enforcement, but must also come from changes at the family level.

The Downside of Diversity

This Boston Globe article takes a look at the recent research of Robert Putnam, who has found that communities can be adversely impacted by profound levels of ethnic diversity:

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings....

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam's research predicts....

The study is part of a fascinating new portrait of diversity emerging from recent scholarship. Diversity, it shows, makes us uncomfortable -- but discomfort, it turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Unease with differences helps explain why teams of engineers from different cultures may be ideally suited to solve a vexing problem. Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating a solution that may have eluded a group of people with more similar backgrounds and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's work adds to a growing body of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collective needs and goals.

Read the whole thing.

This story is interesting in that Putnam's findings - that greater diversity leads to social malaise - have created a quandary for him. He's been the most important social scientist leading the revival of the civic culture school of social capital research. Yet, at the same time his own findings on detrimental diversity go against his previous arguments on the social benefits of greater civic connections:

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote.

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark 1965 report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of "an inconvenient truth," says Putnam.

Putnam reportedly "kicked the tires" on his research before publication, hesitant to distribute evidence that posed a key challenge to his career work. That might explain why he sent his manuscript to an obscure journal, Scandinavian Political Studies. I don't think I've ever read a scholarly article published in that journal! And I'm sure a scholar of Putnam's stature would have been accepted for publication at even a second-tier scholary press in the states!

In any case, additional research could clarify Putnam's downside of diversity thesis by using time-series analysis to map the longevity of detrimental diversity. That is, how long lasting is the phenomenon of social malaise arising under high rates of ethnic diversity? At what point do groups tend to lose their original ethic identities and merge under a dominant American one?

Such a study would have to hold constant the rates of immigration across time periods. One criticism of the current wave of immigration is that Latin American immigrants have greater geographical contiguity to their original homelands, and there is there more periodic repatriation and less language assimilation, which results in more lasting segmentation of social groupings. If that phenomenon holds throughout 21st-century American history, Putnam's most recent findings could have very serious implications for the continued unity and viability of the American polity.

Golden State Magnetism: Why California is the World's Top Immigrant Destination

I've blogged quite a bit over the last couple of months on illegal immigration, for example, on the radical takeover of the recent immigration protests and on the impediments to securing our southern border. Thus it was a real pleasure to read this piece in the Los Angeles Times yesterday on the continued allure of the California Dream. The story is particularly noteworthy because it is a chronicle of the legal immigration process at work. Here are accounts of people moving from all over the world -- the internal migration found in Americans relocating to the sunny climes of the California coast and the external migration of citizens the world over looking for a fresh start in the land of opportunity. Below is a key passage from the article. For the graphic on California's projected growth click here.

For all the attention focused of late on illegal immigration, California is by far the favorite destination of legal immigrants to the United States — about 200,000 in 2005 alone. Moreover, although the numbers fluctuate with the economy, the Golden State remains a powerful domestic magnet as well, with about 600,000 people from other states arriving here last year. No matter how taxing life sometimes seems here in the most populous state in America, newcomers still outnumber defectors, drawn by varying notions of the California dream." California is one of the very few states whose allure has never faded," said Marc Perry, chief of the Census Bureau's Population Distribution Branch. "The faces of the immigrants change, the tongues they speak change, but the people keep coming."Why do they come? One of the strongest and most enduring reasons is the sunshine itself. " A Climate for Health & Wealth Without Cyclones or Blizzards," boasted an 1885 booklet from the Chicago-based California Immigration Commission....

Not everyone comes for the sunshine, of course. Galina Angarova was wooed in part by what all that sunlight produces. Living in Moscow, she met and married a Northern Californian. They moved to San Francisco in August; she never wants to leave. In the Siberian village where she was born, she said, "not a lot of things are available, even food. You will not find an avocado....A lot of my friends don't know what sushi is." Angarova, 30, is eating her way through San Francisco. "The number of good restaurants here on Fillmore Street," she said, "exceeds the number of good restaurants in all of Moscow. "The quality and range of the food here are indeed a wonder, thanks to some of the world's most bountiful soil and accomplished chefs. Even the grumpiest Californians would concede that. But try driving across town to a favorite restaurant, they say. Try to find parking at your favorite market. Still, newcomers tend to see congestion differently from longtime residents' view. When Vasinee Florey, 45, left suburban Bangkok for suburban San Francisco, the first thing she noticed about the traffic was that "it's better" here." You should see the traffic in Thailand, especially in Bangkok," she said. "You cannot go far in an hour." Everything's relative, in other words. Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, crunched census statistics to uncover the reasons why some people come and go. California's humming economy was the strongest draw; the unemployment rate in several big counties, including Orange, San Diego and Riverside, is significantly under the national rate. More than a third of the arrivals from other states told the Census Bureau recently that they're here for job reason.

Stories like these have been repeated again and again over generations. It's heartening to be reminded of the vibrancy of the American promise and the success of the legal immigration process. This is the way America ought to be taking in its newcomers -- in contrast to the millions of undocumented aliens who cross our borders and then demand to be put in front of the line in securing benefits and legal status.