Helen Raleigh. The Broken Welcome Mat. 2016. See here to purchase the book.
Helen Raleigh is an immigrant from China. She holds two master’s
degrees: one in business economics from the State University of New
York, and the other in business administration from the University of
Wyoming. She has worked in the financial services industry and is the
founder of Red Meadow Advisors, LLC, an investment advisory firm. She
is an immigration policy fellow at the Centennial Institute, a
conservative think-tank at Colorado Christian University, and she has
written for the Wall Street Journal, Townhall, and the Federalist.
The Broken Welcome Mat is about how the United States can
fix its broken immigration system. Raleigh provides a history of
immigration to America, starting with the Jamestown settlement and the
settlement of the Pilgrims and the Puritans. She moves on to the
immigration stances of America’s framers, who largely supported
immigration as a way to bring in workers and increase America’s GDP,
while wanting to keep out criminal immigrants. Her story proceeds to
the immigration of Germans, Irish, and Chinese people to the U.S. They
built America’s GDP, and the Chinese worked for low pay in extremely
menial jobs that many Americans did not want to do. In times of
economic turmoil, however, they were scapegoats, as American workers
considered them to be competitors who drove down wages.
Overall, Raleigh views immigration as beneficial to the United
States. There is a high demand yet a low supply of skilled workers, and
immigrants have met that need. While some immigrants in the short term
may compete with native-born Americans for low-skilled jobs, they also
free native-born Americans to take jobs that require more facility with
English. For example, when doctors immigrate to the United States and
become specialists, that frees American doctors to enter general
practice, and the greater supply of doctors has a positive effect on
American health care costs. Raleigh argues that a number of immigrants
work and that few commit crimes (other than being here illegally, in the
case of illegal immigrants). Surveys indicate that many of them have
positive attitudes towards the United States, indicating some desire to
assimilate.
While Raleigh rejects the nativism of Donald Trump, she still
believes that he is raising real issues. Immigrants have not always
been adequately vetted, leading to Islamic terror on American and
European soil. Raleigh notes that one such assailant actually left
anti-American posts on Facebook, but the Department of Homeland Security
did not check that out due to politically-correct sentiments and a
desire to preserve civil liberties. While illegal immigrants pay sales
and income taxes, their consumption of government benefits outweighs the
amount of money that they contribute to the system. They are
ineligible for a number of federal benefits, but some states are more
generous in their welfare policies. The children of illegal immigrants
who were born in the U.S. are also eligible for housing and medical
benefits as well as public education and school lunch programs, and even
illegal immigrants receive emergency care. Raleigh disagrees with
building a wall, seeing that as a very expensive and slow-moving
process. At the same time, she acknowledges that there are gaps in the
border that put America at risk and that can be addressed, through
security and cameras.
Based on her own personal experience as well as her formal analysis,
Raleigh concludes that the U.S. immigration system is grossly
inefficient. It can take decades to become a U.S. citizen, explaining
why there are illegals who try to bypass that process altogether. The
American immigration system is backlogged, and the criteria is not
always consistent: the lottery program, for instance, randomly lets
people in without regard to their ability to support themselves and
contribute, as other programs seek to bring in skilled immigrants.
There are categories (i.e., asylum, refugee) that can and should be
consolidated. Among Raleigh’s proposals are border security, tightening
the welfare system, and admitting people who can support themselves or
at least be supported by people other than the government. She does not
favor so much a single bill that would claim to fix immigration, as
that could increase backlog, inefficient bureaucracy, and a host of new
regulations. Rather, she believes that adjustments and consolidations
can be made, here and there. Raleigh also cites the Canadian and
Australian immigration systems as models to follow.
Raleigh also favors addressing the problems that lead immigrants to
come to the U.S. For instance, she supports safe zones for refugees in
Syria, which would be militarily protected by the U.S., Europe (which
would want to solve the refugee influx to her own area), and Arab
countries. These would be more than refugee camps, for they would
include schools and businesses. Raleigh also believes that the U.S.
should encourage free-markets, democracy, and anti-corruption measures
in other countries, in some cases making foreign aid contingent on that.
The book is written from a conservative perspective. It has somewhat
of a “pull yourself up by your own bootstrap” mentality. In one place,
Raleigh notes the irony of how the Colorado Supreme Court in 2015 ruled
against school choice by appealing to the Blaine Amendment of the
nineteenth century, which marginalized and discriminated against
Catholic schools, reflecting Protestant xenophobia and nativism against
Catholic immigrants.
The book was interesting to read, in areas. Raleigh effectively told
the tale of how the Puritans received financial support from British
merchants to settle in America. The Puritan immigrants wanted to
practice their religion, and the British merchants wanted to profit from
what was in America. The British merchants required a huge payback
from the Puritan settlers because the merchants were making a risky
investment, as there were perils to coming to America and settling
there. Raleigh also tells the story of Squanto, the Native American who
was crucial to the Pilgrim’s survival. The Pilgrims were fortunate to
meet someone who knew English, due to his unique background.
Raleigh’s policy proposals are understandable. A problem that I have
is that their “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” attitude does
not seem to grasp the difficulty that some have in supporting themselves
under the American system. For example, the American health care
system is expensive and daunting even for many native-born Americans,
explaining why there are people who feel a need to receive Medicaid or
Obamacare subsidies. We do not want more a lot of newcomers overloading
the system, but is depriving immigrants of a safety net a compassionate
policy? In addition, while Raleigh supports prioritizing the admission
of skilled immigrants, she still wants to admit people seeking asylum,
and not all of them are skilled. How can American society give them the
skills that they need? That could have been explored more. Raleigh’s
discussion of how to address the problems that lead immigrants to come
to the U.S. could have used more detail. It seemed a little
ginger—-yay, promote free markets!—-and it ignored the rationale that
officials have had for pursuing an opposite path from what she
recommended: the Obama administration, for instance, was skeptical about
the effectiveness of safety zones in Syria because it doubted whether
other countries would be willing to provide the ground troops for them.
A proposal of ways to help other countries to control crime and
violence would also have enhanced Raleigh’s discussion.
I checked this book out from the library. My review is honest!