There is a popular video floating around Facebook called “Immigration Simplified Using Only Gumballs.” Each gumball represents one million people, and a man shows thousands of gumballs living on less than two dollars a day in jars labeled “China,” “India” and “Africa,” among others.
He explains that the one gumball of legal migrants the United States takes in each year does little to change the bleak picture of global poverty. Leaving young, talented potential immigrants to develop their native countries rather than admitting them to America is the more humanitarian decision in his view.
Even admitting two gumballs instead of one — the radical proposition from “Washington elites,” insulated from the harms inflicted by immigrants according to the man in the video — only manages to remove two drops instead of one from a bottomless bucket of third-world misery. He plucks two gumballs from “Africa” and places them in a wine glass representing the United States before adding eighty gumballs to “Africa” to account for the continent’s rapid population growth.
The process continues, two gumballs to “America,” eighty to “Africa,” over and over until the jar overflows and gumballs spill all over the stage floor. The audience murmurs in appreciation.
He concludes that mass immigration does no humanitarian good and needlessly drains our country’s resources.
Two demonstrably wrong premises support this presentation: that the humanitarian goal of immigration is to relieve world poverty, and that immigrants take more than they give back.
No serious immigration advocate argues that we can end poverty by moving every poor person to the United States.
Insofar as America has a humanitarian goal for its immigration policy, it is to unite families. According to the State Department, more than half of immigrant visas issued in 2016 went to the immediate family of an American citizen, with another third going to immigrants sponsored by green card holding family members in the United States.
The rest of the visas go to skilled workers, asylum-seekers and special cases, such as Iraqi and Afghani translators who work with the military.
The second point, that immigrants unfairly siphon resources from America, is entirely wrong. The center-right Cato Institute reports, “the economic effects of immigration are unambiguous and large.” The center-left Brookings Institute reports, “the total lifetime taxes (immigrants) and their descendants contribute exceed the benefits they receive.”
My family had little when we immigrated to the United States, but my parents were educated. They worked hard, paid taxes, sent their children to college and became important members of their church and community. This country is a better country for them having moved here — and they are not alone. The system prioritizes skilled, educated immigrants in a way that generally leads to success.
Despite immigrants’ massive boon to America, immigration policy is in desperate need of reform. Millions of undocumented immigrants participate in a massive, untaxed economy. Certain communities bear the brunt of strained schools and social services without benefiting from the additional tax revenue.
Solutions to these kinds of problems are dry, technocratic and more complicated than gumballs. In addition, they are impossible in the toxic anti-immigrant culture the Tea Party, and more recently President Donald Trump, has unleashed on the right.
The immigration debate has devolved into two questions: how tragic is the refugee crisis? How scary is ISIS? These questions cannot inform policy any more than how hungry one feels can inform a grocery list.
Determining how to exclude the scourge of international terror, how America can leverage its resources to ease the largest refugee crisis since World War II and how to enact law and order with kindness and decency is complex and difficult.
It is much easier to be rash and frightened and call for bans or walls. But so long as these questions are simplified to gumballs, we will continue to get them wrong.
Danny Bugingo can be reached at [email protected]
Jonnie Johnson
This Incurable Tragedy Will Continue To Mount. It is very insightful and reasonably understanding, Mr Becks presentation is, I believe, On Point. God Have Mercy
Duane
Would it be amazing, if we actually helped the people in our own back yard with the billions spent on immigration, first. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see our Veterans getting the help they really need with post war problems, without going through so much red tape. We need to fix us before we can fix others
Frank
I think you missed the point of the discussion. “We need to help them where they live!” We seem to have developed a system that has been shown to work. What needs to be done is export it to the world. That can be done by allowing immigrants to come here to learn and return to their home to apply the methods. Many more people will benefit. Is it easy - no! But it seems it would be worth the effort.
Operation Reciprocity
Your "ass-essment" is WRONG. You're basing it off of legal immigration, and your assessment there is wrong as well. America bleeds BILLIONS due to illegal immigrants. This takes VAST resources away from all aspects of the economy, not to mention away from proper screening of legal immigrants. There's so many holes in your story, I thought I was reading about the history of Swiss cheese.
Thermoman
It is dismaying that Mr Bugingo seems to be deliberately ignoring the deeply compassionate basis for Roy Beck's message on world population growth. The whole purpose of his excellent presentation is to challenge the assumption that advanced economies are somehow obliged to accept mass immigration because of humanitarian considerations and this is dramatically illustrated by the dumb ignorance of the Biden regime currently throwing open the borders. It is not Beck, but dazzlingly stupid clowns like Kamala Harris who madly virtue signal by pretending that they are somehow doing the world a favour by allowing mass immigration. They are not. Why? Because as Beck so brilliantly illustrates, there is a never-ending stream of people attracted by the better economic prospects offered by migration. The same is happening in Europe. And those who support it do so for the very reason that THEY BELIEVE that they are helping to alleviate world poverty. All they are really doing is wrecking the economies and societies poor people are flocking to. If you care about world poverty (and everyone should care about it) by far the best way of reducing it is to help poor nations make the demographic transition, to bring THEIR population growth rates down and improve their economies. That can be done with far greater effect by a number of means that require careful and compassionate work in such areas as improving female (and male) literacy and education, providing (voluntary) family planning, microeconomics (the development of small businesses) and improved governance to name but a few. Although improved governance is a joke given that the US has just illustrated how to rig elections on a grand scale. I'm so saddened that Mr Bugingo can't follow the clarity of the Beck argument. It's not "pseudo maths" as one commenter described it, it is real maths and what a shame that people are so lacking in clarity of thinking to grasp the simple truth: whilever the world's population keeps increasing at such a headlong pace, it's futile to think that it helps (as many do) to encourage mass migration. It's shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. I fear there is no hope while people such as Mr Bugingo cannot cope with rational thought.
Anon
The real reason we need to end most immigration is because we are importing many of the problems from other countries. America is great because we made it great. Our ideals and morals made it great. We've even been able to correct our own mistakes. Ending slavery and creating laws that ensure equally. Most of these other countries we get our immigration from have not done these things. Don't be mislead. History is clear. There was no mass revolt that lead to equally. No one rose up and took it. It was battled over and debated by those in power. We are who we are because we chose to be. And God has blessed us for it. We need not import millions with opposing ideas. Look at our country and look at theirs. I think we're doing just fine.
yeet
too late
Anthony
I think the article and the comments are insightful. Telling people “don’t read the comments “ is why we can’t have a debates in this country anymore. People just don’t want to hear it.
Craig Wilson
Don't read the comments
Johnny Layne
This is how misinformation starts. Listening to the opinions of others is a good thing, and combining it with your own research can help to form your own educated opinion. Does this mean it is fact, absolutely not. I agree with most of what Danny has to say here except for the statement, " In addition, they are impossible in the toxic anti-immigrant culture the Tea Party, and more recently President Donald Trump, has unleashed on the right." For one thing the President hasn't unleashed anything, and most Americans agree with what he is doing. He is not trying to legislate any new immigration laws, just enforce the ones we have had in place for decades. Second, neither Trump or the Tea Party are anti-immigration, they are anti-illegal immigration, the key word being illegal. Unless you stand in the middle of these illegal immigrant hordes, and know for a fact that there are no terrorist affiliated people trying to enter; the times we live in dictate we must first protect all the people who live in America before letting every Tom, Dick, and Mary enter. Especially if they are in large groups demanding entry using the "refugee fleeing oppression card". While demanding constitutional rights given American citizens, they knowingly breaking our laws. Illegal is illegal until the laws are changed. If you really want to see a drop in illegal immigration stop giving welfare and food stamps, but we cannot because that wouldn't be fare to people who need them. So, here we are, what do we do? Well, for one build a fence that can help, and enforce the laws we already had long before Trump! Also, do a little research on Obama, and what he did for some of the children of illegal immigrants, it was way worse than anything Trump has, or would do. Read up on the fall of the Roman Empire, and its causes, look familiar?