August 13, 2009

NJ Jewish News is inviting community leaders and our readers to write short essays suggesting issues they regard as critical to the state and the state of the Jewish community ahead of November’s election for NJ governor. This week: Allyson Gall on immigration policy.

To offer your own ideas on “What’s at Stake,” send your thoughts (no longer than 300 words) to editorial@njjewishnews.com and write “Stake” in the subject line.

Allyson Gall is director of the American Jewish Committee New Jersey area.

Attracting immigrants

Immigration is a hot-button issue, mirroring people’s fears and dreams and affecting everything from New Jersey’s economy prosperity to its physical security.

Yet the NJ Jewish community has not made immigration policy a centerpiece of its concerns. Perhaps that’s because there are so many other pressing issues. Perhaps, for many NJ Jews, “immigration” tends to trigger nostalgia, and we just don’t see the impact it has on us today. While it’s nice to recall our ancestors’ pluck and good timing, immigration policy is about more than great-grandpa’s boat trip from Minsk.

Here are a few reasons to put it on today’s agenda — and to ask the candidates vying for New Jersey’s executive leadership what they can do to advance both local and national immigration reform.

Back in the day when Russian-Jewish dissidents were jailed for seeking the right to emigrate freely, the Jewish community went to bat on behalf of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied trade privileges for communist countries to their emigration policies. With Jackson-Vanik, human rights took center stage and the Soviet Union let our people go — and ultimately crumbled. We understood this linkage and supported it. Immigration — as much as emigration — underpins democracy.

It also underpins our economy and, ultimately, our homeland security. “The view of the United States as a place of unparalleled openness and opportunity is…crucial to the maintenance of American leadership,” wrote the authors of a recent Council on Foreign Relations report on U.S. immigration policy, urging us to fight for a competitive edge in attracting talented immigrants.

Similarly, New Jersey’s “Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Immigrant Policy,” commissioned by the governor in 2007, recommended a host of strategies to “successfully integrate the rapidly growing immigrant population in New Jersey.” Implementation awaits.

The panel’s report shows that our state is one of the most diverse in the country: 20 percent of NJ residents are foreign-born, with India providing the greatest number. Immigrants propel our economy, comprising 28 percent of the state’s workforce, yielding “a modest positive fiscal impact on the state budget.” In other words, they pay more in taxes than they receive in services.

Statistics about immigrants often undercut the stereotype of the predatory “illegal alien” sucking jobs and health-care dollars away from those born in the United States.

Because immigrants are relatively young and healthy, they are more likely to be working, are less likely to depend on public assistance, use less health care, account for fewer emergency room visits, and are less likely to be in jail than the native-born, multiple studies show.

Immigrants disproportionately contribute to New Jersey’s brain-power and fuel our small businesses, our publicly traded companies and our vegetable and fruit farms. More than 40 percent of the state’s engineers and scientists with advanced degrees are foreign-born. And this group includes, of course, Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Israel.

It’s time to ask our candidates for governor, “How are you going to make sure New Jersey is a first-choice destination for those who have the skills and desire to live and work in America?”

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--