Suburban Mayor Takes Refreshingly Practical Approach To Immigrants
The Dallas Morning News columnist with the wonderful name of Macarena Hernandez recently interviewed Irving, Texas mayor Herbert Gears about the increasingly large immigrant population of that Dallas suburb. Mr. Gears says we need more civil conversations about immigration. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
And if there is a city that knows about immigration - legal or not - it's Irving, which is home to one of the largest North Texas concentrations of foreign-born residents, primarily Latino and Asian. In fact, nearly 70 percent of public elementary schoolchildren are Latinos.
"Given current demographics, we'll have this diversity forever," he tells me. "It is never going to be reversed."
And since that's the case, he says, then let's embrace it.
Irving, now a majority-minority city, began its transition about 20 years ago when white families fled to other suburbs and Spanish-speaking immigrants began moving in. Coping with the changes hasn't been easy, Mr. Gears says, but it had to be accomplished. The way he sees it, what some would call the "Mexicanization" of the United States is really a part of the cultural fusion that has historically linked our state to its southern neighbor.
"You want to build a 100-foot-wall along the border, build it," Mr. Gears tells me. "And you can inspect anyone else who comes through from head to toe. But that's a completely different issue from what you do with the people already here."
Too often, Mr. Gears says, the debate centers around the short-term costs of illegal immigration. People forget or ignore that even undocumented workers pay their share of taxes and boost their local economies. But perhaps immigrants' biggest contribution to their new home is their children.
Considering native-born fertility rates are down and those 65 years and older are expected to make up nearly a quarter of this country's population by 2030, Mr. Gears believes this infusion of young energy is a blessing for cities like his. In the long run, it's these younger Americans who will be paying for the pensions of future retirees.
Whether here legally or not, immigrants are "giving birth to new Americans," he says, "and that's what allows America to continue to be strong."
