移民の話です。長文ですが、記事の翻訳お願いします。
The tide of Hispanic immigration today has similar roots, with two important differences: The European waves were legal, and immigration from the south of America, especially Mexico, is mainly illegal. The numbers are also on a wholly different scale from the immigration of the 20s and 30s. These factors understandably raise apprehensions, but so far the evidence shows that the new immigrants largely behave in positive ways similar to their predecessors. They are family oriented, they value education, and their children are learning English. Over time, they are intermarrying among growing numbers of other ethnic groups. They are people of faith. They are energetic, looking to move up in life through better jobs-they work hard and for long hours.
In fact they often take jobs many Americans simply no longer wish to do. By and large the most recent surge of immigrants is made up of people who are young and mobile and who work in the least desired sectors of the U.S. economy-such as agriculture and service industries-for relatively low pay. If these immigrants weren't here, this kind of work would have to be done by more skilled Americans, and they would only do it for much more money-which could be seen as a cause of inflation and a misuse of skills.
There was a very different situation in the 1960s. Then, half of all American men dropped out of high school to look for unskilled work. Today only about 10 percent of white males leave high school for a job, and high school graduates simply won't take the menial jobs that many immigrants are happy to take on. So for the most part, the new immigrant and the settled American are not competing for the same jobs. Even when they do compete more directly with low-skilled U.S.-born workers, the job preference is different. Immigrants find work in agriculture, while less educated natives often end up in manufacturing.
The notion that unskilled immigrants tend to complement rather than replace native Americans is supported by the unusually low unemployment rates of the six states that have the largest influx of illegal immigrants-New York, California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, and Arizona.
Millions and millions of new jobs requiring no more than a high school education will have to be filled over the next decade. Who will take them? Not those born in America. Our fertility rates are falling, our education levels rising. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that we will have many vacancies for unskilled labor-exactly where the vast majority of immigrants expect to be working.
In the California workforce of 2004, among undocumented men ages 18 to 64, more than 90 percent were working, compared with just over 80 percent of native-born men. Illegal immigrants receive virtually no welfare transfers that could sustain them without work. They know that if they're going to be unemployed, they're better off at home in Mexico instead of New York or Chicago. They're here because they want to work.
That is one side of the immigration coin. We hear less about the other side—the high-tech immigrants and the value they provide our economy. By some estimates, about a third of Silicon Valley start-ups in the past decade have been founded by Indians or Chinese, who also power the science departments of America's great universities. Yet, we continue to lock out of the U.S. economy some of the world's best and brightest in such fields as medicine, computers, and engineering, forcing them to work abroad where they can develop businesses or work in businesses that compete with us. It doesn't make sense.
So looking forward, we will need more rather than less migration at both the low end and the high end of the skill sets. Bear in mind that we are getting older. As the 80 million baby boomers retire, we will have 250 seniors to 1,000 working people in 2010; by 2030, 411 seniors per 1,000. Who will pick up the financial burden in the Social Security system for the aging baby-boomer generation?
