Diversity, social capital, and immigrant integration: introductory remarks.

I am very pleased to introduce this National Civic Review issue on immigrant integration.

For sure, we are fulfilling the adage attributed to Confucius, "May you live in interesting times." Twenty years ago, I would not have guessed that by now we'd elect an African American president and Republicans would be nationalizing U.S. banks. The mercurial landscape highlights Yogi Berra's cautions to be wary of making predictions, especially about the future.

That said, one quite safe prediction is that all advanced societies will be far more diverse a generation from now. Figure 1 charts recent immigration data for the United States and various European countries, but inexorable diversification in the future is equally true for Japan or New Zealand. In fact, even if the United States halted immigration tomorrow (which I can't fathom happening), the nation would continue to grow more diverse through a high birth rate among nonwhites and because the U.S. youth population is heavily nonwhite.

As I made clear in my article "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century," immigration brings a host of benefits to the United States, far beyond introducing cultural and gustatory diversity. Among the benefits that U.S. immigrants bring:

* Greater creativity. Immigrants to the United States account for three to four times as many Nobel laureates, National Academy of Science members, Academy Award film directors, and winners of Kennedy Center awards in the performing arts as native-born Americans.

* Faster economic growth. Although there are important distributional effects to be considered-BY especially the impact of immigration on low-wage native workers in the United States--the weight of the evidence suggests that the net effect of immigration is to increase national income.

An engine for economic development in the world's "South." Growth in the annual northward immigration by only three percentage points would likely produce net benefits greater than meeting our national targets for development assistance plus canceling all Third World debt plus abolishing all barriers to Third World trade.