36 Million New Legal Immigrants in the Next 20 Years: The Debate We Should Be Having

Like so many public policy debates that go on in America, the people will be robbed of the debate we should be having as it relates to the immigration reform plan front and center in Congress right now.  Charles Babington and the rest of the Beltway pundits are most interested in how this legislation will impact the partisan horse race and escalating tribalism in American politics.  The lawmakers themselves are most obsessed with border security and the legal treatment of current and future illegal immigrants.  While both discussions are important, we're missing the forest for the trees if we limit the entire immigration debate to these issues.  Finally getting some headlines this week is that the immigration reform legislation will increase the numbers of legal immigrants that America absorbs to 36 million over the course of the next 20 years.  That's a pretty eye-opening number, and the specifics of that legal immigration surge and its impact on our economy should be front and center in the debate over this legislation.

To the limited extent this topic is discussed, there are strong arguments to be made on both sides.  On the pro-immigration side, it's undeniable that cities and neighborhoods in America that have seen significant in-migration by immigrants have healthier economies than do places like Detroit, Philadelphia, or the average lilly-white rural community in Middle America that has not seen new arrivals in decades.  Furthermore, the whiz-kid immigrants brought in to be employed largely in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields where America is severely lacking really stand out as success stories for those calling for an aggressive pro-immigration policy.

On the other hand, I found it quite telling that apostate immigration reform supporter Grover Norquist from the country club faction of the GOP responded to the inquiry about the impact deporting illegal immigrants would have on the economy, and his response was "it would lower GDP".  Yes, I imagine that reducing the country's population by 11 million through a preposterous deportation pipe dream would be a net drag on GDP, but I think we know that the part of GDP that Mr. Norquist is most concerned about being reduced is the bloated profits that his corporate clients enjoy as a result of having more low-skill workers in the economy than are needed and thus keeping wages artificially low.

Now I am onboard with legalizing however many illegal immigrants are in America and getting them on as accelerated as possible path to citizenship.  And I suspect most Americans are onboard with that despite the fact that it's the front-and-center grievance of the Republican opposition in the House.  But instead of fighting about the illegal immigration policy of the past, is it too much to ask we have a public hearing on the illegal AND LEGAL immigration policy of the future?  I'm sure there's language in the bill specifying who these 36 million new legal immigrants over the next 20 years will be, but I haven't heard anything about it.  Will they disproportionately be more STEM students who will be taking unfilled technology jobs and earn $100,000 per year salaries?  Or will they disproportionately be the family members of low-skill immigrants already living in America who will be competing with existing Americans of all races for a dwindling number of low-skill jobs?  Again, it would be really nice if we could have that discussion rather than endless talk about how immigration reform will impact the 2016 election or pie-in-the-sky proclamations of 20,000 new border patrol agents being hired.

The answer to this question that isn't being asked will have a profound impact on the American economy and its underclass long-term, and it's really hard to imagine a scenario where immigration reform ends up being anything other than an additional burden for the working poor.  As Paul Krugman constantly points out, the biggest crisis in America today is the level of long-term unemployment, and the profile of the long-term unemployed tends to be middle-aged blue-collar males of all races, many of whom are considered to have "dropped out of the labor force" as a result of the diminished demand for their limited-to-modest job skills.  Any immigration policy that will inflate the percentage of the population whose job skills are not in demand--at least not above poverty wages--is an immigration policy that will not serve America well.  And the public deserves to know if the immigration policy that Congress is currently debating is or is not that kind of immigration policy.

But going back to Norquist's calculation connecting immigration rather clinically to GDP, the natural conclusion of that logic is that if all of the world's 6.5 billion residents moved onto American soil, it would be a net positive because of the growth of GDP.  Few would agree with that conclusion, acknowledging that there's a point of diminishing returns.  But the biggest question for me from this immigration reform proposal is whether 36 million new legal immigrants over 20 years crosses that tipping point of diminishing returns.  This amounts to absorbing the entire nation of Canada into American life over a single generation and if something like that was ever proposed, you can be damn sure we'd have a vigorous debate about it as a nation.  So why the hell aren't we getting such a debate over an immigration reform package that would do the same thing?  Once again, the nation is suffering from bipartisan political malpractice, and it is only raising my "pox on both of their houses" cynicism which has been escalating all year.

One Category Where "MacGyver" Was Indisputably Great

There's a great deal of historical rewriting about the legacy of TV's "MacGyver" since the release of the series' DVD sets back in 2005 and 2006.  Unlike other shows from the era, most reviewers seem to be trying to compare "MacGyver" to the quality of modern-day made-for-cable series that produce eight episodes per season with massive budgets unbeknownst to any television producer working in 1985 when "MacGyver" came out.  Even reviewers that are generally favorable to the show always have to qualify their commentaries with reminders of the show's cheese factor and dated storytelling.  Well yeah....it was produced a quarter-century ago and the nature of episodic television has transformed dramatically since then, as is evident even when watching some of the most revered shows of the time like "Hill Street Blues", "St. Elsewhere", and "Family Ties", all of which generate cringeworthy moments when rewatching three decades after their initial broadcasts.

But as I revisit my "MacGyver" DVDs this summer, I'm struck by the extent to which the series outmatched its peers in the 1980s and continues to with present-day television, and that is in the category of musical soundtrack.  Modern TV series seem to have really cut back on original musical scores, opting either for placement of studio recordings from national recording artists or for generic, interchangeable escalations of soundtrack intensity leading into commercial breaks.  There's very little emphasis on original compositions than there was in the past.  But even among shows from "MacGyver's" era, the compositions were generally just frequently repeated offshoots from the show's theme song during action scenes or drippy, melodramatic "tender moment" music placed in sitcoms.  The level of sophistication that went into compositions on "MacGyver" was very rare, and even though the music has that 80s vibe to be sure, it holds up remarkably well and I find that as I'm reviewing these DVDs, they stand out as ear candy often upstaging the actual filmed sequences.

"MacGyver's" original composer was Randy Edelman, who composed the theme song and just a handful of the series' earliest episodes and then semiregularly composed future episodes in the first, second, and third seasons.  Edelman's larger-than-life presence with the compositions he did for the series makes it seem surreal that he only composed 16 episodes total.  The theme song itself was a delight, a synthesized toe-tapper conveying a Mr. Wizard-meets-Indiana Jones vibe consistent with the series with a very period-specific sound.  But even the theme song pales in comparison to Edelman's compositions on those early episodes, which were as thorough and sophisticated as anything I've heard on a TV soundtrack, particularly when set to scenes set in international locales as most early MacGyver episodes were. 

Edelman's compositions channeled the settings and the mood extremely impressively whether the setting was the Middle East, South America, or Africa. The early "MacGyver" episode "The Golden Triangle" was set in Burma.  While MacGyver's Swiss Family Robinson tactics thwarting a hapless Burmese Army seemed insanely awesome at the time, I will confess that this episode doesn't hold up particularly well, but even after the immensely cheesy final action scene, Edelman's musical fadeout that accompanies the largely silent final scene acknowledging the newly acquired freedom of Burmese villagers enslaved by their government turns an otherwise dopey premise into a surprisingly powerful scene.  I'm assuming Edelman didn't work cheap since he was hired for only a handful of episodes for each of the three seasons he worked on, but the depth of his compositions on an episode-by-episode basis continues to blow my mind 28 years later.

After the first five episodes of season one, Edelman bowed out from regular composition duties save for one additional episode in the first season.  His successor would have big shoes to fill, and long-time TV composer utility man Dennis McCarthy seemed an unlikely source to rise to the challenge.  But it was clear from the first episode that McCarthy composed that he would in fact meet that challenge, with some compositions that perfectly captured the science-adventure hybrid tone of the show.  And he did so without ever copying Edelman's much more synthesized compositions.  McCarthy composed episodes for all of "MacGyver's" seven seasons, even though he did just a couple each in the sixth and seventh seasons.  McCarthy filled a lot of these hours with some recycled material from prior episodes, which is the rule for episodic television as opposed to the exception that was Edelman's original scores for every episode.  With that said, however, McCarthy introduced new compositions each season, almost all of which were memorable and high-quality, albeit in a dated 80s sort of way that might not perk up the ears of the average 18-year-old who never lived through the era. 

McCarthy's best composition for the series came in the first season episode "Nightmares", one of the series' all-around best episodes.  That episode ran the gamut from incredible suspense, scientific wizardry, and engaging melodrama with an undertone of haunting desperation for MacGyver and his eventual teenage sidekick, and the composition brilliantly captured each scene and the chasmic swings of intensity set to film.  It was only the fifth episode McCarthy composed for the series but managed to accomplish the near-impossible in that it made Edelman's early music seem less irreplaceable.

 "MacGyver" moved production to Canada in its third season, and in order to satisfy some contracts with the Canadian government, it was required that the series employ a mostly Canadian crew.  As a consequence, Canadian composer Ken Harrison joined the series for season three and in the final two seasons, became the primary composer.  Far from an affirmative action hire, Harrison proved his mettle immediately with three exceptional scores for the highly suspenseful Sasquatch-themed episode "Ghost Ship", the Southern prison farm-themed episode "Jack in the Box", and the Murdoc episode "The Widowmaker", which featured Harrison's most sophisticated composition for "MacGyver".  Harrison's role with the series was closer to Randy Edelman's than Dennis McCarthy's in that most of his episodes featured entirely original scores that rarely failed to impress in their sound quality and their emotional range.  Even as the series reached its creative nadir at the same point where Harrison became its primary composer in the final two seasons, Harrison brought some first-rate scores to the table that were the high point of several episodes.

Edelman, McCarthy, and Harrison were "MacGyver's" three primary composers, but in the sixth and seventh season, a final member was added to the team named William Ross.  Ross was the only of the four composers whose work for the series was largely bland and generic in the way that most other series' original compositions are.  But even Ross had one shining moment with his dark and intense musical score for the classic sixth season episode "Lesson in Evil", which was Ross' first episode composing for the series.

Very few TV shows have a musical legacy to boast about and its a shame that so little is said about the musical legacy of "MacGyver", which was usually feature-film quality.  Television today doesn't seem to place much of a priority on sophisticated original compositions, and depending on the nature of the show that may well be a good thing.  On the other hand, it would be nice if at least some modern shows, particularly a show like "Burn Notice" which is very much a modernized throwback to classic 80s action shows including "MacGyver", would attempt a soundtrack worthy of its predecessors.  Because as someone who has consumed MacGyver's adventures many times and is revisiting them again this summer, the series' music is the one thing guaranteed to hold up each and every time I review it even on occasions where the story content doesn't hold up as well.