Political issues are deeply affected by cultural attitudes, and the arguments become distorted when such attitudes conflict. This is a particular problem when the wrong ideas are applied to an issue.
An area where this is most clearly true is in the issue of immigration. It has proven all but impossible for the U.S. elites to come to an agreement on the issue, although the American people are strongly for a commonsense set of limitations. Even young people, relatively lefward on many issues, agree.
Hence the current, very foolish system has remained in place, because the political assumptions of the left elite coincide with the perceived economic interests of influential people on the right. It is a toxic brew that has poisoned debate and caused much harm.
The amount of legal and illegal immigration has been astonishingly huge since 1965. The nation’s elites have resolutely refused to listen to the facts about the effects of such massive immigration, with elites of both left and right converging to protect their self-interests with a smokescreen of rights rhetoric that places nonexistent civil rights of foreign-born persons far above the definite rights of native-borns.
As a result, few voters actually know what the politicians’ positions are.
An interesting study by economist Ed Rubenstein outlines the real consequences of our immigration policies, as summarized in a superb editorial by Investor’s Business Daily. The problem with U.S. immigration policy is actually very simple: Since 1965 we have seen immigration as a civil rights issue, applying our national civil rights to people not born here.
If, by contrast, we were to look at immigration from a national-interest perspective, we’d recognize that skilled immigrants add value to the country and such immigration should be encouraged, while immigration of unskilled individuals should be strictly limited.
As Rubenstein’s study notes, more than a quarter-million immigrants are sitting in U.S. prisons for criminal acts and more than a quarter of the prisoners in all federal prisons are immigrants.
These statistics vividly show just how misdirected our immigration policies are. This is a powerful drain on state and federal budgets and a willful tradeoff of tragedy in countless people’s lives (the victims of crime and their families) for a source of cheap labor for business interests and other U.S. elites.
The reason we don’t limit immigration to skilled individuals and their families, it is obvious, is that skilled people have more political pull, and hence are better at fighting off labor competition.
Thus we have floods of unskilled people and their dependents, and a shortage of valuable, skilled workers, as noted in an article in the forthcoming May issue of The Heartland Institute’s Infotech and Telecom News. (We’ll place a hyperlink when the story becomes available online.)
A classical liberal position on immigration would place the national interest and the rights of U.S citizens at the forefront. That points us toward a clear answer to the immigration problem and a sensible policy approach: skills-based prefernces, and strict limits on all other applicants.
The only question is, after forty-plus years of the current immigration regime, will the public ever be able to force the elites to listen?
thats for sure, brother
Thanks for your comment, JDrake. These are reasonable issues to bring up, and I think that this is the kind of discussion of immigration that the nation should be having: one that looks to our national interest, not imaginary U.S. civil rights for people born outside this country.
The classical liberal position on some types of “skilled labor” may require rethinking if the national interest is truly to be considered.
Other things being equal, foreign born scientists and engineers are more likely to be security risks, IMHO, because of ties to members of their families that haven’t immigrated (see John Derbyshire’s discussion of this. His wife is Chinese).
I think having a preference for native-born Americans to do this work is arguable. If you let immigrants drive down salaries what you’ll have is Americans continue to go into the professions the entry to whose practice is restricted, like law. Just what we need in the national interest, more lawyers.
Another point about all these immigrant engineers and scientists: they’re job-driven, and not at all civic minded. I know because many are my friends from grad school. My point here is that they pursue their occupations illiberally. Although they may be good parents, old-country ways of child-rearing may be insufficient.