Let 'Em All In?
A young friend just out of college (he played football, which is good news, but for Yale, which is bad news for everyone but Rob) writes that he's been giving some thought to immigration policy. "As a second generation American and the grandson of a poor Bavarian immigrant," he says, he
found compelling "this article from First Things."
[M]y immigration policy is simple. Let ‘em all in. That, I cheerfully admit, likely makes for poor public policy. Nonetheless, it is my instinct, based on my collection of immigrant stories. I’m pretty forward when I hear an accent. I want to know about it so I ask. The stories come easily. Almost everyone is eager to tell me how they got to America, and why. The why is simple: freedom, opportunity, a dream they wanted fulfilled. How they got here is always different. Stories do not make for good public policy either, but they are nice to hear:
A New York taxi driver was telling me how he left his teaching job in Pakistan for the opportunity to come to America. He liked driving a taxi better than teaching, and it let him meet people. “You left your homeland so you could come here and fight New York traffic?” I thought I was joking with him, a little. He looked at me very seriously from the rear view mirror. “Yes, God is good.”
"Let 'em all in" does indeed make for poor public policy, but why? My friend is genuinely curious. My response? I hardly knew where to begin. Then I realized I could ask my friends here at Ricochet to help. (My young friend reads our site devoutly.)
Good people of Ricochet, if called upon to explain to a bright-eyed and tender-hearted twentysomething just why we don't simply throw open the borders, what would you say?
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
"You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state."
Milton Friedman
Jun '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
There really was a method behind Bush's immigration "madness." Nobody got anything if they didn't come forward and identify themselves, complete with fingerprints and mug shots. 90% of our illegal immigrants wouldn't harm you or your family, even if they could. They want the American Dream because there is no Mexican Dream. Not for honest people anyway.
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Sure, and why have doors with locks on Yer house?
Oct '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Your friend might want to spend some time in Mexico City and then travel to Southern California and have those conversations. Their reason for leaving Mexico is to get away from a place where there is no future for their children than to live the old world cyclical life, going round and round, but never getting out of their class rut. Blond, European looking, you have a future in the Mexican middle class. Look Aztec or Mayan, you may cut the grass before watering the flowers.
Now to Southern California, and things aren't as different as you would like to believe they are. The immigrants might leave to escape the rut, but unless they assimilate they will bring the rut with them. Assimilation can accept only so many candidates, before it is swamped. When that happens, the host population begins the process of reverse assimilation.
Perhaps you need to be asking yourself why these people aren't investing energy bringing about change in their homelands, and then reflect on the question of where you, and the rest of these people, are to go once America becomes like the place you/they left?
Jan '11
Re: Let 'Em All In?
"Let 'em all in" will eventually lead to "They're all here anyway. Why don't we invade Mexico and make it official." It may take a few generations for the American public to justify it, but that's where we're heading.
I don't want Mexico.
Jan '11
Re: Let 'Em All In?
We do let 'em all in. What's the problem?
We just ask for ID, and some reason to believe you're not here to kill us. Other than that, come on in!
Jun '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
The only way to stop poor immigrants (the illegal variety) from streaming in, is to make America as brutal and corrupt as all the places they left. There are worse things than having lots of family-oriented Catholic guys sneaking across the border to re-roof your house, or make burritos.
Edited on Mar 31, 2011 at 12:26pmDec '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Obviously, your young friend has spent lots of time in an environment where there's no such thing as a stupid question.
Ask your friend if he's ever had a resistant strain of tuberculosis.
Or, maybe ask him if he knows the confined detonation velocity of a commercial grade high explosive. If he's mathematically inclined, you could ask how long it would take for a wave front from that explosive to move from one end of an average NY City transit bus to the other.
Edited on Mar 31, 2011 at 12:28pmAug '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Sometimes, it's useful for the purpose of analysis to imagine an extreme version of something, and then ask whether the extreme differs from the actual in kind or merely in degree. I would surmise that if anyone in the world who'd like to live in the U.S. could magically be transported here, somewhere north of a billion people would make the leap. It's obvious that with a quarter billion natives plus over a billion immigrants, this wouldn't be America any more. So at what level short of a billion does immigration threaten to overwhelm the existing culture? I contend that that's already happening in some substantial parts of the Southwest.
When my grandparents arrived, they were part of a European diaspora that was itself multicultural. My mother's Greek parents had to learn English in part to communicate with the many Portuguese immigrants in the same town. But when tens of millions of people stream across the border, all speaking Spanish, they're able to form unicultural communities that dwarf the immigrant ghettos of the last wave, the Chinatowns, the Little Italies, the Germantowns, the Little Tokyos, and so on.
Oct '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Maybe the best answer (to the young man) is another question using a great microcosm of the issue:
"Why don't owners of ballclubs have a "let 'em all in" policy at their stadiums?"
Asking that question of the young man would force him to think - really think - about the implications of his simplistic viewpoint. He'd get the answer on his own, and thus have a better appreciation of how things work in the real world.
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Well, for starters, some of "em" are very bad people.
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
etoiledunord: The only way to stop poor immigrants (the illegal variety) from streaming in, is to make America as brutal and corrupt as all the places they left. There are worse things than having lots of family-oriented Catholic guys sneaking across the border to re-roof your house, or make burritos. · Mar 31 at 12:24pm
Edited on Mar 31 at 12:26 pm
Family values? The Hispanic illegitimacy rate in this country is currently 45%.
Nov '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
I would love, love to let em all in. To go back to the immigration policy of the early 20th century would be to embrace the fundamental American values that made this country great.
The only problem, of course, is that the incentives for immigration have been totally perversed by the welfare state. If we didn't federally guarantee benefits to anyone (citizen or not), the only people that would come would be those willing to work. In our current situation many come to work, but a significant percentage do not.
Milton Friedman argued that illegal immigration is good for us as long as it remains illegal. The ones who come here illegally contribute to the economy but are not elegible for welfare due to their legal status. They are the purest expression of free-market actors. Any drain on the economy that might be attributable to them (e.g. use of public services without paying taxes) is, in the end, enabled by our own progressive tendencies. Guaranteed access to the emergency room? Ridiculous.
In my view, most other arguments against open borders usually reduce to racism or economic protectionism.
Edited on Mar 31, 2011 at 12:58pmJun '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
First, we need to seal the hole in the hull. Then we can start bailing out all the bad people that got in. But, if you still have a hole in your hull, bailing out any kind of water doesn't do much good. That failure (to fix the hull) belongs more to the Dems, but really belongs to both parties.
May '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
"Democracy, mass immigration, multiculturalism -- pick any two."
-John Derbyshire
Most of the folks who want to come here, including those from our neighbor to the south, do not come from places with a long tradition of liberal democratic institutions. Culture plays a huge role in the maintenance of those institutions here. Immigration is great, but it must be measured, and the immigrants must assimilate. Our capacity to absorb people from third-world backwaters and turn them into Americans is great, but not infinite.
Jun '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Kenneth
etoiledunord: The only way to stop poor immigrants (the illegal variety) from streaming in, is to make America as brutal and corrupt as all the places they left. There are worse things than having lots of family-oriented Catholic guys sneaking across the border to re-roof your house, or make burritos. · Mar 31 at 12:24pm
Edited on Mar 31 at 12:26 pm
Family values? The Hispanic illegitimacy rate in this country is currently 45%. · Mar 31 at 12:36pm
That's not my definition of family-oriented. Do they send money back home to Mom and siblings? Yes they do. Do they live with their kids? Yes they do. Love is not measured just by marriage licenses.
Mar '11
Re: Let 'Em All In?
etoiledunord: The only way to stop poor immigrants (the illegal variety) from streaming in, is to make America as brutal and corrupt as all the places they left. There are worse things than having lots of family-oriented Catholic guys sneaking across the border to re-roof your house, or make burritos. · Mar 31 at 12:24pm
Edited on Mar 31 at 12:26 pm
The 'family-oriented' Catholics are not in themselves bad. However, illegal workers often start other 'families' in addition to those they left behind; so that there is a welfare-dependent American family in addition to the remittance-dependent one left in Chiapas. The Irish, Italian, etc. immigrants of the distant past did not have the welfare state, or cultural matrix, to support excess families.
As the USA considers regime change, perhaps we could encourage the vast underclasses of Mexico to replicate our relatively mild revolution in their own rich land: but not leave it to chance that they replicate the Bolshevik, rather than the Founders', principles. Education brings individual as well as political power. This will take generations: but what worthwhile change does not?
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
etoiledunord
Kenneth
etoiledunord: The only way to stop poor immigrants (the illegal variety) from streaming in, is to make America as brutal and corrupt as all the places they left. There are worse things than having lots of family-oriented Catholic guys sneaking across the border to re-roof your house, or make burritos. · Mar 31 at 12:24pm
Edited on Mar 31 at 12:26 pm
Family values? The Hispanic illegitimacy rate in this country is currently 45%. · Mar 31 at 12:36pm
That's not my definition of family-oriented. Do they send money back home to Mom and siblings? Yes they do. Do they live with their kids? Yes they do. Love is not measured just by marriage licenses. · Mar 31 at 12:43pm
So now Mr. Family Values is all for the production of welfare babies, so long as their parents send black-market dollars home to Mexico?
Try again.
Jul '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
Jan-Michael Rives:
In my view, most other arguments against open borders reduce to racism or protectionism · Mar 31 at 12:39pm
In My view, any argument against open doors to Yer house reduce to protectionism or maybe even racism.
May '10
Re: Let 'Em All In?
The "we can't let them in cus' of welfare" argument has been addressed by numerous economists on numerous occasions. Its as if no one's heard of a rebuttal. Well, you can argue for immigration restrictions, but if that's the case then don't let me catch you talk about how much you adore or admire the free market.