About Immigration

Most of us have homes, owned or rented, and we have set up our homes to suit our lifestyles, values, and preferences.  We certainly welcome strangers into our homes as visitors, but we don’t expect strangers to move in with us and change the furniture and décor to suit themselves. And we certainly don’t expect to keep our door open all the time for just anybody to come in off the street if they feel like it.

The same is true with countries. America has a certain more-or-less uniform set of American values. We expect people to respect the law, unlike some lawless areas of the world. We expect people to be tolerant of other religions, unlike some Muslim countries, and other political views, unlike some dictatorships. Our culture doesn’t condone tax avoidance like the Italians or Greeks. We don’t tolerate “honor killings” or allow village elders to order punitive rapes, unlike Pakistan. We believe in a democratic system of government (messy as it sometimes is), unlike Russia. We value individuality, unlike China or Japan.

We are a nation of immigrants, but what is more-or-less common among all our immigrant ancestors  is that they came to America and became “Americans” – learned the common language, learned and respected the universal values and customs, supported the democratic process (and sometimes got pretty good at using it).  They certainly brought with them and added to the America culture many valuable things:  their music, their cuisine, their art, their holiday customs, and their own unique religions.  But they didn’t expect to come here and change America back into their home country – in fact many if not most left their home countries precisely because they didn’t like something about it – the lack of economic opportunity, the lack of religious freedom, political persecution, etc, etc.

The liberal dream of worldwide open borders is roughly equivalent to having everyone in town open their homes to any stranger coming by at any time of the day or night.  It just doesn’t make sense, and it certainly isn’t a popular view with the majority of Americans – perhaps just with wealthy liberals living in gated communities, who are happy to have low-wage immigrants mow their lawns, but certainly don’t want them moving in next door and lowering the neighborhood property values.

We should accept immigrants, (a) in reasonable numbers that don’t swamp the culture, (b) that want to become Americans and adopt American ways and learn the American language rather than just set up an enclave of their own country within America, and (c) that appear able to support themselves in our economy and not become a welfare burden on the taxpayers.

And we ought to do a lot more than we now do to help new immigrants settle in.  Some nations have “sponsor” programs where new immigrants each have a sponsor family who help them adjust for the first year or so, get jobs, learn their way around, and integrate into the American culture.  We would be smart to do the same.  And we certainly ought to make it easier for bright, well-educated (often in American universities), ambitious people to immigrate and strengthen our nation. Indeed, we already do a fairly stupid thing with foreign students who come here for a graduate education – we force them to leave after they get their degree, instead of encouraging them to stay and help the economy grow.

This liberal dream of "worldwide open boarders" is a recipe for disaster, as the EU is already finding out. On the other hand the knee-jerk right-wing opposition to immigration is also a disaster, and shows an appalling ignorance about our American history.