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Open Borders: The Real Immigration Solution
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12343 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1987 |
1,815 Words |
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Alan W. Bock
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The immigration problem in the United States - insofar as we accept conventional wisdom by calling immigration a problem - has a simple cause. Immigration is a problem because the American Dream, although tattered around the edges and undermined by an accretion of rules, regulations, and conventions, is still alive. Those of us who have lived in this country all our lives may have complaints about many things, but for those who view us from afar - whether from across the oceans or from across the border - this is still as close to a Promised Land as this troubled world affords.
So long as this country continues to honor the American dream of opportunity and liberty, and as long as other countries provide less a measure of these advantages, people will want to come here. Some call this a problem; others view it as an exhortation both to be true to the principles that have made this country so attractive and to continue to benefit from the inpouring of dynamism, variety, new ideas, and willingness to work that have contributed so much to the uniqueness of America.
All that may have been true when Emma Lazarus wrote that nice sonnet, some may say, but things have changed. This country can no longer afford to absorb all the wretched and tempest-tossed of the earth. Immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans, especially black Americans and those who are already living on the economic margin; they overload an already overburdened welfare system, harm the economy, depress wage levels, and deplete natural and sociological resources. Illegal immigrants become an underclass subject to exploitation. They stretch the limits of tolerance in a society already struggling with racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions unique in the world's history.
Even if all these contentions were true, they would not justify the abandonment of our heritage. In fact, though, most objections to immigration are based on myths and unfounded fears. Most of the substantive problems associated with immigration are caused by attempts to restrict immigration or by a welfare system of out of control.
Most of the subjectively valid objections to immigration would disappear if we set up stations at convenient intervals along our borders with a mandate to check for infectious diseases and affiliation with known subversive or terrorist groups. (The latter criterion should be fairly tightly defined: Being a member of an opposition party in Mexico or Guatemala should not qualify.) Those who fail to meet physical and political standards would be sent packing, and everybody else would be granted legal entry, without eligibility for welfare or public support for a period of at least five years.
Such a system would permit the supply of immigrants to meet the demands of labor in the most flexible manner possible without the interposition of an arbitrary quota set up by wise men in Washington. It would defuse the two most common and valid objections I hear from outraged readers on the phone whenever I write such irresponsible claptrap for a newspaper: "I don't mind their being here so much as their being lawbreakers," and "I don't mind if they come to work, but too many of them suck up welfare."
But where's the limit?
Critics contend that under such conditions
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