Letting Everyone in: A Question of How Not If.
Picking up the pieces of the current immigration disaster and protecting our national interest.
America is in the middle of an immigration crisis. Most people deny the the crisis, alternatively saying “Just stop enforcing the border laws and everything will be fine.” or “Everything will be fine once we enforce the law.” This is nonsense. America is in a crisis stemming from the realization that it’s not immoral to sneak into the United States, if doing so will rescue your family from poverty. Knowing this, we can no longer enforce our most basic laws without a destructive sense of guilt.
The proposed solutions of giving up control of our borders or using deterrents so harsh that people “give up and go home” are obviously useless. In one case, we are humiliated by enforcing the law arbitrarily and in the other we commit the equally humiliating act of employing an immigration policy so brutal that it compares unfavorably with starving to death in Guatemala. Neither alternative is sustainable, and vacillating between the two will only “discourage our allies and embolden our enemies.” Worse still, these vacillations threaten to erode our respect for each other by forcing us to listen to fellow citizens advocating dumb ideas.
There is a precedent for the current problem. For centuries, civilization struggled with the moral question “Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving child?” Initially we tried to balance the rights of bakers and starving children by feeling sorry for the children and deterring thieves by hanging them. Slowly, we moved in the direction of looking the other way occasionally when bread was stolen, but this just turned feeding starving children into a deadly lottery.
Eventually, we solved the problem by finding a systematic legal way feeding starving children. Far from being prohibitively expensive, eliminating extreme poverty turned out to be a net benefit. Over the next decade, we must solve the immigration crisis in the same way. We need either a legally coherent, sustainable plan for letting in everybody who can physically get here, or a plan for lowering our standard of living to such a degree that migrants volunteer to remain in Tijuana.
It might seem crazy to suggest letting in and naturalizing everybody who arrives at the border, but the plan includes the best features of all policies currently in the public debate. Nobody will be allowed to enter the country illegally, and there will no longer be an class off people who are in violation of the law because of their status rather than their actions.
Any solution will involve tight order security and very careful vetting of immigrants, combined with a streamlined processed for receiving asylum status based on the applicants assertion that they will be “better off” in America. The final facet of the policy will be some incredibly clever, highly innovative plan for integrating these people into society rapidly and sustainably. In this context sustainably means, that at some known point in the future, we can reasonably predict that the plan will collect more in tax revenue than it costs in services. We want these people to be so productive their home countries will wish they’d never left. To put it another way, “We’re going to build a big beautiful wall with big beautiful doors and Mexico’s going to pay for it.”
I have confidence that this is possible based on the observation that other countries also have people, and natural resources, but don’t seem to be doing as well as America. Presumably, the difference is that the American system is capable of turning people and natural resources into a just and sustainable society that makes people want to participate. So far we’ve always found a solution that transcends our current problem. Denying that fact is an indication of jealousy.
The eventual solution must have the following properties:
- It can’t destroy the country.
- It has to fix the problem rather than ameliorate it.
- It must be constitutional.
Regarding point one: A moment’s thought reveals that the current debate is not focused around those parameters. People who state that no amount of immigration could damage our economy are like people who claim that no amount of atmospheric CO2 could possibly change our climate. Serious suggestions must focus on turning this situation to America’s advantage not pretending that immigration is so inherently good that no amount could possibly be harmful. We should recognize that we are engaged in an unprecedented experiment, which will profoundly effect the future of our society.
We should be proud of the fact that our country is based on universal ideals which remain relevant in the face of change. Some countries are based on a shared language and culture, and exist only because of American security guarantees. Those countries can’t afford to be as flexible as we can.
Point two is equally necessary. The temptation to avoid solving a problem this large is enormous. We should not accept a plan which does not permanently remove the temptation to enter the United States illegally. The solution must make entering the United States illegally so unpalatable that we can reasonably presume that a person caught attempting to cross illegally has bad intentions. The solution will entail both increasing border security and streamlining legal entry. If these two are balanced correctly, people attempting to immigrate for economic or political reasons will be made safer, and illegal activity such as human trafficking will be reduced.
Finally, any solution to this problem must be Constitutional. This entire debate must take place within a space that respects the rule of law as defined by the constitution. We cannot consider suggestions which are cruel, involve abuses of power, or which harm the rights of citizens by appropriating their property in an unlawful manner. By framing our solution within the Supreme Law of The Land, we are making a commitment to take action under the principles which we all respect. One obvious consequence of this is that we will seek a solution which does not hinge on discretionary action by law enforcement, or the court system. Instead, we should create a legislative solution which is clearly expressed in writing, interpreted by courts, and enforced by government agencies. Ideally in that order!
The challenge is to devise a constitutionally acceptable “path to citizenship” which is broad enough to apply to the majority of migrants, and scale-able enough to avoid the necessity of immigration quotas. Once a person enters our country on these terms, deporting them for failing to meet a certain requirement is impractical, especially if they have children. We need to take that into account. Furthermore, there are constitutional limits on how tightly a path to citizenship can control a persons behavior. I doubt we can force someone to become a dialysis technician for example. Despite the challenges, there are clear advantages to an open and transparent system of legal immigration. If the recipients of the 26 billion dollars remitted to Mexico each year instead lived in America (preferable in some sort of solar powered space age city), Mexico would indeed pay for our doors and our wall.inn
