Tag Archives: immigration

Immigration Limits

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written elsewhere about the folly of limiting the numbers of immigrants we allow in.

Here are a couple of interesting facts offered by Steve Case in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Canada got its new startup visa program running this summer, explicitly seeking to lure talented entrepreneurs away from Silicon Valley. Our Canadian friends even erected a billboard near San Francisco…urging foreign-born innovators to consider leaving Silicon Valley and move north.

And

Australia—despite having an economy 14 times smaller than America’s—will, as of Sept 1, offer as many employment-based green cards as the US.

Hmm….

Immigration and Border Security

Posted on by
1

The Senate’s bill on immigration reform purports to include a requirement for border security that must be met before a citizenship path for existing illegal aliens can begin.

Regardless of what we might think about the strength of that requirement, it demands data on current and trigger border security levels.  Those data may not be available:

[CRS and GAO] reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service show the Department of Homeland Security lacks an accurate barometer to measure the success of ramped-up efforts to curtail illegal crossings.
…
…[they have the] number of apprehensions of people coming in illegally….  But those numbers…don’t necessarily show whether an increase or decrease is due to immigration trends, economic shifts, enforcement policies or all of the above.

Because

Apprehensions data…exclude two important groups when it comes to unauthorized migration: aliens who successfully enter and remain in the United States…and aliens who are deterred from entering the United States[.]

That these data are hard to collect (the deterrence factor may be impossible to assess) in no way increases the reliability of apprehensions as a measure of security.

The GAO’s beef also includes a lack of data availability for the several immigration-involved agencies that would benefit from them: “a lack of interagency coordination and information sharing” and “inconsistency in data collection.”

This is just one more example of the lack of reliability of what this government tells us, and in this case it has—or should have—a direct impact on this government’s ability to achieve immigration reform, which is badly needed in any event.

Immigration and Integration

Posted on by
Reply

Michael Adebolajo, the terrorist who butchered a British soldier, is along with his accomplice, a man who has no use for British culture, British economics, British politics, British mores, British anything.  He is a soldato [sic] in an Islamic jihad that seeks to destroy Great Britain.

[Founder of the now-banned Islamist organization al-Muhajiroun Anjem] Choudary says that he was [Omar Mohammed, a radical Islamist cleric who urges his followers to fight the jihad] Bakri’s right hand.  Working together, he says, they aimed to rally Muslim youth throughout the country against the policies of the British government and usher them onto the streets.

When he is asked how he wants to change the UK, Choudary smiles gently.  …  He insists that he wants to introduce Sharia law throughout the country as well as ban alcohol and gambling.  And, of course, abolish the monarchy.  He wants to transform Buckingham Palace into a mosque.  Choudary sees jihad as a means of defending Islam.  He has praised the 9/11 terrorists—and he refuses to condemn the London bombers from 2005.

And

A friend of Choudary’s steps up to the table.  He calls himself Mohammed and also wears a black robe.  He is in an excellent mood.  “The entire country’s afraid now,” he says with glee.  Mohammed says that he happened to run into Adebolajo a few weeks ago, “but didn’t notice anything special about him.”

These people did not “immigrate” into Great Britain in order to participate in and take advantage of all that Great Britain and British culture had to offer.  They came to radically change the very culture that made the country great, to make it over into the country from which these people came.

They refuse to assimilate into British society; instead they demand that British society assimilate into their homeland’s society.

The British have no obligation to accommodate them, nor do the British have an obligation to accept into their country people such as these—indeed, no nation has an inherent obligation to accept any individual or group who wishes, for any reason, to enter.

The British should accommodate these people and their ilk in one respect, though: accept their refusal to assimilate—send them back home.  The safety, the very identity, of the country demands it.

And so does the safety and identity of the United States demand similar responses to those who do not wish to integrate themselves into that which has made us so great, but who, on the contrary, wish to radically change us, to make us over into an extension of their homeland.

All Immigrants Look Alike

Posted on by
1

That’s what Republicans say when they attempt to block immigration reform on the basis that all those new immigrants—whether newly arrived or newly legalized—will vote Democratic and change the dynamic of American politics, if not the fabric of American society.

These Republicans, apparently, also so much lack confidence in the Conservative message that they won’t get off their dead a*es and go talk to the new immigrants about the wonders of conservatism.  But, then, they won’t even leave their Congressional offices to go talk to present Americans about the strengths of Conservative values, preferring instead to hold the odd press conference on the Hill, or to toss a speech over the podium at some high-minded Center for This or Library of That, or to summon the plebes to an audience at a “Town Hall” meeting.  At which they blather on in vague glittering generalities.

You know, it’s just barely possible that the folks who run the high stakes risks for the high stakes payoffs just to get here, and then pick our crops or clean our houses or work in our factories (such as they are) or start their businesses from scratch are the sort of folks we actually want in our country: conservative, hardworking, self-reliant, responsible future citizens.

Maybe Republicans should get out of their way, and welcome them.  Yes, there are deadbeats and criminals who come in on the flood.  That’s what border security and visa controls are for.  However, a filter only works when it lets stuff (and people) through, and it’s only practically useful when it lets the flow run (generally) freely.  So Democrats and unions need also to get out of the way of these future citizens, and let visa caps be eliminated and serious border security be implemented.  (Or are they afraid of the Conservative message, too?)

The primary problem, though, is those Republicans who insist, as they did of the monolithic nature of Communism during the last century’s Cold War, on the monolithic Democrat nature of immigrants.  And fear them for that.  The competition of ideas is not a thing a Conservative fears.  Neither should Republicans.

Our Founders insisted on treating people as the individuals they are.  Our modern Republicans should do the same.

Immigration and Assimilation

Posted on by
Reply

National Review Online has an article on the unfolding (immigrant) terrorist attack in Boston (unfolded: the two proximate terrorists are dead or caught; unfolding: learning from the surviving terrorist whether they acted alone or as part of a larger op).  In the article, John O’Sullivan talks about the assimilation into British society of the immigrant terrorists who attacked the British subway system 7 July 2005.

For almost the entire youth of the 7/7 bombers, the British had acted as if they were ashamed of their national identity and history.  So young men, with the usual propensity of young men to want to identify with patriotic and idealistic causes, had been told that there was nothing admirable or heroic about being British.  It was a sort of swindle, and one, moreover, that had been perpetrated especially upon people of their ethnic backgrounds.  They had therefore looked around for a heroic cause they could identify with.  The radical Islamists provided them with the cause of radical Islamism—and they embarked on the relatively short road to mass murder.

Sound familiar?  O’Sullivan thinks so, too:

The fact that Senator Schumer has declared ex cathedra that the Boston bombings have no significance for the immigration bill before Congress merely shows that folly has no natural internal limit.

Particularly in light of the older brother’s continued feeling of alienation from American society:

I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them[.]