Three on Immigration

I must confess that I have not been following the recent debate over immigration legislation terribly closely, but I did find these three articles particularly worthwhile for bringing up things that those in favor of tighter controls on immigration for America (of all places) ought to consider. I'll tick them off along with some thoughts. The first two I heard about courtesy of TIA Daily.

(1) There's lots I disagree with in this Peggy Noonan piece, but her central point is excellent.

[Another thing driving the immigration debate is] the broad public knowledge, or intuition, in America, that we are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all.

We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence. We had pride and appreciation. We were a free country. We communicated our pride and delight in this in a million ways -- in our schools, our movies, our popular songs, our newspapers. It was just there, in the air. Immigrants breathed it in. That's how the last great wave of immigrants, the European wave of 1880-1920, was turned into a great wave of Americans. [bold added]

This would be part of why we keep seeing Mexican flags flown over American ones during these protests -- by folks who fled Mexico to get here.

Peggy Noonan's point is, furthermore, made in spades in France, where hoardes of unassimilated immigrants rioted recently.

(2) And as for the economic "arguments" for limiting immigration, Tony Snow does a good job demolishing many of these. I particularly liked what he said about foreign consumption of social services.

Princeton University sociologist Douglas S. Massey reports that 62 percent of illegal immigrants pay income taxes (via withholding) and 66 percent contribute to Social Security. Forbes magazine notes that Mexican illegals aren't clogging up the social-services system: only 5 percent receive food stamps or unemployment assistance; 10 percent send kids to public schools.

On the work front, Hispanic unemployment has tumbled to 5.5 percent, only slightly above the national average of 4.7 percent and considerably lower than the black unemployment rate of 9.3 percent. Economist Larry Kudlow praises Hispanic entrepreneurship: "According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening businesses at a rate three times faster than the national average. In addition, there were almost 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses generating $222 billion in revenue in 2002."

Skeptics counter that immigrants have clogged our hospitals, which is true -- but primarily in places that offer lavish benefits to illegal immigrants. [bold added]

The argument that immigrants use lots of social services and that therefore immigration should be greatly curtailed is exactly backward. It is not immigration, but social services, we should be talking about drastically curtailing.

It is worth noting the similarity in this aspect of the immigration debate with that of the drive by the left to penalize Wal-Mart for taking advantage of existing government programs to provide medical and other coverages to some of its employees. As I said back in August -- and you could just about do nothing else but swap "immigration" for "Wal-Mart" here:

In the great Wal-Mart debate, I have so far seen no one point out that the costs (in taxation) of Wal-Mart in terms of its employees' reliance on Medicare are not Wal-Mart's fault. Its workers, after all, are free to seek other employers and other medical plans. It is the government, by guaranteeing medical coverage to certain income groups, that is in fact, adding to the "cost" of Wal-Mart to the public. Worse still, it does this not just to customers of Wal-Mart, who would (and should) be the only ones affected were Wal-Mart to offer comparable medical coverage to workers currently accepting Medicaid, but to every non-customer taxed to support Medicaid. [bold added]

Hmmm. In fact, later in that same post, I noted this very similarity!

(3) Finally, via RealClear Politics, is an article by Dick Morris on a security issue you might not have thought of (unless you have wisely been following this blog over the past year) with respect to national security.

In its debate over how to change the U.S. immigration system, Washington neglected the impact in Mexico - which faces a crossroads election this summer.

And Mexico's choice could not be more important to the United States.

On July 2, the Mexican people will decide whether to elect ultra-leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) as their next president.

Rumors have abounded for months that Lopez Obrador's campaign is getting major funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And last month Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz)., a moderate Republican, told several Mexican legislators that he had intelligence reports detailing revealing support from Hugo Chavez to AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Chavez is a firm ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Lopez Obrador could be the final piece in their grand plan to bring the United States to its knees before the newly resurgent Latin left.

Between them, Venezuela and Mexico export about 4 million barrels of oil each day to the United States, more than one-third of our oil imports. With both countries in the hands of leftist leaders, the opportunity to hold the U.S. hostage will be extraordinary.

Think we have security problems now, with Vicente Fox leading Mexico? Just wait until we have a 2,000-mile border with a chum of Chavez and Castro. [links added]

Morris warns that AMLO is positioning himself to take advantage of a significant anti-immigration shift in our policy. I don't necessarily agree that we should cast our votes based on what people in another country think, but the Morris piece helps illustrate how events in Mexico could compound what already looks like folly to me, curtailing immigration.

-- CAV