Politically incorrect immigration policy
April 3, 2002

I was asked a few weeks ago to moderate a panel discussion on U.S. immigration policy and quickly discovered just why so many people in this town shy away from even discussing the subject.

The topic is apparently too inflammatory for anything approaching rational discussion. The two sides talk past each other.

Prior to Sept. 11, it was assumed by the politically correct that anyone who questioned the wisdom of allowing legal and illegal immigrants in increasing numbers into the country with little supervision or control were simply anti-immigrant nativists. Since then, however, there has been a grudging acceptance of the view that keeping bomb-wielding terrorists from wandering around the American heartland might require us to at least gain control of our own borders and decide how many of which folks we want to let in.

In the past, we were guilty of trying to keep out people who were different from those already here. Thus, the descendents of the northern European immigrants who founded the place were appalled when southern and eastern Europeans began arriving to take the jobs being created by an expanding economy. And everyone was shocked when Asians began arriving by the boatload to build railroads that those already here craved but wouldn’t stoop to build.

It was, of course, always the most-recently poor who most opposed the new immigrants because they feared the new arrivals would work for less and take their jobs. In fact, of course, the new arrivals ended up taking the jobs the earlier arrivals no longer wanted and worked them only until the next wave arrived to supplant them.

In the end everyone benefited. The American dream that lured so many to our shores turned out, in the main, to have been based in reality. America’s streets may not have been paved in gold, but hard work put more gold in the newly arrived immigrants’ pockets than most had imagined possible when they arrived.

All of this remains true today. Most of those who make it to our shores come for the same reason that our grandfathers came 60, 70 or a hundred years ago — to make something of themselves and to work so that their children and grandchildren might live free and prosperous lives.

When they arrived they strove to become Americans. They learned English as quickly as they could and worked hard to become a part of the country they had chosen to call their own.

They didn’t give up their culture, but neither did they swear loyalty to the “old” country over the new. Dual citizenship wasn’t just frowned upon in those days; it wasn’t allowed. Those who wouldn’t — or couldn’t — assimilate suffered for their failure to do so because they simply couldn’t move into the economic mainstream.

A lot has changed since then. The American “melting pot” is no more. Since 1998, Mexicans have been encouraged by their government to keep their citizenship when they get to America.


Moreover, it’s politically correct these days to oppose assimilation in favor of a crude ethnic balkanization of the sort that has destroyed nations in Europe and Asia. New immigrants are not only not required to learn English or much about their new home, but can now be sworn in as citizens in their native rather than their adopted tongue.

None of this seems to bother our elites, but it does bother the average citizen. One doesn’t have to be a nativist to think there is something wrong with, for example, granting the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants the benefit of in-state college tuition while denying that same benefit to the children of military personnel stationed in the state.

Those who would close our borders are wrong, but no more wrong than those who believe everything is great. Politicians who conspire to avoid debating controversial issues of concern to their constituents do a disservice to the people they represent and the system that produces them.

This is what happened recently when the GOP and Democratic leadership in the House decided to act without a recorded vote on President Bush’s request for what amounts to conditional amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants already here. The effort failed, but trying to sneak something this important and controversial through Congress without a real public debate was contemptible.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.