Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has gone a long while without posting an immigration-related essay. He’s finally decided to get off his duff and do so.
In the past few months the Smallholder has done yeoman’s work pointing out the economic benefits that illegal immigration provides for the United States. Your Maximum Leader has done more poking and proding and agrees with the Smallholder that the economic benefits, in terms of dollars generated in our economy, outweigh the (still significant) costs associated with illegal immigration. Your Maximum Leader is still somewhat skeptical about crime statistics. He will conceed Federally gathered crime statistics don’t show significant crime from the illegal community, we know from long experience that statistical information about crime is often under-reported for political reasons. In the matter of crime your Maximum Leader will conceed that crime in/against/by the illegal community is probably lower than is commonly thought.
Now having agreed with my distinguished friend on these points, allow your Maximum Leader to restate his belief that our nation needs an immigration bill that goes towards securing our borders.
First off, your Maximum Leader is in favor of immigration. Legal immigration of course. But he is in favor of it. He also believes that current quotas and loopholes for some foreign nationals are awful. Quotas need to be increased in his opinion. But having said that, we cannot continue to support our current situation - one of, essentially, and open and porous border.
The reasons for this belief, reasons that have so far been unaddressed on this blog, are security and assimilation.
On the point of security… It is a simple point really. We live in a world where many would like to cause us harm. Thousands, perhaps even millions (perhaps tens of millions) of (muslim) people if given the opportunity would just as soon slit the throat of an American as give him the time of day. Now the great majority of these people are not going to travel (legally or illegally) to the US for perfidious purposes. But there are some, be they hundreds (or thousands), whowill attempt to do so. The easiest ways for them to enter unnoticed is across our open borders with Mexico and Canada.
We need to get control of both our northern and southern borders to prevent people from entering our nation unnoticed. We’ve gotten lucky in the past with stupid terrorists getting caught on their way into our nation. But our luck will, one day, run out. The day that there is a domestic terrorist attack and Americans are killed (any number of Americans frankly) by a terrorist who slipped in from Mexico or Canada will be the day that we will likely get serious about border security.
The second, and frankly more pressing issue from your Maximum Leader’s prospective, is assimilation. While just a few short paragraphs ago he said he was in favor of increasing quotas on immigration; there is still a limit to how many we should accept. Our current system of quotas for Green Cards and non-immigrant Visas is around 700,000 a year. (Your Maximum Leader went to a variety of web sites to try and piece that number together. Here is one helpful link to the Immigration Act of November 1990. Which might have been the last time the legal immigration quota was addressed by Congress. Your Maximum Leader hasn’t checked all the budget appropriations bills that might have immigration language nested inside.) That number is low. The United States can, and should, accept more than 700,000 legal immigrants from around the world. But he does have a concern.
Your Maximum Leader doesn’t think that more than a few million immigrants (1, 2, 3 million?) can be successfully assimilated by our nation at a time. To your Maximum Leader assimilation means learning English, gaining an understanding of our laws and national culture, and gaining a primary loyalty to the United States. Immigrants must integrate into our culture and accept it as their own.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much pressure from many sectors for immigrants, legal or otherwise, to assimilate. We no longer put a premium on our own culture. The rich Anglo-Western tradition that is the well-spring of our national culture is widely denegrated, derided, and dismissed by “intellectuals” who are quick to point out it every flaw and inequity. Frankly it makes your Maximum Leader more than a little peevish when someone points out how awful and patriarchic and “white” and oppressive our nation is without giving much thought to the very concepts of liberty that allow such a statement to be made in the first place. In the marketplace of ideas that was our national discourse all the values on ideas have been made equal. To all together too many people there is no relative difference between our Anglo-Western traditions and those of Arabic nomads.
That is a great problem when it comes to assimilation. Why would an immigrant assimilate when there isn’t an evident consensus as to what he should assimilate to?
One thing your Maximum Leader will say, to get back on point, is that when speaking of the huge numbers of illegal immigrants we are currently enduring, there is neither a need or desire to assimilate. This is because the communities are illegal they deliberately try to stay off the radar (so to speak). It is easier and safer to keep to yourself and to maintain the customs of the place from which you came than to try and fit in with everyone else. However the numbers in which illegals come to our nation make them a significant force in public affairs. They are catered to in schools, hospitals, shopping, and television & radio. Why change when you have your “hosts” are doing all they can to make you not have to change?
Now you might be reading over all of this and thinking to yourself, “Self, my Maximum Leader seems to be rambling here. What is his point?” Well, that would be a good question. In your Maximum Leader’s mind, the risks of an open border to our national security and the disintegration of American culture caused by illegal immigration outweigh te (great) economic benefit we reap as a result of that illegal immigration. If Congress does anything this term - which is unlikely - it should be a move to secure and limit illegal transit across our borders. After that situation is resolved, then we can determine to to whatever we want with the illegals already in the US.
Carry on.
