Immigration Matters

If you know me at all you know that I respect and try to think like Thomas Sowell and I really enjoyed his recent piece on immigration. You can read it here.(or scroll to the bottom of this entry) It is very well written and an insightful column.

I'm fairly open to immigration, because I assume people want to come to the US to become an American. Like a cup of coffee this article woke me up to the fact that many people do not wish to be American, only enjoy the things Americans have. I am not sure how you tell the difference between the two different type of immigrants, but it would be helpful in a discussion about amnesty.

My favorite movie to watch with my girls in The American Tale because it talks about how great it is to be an American when you come from abroad. My family has been in the US since the 1800's, but I still have a heart for the person who comes here to assimilate into the culture.
















The Original Article

Gingrich and Immigration

by Thomas Sowell

11/29/2011

"No one honestly believes the government should or will mount a nationwide manhunt to deport millions of people," according to the Wall Street Journal.

      

What we have today is virtually the opposite of that. Cities that openly proclaim themselves "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants put their own policemen under strict orders not to report illegal immigrants to the federal authorities, with the result that illegal immigrants who have committed crime after crime are free to stay here and commit more crimes, including murder.

      

You don't have to launch a "manhunt" when a known criminal is also a known illegal alien. What many local policies have done has been to virtually put illegal aliens in a witness protection program.

      

The more doctrinaire libertarians see the benefits of free international trade in goods, and extend the same reasoning to free international movement of people. But goods do not bring a culture with them. Nor do they give birth to other goods to perpetuate that culture.

      

Why do people want to come to America in the first place? Because America offers them something that their native countries do not. This country has a culture which has produced a higher standard of living and a freer life than in many other countries.

      

When you import people, you import cultures, including cultures that have been far less successful in providing decent lives and decent livelihoods. The American people have a right to decide for themselves whether they want unlimited imports of cultures from other countries.

      

At one time, immigrants came to America to become Americans. Today, the apostles of multiculturalism and grievance-mongering have done their best to keep foreigners foreign and, if possible, feeling aggrieved. Our own schools and colleges teach grievances.

      

European countries have learned the hard way how massive imports of a foreign culture can undermine your own culture, polarize your population and create internal dangers that are irreversible. Victor Davis Hanson's chilling and insightful book "Mexifornia" shows similar patterns in California.

      

Moreover, in an age of terrorism, everyone who comes across the border from Mexico is not Mexican. It is the height of irresponsibility to leave that border open and the people who cross it a protected group. Punishing employers who hire illegals is punishing an accessory to an illegal act more harshly than the one who committed the illegal act in the first place.

     

As for Newt Gingrich, his position on immigration is just one of the items in the "baggage" he has to overcome. But what the voters have to overcome is an insistence on a perfect candidate. Ronald Reagan, after all, supported an immigrant amnesty bill, but that did not prevent him from being a great president otherwise.

      

A Republican Congress would be unlikely to make that mistake again, even if a Republican president wanted to. The big question for 2012 is whether Republicans will win Congress and/or the White House. If Democrats win Congress and the White House in 2012, amnesty is virtually certain, along with other disasters.