5/18/11

Don't Be An Immigration Girlie-Man, Mr. Smith

The American Enterprise Institute has published a piece, by one Nathan Smith, called "What If Justice Demands Open Borders?"

What a mishmash of girly-man thinking, to quote a famous immigrant who is, of late, having to publicly man up.

Smith writes: "Open borders would lead to more inequality and visible poverty in the United States. But the great injustice in today’s world is not economic inequality within countries, which partly reflects people’s effort and choices, but economic inequality between countries, which is larger, and which guarantees some people a relatively comfortable life from birth, irrespective of their merits and efforts, while trapping others in desperate poverty."

And this: "Immigrants are 'stealing our jobs,' critics say. The truth is that most workers cannot substitute for one another. Their skills, locations, habits, and relationships are too different. Deporting an illegal immigrant might just mean one less job in the economy. It might mean two less jobs in the economy: the illegal immigrant’s, and the manager or coworker whose work was complementary with his. It all depends. There is not much reason, theoretical or empirical, to think illegal immigration affects the employment rate of natives one way or the other."

And this: "Since 2008, there seems to be a feeling that the United States is in decline, that a great stagnation has set in, that Americans’ customary optimism is obsolete. One antidote to this declinism can be found in the ideal expressed on the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

That famous poem remains part of American patriotic mythology, even after a hundred years of immigration restrictions have been betraying it."

Oh, brother.

Can you imagine the reaction of these long-suffering folks to this la-di-da way of thinking?

Their response should be: Su opinion no es muy importante para nosotros.

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