Immigration Mend It Not Rend It - Road to the Middle Class

THE IMMIGRATION bill currently before the United States Senate is the usual farrago of band-aids and special interest goodies, trying to patch up the failure of 1986. It is, writes Peggy Noonan in unusually strong language, “a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity, with a touch of class malice.”

In response to the political class’s same-old same-old, the rest of us might profitably enquire: Never mind what they want. What do we want in immigration policy?

We humans are a migratory species. Ever since the first modern hominids migrated out of Africa across the Straits of Hormuz 50,000 years ago we have wandered the earth. In the agricultural revolution about 8,000 years ago we decided to settle down on the land.

But soon enough we tired of a life of rural idiocy, and 250 years ago began a new migration--from the country to the city. It is a story that we know by heart.

By the mid-nineteenth century the migration off the land in Europe had become large enough to engage the interest of the political class. Expert opinion was divided. Some believed, following the ideas of the political economists, that the new smoking, crowded cities were engines of prosperity. Others believed that machine industry would put everyone out of a job.

Everyone was determined to do something. Some advocated spiritual revival. Some demanded universal education. Young firebrands threatened bloody revolution. Sound men proposed beneficial legislation to curb the worst excesses of the factory system. Politicians intrigued to capture the votes of the newly enfranchised workers.

By the end of the nineteenth century it was becoming clear that everyone still had a job. Not only that, wages were rising, and the new financial markets were busily allocating new capital to make even more jobs.

But the workers wanted more than a job and a wage, so they had busily created a network of institutions to protect themselves from the risks of the new industrial economy. In the United States the workers had built churches and fraternal organizations, and they forged labor unions to link together in solidarity.

The political class lacked confidence in the abilities of the workers. It wanted to control the social safety net and so it brought it into the political sector where it could keep an eye on things.

A hundred years later nothing has changed. The migration to the cities, completed satisfactorily within the boundaries of the nations of the western Europe and North America, has now gone global. Rural people all across the world are heading for the city. But they are not necessarily heading for the nearest city within their own nation. Inspired by Ronald Reagan many of them want to go straight to the source, to the place that is “still a magnet for all who must have freedom.”

And the political class still wants to control everything.

The American people are not fools. We understand that when whole peoples are on the move and change is in the air, change could mean worse. We ask: Will the flood of immigrants wreck the life that we have built here for people like us? Will the immigrants successfully assimilate? Will they take my job? Will they pay my Social Security and my Medicare?

Americans understand that by amnestying the millions of illegal immigrants we are ratcheting up the welfare state another notch. We are giving the political class more power and more money, and we know that it will use our money to buy the votes of the newly amnestied immigrants. We know that no good can come of that.

But we understand that the great human migration of the current age is a force of nature. We cannot stop it; we can only channel it and deflect it. The Department of Homeland Security reports in its Yearbook for 2005, there are 175 million people crossing our borders each year and over a million new legal permanent immigrants a year. It’s estimated that there are another 0.5 million a year of illegal immigrants of which about half simply overstay their tourist visas.

Can we keep track of every visitor? Probably not. But we can make it more expensive and inconvenient to live and work illegally in the United States. And we can do more to steer legal immigrants vigorously into the great American mainstream of work and life.

Perhaps we can amend the Senate’s “big dirty ball of mischief” to move it in this direction. And if our noble Solons resent our interference, so much the better. We will direct them to Robert K. Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership:A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. They are, after all, public servants and need to know their place.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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