Twelve Mexicans illegally entering the United States died over the weekend in the Arizona desert. No Americans died trying to get into Mexico. Over several decades, thousands of Cubans have drowned trying to float to Florida. No Floridians have perished making the reverse commute. During the Cold War, dozens of people were shot attempting to cross the Berlin Wall. They all went West. The individual will risk his life to flee socialism. The socialist will risk the lives of individuals to retain socialism. North, south, east, west, nearly all immigrants travel in the same direction: away from socialism.

Great post. That's why I think we should make it easier for decent individuals from whatever country to become legal American citizens.

Ben L: You suggest a change in immigration policy but you don't spell out your reason. Shouldn't all changes in policy be based on seeking the common good of the US?

What is so striking is not that Mexicans would flee Mexico, or that Cubans would risk life and limb--even imprisonment and torture--to escape their respective backwater tyrranies. What really amazes is that even "democratic socialist" paradises like the Netherlands have become net exporters of their own people. Peoplf of talent and education tend not to linger even in heavily nationalist central Europe. That, to the committed Third Way hard case is (or ought to be) the real embarassment.

This post puts it all in simple perspective. Well done. Guess that’s why you get published and the rest of us hack along.

Was talking to a Vietnamese woman the other day who explained that it was difficult for her to even see the ocean after she spent 25 days on a crowded boat with no food or water when she was getting out of Viet Nam after the fall of Saigon. She was pregnant and lost her child as part of the self-imposed starvation.

I know the circumstances were dramatically different but the principle was the same as it is now: to escape a repressive regime.

However, outside of drastic circumstances like this, we can’t continue to be a population receptacle for all people who come from countries where they can’t govern themselves or provide for their people.

A flaw in that model: a line of blue-state PESTs wait to get into Canada. So we should amend that to poor Socialist nations.

Note well that most of the Germans killed at the wall were under 30 years old. THEY WANTED A FUTURE.

Ben L: You suggest a change in immigration policy but you don't spell out your reason. Shouldn't all changes in policy be based on seeking the common good of the US?
Posted by short at May 24, 2005 12:05 PM

Of course. And legal immigration is good for the US. It is good for the US as a whole when immigrants come, willing to work harder and for less, thus buttressing the American free market, lowering prices, making the economy stronger, et cetera.

The only people it is not good for are economic protectionists.

Ben T: I'm not anti-immigrant or anti-immigration, and I'm only a protectionist from the point of view of a libertarian, but you seem to think (a little oddly) that we don't have enough immigration, and that the culture, religion, and nationality of immigrants don't matter for the US common good. I think that's rather naive.

"you seem to think ... the culture, religion, and nationality of immigrants don't matter for the US common good. I think that's rather naive."

(Just a tiny note before I address your point... if I used the phrase "common good" [or "social justice" as my friend Buchanan includes in the title of one of his asinine protectinist tomes] you all would rightly label me a socialist)

As long as the immigrants adopt the basic norms like all immigrants have in the past, I don't see what the problem is. As D'Souza talks about in "What's So Great About America", foreigners bring with them certain traits that will add to our national character, and we do the same to them on a personal level. Both are changed for the better.

Should the essential institutions, both economic and political, be altered? No, of course not. Should the Judeo-Christian moral core change? Again, no. Should Spanish be the second language of the United States? No -- English is and always should be our state language.

The effect is more of a cultural one. Of course, old, white, Norman Rockwell fans will not be applauding. Neither will true conservatives, who are averse to change in seemingly any form.

By accepting people who want to work hard and have ambition, we can strengthen our entrepeneurial character. New minds = new ideas.

Finally, to address the common complaints: as immigrants have done throughout our nation's history, successive generations will become less and less separated and self-ghettoized, until the particular group is just part of mainstream America.

Ben: Did you just say the phrase "common good" is used only by socialists?

Ben T: I'm not anti-immigrant or anti-immigration, and I'm only a protectionist from the point of view of a libertarian, but you seem to think (a little oddly) that we don't have enough immigration, and that the culture, religion, and nationality of immigrants don't matter for the US common good. I think that's rather naive.
Posted by short at May 24, 2005 11:23 PM

I would say that I think we don't have enough LEGAL immigration, because we have too much ILLEGAL immigration. Most of our immigrants come from Mexico, where the majority of people are Catholics with a culture not terribly different from the American one.

I should have known that that would be the only thing you'd respond to, my dear short. To answer your question: no. It's simply reminiscent of the language socialists use when advocating things like income redistribution and steel tariffs. Try addressing one of my actual points, please.

Look for the newly-released German movie, The Tunnel, about Germans who dig a tunnel under the Berlin Wall to help family members escape from the East.