The issues around immigration to the United States are mired in hype, hoopla and plain old snake oil. Ninety percent of the time legal and illegal immigration are conflated as if they were the same thing.
They aren’t.
Yes, America is a nation of immigrants. The American continents are entire continents of immigrants, if anthropologists are to be believed. There are no native Americans because there’s no moral difference between 250 years and 20,000. We’re all immigrants.
Except it’s total nonsense. You can’t be an immigrant to the land of your birth no matter how recently your family arrived. Some of us are immigrants; most of us are natives.
Whether your family crossed on the Mayflower or hiked over the Bering Strait, whatever stupid thing they did or may have done is their business. It’s not your fault your ancestors did in all the nice horseys because they were hungry after that walk from Siberia. It’s not your fault your ancestors bought Manhattan for beads. Get over the guilt trip and work on your own personal failings instead.
You are not an immigrant in your home land. Period.
Okay, now that the stupid part is out of the way, nation states have a few important duties. They have to protect their citizens from foreign intrusion or abuse. They have to maintain the national currency. They have to provide the legal framework. They have to handle the infrastructure that the private sector cannot. Et cetera.
To keep their citizens secure, nation states have to have defined borders. This is not a negotiable thing. Yes, the US and Canada have an unsecured border but the important part is that they have a border. Everyone knows where it is. Everyone knows that stepping across makes them subject to the other nation’s laws.
Things perfectly legal in the US may be illegal in Canada. Cussing out the president – legal on both sides of the border. Cussing out the prime minister – only legal on the south side. What side of the line you are standing on can determine if you’re just being a jerk or about to go to jail. That border thing is important.
It also determines if the cops can just holler at you or shoot at you (really, you need to work on this anti-social behavior of yours!). It determines if we send Federal agents or F-16’s. A whole lot changes at that invisible line.
Until all of Mankind agrees on the fundamental rules, we have to have borders so at a minimum we know what rules we are playing by today.
Yes, a nation state has the right to have borders even if its history totally stinks. Yes, borders are important to the function of both nation states and individuals. Helps to know if running your mouth will just get you into an argument, or a prison, doesn’t it?
These posts would be a lot shorter if I didn’t have to explain the obvious stuff. I’ve seen the news. I obviously need to explain the obvious stuff!
Okay, now for the important stuff.
We usually think about immigration, legal or illegal, in terms of how it affects the US. Nothing wrong with that but there is another side to the story. Excessive immigration of any kind hurts other countries and especially regular people in those countries.
Yes, really.
Think about it. Who is most likely to risk an illegal border crossing, let alone walk a thousand miles to do it? The lazy? The unmotivated? The confirmed cynics? Nope, none of the above. It’s the ambitious, motivated, hard workers that take on the prospect of illegally crossing into the US of A to work under the table and usually underpaid jobs for the chance to improve things for themselves and their families.
But those are the very people that make change happen in their home countries. Without them, the political pressure to make real and useful changes dissipates. Without them, there are few left who can make those changes real. If all the movers, shakers, workers, dreamers and can do people work out their most productive years in the US it makes the US stronger and makes sure another generation will be born into crippling poverty back home.
That’s just the blue collar crowd.
Legal immigration is actually worse for those that are left behind. The US has the pick of the litter. Doctors, engineers, architects, nurses, computer programmers and designers, successful business people – if it has a useful degree it has a great chance of emigrating to the US. The home country invested all that money into their education and welfare and the US reaps all the benefits. The folks back home just have to hope the Doctors Without Borders will pay them a visit soon because the doctors that were born there are long gone.
Not exactly a great way to lift a nation state out of poverty, huh?
No, it’s not some sinister plot. Stupidity rarely needs the help of malice. We mean well. No one can blame those folks, legal or illegal for wanting a chance at even a bit of the American Dream. But the US ends up skimming all the cream off the milk, leaving the nation states that need those people with no cream, no crop and a lot of skim milk.
This is where foreign aid is actually supposed to come in. The system is presently closed for renovation that it apparently needed more than we’d realized. Don’t think we – the US of A – are better off not helping other nations. That’s just moronic. No, seriously, it is. Earth is just one very big neighborhood we can’t actually move out of. Having neighbors that drag down the neighborhood, even when it’s not deliberate, just makes the neighborhood unlivable for us all.
Here, we have to do the hard part – be smart. Enough aid to help others help themselves, with the necessary strings attached to make sure they do just that, but not so much aid that they merely become dependent. Much easier said than done and no, it doesn’t sound easy, does it? But complaining that the neighbor doesn’t paint his fence doesn’t accomplish anything. Making sure he has the paint, the brush and the motivation gets the job done.
I know, the analogy sounds so much easier than the reality. Still, smart foreign aid in small, effective packages, benefits the US both in soft power and by decreasing the impetus to flee to America. It’s always been a lie that ‘Americans don’t want those jobs’ or ‘Americans won’t work those jobs’. Truth is millions could get off welfare and assistance and have their shot at the American Dream if they didn’t have to compete against illegals who are cheaper to hire. No minimum wage, no Social Security taxes, no unemployment and no chance of being sued by people afraid of deportation – of course illegal aliens are cheaper.
They are also taken advantage of. They work their backsides off to live in the same poverty they left behind. Sure, they make much more than back home but they are cheated out of retirement benefits as well as upfront pay while trying to live at American prices.
How does this help anyone long term?
Short term, sure, or those folks wouldn’t do it. But long term? They didn’t work in their home countries at anything that might provide retirement benefits and they didn’t pay Social Security here – eventually, they can’t work and this is going to really hurt.
Legal immigrants enjoy the protection of America’s laws. They enjoy higher incomes and can eventually afford American lifestyles and retirements. They are fine. But the folks back home? Long and short term, they are worse off. Infrastructure that can help build a vibrant economy never gets built. Healthcare may even be free but is sporadic and of poor quality leading to poor outcomes.
Both legal and illegal immigrants share drive and ambition – the good kind – to improve their lives. That ends up benefitting the US and costing the home country. No country succeeds politically or economically without people who can and will roll up their sleeves and make it happen. The result is that the cycle of poverty and oppression continues endlessly.
No, I’m not saying that no one should be allowed to emigrate here. I’m saying that the West in general and the US in particular should not be the escape valve for political pressure in struggling countries nor should they vacuum up all the talent and skills those struggling countries desperately need.
Instead of sending our guys to try and fix stuff, what if we helped their guys fix stuff themselves?
Nations are built from the inside out. That’s why Afghanistan failed. We can provide the stability to give them the shot, but only the people themselves can build a nation. In Afghanistan, those folks didn’t know what a nation could be so they defaulted to what they knew. We tried to build the nation we knew they could be for them. That was well intentioned stupidity on our part. If the Afghans want a nation, they will have to build it themselves.
Each country comes with its own level of accomplishment. Some just need a little internal political pressure to start the process of change. Others need a bulldozer to level the ground. It’s near impossible for the US to come in and know enough about the people and culture to help them figure out what they need.
But the people born and raised there can do what no amount of US intervention ever could. Sometimes they will need a little help and sometimes they just need us to get out of the way.
What they don’t need is the US providing the relief from that internal political pressure by letting those with gumption and drive to use that motivation to jump a fence and pick strawberries. They certainly don’t need the US selectively taking their best and brightest to make new Americans.
A commentary is always going to make things sound easier than they are. Immigration, legal or otherwise, is a difficult and painful problem. We don’t want people illegally crossing our borders and taking jobs Americans do want and need. We also don’t want those same people to be stuck in lives of perpetual poverty. The easy answer will hurt someone, either American working class people or economic refugees from poorly governed, impoverished nations.
How about we skip the easy answer and do the hard one instead? Close the borders, minimize the brain drain immigration and at the very same time, design aid programs that have both smart ideas and sharp accountability. Use America’s political clout to make corrupt governments toe the line and build their countries.
So much easier said than done, but every little win puts a drop into the ocean. Enough drops and you get that rising tide that lifts all boats. Isn’t a world where most people can live in safety and security with opportunity and freedom right where they are born a good goal? We can’t have that world if we only ever use the easy way.
Both And. It has to be both and or the world we’re building won’t be one we like. We’ve been doing either or since Reagan was in office. We’re still mired in problems of illegal immigration unsolved for decades. Either or didn’t work. Let’s try both and. Secure borders and accountable foreign aid.
Can’t be any worse than what we’ve got now.
