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April 06, 2006

IMMIGRATION, ETC

A little sanity on the immigration debate (if using "debate" in reference to what is mostly stupid people saying stupid things and ignoring the very few people that talk sense is not an abuse of the word) currently going on, on the other side of the Giant Pond. Larry Kudlow notes:

Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo calls illegal immigration "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation." Huh? That's xenophobic nonsense. In economic terms the U.S. has never had it so good. Statistic after statistic says we*re booming, with 175,000 net new jobs created each month and record levels of Americans working. In fact, since the early Reagan 1980s, the U.S. economy has been booming almost uninterrupted, creating 44 million new jobs even during the takeoff of high immigration.

Exactly what are we so afraid of? As Center for Equal Opportunity chairman Linda Chavez has been pointing out, Hispanics are great entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and job creators. According to 2002 Census Bureau data, Hispanics are opening new businesses at a rate that's three-times faster than the national average.

As a Reagan conservative, I believe in freedom and opportunity. Globalization is here to stay. Proper reform should combine stronger border security with higher visa levels and a path to citizenship. Yes, illegals should pay fines and go to the back of the citizenship line. Yes, employers must aggressively cooperate with the new rules. But compassion must coexist with free-economy principles and the rule of law.

Before he passed away, Pope John Paul II quoted Matthew 25:35: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me." That is precisely the spirit America should seek when it comes to immigration reform.

Indeed. Jonah Goldberg notes that there is not an immigration debate to have, but rather, many sub-debates. Read also Russell Roberts on immigration economics, in which he rightly concludes:

Immigration makes most Americans better off. Are some Americans made worse off because their skills are closest to new immigrants? Here, at least in the short run, one's usual intuition about supply and demand might hold, though my questions above make me wonder if it's even right in this case. But let's help poor Americans by giving them better schools instead of keeping out immigrants. And immigration is really good for immigrants. I care about them, too. If they want to work, let them come.

Also, don't miss his industrial-strength smite-down of an anti-immigration article in, of all places, the New York Times.

Posted by Lewis at April 6, 2006 12:46 PM