Monday, July 2nd, 2007
A VOICE OF REASON ON IMMIGRATION
One of my older blogospheric associates, TM Lutas had some sage observations on immigration:
“Assimilation is the process of “clearing the job queue”. The immigrants of today are tomorrows’ citizens most capable and most inclined to help out with assimilation because they’ve gone through the process. It’s not something you can really demand because this sort of thing is true charity work. Few people are actually paid to help others learn english, find a job, navigate the political, economic, and social system that is the USA. Most of the people who do it do so part time, often unconsciously.
The common sense outline of the solution for immigration is not too hard to figure out. You need to determine what the inflection points are, set immigration numbers that are above all the “too low” inflection points and below all the “too high” inflection points and make sure that your assimilation machinery works well so that you end up clearing the queue quickly and allow the next round in.
Now is anybody talking like this? I haven’t found any and thus my disgust with the present debate. I haven’t found anybody who’s properly defined assimilation in all its political, economic, and social glory in a way that everybody can agree on. I haven’t found anybody doing the hard work to identify all the relevant inflection points so that we can identify a safe range of immigration where we can set numbers without getting this country into trouble.
Instead, what I find are posturing and falsity up and down the entire range of mainstream debate. Restrictionists don’t want to look to closely at our ability to absorb new immigrants because they’re afraid that the numbers are going to be higher than they’d like to satisfy their interests. The free borders crowd doesn’t want to look at assimilation either. The multiculturalists don’t believe in assimilation at all while others in that camp are too afraid that the numbers will come out as being too low to further their interests.”
Check out the questions that should be asked.
Dan of tdaxp emphatically agrees.
