Thread: Toward a Sustainable Immigration Policy

Toward a Sustainable Immigration Policy


By Daniel Greenfield Monday, November 23, 2009

While the rising threat of terrorism, violence and honor killings produced by Muslim immigration tends to be in the news lately, the problems produced by immigration are not limited solely to Islam. The problem of Muslim immigration was created by a larger trend in First World immigration policies that favors bringing in cheap labor for short term commercial and political gain. Such immigration policies however are seriously damaging to the nations that utilize them and cannot be sustained. So what we must do is look for a sustainable immigration policy.

The first principle we need to begin with is that immigration should be in a nation’s interest. While this seems self-evident, it is a principle that has gone by the wayside. For a clear example of what that leads to, consider Obama’s move to allow people infected with AIDS to freely enter the United States. Clearly the entry of people with a deadly communicable disease for which there is no cure into the United States is not in our interest. It is actually quite dangerous to us and offers us no benefits whatsoever to outweigh the risks. There are numerous examples in our immigration policy are less graphic but ultimately just as destructive.

Beginning with the principle that immigration must be in the nation’s interest, we now need a standard for measuring whether a particular form of immigration is in our interest or not.

The ideal form of immigration is one that benefits both the host country and the immigrants themselves. Immigration that benefits only the host country is slavery. Immigration that benefits only the immigrants is parasitism. The ideal is a mutual exchange of benefits between the immigrants and their new country. And we can begin by measuring that exchange through simple statistics by breaking down the impact of a particular immigration population in simple dollar terms.

This can be done simply by taking a particular population of immigrants and balancing their contributions in the form of taxes against the social expenditures they create through social services, crime, terrorism and public assistance. Through this method any immigrant population can be broken down into a dollar amount, which can then be contrasted and compared with other immigrant populations, as well as with the native population, to arrive at a chart that shows on the financial level which immigrants offer more benefits versus losses. Such figures should be assessed for first, second and if possible, third generation immigrants, to study the extent to which absorption improves those numbers or worsens them. Further in depth studies would look at regional differences which could allow for a greater fine tuning of immigrant acceptance from urban vs rural areas, to educated professionals vs industrial workers, for religious vs secular and so on and so forth, making it possible to produce questionnaires that would allow a country to reap the maximum possible benefit from immigrants, with the minimum possible loss.

Once this is done, it becomes possible to specifically assess the consequences for local and national economies of giving preference to one immigrant population over another. If we can break down the cost of say bringing in 2000 immigrants from Ireland vs 2000 immigrants from Belize, or 2000 immigrants from Venezuela vs 2000 immigrants from China—we will be much closer to forming a rational immigration policy. And by presenting statistics in literal dollar amounts, a compelling interest based argument can be made for reforming immigration by making it sustainable.

The next step is to go beyond simple dollar amounts and to look at a nation’s overall statistics, its total and per capita GDP, literacy rate, teenage pregnancies, domestic abuse, crime rates, and so on, and look to see which immigrant populations raise our statistics, and which lower them. The ideal form of immigration increases our statistics, or at least maintains them in place, but does not lower them. Again this needs to be studied across multiple generations to see the impact that absorption has on these numbers. An immigrant population that lowers these numbers not only in the first generation, but in the second and the third as well, is as unsustainable as a smokestack spewing poison into the air.

Then there is the cultural question. Population migrations are nothing new in human history. Most countries are made up of a mix of peoples blending together over time through migrating populations. But while some such migrations are generally positive, others are generally negative. Whether a population migration is even feasible depends on how much room there is. 19th century America was able to absorb large numbers of immigrants in ways that 21st century America cannot because it lacks the same amount of open space. With the 20th century’s suburbanization, that enabled the immigration and population movements of the 20th century reaching their limit in America, immigration creates crammed urban centers. And without “room to growâ€

There is virtually NO rational basis for allowing unskilled immigration to the US.
1. Labor saving technology has been what has made this country great----and being the next in line for the benefits of the English Industrial Revolution was the historical process that transferred a fledgling, backwater country into an economic powerhouse.
2. For any humanitarian concern for poverty in other countries, it is far cheaper to help people where they are than to move them here.
3. In our history the immigration we valued the most was skilled immigration that would transition us from a primitive agricultural nation to an industrial one. We only need unskilled labor until the technological, labor saving advances came along in each, respective vocation.
4. It is hard to find a "best and brightest" category in any of the other nations that exceeds what we already have here. Though there will be a few individuals from any country who could qualify.
5. The unskilled labor performed by unskilled immigrants would be replaced with labor saving technology---and economic competitiveness now demands it---except for the organized legal and judicial activism on their behalf.