http://sbsun.com/news/ci_3652517

Unlimited immigration would crush American justice, values

Conor Fridersdorf, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

The civil-rights movement looms large among those marching for illegal-immigrant rights.
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought the same way," says Joseph Hernandez, who marched in Monday's student walk-out.

"We are all human and we all have the same rights," says Chinonso Ezeh, another student. "This is America."

Pundits are beginning to pick up on the same theme.

"Historians, politicians, and civil rights activists hail the March on Washington in August 1963 as the watershed event in the civil rights movement," Black News columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote this week.

"It defined an era of protest, sounded the death knell for the near century of legal segregation, and challenged Americans to make racial justice a reality for blacks.

"But the estimated million that marched and held rallies for immigrant rights in Los Angeles and other cities dwarfed the numbers at the March on Washington. If the numbers and passion immigration reform stirs mean anything, the judgment of history will be that it also defined an era, sounded the death knell for discrimination against immigrants, and challenged Americans to make justice and equality a reality for immigrants, both legal and illegal."

A careful historian, however, sees profound differences between the 1960s civil-rights movement and the illegal-immigration marches we're currently seeing in our communities.

On Aug. 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial invoking the heroic deeds of a great president and the principles established by America's founding documents.

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir," King said. "This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

In contrast, the illegal-immigration marchers assert universal human rights, waving foreign flags as if to underscore the point. Whether rightly or wrongly, they believe that being human gives them the right to immigrate anywhere they choose to seek work, be near family members and raise children.

As they chant the slogan, "There's no such thing as an illegal person," the implicit message is that the United States sins against justice whenever it enforces any limits on immigration.

Whereas King worked to apply rights inherent in the American system to black citizens, today's illegal-immigration marchers are asserting rights found outside the American system and demanding radical changes to our system to accommodate those rights.

I'm sympathetic to these immigrants and the case that they are making. It seems unfair that those lucky enough to be born American are automatically afforded economic rights that outsiders lack. I truly wish our world could accommodate open borders - I hope one day we reach that utopian reality, and I support high levels of legal immigration partly because I believe justice demands it.

Unlimited immigration is nevertheless a radical idea, and an awful one.

There isn't a single nation in the world that embraces it. That's because by necessity nations aren't simply economic entities producing wealth to be divided up as fairly as possible.

Our nation's primary purpose is protecting the rights of citizens by establishing a framework for governing ourselves. Unlike Latin America, where corrupt governments are only tenuously answerable to their citizens, American democracy is vibrant and responsive, and an engine for the greatest material prosperity the world has ever known.

That's no accident. An educated citizenry that participates in government by choosing leaders, eschewing tyrants and voting for laws makes our prosperity possible.

Open borders would end that prosperity, eliminating the very incentive driving people to immigrate here in the first place.

It isn't that illegal immigrants are bad people. It isn't that they are lazy or inferior to Americans - quite the contrary. We must limit immigration because our ability to incorporate newcomers into American life, though impressive, isn't unlimited.

Anyone who favors citizen participation in democracy, a minimum wage, shared American values, relative economic equality among citizens or some sort of social safety net should quickly see that chasing a utopian scheme for open borders would destroy all these things.

Even most illegal immigrants currently within our country would be hurt if we truly adopted open borders. After all, the protesters waving Mexican flags this week come from a country far wealthier than many in the world.

If America so chose, we could find sub-Saharan and southeast Asian immigrants far poorer than the Latinos who currently come here, as willing to work hard, and perhaps more willing to abandon ties to their homeland in the assimilation process.

"What are they going to do without all the Mexicans if they kick us out?" Chino High School student Kimberly Bermudez asks. "Mexicans do everything. America wouldn't work without us."

In fact, Mexicans are no more or less special than any other nationality, something truly open borders would quickly make apparent. Surely Ms. Bermudez sees that Nigerians, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Guatemalans, Thais, Vietnamese, Filipinos and Haitians would compete for jobs currently done by Mexicans as surely as they would undercut their wages.

If justice really did require open borders, people whose flags weren't flown during the recent rallies might rightly ask why Mexican proximity to the United States privileges their immigrants above the rest of the world.

In reality, however, justice demands a system of limited legal immigration - one that preserves American values and prosperity both for present citizens and future immigrants.

Those who advocate the notion that any limits on immigration are unjust, or that everyone has a right to live and work in America, should be careful what they wish for. Since 1776, the United States has been a goose laying golden eggs for immigrants the world over. Open borders will kill it.