http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/ ... toryPart-I

0. A last note on immigration, NumbersUSA and affirmative action before getting into the subject of this entry

Sometimes I have found people letting them be tempted by the mermaid singing of xenophobic groups like NumbersUSA. To sell discrimination against Third World skilled immigrants, they have used the ludicrous idea that if we let Third World immigrants come to America, Third World countries would never have the human capital to develop. This idea is deeply immoral as it implies making of Third World immigrants a kind of subhuman entities because while we are people, free to pursue our happiness and to move freely around the world, those immigrants would be pretty much appendixes of their countries whose lives should be perpetually plugged to their place of birth, as if they peasants of the Middle Ages.

This idea is also deeply dishonest because it would require making of scientists, doctors, economists and engineers not skillful but extraordinary politicians because they would have to deal with the ultraconservative societies, submerged in widespread political illiteracy, that have excluded them in the first place. This idea is also deeply dishonest because rejecting these immigrants for the reasons invoked by NumbersUSA would require providing them with properly funded projects so they could have a chance to transform the societies of their birth. The same way as many conservatives swallow the ideas of the Right that tax cuts are moral because it puts money back on those who have earn it, some at the left them NumbersUSA to seduce them with the idea that if those brown immigrants magically disappear, suddenly the American dream will come back to them without further hard work to change America.

The idea I wanted to add on this end of the debate is, especially for those who do not see anything unfair or racist on the whoppers delivered by NumbersUSA, is this: If you consider that NumbersUSA is right and that is moral to discriminate in favor of the native born and First World skilled immigrants because forcing them to stay in their places of birth is necessary to develop those places, then you should also agree with the idea of forcing South Dakota or those born in states with little opportunities to stay there, banning them from moving to other states because otherwise those states would never have the human resources to develop.

Likewise, following the same criterion, we should have forced skilled residents from the areas of Louisiana affected by Katrina to stay in the devastated areas because otherwise those areas would always lack the human resources to develop. No funding, no support would be necessary to develop those areas; only forcing these people to stay there. Likewise, following the same criterion, to develop inner cities we should force skilled children to stay there, even erecting walls to be sure that they won’t affect the development of their communities by escaping, and, as affirmative action could put this goal in danger, we should penalize the families of those recipients of affirmative action help if they escape of the projects. This way no reforming inner city schools would be necessary, any community development spending could be saved to the taxpayer. If we can determine a person’s fate using his place of birth, why not using also his family of origin? Relatives of skilled citizens born in depressed areas could be legitimately used to force them to stay in those communities.

The only difference between one stupid derivation of prejudice and the other is that in the NumbersUSA-sponsored discrimination we deal with external migration and in the cases I use to make evident the absurdity and immorality of such position we deal with internal migration.