Thread: NY TIMES writer on Charlie Rose last night ...

First show since Charlie is back after heart valve surgery.

He talked about the War, Green energy, US and world economy, and at the very end he slipped in that we need to keep this immigration flow coming in - the high and the low end -WHATEVER THAT MEANS.

THIS GUY HAS A LOT OF VISIBILITY - WE NEED TO WRITE HIM OFTEN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.

NEW ARTICLE -

Article Launched: 04/06/2006 01:00:00 AM MDT

the new york times | columnist
A high fence and a big gate
By Thomas Friedman
The New York Time


America today is struggling to find the right balance of policies on immigration.

Personally, I favor a very high fence, with a very big gate.

So far, neither President Bush's proposal to allow the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants to stay temporarily on work visas, nor the most hard-line Republican counterproposal, which focuses only on border security, leaves me satisfied. We need a better blend of the two - a blend that will keep America the world's greatest magnet for immigrants. Why?

First, the world is flattening, and as a result more and more people around the globe have access to the same technological tools for innovation and entrepreneurship. In such a world, where innovation is concentrated really matters - because that is where the best management, research and sales jobs will be located for any company.

Because of its deeply rooted culture of immigration, the U.S. has a huge advantage in such a world. If we are smart, we can still cream off the most first- round intellectual draft choices from around the world - more than any other country - and bring that talent to our shores to start companies and work in others.

We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Talent Age, and countries that make it easy to draw in human talent will have a distinct advantage today.

Anybody out there try to become a Swiss citizen lately? It's not so easy - and it's also not an accident that Switzerland's most famous product is the cuckoo clock.

Second, a steady flow of immigrants keeps a society flexible and competitive. In this flat world, more people than ever can leverage technology. So whatever can be done - whatever today's technologies enable and empower - will be done by someone, somewhere. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you. The more open your society is to new people and ideas, the more things will be done by you, not to you.

We shouldn't just welcome educated immigrants, but also laborers - not only because we need manual laborers, but because they bring an important energy. As the Indian-American entrepreneur Vivek Paul likes to say: "The very act of leaving behind your own society is an intense motivator. Whether you are a doctor or a gardener, you are intensely motivated to succeed."

We need that steady energy flow, especially with India and China exploding onto the world stage with huge pent-up aspirations. If you want to know what China and India feel like today, just take out a champagne bottle, shake it for 10 minutes and then take off the cork. Don't
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get in the way of that cork. Immigrants keep that kind of energy flowing in America's veins.

An amnesty for the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already here is hardly ideal. It would reward illegal behavior. But since we are not going to deport them all, some version of the Arlen Specter bill seems like the right way to go: Illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. before Jan. 7, 2004, could apply for three-year guest-worker visas, each renewable one time if the applicant pays a $1,000 fine and passes a background check. After six years, if the immigrant learned sufficient English and paid another $1,000 fine and back taxes, he or she could start to apply for citizenship.

But because I strongly favor immigration, I also favor a high fence - if not a physical one, then at least a tamperproof national ID card for every American, without which you could not get a legal job or access to government services. We will not sustain a majority in favor of flexible immigration if we can't control our borders.

Good fences make good immigration policy. Fences make people more secure and able to think through this issue more calmly.

Porous borders empower only anti- immigrant demagogues, like the shameful CNN, which dumbs down the whole debate.

We also need to control the influx of immigrants because one byproduct of the flattening of the world is that many decent low-end factory jobs previously open to someone with only a high school degree or less are now disappearing. As Dan Pink notes in his book, "A Whole New Mind," many of those jobs can now be done by a computer faster or by a Chinese worker cheaper. Therefore, we can't just endlessly expand our pool of manual labor, without condemning people at that low end, particularly black men, to a future of declining wages or unemployment. That will have terrible social consequences.

For all these reasons, I weigh each immigration proposal with two questions: "Does it offer a real fence? Does it offer a real gate?"

Thomas L. Friedman can be reached at thfrie@nytimes.com.

There are very few Jewish supporters of closed borders. Most in the media are all open borders. Micheal Savage is the most vocal anti illegal Jewish guy in the media. All the Jewish Republicans voted for open borders. I mearly mention this because it should be pointed out that if your going to define yourself as a hyphenated- American and your particular group is for open borders more than hispanics, then that should be brought to your attention.

Peter Brimlow thinks it will just piss them off (VDARE article on this very subject last week VDARE.com , but I think it needs to be brought out, as alot of the media folks are Jewish ancestory, and Open Border Fanatics.

Let them try to cry racism, that wont fly anymore........

They want to get a third world country going here at the expence of middle america....That is what is racist, or classist, etc.....

Before I ever read the name I knew it was Tom Friedman. The NY times needs to get a handle on him, he is causing alot of trouble.

Well he needs to know that a lot of folks are in opposition to illegal immigration.

I think he has some good points, but he is myopic, and idealistic. He also has a lot of influence and it scares me.