I remember being so filled with pride the first time I recited the Pledge of Allegiance, especially the part at the end. “With liberty and justice for all, unless they talk Mexican or something.”
Or, more seriously, all of the wiretapping, lawyer shooting, domestic spying and propagandizing going on, all the threats to liberty so many of you seem so terribly concerned about, all these do not compare to the grave injustice that is United States immigration law.
North Carolina has a great many immigrants, and, like any place in American history with that distinction, it has a great many people who despise immigrants. These are the xenophobes. Many N.C. State students fall into this category. Therefore, at least a few of you reading this column are enemies of freedom and those who would seek it.
I’m not exaggerating in the least. The right of people to move as they wish should be among the most fundamental. What sort of justice is it that I can have a Hitler parade in a Jewish neighborhood while millions of people cannot cross an imaginary line and get a job?
Just this week it is being reported that a federal immigration official has lost his job because he fell in love with an illegal immigrant. When the government tells two guys in Massachusetts they can’t love each other, there’s an uproar. But when it tells a Hispanic couple they can’t love each other, you can hear about it in a brief segment on CNN.
Also in the news are the Minutemen, private citizens who patrol the border with guns. This group is almost exactly as scary as every other group of white people with guns who got together to “protect their society” from others. History is full of these.
Having given them a paragraph or two to arrange their thoughts, I’m sure my opponents now have the same tired list of oppositions to free (a word that works on so many levels here) immigration. We’ll start with the most popular argument, made concise by South Park. In short, “Dey tuk urr jobs!”
In short, no. Great mountains of research have demonstrated no overall negative impact on employment brought on by immigration. If you lost your job, it’s at least even money that, while it went to a foreigner, that foreigner was still in his own country.
The second most popular argument after Sept. 11 is immigration lets terrorists in. It is worth pointing out that, since nobody really used this argument prior to those attacks, it seems an awful lot like pandering to national fears. Here again, though, the simple fact is that what terrorists have gotten in have, so far, gotten in relatively legally and often with temporary residence. Background checks are important, yes, and they would be all the easier to implement if we could better use certain resources currently being squandered in an effort to fight a people’s march towards freedom and opportunity.
Next the xenophobes will claim that immigrants cost the government far more than they bring in, which is true if you want to take the most shortsighted view available. The best research available indicates that within the course of an immigrant’s lifetime, his family contributes more in taxes alone than it receives benefits.
Finally, there’s the old bit about immigrants causing crime. No. Poverty causes crime. If you want to make the country safer, stop putting people into positions of poverty by doing things such as, say, having to take low-wage or illegally paying jobs to keep a low profile to avoid deportation.
The “We’ll run out of space” argument is my personal favorite. The United States has a population density of around 30 people per square mile. France’s is more than three times that. Does anybody think France a teeming, overcrowded morass of humanity?
Anyone who questions the facts I’ve presented here should take their complaints to the National Academy of Sciences, whose research I’ve drawn upon quite a bit. I’m sure the argument of, “They ain’t even speak English good,” will lead them to reject empirical evidence in favor of what is basically racist oppression.
And nobody out there should be fooled. The arguments against free immigration are so transparently wrong they can be a veil only for bigotry, whether it is consciously cultivated or not. People yearn for freedom and opportunity, and anyone who would deny it is a tyrant.
E-mail Ian at [email protected]
