The NY Sun prints a guest editorial entitled "City, Thank Your Immigrants" from Edward Glaeser ("the Glimp professor of economics at Harvard, director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.")

Today the House of Representatives reconvenes after spending the summer holding public hearings discussing the alleged dangers of unchecked immigration. The House's Republican leaders will decide whether to follow the Senate towards moderate immigration reform or whether to follow Representative Tom Tancredo's hard anti-immigration line and an appeal to immigration's enemies. The Republican attraction to nativism isn't new. [...we've all seen those articles where they offer a wonderful history lesson on the Know-Nothings and similar groups, and Glaeser doesn't disappoint...]... I despise this heritage's dark doppelganger — the anti-immigrant legacy of the Know-Nothings.

Obvious to some of us who don't write like we're frothing at the mouth, being opposed to illegal immigration or even favoring reducing legal immigration or even declaring a moratorium on legal immigration are no the same as being "anti-immigrant" or "anti-immigration". And, the Senate's "moderate" approach is anything but: it's a radical plan that would increase immigration beyond anything we've ever witnessed before.

He continues on in the same vein, discussing an "attack on immigration", using "nativism" twice more, etc. etc. And:

Our 21st century strength depends on our total economic and military might — a more populous America will contribute to that strength.

Of course, if we lose California to Mexico - or have effective co-dominion over parts of the Southwest with that country - that might be a bit of a monkeywrench in the plan for "total economic and military might". Especially if, for instance, Mexico is on the other side of an issue as they've often been.

There would be a huge difference between dealing with, say, 10 million immigrants in one year and 100,000 immigrants in one year. It would be very difficult to assimilate the first group; they could form a political bloc and completely separate themselves from the rest of the U.S. if they wished. The second group would be much easier to deal with. Glaeser doesn't seem to understand that.

He proposes increased visa levels for our recent allies and favoring those with skills. And he says:

I do not have any greater right to American freedom and prosperity than anyone else does, and it pains me that we deny those blessings to the rest of the world.

I'll leave the philosophical question of whether he does indeed have a greater right to others, but since he does have the advantage of "American freedom and prosperity", perhaps he should also realize one of his duties is to help preserve that rather than taking actions that would reduce it. The only reason we have those blessings is because we haven't (yet) invited several billion people to join us.

As if the preceding wasn't enough to show that he has no business proposing any sort of policy, he finishes the screed with a snippet from Emma Lazarus' Statue of Liberty poem.