Michael Kinsley: simple-minded thoughts on immigration

Michael Kinsley offers "Kidding Ourselves About Immigration" in which he tries to present an argument for conflating all types of immigration together. You can click his name at the article to let him know what you think. The bottom line is that he's a sheltered Beltway insider who isn't familiar with this issue:

Saying that you oppose illegal immigration is like saying you oppose illegal drug use or illegal speeding. Of course you do, or should.

What he fails to mention is that many politicians claim to oppose illegal immigration, and then take steps to encourage and enable it, such as by giving benefits to illegal aliens or trying to block enforcement.

Another question: Why are you so upset about this particular form of lawbreaking? After all, there are lots of laws, not all of them enforced with vigor. The suspicion naturally arises that the illegality is not what bothers you. What bothers you is the immigration. There is an easy way to test this. Reducing illegal immigration is hard, but increasing legal immigration would be easy. If your view is that legal immigration is good and illegal immigration is bad, how about increasing legal immigration? How about doubling it? Any takers? So in the end, this is not really a debate about illegal immigration. This is a debate about immigration.

To a certain extent that's true. However, what Kinsley doesn't understand is that the illegallity is a vital part of the issue. While we shouldn't expect every law to be fully prosecuted, when millions of people are allowed to enter the U.S. illegally despite the wishes of the American public, one might wonder what's going on. Unfortunately, Kinsley doesn't seem to have figured out that massive illegal immigration is evidence of massive government corruption. Instead of doing their job, many politicians have decided to allow illegal immigration in some way so that they, their party, or their donors can benefit.

He then demonstrates yet more Beltway Cluelessness by saying that giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens is an "arcane" issue. Then:

On the Republican side, the candidates take turns accusing one another of committing some act of human decency toward illegals, and indignantly denying that they did any such thing.

That's certainly cute, but there are strong public policy arguments against doing things like giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens, and enabling illegal immigration is not a "decent" or humane thing to do.

Then, somewhat surprisingly, he admits that we have a right to determine how many are allowed to immigrate here and that "[t]here is no obligation to be fair to foreigners". Then, it's back to Cluelessland:

To characterize illegal immigrants as queue-jumping, lawbreaking scum is seriously unjust... [we're all immigrants drivel]

Most illegal aliens are, I'm sure, nice people. Unfortunately, massive illegal immigration has had a cultural impact that Kinsley doesn't discuss or doesn't know about. Many illegal aliens are used to buying fake documents and engaging in other sorts of illegal activity, and many don't see a problem with that ("If work is a crime, accuse me of committing a crime." and others). If legalized, would they suddenly forswear activity of that sort? Or, would they cut corners when it's convenient for them?

And, some of those coming here have no respect for our laws or our territorial claims. Or, in the case of Elvira Arellano, invent justifications for coming here illegally.

Then, it gets even worse, where he says that illegal aliens would win in an "American-values contest" against past immigrant groups. Considering that most illegal aliens are from Mexico, and considering that, per Zogby, a large majority of Mexicans think the U.S. Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico, I'd say that Kinsley has no idea what he's talking about.

Let me suggest that Kinsley hires an interpreter and goes out and asks twenty or thirty Mexican illegal aliens whether they'd sign on to the statement "I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me." And, he can find out from the same number of illegal aliens from all countries whether they think things like identity theft are major crimes. Then, he can engage his brain and get back to us.

Immigration2007b · Fri, 12/07/2007 - 09:10 · · Importance: 1