Boston Globe: The silence about immigrants
Posted Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 9:01 pm
From an editorial by Tufts University's Lawrence E. Harrison:
...We have to find ways to legitimize immigration policy as an issue of high national interest and open debate. We must insist that the candidates develop clear positions on what to do about immigration policy. Do they support open borders? If not, what criteria would they use in establishing limits? What specific levels of immigration would they endorse? Should visas be issued on the basis of skills or family connections?
The rest of the editorial has several population-related data points and discusses the left-right coalition that opposes the great majority of Americans' wishes.
Comments
John S Bolton (not verified)
Wed, 09/29/2004 - 23:04
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Why do big business, and its propaganda organs, support mass immigration? Well, why do they support affirmative action, ecology, feminism, expensive regulatory regimes, unions, and many other enormously expensive governmental projects? Because the officials threaten them with worse if they don't go along to get along. Business leaders, and their organizations, are net taxpayers. They pay more than half the taxes, and every year's cohort of immigrants means their taxes will go up. Immigrants are on net public subsidy, the middle classes can't pay for this additional extravagance, no one is left to pay but the business elites. They would, and do lobby for the retention of affirmative action, when it is jeopardized; they must prove their subservience to public policy. Not on all issues, but on those which are crucial for the officials objective of establishing dictatorship; immigration happens to be one of these.