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January 26, 2006
Immigration
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel has an Op-Ed in today's WSJ where he critiques the Sensenbrenner-King bill, H.R. 4437. This bill isn't a very good bill. It is expected to cost an estimated $1.9 billion over the five year period between 2006-2010. But more seriously, it treats as a felon anyone who "assists, [or] encourages . . . a person who . . . lacks lawful authority to remain in the United States". The punishment is three to 20 years in jail, the same punishment meted out to human traffickers. Another significant criticism is a lack of a humanitarian exception (for doctors, firemen, etcetera) for helping illegals. The City Troll has a few additional criticisms.
I love immigration. Without immigration it is almost certain that all of my ancestors would have died from either Hitler's abattoirs or Stalin's madness. America is nearly an under populated country. As I mentioned in an article about broadband penetration, last year, America is less than a tenth as dense as many other industrialized nations. As a moral matter, it is wrong to restrict employment to those born in a certain place. Simple hypocrisy avoidance requires us to recognize that essentially every American owes his place here to a liberal immigration regimes past. Our unemployment rate is low, we are very successful in integrating immigrants, and they are often more driven than the native born. However, not everyone else agrees.
The anti's in the immigration issue fall into two categories, border watchers and nativists. The former see our porous borders as a weakness to possible terrorist infiltration. The nativists are trying to protect our unique culture, American jobs, or just think the place is already too crowded. Bills like the 4437 (which also funds a border fence), seem anti-immigrant, but are in some sense an attempt to protect the level of immigration we currently have. They placate the naysayers. If we are going to restrict immigration, it is fair that who is to be admitted be decided democratically, not by who happens to be able to be able to sneak in. We aren't accomplishing that today and doing so could very well require a fence, a vast increase in border police, and some sort of punishment for employing illegal aliens. It isn't my first choice, but If a secure border is what is required to achieve a broad consensus among Americans that legal immigration (economic and humanitarian) is a great thing that deserves significant expansion, it might be a bit unseemly to have to build a fence and punish people looking for cheap nannies and gardeners (financial punishments would do, no need to jail them), but that is a price worth paying.
Posted by OneEyedMan at January 26, 2006 9:51 AM
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