Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [75]
Reasonable people agree that illegal immigration should be reduced. The question isn’t whether it’s a problem but how to solve it. Historically, the best results have come from providing more legal ways for immigrants to enter the country. Most of these people are not predisposed to crime or terrorists in waiting. They are economic migrants who would gladly use the front door if it were open to them. Post 9/11, knowing who’s in the country has rightly taken on an urgency. But painting Latino immigrants as violent criminals or Islamofascists won’t make us any safer. Nor will enforcing bad laws and polices, as opposed to reforming them. On the whole, immigrants are an asset to America, not a liability. We benefit from the labor, they benefit from the jobs. Our laws should acknowledge and reflect this reality, not deny it.
Let them in.
CONCLUSION
As I wrap up this book, the 2008 presidential primary season is just beginning. Immigration has figured prominently in the debates so far, particularly on the GOP side. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee are all running as heirs to Reagan Republicanism. Yet they’ve fallen over each other in condemnation of President Bush’s attempts to follow the Gipper’s lead on immigration reform. Makes you wonder.
No self-respecting free-market adherent would ever dream of supporting laws that interrupt the free movement of goods and services across borders. But when it comes to laws that hamper the free movement of workers who produce those goods and services, too many conservatives today abandon their classical liberal principles. Adam Smith, J. C. L. Sismondi, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill give way to . . . Pat Buchanan. Some of us find this troubling.
Among Democrats, there’s been much less restrictionist rhetoric, and not just because the political left tends to favor more liberal immigration policies. Strategically, the Democratic candidates have reasoned that it’s best to sit on the sidelines and let Republicans fight among themselves. Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton stumbled when she got careless and appeared to endorse a proposal by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. The governor and the senator had logic on their side, to be sure. If we are not going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants— and we’re not—it makes little sense, public policy-wise, to let them stay but not drive legally.
Some will drive anyway, which means more unlicensed and uninsured drivers on the road. But denying licenses to illegals is also counterproductive from a law enforcement and homeland security standpoint. Which is why people like William Bratton, the former police commissioner of New York and current chief of police in Los Angeles—and a man no one would accuse of being soft on crime or terrorism— supported the Spitzer plan. As Margaret Stock, who teaches national security law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, has noted, the collective Department of Motor Vehicle databases are the largest and most comprehensive law enforcement databases in the country. In a post-9/11 world, when knowing who’s in the United States has never been more important, how does excluding 12 million residents from the nation’s largest security database make us safer?
Nevertheless, public outcry, much of it facilitated by Lou Dobbs, forced Clinton to back off and led Spitzer to shelve his proposal. As we’ve seen in the preceding chapters, it’s not uncommon for logic and reason to be crowded out of our emotionally charged national conversation about immigrants. At such times, we count on our elected leaders to have the courage of their convictions, even when it’s unpopular. Especially when it’s unpopular. The driver’s license brouhaha revealed that when it comes to immigration reform, Senator Clinton and Governor Spitzer lack either courage or conviction. It also revealed that the GOP isn’t the only party struggling with the issue. A Democrat in the White House won’t automatically (or necessarily)