Essential Victor Davis Hanson, long-time close observer of immigration in California, identifies the "force multipliers" of illegal immigration, and says we need a better strategy than that outlined by President Bush.
Illegal immigration cannot be looked at in a vacuum in an age of growing ethnic chauvinism that sees unassimilated and often exploited foreigners in the shadows as an oppressed constituency needing group, rather than individual, representation. Ethnic studies, separate college graduation ceremonies predicated on race, bilingual education, state-supplied interpreters and groups like La Raza ("The Race'') are all force-multipliers to massive illegal immigration, and thus present us with a litmus test of the viability of the melting pot itself.Posted by Alan at February 23, 2004 05:17 PMInstead of arguing over piecemeal legislation in an election year, rolling amnesties or the return of bracero, we might as well bite the bullet and return to an immigration policy that worked well enough for some 200 years for people from all over the world. We can set a realistic figure for legal immigration from Mexico. Then we must enforce our border controls, consider a one-time citizenship process for current residents who have been here for two or three decades, apply stiff employer sanctions, deport all those who now break the law and return to social and cultural protocols that promote national unity through assimilation and integration.
Under such difficult reform, we of the American Southwest might initially pay more for our food, hotel rooms and construction. Yet eventually we will save far more through reduced entitlements, the growing empowerment of our own entry-level workers (many of them recent and legal immigrants from Mexico), and the easing of social and legal problems associated with some 8 millioon to 12 million illegal residents.
More importantly, our laws would recover their sanctity. Without massive illegal immigration, Americans would rediscover their fondness for measured legal immigration. At a time of war, our borders would be more secure. And we all could regain solace, knowing that we are no longer overlords importing modern helots to do the jobs that we, in our affluence and leisure, now deem beneath us.