One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as ”limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

Our last Rattle of 2011 runs the gamut, all the way from an immigration enforcement success in Pennsylvania to a disappointing judicial setback in South Carolina. However, we begin the final roundup of the year with a must-read essay in The American Conservative by W. James Antle III. It looks at the immigration scorecard in a sober, realistic analysis that takes into account the substantive victories of immigration reformers-such as continued nationwide support for SB 1070 and its clones-to the unquestionable failures, including a seismic change in the language of the immigration debate, which has turned the phrase “immigration reform” into a synonym for wholesale amnesty. It’s a piece that anyone who is concerned about this subject-as I know most of you are-should read in its entirety. 

We continue by highlighting a great post over at the American Thinker that poses several questions that Newt Gingrich has yet to satisfactorily answer about his dubious proposal to create a tiered system of permanent non-citizen workers out of the pool of 11-20 million illegal aliens currently living here. Be John Galt  expresses some other concerns that have yet to be addressed by Newt while emphasizing the points made by Mickey Kaus in his own analysis of Newt’s plan. Something that conservatives supporting Gingrich-but who are ostensibly opposed to amnesty-need to answer is why they’re backing a candidate whose immigration platform mirrors the one put forward by open borders, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan.

Staying in the field of presidential politicking, American Rattlesnake wholeheartedly endorses the statements of Mitt Romney, vis-a-vis President Obama’s illegal alien uncle, Onyango Obama. For those of you who might not recall, Omar Onyango Obama is not only residing in this country illegally-much like the President’s beloved Aunt Zeituni-but is the owner and operator of a liquor store in Boston, despite his recent DUI conviction.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s opponent Rick Perry continued his tough on the border pantomime in Iowa, decrying the inability of the federal government to control our southern border with Mexico, as well as declaring that he would withdraw the Justice Department’s lawsuits against states like Arizona and Alabama. The pull quote from this article is “the border has to be shut down for the future of the United States of America.” One wonders what he would do with the estimated forty percent of illegal aliens who overstay their visas. I suppose we’ll just have to wait ans see how serious Governor Perry is about his newfound posture of immigration hawk.

It does seem that the current crop of presidential candidates is being forced to address the concerns of Republican voters, however reluctantly and haltingly. That said, VDare has a fascinating piece exploring the damage that refugee resettlement has caused in Manchester, New Hampshire, and why the national GOP has been completely AWOL on this issue, despite its ritualistic paeans to the role of New Hampshire as the first state in the nation to hold its presidential primary. The politically courageous current mayor of Manchester is standing up for his constituents, even if the federal government and parasitical members of the refugee resettlement industry won’t. Perhaps the boldness of Ted Gatsas will serve as an example for his timorous counterparts in the national GOP to emulate. We can all hope.

The internal strife caused by the U.S. State Department in Maine is mirrored in Florence, Italy, where the tragic deaths of two Senegalese street merchants is being exploited by media organs to condemn the “racism” of ordinary Italians. Sadly, the exploitation of tragedies like this for political purposes is nothing new to the multicultural zealots spearheading the militant, Gramscian left. Nor is the equation of patriotic, reasonable opposition to mass immigration to racism an anomaly, unfortunately. It seems like these sorts of ad hominem attacks come with the territory, as Peter Brimelow pointed out in yesterday’s post.

Heading down to Washington D.C., we find that the usual rogue’s gallery of open borders demagogues is trying once again to foist amnesty upon an American public, and a Congress, that has consistently rejected it since it was first introduced over a decade ago.  The tireless efforts of Dick Durbin to give the bird to American taxpayers and hard-working students wouldn’t be newsworthy in itself, if not for the fact that a Philippine newspaper is now leading the charge to see the enactment of the DREAM Act. Media bias in reporting of immigration issues is nothing new, especially from foreign newspapers who hold no reverence for American law. However, the fact that a member of the United States Senate is cribbing notes from a newspaper overseas in order to undermine the country he’s ostensibly representing is a sad commentary on the state of politics in America in 2011.

Taking a short jaunt to Baltimore, we say farewell to WBAL institution Ron Smith. Before being struck down by cancer at the age of 70, Smith was a resonant voice of reason and integrity in a world where too may fall prey to the lure of the D.C. cocktail circuit. Gregory Kane has a fitting tribute to him in the Washington Examiner. Michelle Malkin testifies to the humanity of Ron on her website as well. Like the late, great Terry Anderson-another immigration patriot who died last year-Ron Smith will be missed by many people across the country, most of whom never knew him personally. Rest in Peace, Ron.

In slightly cheerier news, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has approved a bill that would penalize employers who hire illegal workers. Fox News Latino has the entire story, which touches upon similar bills that were eventually enacted in states like Alabama and Arizona. On the other hand, the drive for immigration enforcement suffered a blow in South Carolina, where a federal judge has enjoined a law that cracked down on human smuggling and gave law enforcement officers the opportunity to detain those arrested for unrelated crimes if they were illegal aliens. As Governor Nikki Haley’s spokesman has said, the ultimate resolution of this case rests in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Our neighbor to the north is having its own immigration problems, which  have been amply documented by American Rattlesnake in previous updates. Canada’s capable Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is tackling them in stride, initiating the largest crackdown on citizenship fraud in recent memory. Of course, his proactive initiatives-including an innovative tip line ordinary Canadians can use to report cases of immigration fraud-have earned scorn from the usual suspects. Notwithstanding the carping from bottom-feeding immigration attorneys and radical, open borders socialists, Kenney has earned respect from the public and his adversaries across the aisle, as this National Post article demonstrates.

If only our president had cabinet members willing to stand up for their fellow countrymen. Instead, we have Hilda Solis, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, doing everything in her capacity to empower illegal aliens instead of the Americans who are struggling beneath a crushing unemployment rate and prolonged recession. Even as the unemployment rate plummets in the Yellowhammer State because of HB 56, Solis tries to find ways to double down on the failure of the Obama administration to provide economic opportunities for American citizens. Combined with the administration’s decision to remove the last remaining National Guard troops from our southern border, Barack Obama has demonstrated his disdain for the concerns of the American electorate.

In other administration news, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Alan Bersin, has resigned from his post. An unconfirmed recess appointment by President Obama, Bersin will be replaced by David V. Aguilar. But don’t worry open borders enthusiasts, Mr. Aguilar is four square in favor of amnesty, although he prefers to call it something else.

Finally, the ongoing congressional investigations into Operation Fast and Furious and this administration’s persistent coverup continue apace. We now have Senator Joseph Lieberman, previously known for his atrocious record on immigration issues, directing the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he currently chairs, to investigate the interagency “miscommunication” that lies at the heart of the Fast and Furious debacle. Let’s hope that he and Senator Grassley can elicit a more responsive reaction by administration officials than we’ve seen in the past. What is certain is that the men and woman who were killed, including Agent Jaime Zapata, as a result of the Justice Department’s and ATF’s negligence will never return to the warm embrace of their loved ones. If nothing else, let’s push for some measure of justice and accountability for those still alive.

Hat Tips: The Tea Party Immigration Coalition NCFreedom and NAFBPO

Friends of ALIPAC,

Another GOP Presidential debate is coming up this Wednesday on CNBC.

You can submit questions via the CNBC website.

You can also submit questions using the CNBCdebate hash tag on Twitter, or you can post your questions on CNBC’s Facebook wall.

Our past efforts to have the candidates answer questions about illegal immigration have been very successful.

Please take a few minutes to review our suggested questions and then submit your versions.

Sample 1
As President would you honor the US Constitution by enforcing America’s existing border and immigration laws, or would you favor Comprehensive  Immigration Reform or Dream Act amnesty instead?
Sample 2
Would you fight to stop 12-20 million illegal aliens from voting in US elections?

Sample 3
Do you support in-state tuition and a special Bush-era guest worker amnesty for illegal aliens like Rick Perry does?

Sample 4
Do you support the Dream Act Amnesty for illegal aliens like Newt Gingrich does?

Sample 5
Do you believe illegal aliens should have to leave the United States as mandated by current federal law, or do you support changing the law to allow them to stay and become citizens and a new voting block in American politics?

Sample 6
As President would you reverse Barack Obama’s amnesty for illegal immigrants created by mysterious memos that bypass Congress?

Feel free to enter your own questions, but the most important thing is that we flood CNBC with illegal immigration related questions for the next 48 hours.

Let’s roll!

The ALIPAC Team

Saudi Arabia is not normally associated with such values as human rights, due process, or civilized behavior. That’s why the news that Indonesia has suspended its guest worker program with the House of Saud should surprise no one. The proximate cause of this moratorium is the beheading of an Indonesian maid who killed her abusive, Saudi employer. A sentence that prompted the Indonesian president himself, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to speak out against the draconian verdict meted out by a Saudi court.

The systematic abuse of domestic servants from Southeast Asia, Africa, and the subcontinent of India by their wealthy, Gulf Arab employers is so widespread that it has been the subject of a treaty devised by the International Labor Organization, as well extensive coverage by human rights organizations and media outlets.

Although the treatment of domestic workers, who are in reality no more than indentured servants-if not slaves-in Persian Gulf nations is abominable, these horrific cases illustrate the broader problem inherent in any guest-worker program. Despite the bleating of open borders dogmatists and corporate shills at institutions like the Wall Street Journal, the disastrous consequences of previous guest worker/bracero programs are well documented, and the notion that future programs-which are a key ingredient of any proposed amnesty-will be more successful is misguided, to say the least.

Although domestic workers who come to the United States will never experience the degradation or risks to their health and/or life that impoverished migrants to Saudi Arabia endure on a daily basis, the truth is that guest workers in general are treated like second class individuals in a country that still prides itself on the equality of opportunity afforded to everyone who lives here and tries to prosper while obeying the law. That’s why the concept of the guest worker-which is an oxymoronic term if ever there was one-should be rejected by Americans. We’re better than that.

This past tuesday I had the distinct pleasure of attending an Intelligence Squared debate whose subject is one that this website has addressed repeatedly in the past, although admittedly, not as often as I would have liked. The drive to thwart repeated amnesty proposals introduced throughout this past year has not given us the opportunity to address the innumerable problems presented by unfettered, mass (legal) immigration.

That’s why I relish the chance to explore the flaws of our current, post-1965 wave of immigration. Or, as the framers of the IQ2 debate phrased their resolution: Don’t Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses.

The title, although slightly cheeky, was appropriate, given the subject under discussion. I have to commend Congressman Tom Tancredo for using his opening statement to debunk many of the myths surrounding The New Colossus, the Emma Lazarus sonnet inscribed upon a plaque inside of the Statue Of Liberty. Contrary to popular opinion-at least, the opinion propounded by supporters of mass immigration-that poem has absolutely nothing to do with immigration, and was in fact penned in connection with the transatlantic fundraising campaign to erect the iconic statue in New York Harbor. The statue itself was designed with the intention of honoring American liberty by French liberals and republicans, not as a tribute to mass immigration; certainly not as a calling card for mass, unskilled, uneducated immigrants from the Old World.

After knocking down one of the chief rhetorical pillars of the pro-immigration mythos constructed by their opponents, Tamar Jacoby and Julian Castro, the current mayor of San Antonio, Tancredo and Secretary of State Kris Kobach proceeded to make the empirical case against our current, misguided federal immigration policies. While Jacoby attempted to justify low skilled immigration on the basis of economic expediency, i.e. it helps the large corporations, and their lobbyists, that are her organization’s chief benefactors, Mayor Castro attempted to limn the legal and political arguments in favor of unfettered immigration as he saw them.

The case by Jacoby is a familiar one, equally unconvincing today as it was when corporate lobbying outfits like the Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, and American Farm Bureau demanded the imposition of amnesty and guest worker programs opposed by the vast majority of Americans in years past. Secretary Kobach  made a convincing rebuttal to these tedious talking points that focused on the seven million jobs that illegal aliens occupy which could be filled by the over 14 million Americans who currently find themselves unemployed.  He also pounded home the ineluctable fact that low-skilled immigrants from poverty-stricken regions depress the wage scale of every industry in which they’re employed. The perfect illustration of this phenomenon is the meatpacking industry, which has been transformed from a relatively desirable, decently compensated, working class vocation into a way station for underpaid immigrant workers.

It was at this point that the philosophical gulf between the two sides came into stark relief, as Tamar Jacoby repeated the stale platitudes of the Chamber of Commerce and its allies, including the charges that immigrants do the jobs “Americans won’t do,” and that even those who were willing to allegedly demean themselves by embracing “menial” work would eventually quit those jobs once better opportunities for career advancement arose. In response to the affirmative’s citation of the Swift meat processing plant, which continued to thrive in spite of the immigration raids that stripped it of many “hard-working” illegal aliens, Jacoby asserted-with no supporting evidence-that the plant experienced a high turnover rate once it began to rely upon the labor of actual Americans.

Perhaps even more persuasive than the economic argument against our government’s current immigration policy, were the fiscal arguments which Mr. Kobach marshalled with aplomb. He rightly brought up the extremely high percentage of immigrant-headed households  that rely upon one or several different welfare programs, a percentage that outstrips even the large percentage of American citizens who now use those very same programs, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the pivotal moment of the debate from my perspective, with Kobach repeating the famous Milton Friedman quote declaring the mutual incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered, unskilled immigration.

Even though the negative side attempted to refute the concrete data provided by Kris Kobach, prompting an hilarious exchange where Ms. Jacoby was asked if she thought that National Academy of Sciences was biased against immigrants, the negative fiscal impact of our current immigration pool is, as he said during the debate, indisputable. While conceding that using generous extrapolations of what immigrant families might contribute to the economy in the future-scenarios that are, as Tom Tancredo pointed out, so speculative as to be almost meaningless from an empirical perspective-might show some benefits from unskilled immigration, Mr. Kobach nevertheless provided a litany of devastating facts and figures-including referencing the astounding Robert Rector Heritage Foundation study on the potential costs of Comprehensive Immigration Reform-that, in my opinion, demolished the claims made by the opponents of the debate resolution.

Although Ms. Jacoby’s arguments were, as usual, entirely unconvincing, the other “con” debater, Mayor Julian Castro, made at least an appealing rhetorical case in favor of the post-1965 immigration status quo. While agreeing with Kobach and Tancredo that the vast majority of immigrants today are lower working class, Castro claimed that the dynamism of our economy-as well as the considerable skills these immigrants bring to this country-provided for extreme upward mobility among these same immigrant communities. Unfortunately, he did not address the main concern that the affirmative side expressed throughout the debate. Namely, that the uninterrupted flow of immigrants from the same unskilled, undereducated populace would inalterably change the culture and economy of this country.

It was on this point that I think Tom Tancredo truly hit his stride. While Mayor Castro invoked laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act as an illustration of the government straying from this country’s core tenets, the former Colorado congressman reminded him-as well the audience- that the current wave of  mass immigration from the third world is a relatively recent phenomenon that can be traced back to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the brain-child of the late Ted Kennedy, a doctrinaire liberal who used his time in the United States Senate to remake this country into a multicultural mosaic, not the melting pot it had traditionally been. He explained how each previous wave of immigrants-whether it was the Irish who came here in the wake of the great potato famine, or the Eastern Europeans who came at the end of the 19th century-was allowed time to assimilate into American society before being deluged with yet more immigrants from the same region and nation.

In the end, I think it was this argument that persuaded the vast majority of “undecided” voters to come over to the affirmative side. While superficially appealing, the arguments advanced by Jacoby and Castro were essentially contentless. They relied upon pulling the emotional strings of the audience, attempting to draw upon the nostalgia most people have for their ancestors-a common theme used by immigration enthusiasts and amnesty supporters is to draw an analogy between this aberrent wave of unrestricted immigration and previous periods of mass immigration. However, they ultimately did not succeed because the opponents of the evening’s resolution could not provide a compelling argument for keeping our doors open to millions of immigrants who do not possess 21st century skill sets, who are not able to support themselves independent of the American taxpayer, and who are entering a nation with a vast welfare state that did not exist in previous generations.

It was a masterful performance by both Kris Kobach and Tom Tancredo and a riveting discussion throughout. I highly recommend you watch the entire debate for yourselves though, and draw your own conclusions.

If there’s one subject the mainstream media loves to skirt it’s the problems caused by Islamic expansionism in the developing world. If there’s another subject the MSM loves to avoid, it’s the problems caused by massive migrations of people into previously ethnically/religiously homogeneous nations.

The volatile political situation currently unfolding in the Ivory Coast highlights the overlap between both problems in an acute way. While many media outlets are depicting the battle between supporters of  President Laurent Gbagbo and Alessane Outtara as simply a fight between the southern and northern parts of Cote d’Ivoire, the truth is much more complex. As this analysis points out, one of the chief reasons that Mr. Outtara emerged victorious from this most recent, disputed election is because he was supported by almost all the immigrants who settled in the Ivory Coast from its Muslim neighbors, e.g. Burkina Faso, Mali, etc… 

In other words, the people who were brought to the country-one of the most prosperous in West Africa, and an oasis of stability at one point in time-as laborers eventually became permanent residents who disrupted the existing political dynamics of the Ivory Coast. This is the difficulty you face with unchecked immigration, especially of people that share a completely different set of values than the native population. It’s why the constant clamor for guest-worker programs from the likes of Tamar Jacoby and Jason Riley should fall on deaf ears in this country. 

While the concept of “workers” sounds appealing at first blush, the fact that those “guest” workers bring values and prejudices-like those workers who have now completely transformed the Ivory Coast-is something left unexamined by immigration’s biggest boosters. Before we allow millions of people to come here to “work” we should ask ourselves what else they will do once they’ve established roots in this country.

Several weeks ago, there was a fantastic analysis by Numbers USA’s press watchdog on the common misperception floated by reporters, as well as mass immigration enthusiasts, that immigration to this country is simply a response to supply and demand economics.

This canard is a favorite of libertarian open borders supporters, especially the consistently misguided Will Wilkinson.  Although I’m too sick to address this issue in any length at the moment, you can look forward to my deconstruction of the liberaltarian Wilkinson’s bizarre-and not very libertarian, truth be told-philosophy in the weeks ahead.

Stay tuned.

A fascinating essay by historian Victor Davis Hanson was published in National Review recently. As a native and permanent resident of California’s Central Valley, he’s seen the dramatic changes that have occurred with the removal of most barriers to emigration from Mexico and Central America.

Hanson’s piece attempts to unravel the dichotomy he sees in the state between an extremely zealous tax and regulatory regime aimed at long-time American citizens living in his state, and the relative absence of law enforcement and regulatory bodies from the vast territory where non-English speaking migrants live. It’s a thoughtful examination of some troubling issues that will become increasingly relevant as the rest of the nation becomes more like the Golden State.