You know, this argument is only persuasive if you accept its starting premise -- that those opposed to the current proposal giving amnesty to border-jumpers really hate immigrants and want to keep foreigners out of the US.

How do you justify a border fence? Why is it OK to consign millions of unskilled Mexicans to lives of desperate poverty? I'm told it's because Americans should care more about their countrymen than about a bunch of foreigners. OK, but how much more? Surely there's some limit; virtually nobody thinks, for example, that Americans should be allowed to hunt Mexicans for sport. So, exactly how much are you willing to hurt a foreigner to help an American? Is a foreigner's well-being worth three-quarters as much as an American's, or half as much, or one-quarter as much?

The column then goes on into a rather tiresome analysis of wages and ends with a fatuous comparison between our immigration policy and the three-fifths compromise (which the author gets precisely wrong -- but then again, so is his entire analysis) that is designed to paint advocates of border security as knuckle-dragging nativists who hate Mexicans.

The problem is, of course, that he is dead wrong. The overwhelming majority of us welcome immigrants from anywhere on the globe -- but what them to come here legally, and for our government to stop those coming illegally. Indeed, we recognize the need to make immigration from south of the border "safe and legal" -- not unsafe due to the means and location of illegal border crossing or dominated by criminals who have no regard for their human cargo.

Posted by: Greg at 04:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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