Friday, April 7, 2006
Yay, Charles Krauthammer. He gets at least half the equation right here. If you want people like me to compromise on our fairly draconian view of illegal immigration, build a wall and show you're serious about stemming the influx first. I'm not sure I'm with him on full amnesty for everyone here already, but if you want to even discuss it, control the border first.
Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols.
Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the past 50 years.
Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one...
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to cut off the positive growth to the economy that results when millions of people emigrate to a country.
The housing market has been a major boon to the economy. What better way to fill all of those houses being built than to open the imigration spigot.
The question becomes: How many people do we want in the USA. This year we will go over the 300 million threshold. Is 500 million enough residents in the USA? How about 1 billion?
If you build a wall preventing illegal aliens from entering the USA, the population will remain where it is today---based upon current childbearing rates.
Is that ok? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Sure, but just because there's a fence doesn't mean there can't be a gate in it. The point is that we need to control that gate so that we, as Americans, can have that conversation about how many people we allow in, and where we allow them in from.
The point is to get control of the flow first so that we can rationalize and control the rest of the system. Tom Glennon also made this point nicely in his essay, here.