Suketu Mehta: "Why Should Immigrants 'Respect Our Borders'? The West Never Respected Theirs"
link
Just a reminder: six or seven years ago I started pointing out that progressives were making arguments that more-or-less committed them to open borders. That's to say: they were tacitly--thought not yet explicitly--arguing that any enforcement of immigration laws was unjust. Some commenters dismissed the point. But here we are. Now the inexplicit open borders arguments are even less thinly-disguised (tear down the fencing we already have, it's immoral, no more deportations, abolish ICE...) and leftier progressives have just abandoned the pretense.
Thing is, actually, I don't think Mehta's argument is fundamentally insane, and I've made vaguely similar arguments myself in the past. That's to say: I think we ought to expend more resources to help people in the shittiest of other countries, give some kind of preference to people who are trying to immigrate to avoid violence, and take into account the fact that we've done a lot to crapify the places in question. All those considerations ought, IMO, be part of a serious discussion of immigration policy.
However: we're not having a serious discussion of immigration policy.
We almost never seem to have serious discussions of anything anymore.
What we have is "discussions" in which the PC left wakes up one morning and begins shrieking that the status quo is racist, as is anyone who refuses to completely overhaul it in favor of something cooked up in the women's studies department last Tuesday. Radical, crackpot alternatives aren't even just suggested, they're insisted upon. Instead of, say, raising the idea of allowing more legal immigration from Mexico and Central America, the vanguard of the left simply began ululating about barriers and deportations being racist. Which, barring implausible dancing about, means that immigration controls of any kind are immoral.
We're a well-off country. I'd like us to do what we can--within reason--to help those less fortunate. But the first step in doing so is: not destroying ourselves. And the first step in doing that is refusing to take seriously the lunacy emanating from the contemporary left. The American left has often been sane and reasonable, even if not always right. But that's not the left we face today. I think it's important to recalibrate our public discussions by reminding us all that shrieking is not argument. And that--barring emergency--change--if it happens at all--ought to be incremental.
As for the issues themselves: I simply don't believe that massive waves of illegal immigrants--especially poor, undereducated immigrants, especially given the left's prevailing anti-assimilationist ideology--won't do harm to the country. I'm willing to consider evidence. But that evidence has to be presented and discussed in rational, public debate. If anti-assimilationism/radical multiculturalism weren't simultaneously being forced on us, I'd have fewer such concerns. But the more radical experiments we're being commanded to perform simultaneously, the more cautious we have to be in other ways. And we don't know how much disunity we can absorb without undue harm.
We've got a very generous immigration system, we get to insist that people abide by it. We can rethink the specifics--e.g. consider letting more people in. But it's a violation of ordinary rules of reasoned debate to try to do an end-run around first-order considerations by illicitly popping up to the level of total philosophical reconsideration of fundamental commitments. Why have nations at all? is a perfectly reasonable question in certain contexts. It isn't legitimate in ordinary policy discussions. If I'm standing in front of a judge because of a parking ticket, and my "argument" is Laws, what are they good for?, I deserve to be laughed out of court and instructed to pay my fine on the way out.
As for Mehta's suggestion that, e.g., we take in as many Iraqis as we killed in the war: well, that weird moral math makes only a kind of extremely superficial sense. The answer's no...but, once the debate is recalibrated and re-rationalized, I do think we ought to ask, in general, what sorts of things we might owe Iraq--and many other countries.
Back in the day, see, liberals--when we had them--would raise such considerations in a more sober and thoughtful way, as suggestions, points on the horizon we might want to tack toward, after due consideration. But, again, that's not the left we have today.
[Addendum: Should, say, desperately poor people, or those fleeing violence, respect our borders? I'm not sure they should. I don't think I would were I in their position. We are permitted to defend our borders, but I'm not sure others are obligated to respect them. I don't, e.g., think we should be angry at illegal aliens. I think we should understand them. Which doesn't mean: allow them to stay. Basically I think something like: they have to try to get in, we have to try to keep them out.]
Just a reminder: six or seven years ago I started pointing out that progressives were making arguments that more-or-less committed them to open borders. That's to say: they were tacitly--thought not yet explicitly--arguing that any enforcement of immigration laws was unjust. Some commenters dismissed the point. But here we are. Now the inexplicit open borders arguments are even less thinly-disguised (tear down the fencing we already have, it's immoral, no more deportations, abolish ICE...) and leftier progressives have just abandoned the pretense.
Thing is, actually, I don't think Mehta's argument is fundamentally insane, and I've made vaguely similar arguments myself in the past. That's to say: I think we ought to expend more resources to help people in the shittiest of other countries, give some kind of preference to people who are trying to immigrate to avoid violence, and take into account the fact that we've done a lot to crapify the places in question. All those considerations ought, IMO, be part of a serious discussion of immigration policy.
However: we're not having a serious discussion of immigration policy.
We almost never seem to have serious discussions of anything anymore.
What we have is "discussions" in which the PC left wakes up one morning and begins shrieking that the status quo is racist, as is anyone who refuses to completely overhaul it in favor of something cooked up in the women's studies department last Tuesday. Radical, crackpot alternatives aren't even just suggested, they're insisted upon. Instead of, say, raising the idea of allowing more legal immigration from Mexico and Central America, the vanguard of the left simply began ululating about barriers and deportations being racist. Which, barring implausible dancing about, means that immigration controls of any kind are immoral.
We're a well-off country. I'd like us to do what we can--within reason--to help those less fortunate. But the first step in doing so is: not destroying ourselves. And the first step in doing that is refusing to take seriously the lunacy emanating from the contemporary left. The American left has often been sane and reasonable, even if not always right. But that's not the left we face today. I think it's important to recalibrate our public discussions by reminding us all that shrieking is not argument. And that--barring emergency--change--if it happens at all--ought to be incremental.
As for the issues themselves: I simply don't believe that massive waves of illegal immigrants--especially poor, undereducated immigrants, especially given the left's prevailing anti-assimilationist ideology--won't do harm to the country. I'm willing to consider evidence. But that evidence has to be presented and discussed in rational, public debate. If anti-assimilationism/radical multiculturalism weren't simultaneously being forced on us, I'd have fewer such concerns. But the more radical experiments we're being commanded to perform simultaneously, the more cautious we have to be in other ways. And we don't know how much disunity we can absorb without undue harm.
We've got a very generous immigration system, we get to insist that people abide by it. We can rethink the specifics--e.g. consider letting more people in. But it's a violation of ordinary rules of reasoned debate to try to do an end-run around first-order considerations by illicitly popping up to the level of total philosophical reconsideration of fundamental commitments. Why have nations at all? is a perfectly reasonable question in certain contexts. It isn't legitimate in ordinary policy discussions. If I'm standing in front of a judge because of a parking ticket, and my "argument" is Laws, what are they good for?, I deserve to be laughed out of court and instructed to pay my fine on the way out.
As for Mehta's suggestion that, e.g., we take in as many Iraqis as we killed in the war: well, that weird moral math makes only a kind of extremely superficial sense. The answer's no...but, once the debate is recalibrated and re-rationalized, I do think we ought to ask, in general, what sorts of things we might owe Iraq--and many other countries.
Back in the day, see, liberals--when we had them--would raise such considerations in a more sober and thoughtful way, as suggestions, points on the horizon we might want to tack toward, after due consideration. But, again, that's not the left we have today.
[Addendum: Should, say, desperately poor people, or those fleeing violence, respect our borders? I'm not sure they should. I don't think I would were I in their position. We are permitted to defend our borders, but I'm not sure others are obligated to respect them. I don't, e.g., think we should be angry at illegal aliens. I think we should understand them. Which doesn't mean: allow them to stay. Basically I think something like: they have to try to get in, we have to try to keep them out.]
posted by Winston Smith at
6:59 AM
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