Niall Ferguson has good advice on immigration at the Boston Globe:
To those of you contentedly living in the country where you were born, I address a plea for empathy and also realism. A world without cross-border migration would be a poorer world in multiple ways. The question is not whether to stop migration but how to manage it. But from those of you who regard any regulation of immigration as somehow unjust — who want illegal immigrants to be treated the same as those who follow the rules — I plead for rationality. Wholly open borders are not a sane option for any country. And comparing today’s US government with the Nazis — who systematically persecuted native-born German Jews by depriving them of their citizenship, then their rights, then their property, and finally their lives — is preposterous.
and
The last time the issue surfaced, in 2014, the Obama administration threw in the towel. Just 3 percent of the tens of thousands of children from Central America who entered the United States that year were ultimately deported. The Trump administration didn’t want to be such a pushover. It was nevertheless pushed over — not by the asylum seekers, but by the media.
The German leader Trump more closely resembles is not Adolf Hitler but Angela Merkel. She too was forced to cave by the media, in 2015, when her statement to a sobbing Palestinian girl that Germany “could not manage†to accommodate refugees from the Middle East triggered a storm of emotion. You may recall what happened in the months after Merkel’s U-turn. European and American leaders confront essentially the same problem. I just wish the media would express the same outrage about the camps in Turkey and North Africa where Europeans are now trying to confine their would-be immigrants.
This is not an American problem. It is a global problem. According to a Gallup survey published a year ago, more than 700 million adults around the world would like to move permanently to another country. Of that vast number, more than one-fifth (21 percent) say that their first choice would be to move to the United States. The proportion who name a European Union country as their dream destination is higher: 23 percent.
Those calling for more empathy need to recognize that a) there is no right of immigration; b) the claims of most of those seeking asylum are ultimately rejected—they’re actually economic migrants gaming the system; c) the citizens of the United States (as well as Germany) have the right to determine who becomes a resident of the United States not those seeking residence; and d) enforcing the law is harsh by its nature.
Those calling for more realism need to understand that in a contest between emotion and reason emotion will always win. They’ve got to do more than recite the facts. They’ve got to tell a compelling story as well. Immigration has victims, too, and most of them are your fellow citizens. Tell their stories and pit emotion against emotion.
“Immigration has victims, too, and most of them are your fellow citizens. Tell their stories and pit emotion against emotion.”
Which I have tried on for size at OTB a couple times. Perhaps I’m not a good storyteller, but it went nowhere. Others may draw different conclusions, but I conclude they (like Democrats pols and media in general) couldn’t care less about immigrants and “the children.” But they sure do care about an issue they think they can bash Trump with. Its a sadly hypocritical and cynical state of affairs.
Afterthought – I’m not sure I’ve read commentary from anyone but you, Dave, that proposes a legitimate halfway house solution.
I am nothing if not an outlier. 😉
It seems to me the untenable situation we’re in results in part from the idea that people seeking asylum must not be turned away without due process even though most or many will eventually be turned away. When a flood of such people arrives, where should they go while their petition is adjudicated? If detained then there’s enormous expense and potential for human rights violations and not detained then we have de facto open borders and enormous potential for exploitation.
In all seriousness, Dave, I cringe at the notion of foisting enforcement onto business. Why not the government; its a legitimate function? But that said, I understand your rationale. It seems there are precious few who are really trying on this issue, which tells me the current hysteria is just political opportunism and not one iota about providing asylum or dreaming etc, at least for the vast majority.