Scott Burns’s recent post at RealClearWorld starts out propitiously enough with a condemnation of interventionist foreign policy that I can get behind:
Throughout the post-World War II era, the United States has embraced its self-assigned role to “make the world safe for democracy” in three main ways: through direct military intervention; through indirect interventions, such as by arming rebel groups to help overthrow hostile regimes; and through economic sanctions. The best of intentions may drive these interventions, but in most cases the outcome has been disaster.
but then he descends into madness. What is his alternative to interventionism? Mass immigration:
Surprisingly, part of the answer lies in loosening immigration quotas for refugees to come into relatively peaceful and developed countries such as the United States, which in the long term can have better results for us and for them.
The number of reasons that this is wrong-headed is so large it’s hard to know where to start. Let me just list a few:
- Limited employment opportunities
- Unacceptable risk
- Superempowerment
- Societies have carrying capacities
- We’re not all missionaries
Limited employment opportunities
The United States is a different country than it was in 1850, 1900, or even 1950. The unemployment rate among Somali refugees is around 20% and for decades was around 50%. As it turns out there just aren’t that many opportunities for people without modern skills who don’t speak English.
Unacceptable risk
In all we’ve accepted about 200 Chechen refugees into the United States, a very small number. Of those about 10% were either perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings, directly involved with the Boston Marathon bombings, or indirectly involved with the Boston Marathon bombings. I’ll leave explaining why such a high percentage hate us so much to someone interested in the question. I think it’s clear that those refugees present an unacceptable risk. These are not the post-WWII or Ellis Island refugees or even Mexican economic migrants.
Superempowerment
Modern technology makes individuals much more capable of producing enormous carnage than was the case in the past. A 19th century anarchist could kill a couple of dozen people. A modern terrorist can kill or injure thousands. Times have changed.
Societies have carrying capacities
I believe that societies have carrying capacities in terms of the number of immigrants they can support without producing serious social upheaval and that for the United States that’s about 20%. We’re there now: we have the highest proportion of immigrants in our population as at any time in U. S. history—the same as at the turn of the 20th century. We need time to absorb the immigrants we have rather than to bring in a lot more.
We’re not all missionaries
The reality is that most Americans don’t have the impulse or feel the mandate to save the world, whether by going out as missionaries or by overthrowing tyrannical foreign governments. When a missionary goes to a foreign land, that’s his or her right. Bringing the poor and downtrodden here where it’s more convenient and comfortable to care for them is drafting all of us into their missionary efforts and that’s actively immoral.
If you want to save the world, go ahead and do it. Just don’t force me to help you.
Yep, Burns is an economist. Everyone is, fundamentally, exactly the same to those idiots. No accounting for any variance at all. So sure, importing a Somali is exactly the same as importing an Icelander is exactly the same as importing an Indian is exactly the same as importing a Mexican is exactly the same as someone born in America to parents born in America. Culture is as meaningless and as instantly changed as clothing, and everyone could do exactly the same things as anyone else, if only given proper training & opportunity.
Is it any wonder the economy is stagnant after letting these tools have so much authority for so long?
Even if true, there are such things as baseline knowledge, societal constraints, and opportunity costs. Given enough time and resources you might be able to train an illiterate aboriginal tribesman to be a neurosurgeon or an astrophysicist.
But it will take decades and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. What happens to his family in the meantime? How does he live? How do they live? And what expectations does he bring with him? What views of a decent society does he bring with him?
In the liberal view culture is simultaneously irrelevant and central. If the Right is spiraling down into nativism and fascism, the Left is wandering feckless and confused, believing diametrically opposite things and making no effort to resolve the contradictions or work out a set of beliefs that go beyond posturing, taking offense and scolding.
The unbearable triviality of the Left is on full display, and it leaves us unable to rally, unable to resist effectively. How do we object to Trump’s suggested attack on freedom of speech when our campus wing has blazed the trail of attacks on the First Amendment? How do we claim that culture is both precious and defining, but also irrelevant? How do we call for tolerance while shouting down opposing voices? How can we talk about society failing minorities and position ourselves as the cure when virtually every major city in this country is run by us?
Some local history dating back to Lincoln’s time has been repeated of late to emphasize the success of assimilation. Consider for yourself, but I take a different lesson:
A Scottish minister on his way to China stopped on some islands in Portugal, converted a large number to Presbyterianism and established a mission there. Eventually, mob violence broke out in the fractured community against the converts. The American Protestant Society published stories about the outrages and encouraged its followers to help relocate the refugees and to America and settle them. A few hundred settled in Lincoln’s hometown where coreligionists provided temporary shelter in their homes, arranged for them to get jobs, and donated food, furniture, and clothing. Within a couple of generations there were no signs of Portugese culture, other than some family names, the names of their churches and the nickname of a neighborhood.
This is a successful story of assimilation, but how you feel about it might depend on your religious views, since this was a missionary pursuit. It involved no public policy or government purse, and relied entirely on people opening their homes to strangers and taking personal responsibility for the refugees.
“our campus wing has blazed the trail of attacks on the First Amendment”
This always bugs me. The right points at the weird stuff going on at campuses and claim that it represents the entirety of the left. Honestly, we don’t worry about mini-sombreros or gender where I work. I don’t even know anyone who talks about, let alone worries about these issues. The right has to use 20 y/o’s to find examples of what they want to oppose. (Actually, on the social con blog I read, they now use 16 y/o’s as representatives of true liberal thought.) Now, when you want to find examples of people on the right engaging in First Amendment suppression, you find adults. When you want to find whackos supporting anti-science beliefs or consumed by conspiracy theory, you have no shortage of adults. I just don’t get why I should obsess over what college students are doing.
As to the broader topic, how many on the left are actually calling for mass immigration? I have supported Obama’s goal of 10,000 vetted Syrians. That hardly seems like mass immigration, especially since we probably won’t even reach that goal.
Steve
Just in case folks didn’t read until the end, Burns is a George Mason guy, meaning he is a Republican.
Steve
Steve:
That’s unfortunately not true. I’d point you to places in the kidlit world where liberals have – and I am not making this up – managed to convince themselves that diversity requires literary segregation. And these are writers, teachers and librarians. I worry far more about being attacked from the left than from the right. In my world it’s the liberals who are the self-appointed censors.
In any event, of course it’s the nuttier fringe that ends up representing. Just as the fetus-wavers and racist joke forwarders end up representing the Right.
And are we liberals rising up to denounce our campus fringe? No. On the contrary, we’re caving in to their asinine demands. People are losing jobs over this. And these same campus lefties are the core of the Sanders phenomenon which is having a rather large effect. When we stop defending our core beliefs in freedom and tolerance and instead bend the knee to anti-free speech fanatics on ‘our’ side, we surrender the ability to resist similar attacks from the Right.
steve, as much as it might irk you, not everything is a question of Democrats vs. Republicans, left vs. right. There are both Republican Wilsonians and Democratic Wilsonians. The neo-cons are/were Republican Wilsonians.
Interventionism is bipartisan.
Dave- Sure. Both parties are much too interventionist, but when it comes down to it, you have to vote for a Democrat or a Republican or not vote or throw it away on a third party. That being the case, the neocons absolutely run GOP foreign policy and are clearly much more interested in using military intervention to achieve their ends. Remember that they wanted to invade Libya. They were criticizing Obama for leading from behind. They wanted to invade Syria a long time ago. It is just a choice of a lesser of two evils. Of course with Hillary, the degree of separation drops a lot.
However, on Burns, my point is simply that while libertarians pretend to be different than Republicans, in the end that is who they always support, so in practical terms there is no difference.
Steve
In practical terms, Steve, you always support open borders candidates, so there is no difference between you and an open borders advocate.
“In practical terms, Steve, you always support open borders candidates, so there is no difference between you and an open borders advocate.”
That’s why I will throw away my vote and go third party or independent this year. I can handle a rotten egg or two in a candidate’s basket of policies, but most of the eggs are rotten I’ll find a different basket.
I mainly vote for President on the basis of foreign policy because, as we’ve seen over the last eight years, President’s can’t do much domestically without a friendly Congress. I don’t see any potential candidate, except perhaps Sanders, that will have a less interventionist foreign policy. Clinton is probably the worst – an activist foreign policy is her most consistent policy preference and she’s been on the wrong side on most every foreign policy decision she’s been involved with.
You don’t need much in the way of modern skills or English fluency to paint a house, mow, weedeat, blow leaves, trim trees, change car oil, wash cars, stack shelves, clean floors or a myriad other jobs. Not only that, but a Somali who spoke both English and Somali could put together a small team at Home Depot or Lowe’s to do dozens of more demanding jobs. Mexicans and Central Americans do that all the time.
…and yet the unemployment rate for Somali refugees remains at 20%. And the pay level for people taking those jobs has remained the same or declined, suggesting slack demand.
“In practical terms, Steve, you always support open borders candidates, so there is no difference between you and an open borders advocate.”
Not even on my list of considerations when I vote for POTUS. I go by foreign policy first. By your definition, they are all open borders candidates, so why make that an issue? (Pretty well documented that Trump has hired lots of immigrants in the past, so while he says he now opposes it now that he has made his money, I have a hard time seeing much sincerity there.)
Steve