On Immigration, Democrats Are Shooting for the Moon and Blowing up on the Launch Pad
Is there a path to a path to citizenship?
***Hey! I plan to do I Might Be Wrong Komedy Klass next week, so, as always, you can send your comedy essay, sketch, short video, or whatever (not a novel, please) to KomedyKlass@imightbewrong.org. I’ll pick one piece to be the subject of our discussion, and everyone in the Klass has agreed to keep any negative feedback to themselves, because the internet is enough of a bile-producing craphole as it is.
I’ve noticed that writers in this “heterodox” space that I occupy often…agree with each other. Yes: We’re a group of independent free thinkers who shun conformity and march to our own drummer and land in the same spot on important issues about 99.6 percent of the time. I find that troubling. True, we me might just be processing the same information in the same way, but we might also be creating a new locus for conformity that obnoxiously has the “FREE THOUGHT” label attached to it. And that’s why I look for opportunities to disagree with your Noahs Smith, your Nates Silver, your Matts Yglesei, and others.
And, yippee: I disagreed with Matt’s column on Wednesday. It’s a disagreement over tactics, not substance, but beggars can’t be choosers. Matt notes that Trump seems to have suddenly realized that vanishing a few million illegal immigrants could harm the economy, because the MS-13-Kingpin-to-guy-washing-dishes-at-Buffalo-Wild-Wings ratio in our illegal immigrant population is actually quite low. Matt also notes that the fact that illegal immigrants are often sympathetic makes the issue tricky, and I agree: My position is that immigration laws are necessary and need to be enforced, but I 100 percent would have done what the immigrants did if I was in their shoes. I honestly respect the get-up-and-go shown by illegal immigrants; it’s the losers sitting in economic stagnation in the Old Country that I don’t respect. Don’t sit there whining about your lot in life — hop a fence! Ford a river! Your situation won’t improve if you can’t even be bothered to break my country’s laws.
Matt believes that immigration reform — whenever we get around to it — will have three elements. He writes:
Stricter enforcement, including both border security and e-verify and other measures to make it harder for employers to hire workers who are here illegally.
A program of legalization, whereby people who can demonstrate they’ve been here for a while and/or have some substantial links to the community and no criminal record can secure legal status — probably including the payment of fines or other monetary penalties.
A shift in forward-looking legal immigration to make it easier for employers to meet labor market needs and/or to improve the skill ratio of the future flow of immigrants.