In the divided territory occupied by the United States these days, few issues seem to be so divisive as immigration. The Presidency is occupied by a minor reality tv personality who has made his political career by stirring up fear, and it seems his greatest success has been increasing the fear of immigrants. Most of my friends tend to be in the liberal-to-progressive faction, and they lean towards an open border policy. 'We come in peace. All men are brothers.' (Except of course one is not allowed to say 'All men are brothers' because it's sexist and fraternalistic.)
I am uncomfortable in both (all) of the factions. So far as I know I am fully human, with no Klingon ancestry, but I distrust emotions as a basis for political policies. Fear is, in my opinion, probably the most dangerous emotion, especially when it is misdirected by refusing to face our real fears and transferring them to some other object. But cheap 'love' sometimes can be as dangerous, in that it lets us lure those we like to think we love into very dangerous situations in which we can then do nothing, or easily choose to do nothing to help them.
There is no doubt that the United States have benefited from immigration. A quick search of sources will find a long list of liberal and libertarian arguments for the past benefits of immigrants to the United States. Most recent presidents and presidential candidates have made speeches containing the phrase 'we area a nation of immigrants.' That phrase is often followed by some statement like 'immigrants built our railroads, mined our coal, manned our factories, grew our wheat, . . . .' Not dwelling on the distinction between 'immigrants' and 'our' in such statements, I would point out that one of the most important parts of those claims is that they are in the past tense. There are certainly many immigrants making America great in the present time. One of the founders of Google is an immigrant. The CEO's of Microsoft and of Google are immigrants. The founder and CEO of Amazon is an immigrant. The founder of Tesla and Space X and whatever else he's doing this week is an immigrant. Even Steve Jobs biological father was an immigrant. And without H-1B visas, many critical contemporary American industries would be crippled, something which the current US regime seems to be trying to achieve.
But, there are very many folks who are seeking asylum or residency in the United States who do not have the skill set of Sundar Pichai, and who are certainly not entrepreneurs. They are the 'tired, . .
. poor, . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free, . . . [the] wretched refuse of . . . teeming shore, . . . the homeless, tempest-tossed.' Unfortunately, these are just the sorts of people for whom jobs and opportunities are missing in contemporary America, where railroads are not being built, where mines are closing, where factories are closing, and where the current regime's trade policies are shutting down markets for wheat, even if there were still jobs in the wheat fields.
I began thinking about writing this essay as I overheard a discussion in a produce department about I had called rootabagas only to be corrected by another man that they were 'swedes'. i thought about Carl Sandburg and the America in which he was raised and in which he wrote, an America that still sent posters to European lands seeking immigrants, and America that would produce Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. But even in that past Americans were not so welcoming as we like to remember ourselves. Just a few miles south of the quiet forest in which I write, in Edmonds, Washington, where Boeing is dependent on workers all around the world to produce it's 'American' airplanes, a 'fact' that the current occupant of the White House liked to warp when he landed to shock and awe his supporters in his Boeing 757, Chinese workers were forced to 'commit suicide' by jumping off a bridge, sometimes several times when their 'first attempts' failed, because other, European workers were reaching Edmonds from the eastern states.
The United States today face one of the biggest changes in economics--which at one level we see as jobs--that has ever occurred, as we move from a scarcity state to an abundant state. We aren't yet at Star Trek levels of capabilities, but we're getting there fast. But the discussion about it has not reached the politicians who want to make policies for the future, unless seeing something is happening here that they don't understand and so want to forbid can be considered policy. Until we begin to adjust our understanding and options, I fear that open borders will simply make having such a discussion even more difficult.
I hope that the word will reach those on the 'teeming shore' that the United States are little better prepared for the future than anywhere else. Indeed, the United States may be worse prepared than many areas of the world because it has long been in the vanguard of change, and therefore also bears the brunt of that change. But few states are founded on the liberalism of Locke and Smith and Company that has encouraged the United States towards inclusion. I can't imagine a Salvadoran emigrant expecting to be welcome in Ghana.
(An interesting side note is Japan, which has long opposed immigration, preferring to keep Japan Japanese and preserving as much of its weird culture as is possible in the day of Sony and Toyota, is finding it helpful to invite skilled immigrants to fill the labor gap that has not yet been solved by robots, but Japan is not issuing permanent immigration visas.)
In the meanwhile, as the number of emigrants/immigrants grow, partly because so many nations are in turmoil and partly because there are just so many of us folk nowadays, the United States probably have more ability to absorb immigrants than the much smaller European states such as Sweden or Germany or England, where there are real immigration crises. But this is a comparative ability only, simply because of the scale of the United States. Neither the Republican fear-mongering of immigrants nor the Progressive love fest over immigrants does anything to solve what will may become a very difficult situation without intelligent, serious, data-based investigation of what the future may hold for economic residents of the United States. A much more comprehensive policy than a wall or a cache of bottled water is needed.
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