Tuesday, November 08, 2005

France the example why we need controlled immigration

Loosely controlled immigration has been all the rage in Washington for some time now. Some have even advocated open borders. The reasons for this are many and varied, and I'm not going to cover them in this post. Instead, this post is going to be about why this loosely controlled immigration is bad for the United States.

Part of what has made this country what it is has been immigration. It takes a unique, risk-taking individual to travel to a new land, where they don't know the customs or language, and start a new life. That immigration has always had controls on it, though. It was understood that a country can only absorb so many new, often times poor, immigrants at one time. And that really is the key-absorbing immigrants. If you can allow new immigrants to acclimate themselves to their new culture and slowly work their way up the ladder, the country experiences a net gain from these new citizens.

What France is currently experiencing we could one day experience ourselves unless we shore up our immigration controls. When a flood of immigrants overwhelms a nation's ability to absorb them, those immigrants never acclimate themselves to the culture of their new home. Instead, they form tight communities that develop exaggeratedly strong nationalism for their old home countries. They also have little economic opportunity, which hardens them against their new home country. An economy has only so many entry level jobs for new immigrants. Loosely controlled immigration leads to a poverty in the immigrant population that further sets them apart from the existing population.

Look at France as a warning. We have time to tighten our policies. If we don't, we'll repeat many of France's mistakes.

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