Our Way of Life

Larry Kudlow, RCP makes some good points in the immigration debate. Here's one, on the Senate bill:

The Upper Chamber is also limiting the volume of skilled H1B workers, primarily engineers and scientists. These workers are crucial to American competitiveness, and if allowed into the country at much higher levels they would throw off more than enough tax revenue to finance public services for unskilled H2B immigrants.

I don't understand these limits either. If we want to keep America growing and jobs here, we need to keep brainpower coming our way. We simply don't generate enough of our own. Do we really want to give Hillary and Harold Ickes an opening for a BIG Government Plan, reminiscent of HillaryCare, mandating that all our little darlings study engineering? (Good luck with that, with our underperforming public school system.)

And here's another good point, challenging the Heritage Foundation's numbers:

Due to the demographic shift being caused by the baby boomers, the ratio of working-age persons in the U.S. to retirees aged 65 and over will drop like a stone from the current 4.7:1 ratio to 3.5:1 by 2030, and 2.6:1 by 2040. With the Social Security and Medicare trust funds going bankrupt, how will we manage with so few workers per retiree? Will we let our whole economy stagnate like France, Germany, Italy, or even Japan? All of these countries suffer from shrinking workforces and top-heavy government taxation.

Well, the U.S. could maintain a 4:1 ratio of workers to retirees by admitting an additional 57.5 million workers over the next nineteen years, according to analyst William Kucewicz. This would result in an average annual population increase of less than 1 percent and a total of only 16.4 percent more than the 350 million projected by the Census Bureau for 2025.

We need more legal immigrants. Got to help support those Boomers in the style to which they have become accustomed! Austin Bay here also on the need for Mexico to embrace free-market reforms so many of its people are not so desperate.

But Amity Schlaes, via RCP, also points out that the debate is really cultural--that is to say--a backlash to the multiculturalism of the last few decades. Most Americans identify with the individual, legal immigrant who becomes part of the American melting pot. Most Americans do not identify with ethnic identity politics and demands for group "rights" and services.

With all due respect to our Canadian neighbor, we do not want official ethnic enclaves in this country.

And the idea of America is tied up with security on our borders. Tom Bevan here.

We have committed our troops overseas to defend this country and our way of life. Americans expect our borders at home to be defended as well.