Thinking About Immigration

The problems with immigration are closely tied to our attitudes towards social welfare.

Politically, people's attitudes towards social welfare are numerous, ranging from "We don't need any sort of welfare at all.  Each man for himself!"  to  "Everyone should be provided with the basic necessities of life."  Those who haven't thought about this sort of issue might be shocked, but instead of 'everyone' if we were to say 'children', bearing in mind that even penniless families can have children, it takes on a different color.  Imagine a young couple, where the man was the breadwinner, and the woman was a homemaker, and then a mother; they get divorced, and now the woman must get child care while she looks for a job, or works.  Our perspective must change from: "I don't think I'll ever need the state to take care of me!" to: "There certainly are people who may need help from the community."

It isn't a huge leap to make the assumption that everyone believes that every citizen has to be taken care of, to some degree.  We are a nation that takes care of its citizens.

Some of us believe that we ought to take care of even non-citizens who live here.  It may be that (1) we give non citizens certain basic services to keep everyone safe.  (2) We give the kids of noncitizens certain services out of sheer humanity.  (3) Sometimes it is too burdensome to insist that our social service providers should verify citizenship of every individual before services are given.  And so on.

Well, once we establish the principle that we're a nation that looks after its citizens, or even its residents, it becomes clear that allowing open immigration is impossibly difficult; we would be taking on a great expense when we admit people through our borders.  Presence here has to be understood as a membership in all sorts of services.

Why not deny all immigration?  This sounds good in theory, but each of us has some categories of wannabe immigrants who we feel should be allowed in.  The question is how to do it in a fair and consistent way.