06/16/2012
There’s an excellent David Frum column on the Daily Beast this morning: Obama’s Immigration Announcement: Another Loss for the Middle Class, (July 16 2012):
… to put amnesty in place before effective enforcement measures are in place — and before authorities are certain that as many illegals as possible have voluntarily repatriated — is to invite another wave of illegal migration just as soon as business conditions improve.
That may not seem on the verge of happening soon, but it will happen.
In a time of very high unemployment, it seems simply reckless to invite future waves of migration — and especially of the low-skill, low-wage migration that America has mostly attracted over the past four decades.
Every serious economic study of immigration has found that the net benefits of present policy are exceedingly small. But that small net is an aggregate of very large effects that cancel each other out. The immigrants get higher wages than they would have earned in their former country. The affluent gain lower prices for in-person services. Lower-skilled native-born Americans face downward wage pressure.
In any other policy area, people who consider themselves progressive might be expected to revile a policy whose benefits went to foreigners and the rich, and whose costs were born by the American poor. Immigration policy baffles that expectation.
It’s all familiar stuff to VDARE.com readers, of course, but not to Daily Beast readers (look at their raving reactions in the comment thread) or to many others in the Main Stream Media.
It always puzzled me that so many people, Left and Right, appear to dislike David Frum, who is a genuinely nice fellow (putting aside the politics, which I think we should).
And Frum has repeatedly shown that he is one of the handful of neoconservatives who actually understand the immigration argument.
Moreover, Frum is being brave. He all too aware of the very real risks involved in raising the immigration issue in the MSM. Years ago, after the publication of my book Alien Nation, he told me that one of his regular NPR talks (David gets around!) was abruptly cancelled, without explanation, after he told the editors he wanted to criticize immigration. He said: "I thought to myself, 'Peter Brimelow must get this all the time." Yeah.
The broader point: certified Establishment and Respectable Right types are being openly critical of Obamnesty — yesterday, we praised Redstate’s Daniel Horowitz, and what about this from the Washington Post: Young illegal immigrants’ amnesty could tighten competition for jobs, college? (by Pamela Constable, June 15).
Stop being a wimp, Mittens! Come on in! The water’s fine!
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