More Refusal To Think From The Intellectuals Of Reform Conservatism

08/14/2014

Stung that the conservative grassroots care more about immigration than the Reform Conservatives' itty bitty pet causes, Reihan Salam and Yuval Levin have finally issued a statement of their position on immigration. In fairness, they recognize the negative impact on wages of mass low skilled immigration, the collapse of assimilation, and the need for border security first. They have at least looked at the issue, which puts them far ahead of other conservatives and libertarians who seem never to have considered it at all (like Rand Paul.)

Unfortunately, their "middle ground" leaves much to be desired.

To summarize, this package of reforms would consist of legalization without a path to citizenship for those here illegally, and a gradual rebalancing of legal immigration toward higher-skilled workers and away from extended-family unification, temporary workers, and lower-skilled immigrants. It would offer a more plausible resolution of the illegal-immigration question than the current preferences of either the cosmopolitans or the populists, and it would provide a legal-immigration system resembling those of immigration-friendly and economically developed countries such as Canada and Australia.
[The Immigration Middle Ground, by Yuval Levin & Reihan Salam, National Review, August 14, 2014]

Three points.

Legalization without citizenship simply creates a helot class and a permanent issue for the Democratic party and Hispanic ethnic lobbies. Needless to say, this does nothing to help the working class and middle class Americans Reform Conservatism is supposedly designed to target.
Without confronting (or even addressing) birthright citizenship, legalization without citizenship just makes the problem worse. It simply pushes back the problem of the Permanent Democratic Majority created by a Third World America. More importantly, it actually makes assimilation or "Americanization" even less likely because the new anchor babies will be reminded every day that America doesn’t consider their parents worthy to be citizens.
If the authors are serious about finally enforcing employment laws, these illegals are not going to be able to work anyway — so why shouldn’t we deport them, or at least encourage them to go home? What precisely will these people be doing here if Reform Conservatives say they will finally enforce the laws that prevent them from taking American jobs?

This isn’t just about trying to be "tough" on the issue or demanding everyone be more "right wing." It’s about thinking seriously about the consequences of policies.

If the master plan of Reform Conservatism is phony triangulation and the creation of a permanent helot class guaranteed to be hostile to Americans — how is this any different from the braindead Conservatism Inc. policies of the past?

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