Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
1. 'Hidden Cameras 3' Video Release with Women in Homeland Security (Transcript and Video)
2. For a Really Excellent Immigration Report, Try Australia's Offering (Blog)
3. Wishful Thinking from the Center for American Progress (Blog)
4. Good and Bad News on the Investors' Visa Program (Blog)
5. Chinese Illegals Coming to U.S. via Haiti (!) and Belize (Blog)
6. Murdoch and Bloomberg Put Profit Ahead of Principle (Blog)
The confusing state of immigration in Europe
Doubts about the utility of immigration is provoking aggressive attitudes toward migrants, Islamic head scarves and a mass political retreat from “multiculturalism”.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, says multiculturalism has failed utterly and it is causing a political shudder across Europe. Her complaint – that it was wrong-headed to encourage millions of Turkish immigrants to settle in Germany with no thought about how they would integrate into a liberal, libidinous and mostly irreligious society – is not original. It might have been made in Britain about immigration from Pakistan. It is already being made in France and the Netherlands where politicians are using bans on head scarves to enforce a new public intolerance toward the private intolerance of Islamic culture. In Germany, a senior official of the Bundesbank, Thilo Sarrazin, was sacked for publishing a book that blamed immigrants for dumbing down Germany and causing its decline.
Mrs. Merkel’s outburst is interesting because she is clever and because she is German, the leader of Europe’s largest economy and one that has the biggest political stake in preserving the protocol of human rights and decencies. No German politician could easily contemplate the targeting of a large group of illegal immigrants for summary deportation, as did France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, with the mass removal of Roma from squatter camps.
Mrs. Merkel is giving voice in measured tones to a simmering public disquiet about immigration. She hopes, as probably did President Sarkozy, that by letting off her own firecracker, she will distract attention from the firebrands of the Far Right. But there is a more interesting question that Europeans are beginning to find troubling. We were told that immigration was good for us, good for the economy; how is it good?
Immigrants are supposed to fill jobs; their consumption creates economic demand for goods and services, and the cultural exchange stimulates creativity and enterprise. That is the theory. In practice, the experience is messy. Germany has a labour shortage of some 400,000 skilled workers, but immigrants in Germany are twice as likely to be unemployed. The Governor of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, caused a furore when he said immigration from Turkey and Arabian countries should cease because these mainly Muslim people were unable to integrate.
Today, good ideas don’t need an invasion to take root and that may be why we still have problems with migration. The Flemish, the Lombards and the Jews brought useful skills to Britain centuries ago: weaving, banking and finance. The less pleasant truth is that the real value brought by waves of migrants [now] is labour, cheap and more willing than the local muscle can provide. If the migrants don’t or cannot supply cheap labour because of minimum wage laws or generous welfare benefits, then the immigrant labour is not required and migration becomes a burden.
What about the cultural exchange and the great ideas? They are already here. The brilliant Asians writing novel software? They are not queuing up at Ellis Island, they are already writing doctorates at Stanford University or earning six-figure salaries at Microsoft. The music composed by talented African and Latin American musicians is on the Web. The migration that matters is happening in the ether. The rest is about rates per hour.
SOURCE
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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