The discussion about immigration and refugees is a central issue in the 2016 presidential race. We’ve all heard the arguments put forth regarding this issue, ranging from national security, to ideology and religion, to our nation’s “values” etc., but I haven’t heard much talk about an even more basic argument to be had: do we have to take in any immigrants at all?
Nothing makes me scoff more during a discussion regarding immigration policy than hearing someone utter, “But we’re a nation of immigrants!” Wrong. We’re a nation of laws, and the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, contains nothing supporting immigration.
The only power given to the government having anything to do with immigration is stated in Article I Section 8. it says, “The Congress shall have power to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.”
There is no legal obligation to let anyone into our country. End of story.
And no, the words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty aren’t legally binding.
When I bring this up, I am almost always accused of being heartless and selfish.
I agree with the first description; it’s very difficult to turn away the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free,” as the statue of liberty’s pedestal reads.
But the world is a difficult place, and sometimes we must be heartless to survive in such a world.
It’s the reality we live in. I doubt the commanders at the Battle of the Somme wanted to send millions of young men to their deaths to a sea of hellfire and poison gas, but it was the reality they lived in and needed to face it.
It’s incorrect to call me selfish, however. I care very much for the poor of my own country.
It infuriates me to know that our big government spent one trillion dollars on a fighter jet that doesn’t work, when that money could’ve been spent hypothetically to house every single American homeless person.
As seen in Germany, the local government treats the migrants better than the local poor by housing them in hotels and giving welfare to the many able-bodied young men who refuse to work.
There they sold the mass importation of migrants as a good thing, for Germany was running out of youths to work and pay the elderly’s pensions (unemployment was at a similar rate than ours when the migrant crisis began).
In the United States, I hear the same old mantra, “We need people to do the jobs Americans refuse to do!”
At the same time, I’ve started to hear complaints about how automation is killing America’s jobs, as well as the ongoing problem of outsourcing.
I have a hard time taking a politician seriously who says they’ll bring back jobs to America’s working class while at the same time advocating for bringing in thousands of migrants who’ll either end up taking what few jobs are left from an American, or going on welfare and taking those benefits away from our own poor.
We need to look no farther than Japan for the answer to these “problems” that our politicians claim can be solved by increasing immigration.
Japan takes in very few migrants and has a shrinking population, and we don’t hear the Japanese calling their government for a massive influx of migrants.
They let the free market adjust, they’re currently having machines efficiently take up the jobs lost from the lost population and their unemployment is better than ours!
I’m not selfish for wanting to see my own country’s poor and unemployed taken care of first.
If you want to help the problems of people from other countries, stop voting for big government candidates who’ll go to war in places like Iraq and Libya and destabilize them for no good reason, giving people a reason to want to come here.
Vincent Moore can be contacted at vmoore@kscequinox.com
