Letter: Public policy on immigration obsolete

Published 10:46 am Tuesday, July 8, 2008

One of the great challenges to public policy is knowing when and how to change a successful policy grown obsolete.

Yet the clichés from one era often linger in our minds and public dialogue. Take immigration as an example.

Immigrants originally settled every nation in this world; this cliché often confuses facts with wisdom. Immigration “has been good for America,” but we are not longer an empty continent — we are a crowded country of 293 million people, with problems of sprawl, pollution and disappearing open space. When the Statue of Liberty was erected in 1886, there were fewer than 65 million Americans. What other public policy applicable to the 1880s is still applicable today?

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It is said that immigration is important because there are “jobs that Americans won’t do.” This probably never was true but this cliché has now become a job-destroying and wage-lowering philosophy where employers use unskilled and skilled immigrants to hold down wages and obtain cheap labor at the expense of American workers.

One particularly below-the-belt cliché suggests that all discussion of immigration is “racist.” Yet every immigrant-receiving country in the world has not only the right but also the duty to discuss and decide how many immigrants, which immigrants, and by what rules such decisions are to be made and enforced.

Immigration has been good for America, but mass immigration during the 21st century brings America far more liabilities than assets.

Paul Westrum

Albert Lea