16 January 2011

Truman on Immigration

Truman: "It is absolutely impossible, without the expenditure of very large amounts of manpower and money, to seal off our long land borders to all illegal immigration."

He was arguing for increased powers to expel illegal immigrants.

I took a great class on social justice at Swarthmore. The basic lesson was that immigration policy comes down to a choice between:

• welcoming everyone and degrading the quality of life (benefits recent immigrants) and

• restricting immigration and serving as an example to the world (benefits current residents and the rest of the world).

There are two assumptions implicit in this view: that increasing immigration decreases quality of life, and that we are fit to serve as an example to the world.