The basic argument is fine (yes, we've had centuries of deep immigration divisions, etc.). See Bush and Putnam's, "A Better Welcome for Our Nation's Immigrants." (Via Memeorandum.) It's what's omitted that's problematic.
Jeb Bush has long been known for backing leftist policies on affirmative action, immigration, and law and order. He became the first GOP big-wig to attack Arizona's SB 1070 earlier this year. (And Bush's wife, Columba, is originally from Mexico, born to a migrant worker family in León, Guanajuato.) And Robert Putnam is an eminent Harvard political scientist and author of one of the more widely-hailed books of the 1990s, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Basically, the book single-handedly revived the "civic culture" paradigm of earlier decades in political science. It provided all kinds of activists and officials with a modern manifesto for increasing "community solidarity" in American politics. The fact that Americans weren't exactly "bowling alone" during the height of the book's popularity did little to dampen enthusiasm for it among the chattering classes (see, "Bowling Alley Tour Refutes Theory of Social Decline.") Not only that, it's odd for Putnam to be arguing the assimilation line. Much of his research was later found flat wrong --- especially on the left's Holy Grail of ethnic diversity --- and it was Putnam himself who demonstrated it, perhaps painfully. See, "The Downside of Diversity."
Anyway, readers would do well to read Michelle Malkin's essay from yesterday, "Assimilation and the Founding Fathers." Michelle provides an enormously more accurate portrait of the trends in immigrant assimilation (paying special attention to Democratic-left's La Raza-reconquista constituency). It's not pretty, but tons more accurate than what you'll get from open borders types like Bush and Putnam. (Radley Balko's eating it up, in any case, which is one of the threads of libertarianism that I can't dig.)
RELATED: Putnam's late Harvard colleague Samuel Huntington would probably serve folks better as well. See, "The Hispanic Challenge."
Our welfare state is more massive than ever. Libertarians need to acknowledge the fact that massive immigration from an impoverished neighbor to the south is a bad idea as long as our federal government is in the business of wealth redistribution.
ReplyDeleteDo Libertarians know that most of the law-breakers coming from Mexico aren't Libertarian?