By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Listen for a few minutes to the raging debate over the
fate of the Syrian refugees, and you will hear a familiar phrase rear its weary
head: “The United States is a nation of immigrants.” This line has two purposes
in modern American life. The first is to serve as a dry description of the
period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Roaring
Twenties, during which the United States accepted tens of millions of émigrés
looking for a better life. The second is to act as a cudgel in our contemporary
immigration debate. Over the past few years, President Obama has proven himself
to be especially fond of the phrase. The United States, Obama submits, has
“weaved a tradition of welcoming immigrants into the very fabric of who we
are”; its people, he argues, “were strangers once, too,” and found good
neighbors here; this is, above all else, “a nation of immigrants.” His
conclusion? We should change our current system in exactly the way he desires.
In a purely historical
sense, the president and his parrots are correct: The United States does indeed
have a long tradition of welcoming outsiders to its shores. But, in the
immediate context, one must ask “So what?” The question currently before us is
not “Should Americans ever accept new people into their midst?” or “Is
immigration a good thing per se?” but “What policy should the United States
adopt toward the Syrian refugee crisis?” It cannot be answered merely by
appealing to general principles. Unless you’re for open borders without checks,
you are, by definition, in favor of drawing a line somewhere. And if you’re for
a drawing a line somewhere, you are, by definition, for some restrictions.
Perhaps you are less restrictionist
than others. Perhaps you consider yourself to be less “fearful” or less
“racist” than those with whom you disagree. Perhaps you think that your policy
is the only moral and practical one. Fine, fine, and fine. But you’re still a restrictionist; you just
covet a different set of restrictions than do some others. Picking a point on
the continuum and deciding that it represents timeless American values is
little more than folly. Unless you want a complete absence of laws, someone
will always be able to out-Nation-of-Immigrants you.
As far as I can see, the questions with which the people
of the United States are presently grappling are, 1) Should we take a risk and
allow into the country a host of people among whom a few terrorists might be
hiding?; 2) If so, how many should we
take?; 3) Which criteria should we lay out when deciding who exactly is
eligible?; and 4) Which processes should we put in place to screen those who
apply? Mawkishly reminding one another that America has played host to a lot of
immigrants in the last two centuries does precisely nothing to help us in this
endeavor. It’s an appeal to emotion, and little else.
That the phrase is so often thrown down as a potential
conversation stopper is especially peculiar given that the people of the United
States are legally authorized to contrive whatever immigration plan they wish.
In the last two hundred years, there have been periods during which there were
no immigration laws at all, and periods during which those laws were complex,
and even evil. There have been
periods during which outsiders flooded in, and periods during which the borders
were all but closed. The system has been unpredictable: A Japanese expat
heading for California in 1885 would have been welcomed with just an
inspection; his grandson, applying in 1933, would have been summarily turned
away. Romanticize it as we may, this area is just not as simple as we pretend
it is. When a free-speech or Second Amendment advocate notes in absolute terms
that this is a nation founded upon certain political precepts, he is correctly
reminding his audience that the government is legally allowed to restrict his
liberty in only a small number of ways. When an immigration advocate appeals to
history, he is doing little more than begging the question.
Ultimately, our present contretemps is the result of two
equally important aims coming into conflict. Certainly, there are many
Americans who remain instinctively friendly toward those fleeing oppression.
The Mayflower, Ellis Island, and the
Irish Potato Famine still loom large in the American imagination, as does Emma
Lazarus’s famous paean to the “masses yearning to breathe free.” But there are
a host of Americans who are also wary
of allowing Europe’s problems into their backyard. (This paradox has haunted
the question of immigration since the Founding era.)
Put bluntly, Americans do generally want to invite exiles
in, but not at the expense of establishing in the United States the conditions
that led them to flee in the first place. As Ian Tuttle established
convincingly earlier today, it is neither irrational nor unreasonable to worry
that a liberal policy toward the Syrian refugees will bring in both a host of
deserving outcasts and a smattering
of their tormenters. Quite how we attempt to square this circle I am not sure.
As so often in American politics, conflicting values have led us to a messy
place. But shrieking hysterically about history and attempting to shame the
dissenters is not going to cut it this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment