Needed: A rational, reasonable, reliable immigration policy
No, this is not another hand-wringing story of chaos and bedlam spreading across the world in the explosive wake of Donald J. Trump's reckless immigration decisions. (Although many would surely like to damn him for it.)
And no, neither is it a tale of heraldic angels flying down from heaven to praise that selfsame American president. (Although, yes, many would also love that.)
Instead, this is a humble little report virtually nobody wants to hear, whose historical references will probably bore you to death. So please, tune out now, while there's still time before Homeland Security deports you to Syria on the last plane out!
When and if we become serious about determining who should be American and when, where and why, I intend to insist that the solution include a kind of third way, a middle road, one of those moderate, careful steps that are always the wisest course and that could lead us to a "Rational, Reasonable, Reliable" path (call it the three R's), which is what we need.
To understand what America is going through today, you have to go back to 1965. That was the year the still little-known Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was signed, almost as an afterthought. Yet it would transform America beyond Americans' wildest dreams - or, more aptly, fears.
Its most impassioned supporter, Sen. Edward Kennedy, was famously quoted then as vaingloriously proclaiming, "First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Second, the ethnic mix will not be upset." Every single assurance, false.
As I wrote in my 1996 book, "Americans No More: The Death of Citizenship," before 1965, "the major principle of immigration policy was to take skilled people proportionally from the countries of origin of present American citizens. But after 1965, American immigration was deliberately opened to the Third World - indeed, to the point of nearly being reserved for it.
"Before, immigrants were expected to embrace American values; after 1965, Americans were forced or felt they were being forced to adapt to foreign cultural values."
From 1930 to 1960, about 80 percent of America's immigrants came from European countries or Canada. By 1980, that figure had dropped by half, according to the Pew Research Center, while immigration from Asia and Latin America boomed.
At the same time, well-worn practices that were simply common-sensical and had served America well, also were changed by the "utopian lobby" of those in Congress, in the think tanks and in the universities who, if one carried their ideas to their logical conclusion, really wanted open borders.
In earlier years, for instance, new arrivals had quite deliberately been spread out across the country, in order to facilitate integration and to avoid the formation of hothouse ethnic enclaves. After '65, new ethnic and national groups were settled together - the Hmong in Wisconsin, the Somalis in Minnesota, the Mexicans in Los Angeles - and quite naturally formed their own interest groups, leading directly to resentment on the part of earlier Americans, which paved the way for a President Trump.
Then, on top of everything, came America's reckless interventions in the Middle East, leading to the collapse of whole nations there, the formation of ISIS and the massive refugee movement of peoples, sparking both reasonable and unreasonable questions about Islam and democracy.
My Rational, Reasonable, Reliable policy fully and joyously celebrates that Islam has inspired great civilizations, from Al-Andalus in Spain to the Ottomans in Turkey. But Islam has also been profoundly anti-Christian across history, and today the Muslim world is, by all indicators, painfully backward. Much more, for Muslims, the state and religion are one; if you are a serious believer, you find it hard to believe in religious freedom.
Rational, Reasonable, Reliable says there is no reason not to bring some Muslims to America as immigrants or refugees, but how many? Our society can integrate and learn from different peoples so long as those peoples are not perceived as a threat, but that is what has occurred because of the "open border" folks - and not accidentally or by chance.
A telling note: Most thoughtful analysts in the immigration field say that a country like ours can reasonably flourish and remain stable with about 5 percent of its population foreign-born. America's foreign-born population today is 14 percent and growing, with the global tsunami of refugees threatening societies across the industrialized North.
All right, I plead guilty. I am a moderate. I meditate on the third way. I walk the middle road, and only in the daylight. I believe in the cautious step, and not on steep staircases. I ask only that we think for a while about: (1) what kind of country we want; (2) what foreign cultures can best enrich ours (and theirs) by absorbing new settlers; and (3) how our laws and institutions can best accommodate newcomers, without America losing its own, unique soul.
Donald J. Trump is not only doing it wrong; he is not doing it at all. But, too, he inherited a situation filled with self-indulgent "goodiness" that led us to where we are today. Good God, let us figure this out - carefully.
Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.
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