Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Trump’s executive Order on immigration and refugees is causing angst, but not analysis. We need analysis.
For years, I’ve used the lifeboat analogy to discuss immigration. There’s only so much room in the lifeboat, only so many rations. There are 7,000,000,000 people in the world who want better lives which, for most of them, means coming to the United States. We can’t take them all: they’ll swamp the boat. See, for example, Europe today, and that was only a million immigrants.
Lately, it occurs to me the lifeboat is the wrong analogy. A lifeboat implies a temporary accommodation until help arrives. But the rest of the world is worse off than we are. Help will never arrive.
The United States is more like a medieval castle when invading armies arrive, everybody heads for the castle and they slam the gates shut. There’s a limited supply of water and food and limited space. Extra people endanger the survival of everyone already there. They close the gates every night, for that reason. Yes, the wolves may eat you, if you arrive late and the gates are already shut for the night; but the gates will not be opened for you in the dark when it’s possible for invaders to slip in.
In the intelligence world, it’s night right now. Governments collapsed, sources compromised, consulates sacked, refugees and raiders look alike. We can’t tell friend from foe so nobody gets in until daybreak when we can sort them out. Daybreak will arrive when the intel for background checks and deep vetting is strong enough to trust, however long that takes.
Even after our intel improves, we need to choose carefully who we let in because their kids become our new citizenry. Carlos and Maria might be ecstatic to get jobs as gardeners and hotel maids in America, but their kids will grow up watching MTV and wearing Nikes. They won’t be thrilled to take menial jobs. Second generation Somalis are the ones going on jihad, here and abroad. N-th generation Blacks are the ones insisting their lives matter. “Grateful” is not an inherited trait.
Western Civilization, and particularly our constitutional republican form of government as we know it in England and America, is a relatively recent development and a very small part of human history. If that’s what we’re trying to preserve in the castle until the Dark Age ends, we need to be very choosy indeed. We need the best, brightest, hardest working immigrants with morals and cultural values most compatible with our own. Reuniting Carols and Maria’s extended family of unskilled laborers is heartwarming, but more unskilled labor is not what the nation needs to prosper.
Trump temporarily halted immigration from countries that sponsor terrorism. I’d go further and impose a temporary moratorium on ALL immigration, ALL refugees, until we sort out our national priorities and institute procedures to ensure new arrivals don’t threaten our national survival. It’s not just for me – I’ve already lived most of my life in a clean, safe America – it’s for my grandkids. Do I want them to grow up in Minnesota or Mogadishu?
Joe Doakes
To many on the left, the fact that you worked and sacrificed enough to build a place worth fleeing to makes you unworthy of being there.
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