Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday I started a little Salzburg journal — go here. Let me just wade into Part II (Part Zwei, if you’re in a Salzburg mood). And let’s move out of Salzburg — to Kitzbühel, the famous ski village maybe an hour and a half southwest of Salzburg. Let me take you into the graveyard, in particular — macabre, I know, but notable.

Toni Sailer is buried here. He was the “Blitz from Kitz,” a great downhill skier, a great Olympic champion. Later he did television and movies — a huge personality in Austria. The kind with 100 percent name recognition — as famous as the Kaiser, if there were a Kaiser. (More on that later in this journal.)

Also buried in this cemetery is Heinrich Harrer, the Seven Years in Tibet man — a fabled mountaineer, and athlete, and author. When young, he joined the SS. He lived a much better life thereafter. He was a great supporter of the Tibetans, and the Dalai Lama honored him. Tibetans — exiles, of course — make pilgrimages to his grave, here in “Kitz.” They dress it up with national and Buddhist items.

Also buried — this is sad — is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brother, Meinhard, who died as a young man — 25, I think — in 1971. Car accident.

Flying around Kitzbühel — gliding, I should say — are paragliders. They make a pretty amazing sight, amid the mountains. And speaking of amazing sights: May I show you the view from the front yard of our lunchtime hosts? Try this.

Back in Salzburg, I meet a couple who live in Silicon Valley. She’s Austrian — Austrian-born, I should say — he’s Dutch (Dutch-born). National Review readers, bless them. I ask where they met. “Skiing in Kitzbühel,” they say. Nice. They spend about four months of the year in St. Gilgen (Austria). Otherwise, they’re back in Silicon Valley. And, needless to say, he is an engineer, one of those men who helped make the American economy boom: and who showered the world with life-improving goods.

Will such people still immigrate to the United States? Are they able, bureaucratically? Is America still attractive enough — still the land of the future, still the land of opportunity? These are worrisome questions.

Peter Thiel, the great American entrepreneur, told me something sobering earlier this year, during the Oslo Freedom Forum. He said, “Watch emigration” — watch an outflow from America, rather than the usual, traditional inflow. Then we’ll know we’re in deep you-know-what.

As regular readers know, I bear no ill will toward the millions of campesinos who cross our southern border. We know why they do it, and they’re right to do it. (The law-breaking is problematic, to be sure.) But it kills me a little that two young German bankers I know can’t work in America and make their lives in America, as they want to, while the millions of campesinos just waltz over the border. The two young Germans feel they were born American — “I was born in the wrong country,” they say. “I am naturally and spiritually and temperamentally American.” All they want to do is become American citizens. They want to join our great and ongoing experiment, and have American children: native-born ones.

But no. Our government won’t let them.

If there is room for the Latin American millions — and we are a big, bounteous country — can’t we make a smidgeon of room for European investment bankers? Especially when their hearts beat red, white, and blue? I promise you they wouldn’t be waving German flags in America — they don’t wave them now. They wouldn’t demand bilingual education, or ballots in German — they already speak English like Masterpiece Theater hosts.

Don’t get me wrong (I know I sound defensive): I am for the illiterate or semi-literate southern masses — particularly those who go through lawful channels. We can’t all be investment bankers. (I certainly can’t.) I have hailed the hard-working, manual-laboring immigrant repeatedly. I would not last a week in his shoes. But, when it comes to immigration, I’m for my European friends, too. Which I think is less than Klan-like. Isn’t it?

While I’m on this bitter jag, let me add a comment: In thought, they are like John Roberts, not Sonia Sotomayor. If judges, they would never describe themselves as the equivalent of a “wise Latina.” They would say, “I’m an American, and an adherent to the Constitution — period.” They are Miguel Estradas, not Sotomayors.

Okay, end of bitterfest. How’d I get on this soapbox anyway? Isn’t this supposed to be a Salzburg journal? Oh, yeah — the Dutch-born American from Silicon Valley.

Street names are interesting in Salzburg — for instance, you see “Wilhelm-Backhaus-Weg,” “Wilhelm Backhaus Way,” referring to the great German pianist (1884-1969). There are many other streets named for other Austrian or German musical bigs. But there is also “Mascagnigasse,” “Mascagni Lane” — delightfully incongruous, to me. Because, as you know, Mascagni was an Italian: composer of the little (but great) opera Cavalleria rusticana.