<a href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112103224951381611,00.html?mod=todays_us_

opinion”>Good piece by Stephen Moore in yesterday’s WSJ

I don’t mean “good, I agree with it,” I mean “good, presenting the

Open Borders case as well as it can be presented.” Stephen argues that the

“fourth great wave” of immigration (i.e. since 1980) has been good for the

economy & has raised living standards, and that “a generous immigration

policy can coexist with high rates of economic growth and low unemployment.”

For immigration reformers, the language comes across as a bit tendentious.

Stephen dismisses us as “nativists,” apparently including in that term the

immigration-restrictionist economist George Borjas — a Hispanic immigrant!

Notice also that word “generous” in the quote above. Why is the United

States under any obligation to be generous to citizens of foreign nations?

And is it, actually, a good thing for foreign nations if all their

high-skill people drain away to the U.S.? I don’t mind the use of loaded

language like this — it’s a perfectly acceptable tactic used by skilled

debaters — but I do want to point it out. The entire tendency of the Open

Borders folk is to portray themselves as nice people — “generous”! — and

us as nasty people — “nativist”! But all that just evades the real issues

of immigration policy, issues encapsulated in the following quote from that

same George Borjas whose economic arguments Stephen pooh-poohs.

“The United States will inevitably attract many more immigrants than the

country is willing to admit. As a result, choices have to be made. Current

immigration policy benefits some Americans (the newly arrived immigrants as

well as those who employ and use the services the immigrants provide) at the

expense of others (those Americans who happen to have skills that compete

directly with those of immigrants). Before deciding how many and which

immigrants to admit, the country must determine which groups should be the

winners and which should be the losers. Few of the detractors [i.e. of

Borjas’s book Heaven’s Door

were willing to take on

this question.”

I advise readers to scrutinize Borjas’s economic arguments for themselves

. Mark Krikorian’s Center for Immigration Studies

has also published many papers on the economic impact of uncontrolled

immigration, e.g. this one .

And while Stephen’s piece is well stated, it is all crystal-pure economism.

Nothing, nothing matters but economic advances. Even if you accept his

interpretation of the economic arguments, this is not a position likely to

appeal to many citizens. Welfare? Health? Education? Crime? Terrorism?

Social friction? Oh, we don’t talk about that stuff… Stephen, in fact,

gives the game away in his first sentence: “The latest U.S. Census Bureau

data confirm that America is in the midst of one of the most dramatic

demographic transformations in our nation’s history.”

Do the American people actually want to see a “dramatic demographic

transformation” of their country? Or, to quote Borjas again (sorry, but

he’s very quotable): “The answers to many of the concerns that drive the

debate over immigration policy hinge on the question that I pose at the

beginning of Heaven’s Door, a question that has yet to become a central

issue in the modern immigration debate: What do the American people want

immigration to do for the United States?”