Probably the most powerful tool the U.S. government has at its disposal now to shape voting patterns and economic growth for decades to come is immigration policy. The most powerful tool citizens have to shape our country is to embrace the Founding, to teach it to our children and encourage our friends and neighbors to do likewise
Importing new labor from developing nations will lead to competition at the lower end of the wage scale and drive wages down for all those in the U. S. who draw a paycheck from work. Those who arrive on our shores from developing nations are generally willing to embrace a lower standard of living than those who grew up in the U. S. and therefore they are also willing to sell their labor for a lower wage. Companies — facing pressures of regulation, taxation, and consumers with less disposable income to spend on their products and services — will take often take any legal route to increase their profitability. One of these routes is hiring the workers willing and able to do the required work for the lowest wage. We see this particularly in the software and technology industries where many qualified Americans are under-employed and wages have been stagnant for about a decade. If the U.S. government allows this and even encourages it through regulation, taxation and immigration policy, then this is the course many companies will take.
A company, like a person or a bureaucracy, just wants to live and thrive.
Another facet of immigration policy is shaping future voting patters. When the government allows impoverished, illiterate, unskilled and low-skilled citizens of other countries to ‘live in the shadows,’ this discourages assimilation. It encourages Balkanization and leaves these US ‘persons’ open to various victim advocacy groups, such as La Raza and even to gangs and triads. If these US ‘persons’ become US ‘citizens’ without assimilating, then they will continue to vote for the same big-government policies they voted for in their countries of origin.
My grandfather and grandmother immigrated legally from Cuba and Italy, respectively. He came through Ellis Island in 1929, alone; she, around the time of World War I and with her parents and siblings. When Castro came to power in Cuba in the 1950s, they began to bring his cousins and other relations to this country, legally. My grandparents sponsored many themselves and found sponsors for others. Those my grandparents brought here all learned English, got jobs, served in the US armed forces, build and sold businesses, did not take a dime of welfare and became part of the great American melting pot. They assimilated. They helped make this country great. By the time they became citizens, they loved this country and voted as such.
Other immigrants who come from developing nations without the skills necessary to succeed in the US job market will become wards of the welfare state. And they will vote for more and high taxes, more and bigger government, just as they did in their countries of origin. With the flood of teens and single mothers with toddlers across our southern border this summer, and the speeches given by establishment politicians of both major parties calling DREAMers the future and saying that illegal immigration is an act of love, we face the Reinvention of our country. Do we want more wards of the welfare state, higher taxes, bigger government, less opportunity and liberty for individuals?
If we want to continue to be a nation of pay checks, and not become a nation of food stamps, we must embrace the values of the Founders. We must embrace the values that made our nation great, eradicated diseases (polio, typhoid, cholera, etc), won two World Wars, put men on the Moon and liberated Middle Eastern countries. It was not collectivist reliance on big government programs that made us great. Rugged individualism, self-reliance and acknowledgement of the Creator Who endows us all with our unalienable rights, these values made America great.
Those of you who have read me for a while will know that I tend to favor the Judeo-Christian view of the Creator. Among the Founders were Christians and Jews but also Deists and Theists who believed in Divine Providence. As pluralistic, democratic society we have to acknowledge and tolerate beliefs that differ from ours. I think Benjamin Franklin had a good idea when he described the American religion something like this: There is a Creator Who gave us our rights and our abilities, and one day we will all stand before Him as the Supreme Judge of the world. On that day, we must each give account for what we did with those rights and how we used those abilities. So, until we stand before Him as Judge, we should serve Him as Creator. But how shall do anything for He Who sits Enthroned in the Heavens? We can serve each other, that’s how. We can voluntarily choose to do right by each other. We can voluntarily choose respect each other’s rights and property and opinions. We can voluntarily choose to use the abilities our Creator gave us to make the world a better place, to create wealth, to share charity. I think that a lot more than just Jews, Protestants and Catholics fall under that Franklin’s description. I think probably Buddhists, Bahi, Unitarians, and many others — even some Muslims — fall under it as well.
We’ve got to voluntarily stand united, otherwise as Lincoln and Yeshua observed, “a house divided against itself cannot stand, nor long endure.”
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