Tom Finneran: After Boston—An Immigration Proposal

Friday, April 26, 2013

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

We’re coming up on two weeks since the Boston Marathon became the subject of headlines around the world. And we’re coming up on three decades of wishful thinking and willful ignorance regarding our immigration laws. Of all the public policy debates this country can and should have, immigration “reform” is the most frustrating one of all.

One would think that any nation would want to advance and improve its economy. One would think that any nation would want to secure and protect its borders. One would think that any nation would learn from its past mistakes. One would think that any nation would want to bolster its legal immigration policies and deter illegal immigration practices. One might even think that in such a nation, the political parties would make a good faith effort to place the nation’s interest above the narrow interest of politics. Good luck with all that reasonable thinking. And welcome to America in the year 2013, a land where wishful thinking and willful ignorance now reigns.

That America is a nation of immigrants is indisputable. The history of America as the world’s melting pot is an inspiring and optimistic story of human striving. Notwithstanding the glaring injustice and hypocrisy of our historic treatment of Native Americans and slaves, America has been without peer in its acceptance and assimilation of every race, color, and creed on the planet. Singular American achievements continue to spring from fertile minds nourished by America’s freedoms.

Yet something is terribly wrong with America in the year 2013. It’s almost as if we have a death wish in our desperation to please narrow selfish constituencies. I’m as moved as anybody by the words inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty---

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

To millions of immigrants desperate to escape the conflicts and poverty and social limits of their old countries, these words and the accompanying liberties of America were a powerful tonic. And though life in America has rarely been a picnic for those who arrive penniless speaking foreign tongues, to them the freedoms of our country were astounding to behold. Thus, as day follows night, the children of those immigrants came to see America as a land of opportunity, where hard work, consistent effort and special skill paid dividends. They quickly put the Old World with all its limitations in the rear view mirror and they became “Americanized” in speech, in thought, and in habit. What a great blessing that has been both for them, and for the nation. Indeed, the history of the world would be vastly different and considerably uglier had it not been for the miracle of America absorbing and refreshing the peculiar energies of peculiar peoples.

I do not believe that we shatter our history or revert to dark impulses when we insist upon a coherent immigration policy for these United States. Neither the poetic and generous impulses put to words on the Statue of Liberty nor any rational assessment of our national self-interest require us to accept all those who yearn to come to America. A handful of principles can be our guide:

Secure the borders of the nation as quickly as possible. Porous borders tempt both the good and the bad. They also make chumps of those who go to American consulates, fill out all the paperwork, and then wait for years on end.
Strengthen the legal immigration process so that good people, playing by the rules, do not have to wait for ten, fifteen, or even twenty years to gain admission.
Announce and abide by a specific economic bias toward the educated, the skilled, and the entrepreneurial applicants and do it without apology or equivocation. We are under no obligation to meekly accept all who apply.
Provide swift verification of status so that employers do not have to worry about their hiring practices. And punish those employers who game the system while exploiting frightened laborers.

I rest my case. Any takers?