Hearts, Heads, and Immigration

This is a posting I made to the Exiles of the NYTimes immigration forum:

Incadove, your comments on arguments having to be based on humanitarian principles gave me pause. To some degree I agree. For example, I know an ardent libertarian, and the heartlessness of his worldview certainly turns me off. Moreover, what's the purpose of continuing to live if you don't get positive feelings out of life--and try to contribute to the good-heartedness of the whole shebang while you're at it.

OTOH, I was raised by drunks as you'll perhaps recall. They weren't stupid people, but they always put their feelings first, and gave me a rotten childhood as a consequence of their dionysian wallowing. A little more cerebralness would have been welcome.

There has to be a balance. The reason for reason is to give us as accurate an understanding of the world and our condition as is possible. Seems like in the long run you'll get and give the most happiness to others if your reason mediates your feelings.

Maybe that's why my favorite saying is "Hope clouds observation."

Think of the guy with TB who flew on seven airplanes and subjected hundreds of people to lengthy medical treatments, the harrowing fear of having contracted a drug-resistant strain of a serious disease, and has become an icon of self-centeredness. When he made his decision to go home this way, he obviously went with his gut feelings. He wanted to go home. To get treatment in America. To not spend an enormous amount on a private medivac flight. But what he did was wrong for both him and everyone else.

I believe there must always be an utterly cold, remorseless Eye of Logic nestled in your head somewhere, cooly regarding every choice, every action in the pitless sunlight of reason. You'll be a better person for it.

In the immigration debate, it seems to me that much hurt has come from much good-heartedness. Locke's Utilitarian notion of the greater good needs to be considered.

TB guy just wanted to go home. We all should feel sympathy for that desire. But that doesn't justify the choice he made. Likewise, I'm moved by every propaganda piece I see on PBS about hardworking illegals. No, I'm not being sarcastic. Remember, I know a fair amount about Latin culture.

There's an Italian movie titled "L'America." I'm sure someone with European's vast sophistication has seen it. It's about immigration--only, in this case, from Albania to Italy. It's called "L'America" because Italy is to Albanians what America was to Italians. It's a wonderful movie. In it two Italian con artists go to Albania to set up a fake factory for the sole purpose of gulling Italy out of foreign aid which they'd then pocket. But one of the con artists gets stranded in rural Albania without resources, and in his struggles to get out of there he slowly--very slowly--comes to see the Albanians as humans, and not just as ciphers to be exploited.

At the very end of the movie, there's a long shot of a rusty freighter loaded to the gunwales with desperate Albanians trying to sneak into Italy illegally. The shot starts with the freighter at some distance as it plows across the Adriatic. Then the camera slowly zooms in on the passengers until it's close to their faces. It goes slowly from one face to another, each so sad, so hungry, so nearly out of hope. There's no fatuous dialogue or bombastic music telling you how to feel. Just their faces. It made me weep, and that doesn't happen to me often.

I'm sure Chakotay Feels the same way as I do about all this. But I'm also sure he and I agree with Patricia_K that until we have one world government or some such, nations are the ultimate unit of government--the one we all depend on ultimately for our safety and the safety of those we love. No other country on Earth would take in an American refugee willingly. You ought to see how Mexico treat American illegals there (mainly American citizen children of deported illegals). Vastly worse than anything here.

We have an obligation to care for our own working poor, therefore, since there is no world government or other nation's government that will look out for them. TheCap0 calls this a zero sum game. It's no game. As Krugman pointed out, every cycle of massive immigration has depressed the wages and protections of the working poor. General idealistic statements cannot fool the Eye of Logic, wishful thinking notwithstanding. "European" pointed out that Krugman drew different conclusions than I did. That's true, but I quoted the factual part of his essay, which is incontrivertable. My different conclusions don't stem from a disagreement over the facts on the ground, but over having different values than Krugman in some regards.

Lastly, Patricia_K alluded to the fact that the high-immigration states are being forced to bear the brunt of illegal immigration, while the federal government--whose policies made it possible for them to come here--has forced us to provide for their social services vastly in excess of the value they add to the economy. That goes to Washington and the corporatists. And I'm a native-born resident of the highest-immigration state of all: California. Much of the fatuous idealistic pronouncements I read in NYTimes editorials and suchlike show no awareness whatsoever of what's it's like here, and how it's draining us to do so. All you who advocate for illegals: go spend your next vacation in LA. Please, please find out what's actually happening. Might change your minds, or at least help you take Joe Lunchbox's concerns more seriously.

PS: I believe in learning from other countries' experiences when I consider America's social issues. For example, the Netherlands provides a vastly superior model for a transportation infrastructure. So in that light, perhaps "European" would care to enlighten us about Europe's no doubt vastly superior model for accommodating large numbers of illegal immigrants (and legal ones, for that matter). How all those Muslims and Blacks and Caribbeans and Pakistanis and Indians work and live happily shoulder to shoulder with native Euros in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France etc.