On Immigration, Conservatives Sound Just Like Socialists
The other day John Hinderaker of Powerline wrote:
If someone proposes that next year we should import 10,000 unskilled immigrants from Pakistan, the first question we should ask is: why do we need them? But that is the one question that no one ever seems to pose.
This is a terrible question and to my eye shows just how close Conservatives come to accepting many of the assumptions of Socialism.
Socialists seldom think in terms of individuals, but instead talk about the economy as some great big machine that they get to run. We all remember Bernie Sanders saying
“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this countryâ€
When Hinderaker is asking if we need more immigrants, or Sanders is asking if we need more deoderant choices, they are both working from an assumption that some authoritarian gets to sit at the top and make these choices for us.
The question "do we need immigrants" is actually senseless. Who is "we"? Who gets to make decisions for "we"? Only a socialist thinks this way. In a free society, the questions that matter are "Do I want to hire this immigrant?" or, as an immigrant, "do I want to take the chance of moving to an unfamiliar country to try to better my life." If I wish to hire someone from another country and they wish to move here and take the job, what the hell does it matter if John Hinderaker thinks this person is "needed"? I have decided I need a certain immigrant for my business, and the immigrant has decided that moving here is a good tradeoff for him. In capitalism, that should be a done deal.
Could the immigrant or I be wrong about my employment offer being a good idea? Sure. But authoritarian government second-guessing of individual decisions is supposed to be a progressive-socialist game, and here is a prominent Conservative doing exactly the same thing. If Bernie Sanders wanted to require me to get government permission to produce a new flavor of deodorant, Hinderaker would be outraged. But never-the-less he similarly wants me to get government permission (actually he wants to deny me government permission) to hire the employee I want to hire.
All this "Amercan jobs for Americans" thing may sound nice, and get head nods at the local Rotary, but what it actually means is that individual business people like myself have to be limited to hiring from a government-approved list. Doesn't sound much like the free markets and small government Conservatives claim to want.
Hinderaker quotes approvingly from David Frum
However one assesses [the Farook family] chain and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of legal immigrants choose to come—or, more exactly, are chosen by their relatives—for their own reasons. They are not selected by the United States to advance some national interest. Illegal immigrants are of course entirely self-selected, as are asylum seekers. …
Donald Trump’s noisy complaints that immigration is out of control are literally true. Nobody is making conscious decisions about who is wanted and who is not, about how much immigration to accept and what kind to prioritize—not even for the portion of U.S. migration conducted according to law, much less for the larger portion that is not.
Doing things for one's own reasons. Self-Selection. Lack of government control. Lack of government decisions about who or what is wanted. Lack of national priorities. These all sound like ... capitalism and a free society. Replace the word immigration with any other term and Conservatives would blast these two sentences and Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama would vigorously nod. I could write a $15 minimum wage screed using almost these identical words from Frum. Here, let me try:
However one assesses [the John Smith] $8 wage and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of employers set wages for their own reasons. These wages are not set by the United States to advance some national interest. The wage rates are entirely self-selected by employers and employees.
Bernie Sanders's noisy complaints that wage rates and income inequality are out of control are literally true. Nobody in government is making conscious decisions about who is hired and for how much, about how much income to accept and what kind to prioritize.
Postscript: Yes, I know that Conservatives are all worked up because 1 in a 1,000 or so of our immigrants might be murderers. You know what, one in a thousand Americans born every day will likely grow up to be murderers, but we don't ban sex. We accept the consequences that we get a few bad apples along with a lot of awesome productive people.
I would also ask Conservatives this -- why don't you think the Left's desire to ban gun ownership to head off mass shootings is fair? I would suggest one reason is that it is unfair to ban legal gun ownership for 1,000 good people because one will use their gun to commit a murder. If you agree with this statement, explain why your argument against immigration is different from the Left's call to ban gun ownership.
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
The question is whether one should conserve a legal tradition of openness and freedom or conserve an ethnic composition of whiteness and Protestantism.
I understand that the progressives and conservatives who teamed up in 1921 and 1924 were openly racist and anti-Jewish. I don't understand why conservatives in 2015 would want to look to those people for inspiration about what's worth conserving.
What about the notion, now widely shared by the right as well as the
left, that "all men are created equal" and all should be judged "not by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character?" I had thought conservatives were mostly reconstructed to accept the TJ-MLK thesis of equality and colorblindness.
That's a lot of talk that basically hinges on the idea that foreigners and their offspring are irredeemably unfit for democracy. That argument was advanced about Africans, Asians, Catholics, Jews and other groups, but today those groups are well represented in American society, economy, and politics.
Inertia is a fact of politics and law. Inertia keeps free countries free and keeps corrupt countries corrupt. It's hard to suddenly fix foreign tyranny for the same reason it's hard to suddenly ruin US democracy. Especially by a bunch of immigrants with limited resources, limited linguistic skills, and limited social connections. By the time their children and grandchildren are born here and gain political and social influence, they've already been assimilated by television, movies, college, law school, and the political party machine. It requires assimilation to gain political power and social influence, and that assimilation means leaving behind the notions of your grandparent's time in China or Syria or wherever.
NL7: I had thought conservatives were mostly reconstructed to accept the TJ-MLK thesis of equality and colorblindness.
Many accept it in theory, but not in practice. That particular strain of conservatism is very prevalent in the modern Republican Party. It started with Nixon's Southern Strategy, and metastasized.
NL7: So conservatives need to be reactionary today in defense of a racial composition of America, even if that prompts radical new changes?
They don't have to be. Part of conservatism is accepting the world as it is. The world is a very diverse place, so walling off America will not work in the long run.
Adriana: Calling it a political issue, not an economic one, doesn't let you sidestep the accusation of the socialist nature of immigration restrictionism or avoid the fundamental questions about government powers.
You seem to be conflating statism with socialism. Restricting immigration has a long pedigree in world history having little to do with socialism.
They're "well-represented", all right, by the fringe coalition the left has cobbled together for the sole purpose of establishing a permanent dependency class. On the one end, you have a low-level insurgency in America's urban areas and disgruntled student groups taking down what few shreds of academic legitimacy our universities had left. I'd talk about the other end, but my fellow Grand Wizards said it was verboten, even for us.
Asians are pretty cool, though.
Of all the straws at which you people have grasped to try to justify your astonishing naivety, this is by far the most incredible. Inertia, huh? This one deserves a sentence-by-sentence breakdown.
So hard that even today the Queen sails over here regularly to kick us colonials around every time we have some tea.
In fact, it's not difficult in the slightest, on either end. Europeans have revolted numerous times against established regimes to restore the ideals of self-rule. Again, most peoples and cultures around the world have had many opportunities, not just to begin their governments anew but to rise up in the first place. Some get it, some don't.
As far as American democracy goes, libertarians, of all people, should be aware of how much our freedom has been degraded since the birth of the country. Today, the left rallies against the ideals of free speech it used to great success in the past few decades, and why? Someone might say something "offensive" about any number of ethnic groups who have assimilated to American culture so well they demand special exemption to the First Amendment. Admittedly, there are a great number of the white non-exempt class who, wittingly or no, go out of their way to advocate for this, but that's r-selection for you.
A "bunch"? In what way exactly do 15 to 30 million immigrants from Latin America have "limited social connections"? How do "limited linguistic skills" hurt them when the government produces all of its documents in Spanish? When the political duopoly falls over themselves to get them registered to vote, to say nothing of the useful idiots who advocate for making it even easier for more to come, is that considered having "limited resources"?
Ironically, even if we accept your ridiculous notion, that this nation somehow forces immigrants to assimilate rather than not just enabling, but encouraging their continued cultural balkanization for their benefit, in what way does your Pollyannaish ideal of universal "freedom" support it? When upwards of 150 million people around the world actively want to come here, even given our supposedly burdensome naturalization process, what exactly forces a group to assimilate among a population only slightly more than double its size?
Assimilation only succeeds among small populations, over long periods of time, but you're advocating for the opposite: throwing open the doors for anyone to come and go as they please.
See above. But I guess that explains why second-generation immigrants commit crimes at even higher rates than their parents.
In a time where everyone is a hyphen-American (well, save one group...), and further where that status actually gains you advantages in areas like college admissions, employment, etc., assimilation gains you nothing, and joining the fringe coalition of rent-seekers gains you everything.
Face it, your "inertia" BS is ludicrous to its core. Even if we accept your assertion that the world is full of potential freedom-loving Americans who are just being held back by their governments, you seem to think it a one-way street. There's a reason people live for generations upon generations under conditions we would deem oppressive, without changing them. Maybe they find it agreeable, to whatever degree. Maybe they are too afraid or whatever to challenge it. Maybe they think it's easier to go somewhere else. Why would we find any of these qualities to be desirable among our own citizens? Why do you think people with these attitudes would suddenly change them upon arriving here?
If people want to live in the society we've created, they can do the same thing we did: create it. Themselves.
I'm not conflating them. Immigration is clearly an example of economic statism that relies on arguments from collectivism and protectionism, and that extols the virtues of central planning, and by necessity limits the economic liberty of Americans and foreigners alike. Some might call that socialist in nature.
What I'm objecting to is your dismissal of the socialist aspects of immigration restrictionism in your re-framing of this issue as political. You cannot remove the economic element just because there's a political dimension, as though that makes the socialist component go away.
Restricting immigration is also consistent with mercantilism.
I think you're missing the point here. The arguments could be consistent with 50,000 different philosophies, ideologies, and economic theories. The challenge to conservatives is this: if you reject these arguments and justifications from socialists on other matters, then why do you accept them for immigration?
Maybe there's good reason to make an exception for immigration, maybe conservatives don't really believe in free markets, but whatever is going on, conservatives must acknowledge that the defenses of these laws have a lot more in common with socialism than free-market capitalism.
And calling it a political issue doesn't absolve anyone of needing to explain the conflict.
Adriana,
Not sure why you are missing the point. The left generally supports immigration because it is more egalitarian. Furthermore, there are conservative reasons to limit immigration, including resistance to demographic change, which may undermine traditional values and institutions.
None of those adequately address the conflicts with other stated principles, like free-market economics and limited government. That's the issue. When you say "this is political, not economic," that's a deliberate attempt to ignore the contradictory elements of immigration restrictionism with other views. They cannot be reconciled.
Adriana: None of those adequately address the conflicts with other stated principles, like free-market economics and limited government.
But free-markets and limited government aren't intrinsic characteristics of conservatism. You are conflating conservative with libertarian.
I'm really not. Those are fairly fundamental principles of conservatism that happen to be compatible with libertarianiism or minarchism. (You'll have a hard time convincing me that there are "intrinsic" characteristics of conservatives at all. I think, like with the immigration issue, that you're trying to define the issue so narrowly and in your favor that you avoid substantive challenges.)
I would agree that conservatives aren't as committed to them as much as libertarians are, but these aren't controversial descriptions. Really, go Google "American conservative" and "definition" and you'll find dozens of definitions and explanations that broadly describe what I have. Maybe where we can come together on this: limited government and free markets are popular enough rallying cries among American conservatives that it's worthwhile to point out this contradiction regarding immigration, especially when directed to conservatives who speak in the language of liberty.
If you don't care about limited government and free markets, then perhaps you're just a social conservative - in which case, maybe you don't care if immigration restrictionism uses socialist appeals of central planning, collectivism, and labor and employment regulations to justify these laws. But even if that is how you feel, you'd be overstepping to say that's what a true conservative is.
Adriana: Those are fairly fundamental principles of conservatism that happen to be compatible with libertarianiism or minarchism.
That depends on the political situation. For instance, Louis XVI was conservative, but hardly libertarian.
Adriana: Really, go Google "American conservative" and "definition" and you'll find dozens of definitions and explanations that broadly describe what I have.
George Wallace was an American conservative, but advocated that the states be allowed to use the power of government to segregate.
While the concerns of modern conservatives have changed, the basic philosophy is fairly consistent over time. There has been more of an overlap of the term with what is more properly considered right wing, though.
Adriana: Maybe where we can come together on this: limited government and free markets are popular enough rallying cries among American conservatives that it's worthwhile to point out this contradiction regarding immigration, especially when directed to conservatives who speak in the language of liberty.
Sure. Many conservatives do advocate limited government, but then want to have the government build and enforce walls.
Adriana: If you don't care about limited government and free markets, then perhaps you're just a social conservative
Good example of a conservative that advocates the expanded use of government, in this case, to restrict personal freedom based on moral or religious principles.
Conservative is not a universalist term that transcends time and space. Each country, each time period, has its own context. I thought it was obvious that we're referring to modern American conservatives since we're dealing with the American immigration system.
Adriana: Each country, each time period, has its own context.
Of course context is important. What was once considered radical — women's suffrage, racial equality, democracy — are now established institutions. However, the word retains its meaning, which is not equivalent to libertarianism. You yourself provided the counterexample, social conservatives.
The strong implication was that we were speaking about American conservatives in 2015, not George Wallace or Burke or conservatives in Ancient Rome.
"Conservative" as a political ideology does not retain any meaning that transcends time and space, just like "liberal." We're not discussing a conservative investment portfiolo or liberalizing a law, but rather belief systems that are labeled one way or another.
I never said that conservatives and libertarians are equivalent. You accused me of that, but it's false. They have overlapping views in some cases. I named precisely two ways in which modern conservatives and libertarians agree with each other, but I qualified it even further than that by saying that conservatives clearly aren't as committed to either one.
We're getting into the weeds here. You're clearly very interested in parsing out the meaning of conservative or right wing, but neither is useful to this discussion. The intent of Warren's post was clear: 1) conservatives use socialist arguments and support laws with socialist components in favor of immigration restrictionism and 2) many conservatives claim they like free markets and limited government. These are at odds. It's not more complicated than that.
Adriana: I never said that conservatives and libertarians are equivalent.
You claimed limited government was a "fundamental principle of conservatism", even as you provided your own counterexample in social conservatism.
Adriana: The intent of Warren's post was clear: 1) conservatives use socialist arguments and support laws with socialist components in favor of immigration restrictionism and 2) many conservatives claim they like free markets and limited government.
And we disagree with that claim. When you mangle terms, you are liable to make absurd statements like this:
Coyote Blog: The question "do we need immigrants" is actually senseless. Who is "we"? Who gets to make decisions for "we"? Only a socialist thinks this way.
"We the people of the United States ... "
Limited government is a fundamental principle of American conservatism. Fundamental just means widely believed, not intrinsic or universal.
A social conservative isn't a counterexample, but rather a description of another type of conservative - a type of conservative that often coincides with a limited-government conservative. There are many kinds of libertarians, too. Does that mean that you can't say NAP is a fundamental principle of libertarianism, because not all libertarians believe it and because there isn't only one type of libertarianism?
What I see from you are a lot of excuses to avoid the central argument. Open borders is the case for free market immigration. Conservatives normally reject arguments from socialists about command economies, saying they're short sighted, unwise, unpractical, detrimental, and - most damning - irreconcilable with liberty. Yet on the immigration start from a presumption that the government should control it and that immigration must serve the collective will. Why are the arguments stupid when they come from socialists, but reasonable when they come from conservatives on the issue of immigration?
If you believe in limited government and free markets, whether you are a conservative, a libertarian or anyone else, then you are contradicting your principles when you support immigration reform. Since limited government and free market ideas are exceedingly common among American conservatives, yet so is the border war mentality, it's perfectly acceptable to confront the inconsistency head on and ask for it to be remedied.
Adriana: Fundamental just means widely believed,
not intrinsic or universal.
Fundamental : forming or relating to the most important part of something : of or relating to the basic structure or function of something.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fundamental
Therefore, as there are widely held conservative views that advocate greater government intrusion into the social sphere, limited government is not fundamental to conservatism. There is certainly a common strain of conservatism that advocates limited government, but when looked at closely, they only advocate limited government in the economic sphere, not the social sphere. Otherwise, they would be called libertarian. There's some overlap, of course, and people balance competing concerns differently.
Adriana: Open borders is the case for free market immigration.
Agreed. There is a free market case to be made for open immigration. This is usually found among libertarians, while most conservatives reject it.
Adriana: Conservatives normally reject arguments from socialists about command economies, saying they're short sighted, unwise, unpractical, detrimental, and - most damning - irreconcilable with liberty.
Most conservatives do reject socialism, of course, as socialism engenders radical change. Some certainly do point to your stated objections.
Adriana: If you believe in limited government and free markets, whether you are a conservative, a libertarian or anyone else, then you are contradicting your principles when you support immigration restrictions.
An argument can be made that social welfare programs distort the market so that you can't have social welfare programs and open immigration. This is a common way to reconcile purported support for free markets with restriction of immigration. Even libertarians often cite this argument.
Adriana: The question is why the contradiction from so many conservatives.
Because conservatives are trying to reconcile competing demands of conservative philosophy; that is, nationalism with limited government involvement in the economic realm. Consequently, conservatives will weight these different concerns differently.
1. There's a difference between stated principles and applied principles. You've correctly noted a contradiction in applied principles, but you haven't addressed the stated principles of limited government and free markets. So, these are widely held conservative views, but conservatives are compromising them in practice.
2. Conservatives are pulling back on social issues in recent years, so I'd say limited government and free markets are becoming more fundamental to conservatism than the social control.
Yes - this is what I am saying. We're getting back to your original premise now. Immigration is an economic issue.
Saying they "reject it" doesn't mean anything. Why do they not see or care about the inconsistency?
So, they reject socialism because it's different? Unfortunately, you have a terribly narrow view of what makes a conservative (tradition versus change). I don't think this rings true.
Okay, we're getting some place.
This might be credible, except that you'll be hard pressed to find a conservative or a libertarian who advocates soda taxes or bans on trans fats because of Medicaid, Medicare, state- and county-level taxpayer-funded health care programs, etc.
Normally libertarians - and even a lot of conservatives - would argue that you don't respond to violations of liberty by making the government bigger so that liberty can be violated even more. In fact, that would be the worst response. You'd create a scenario where much of government power can't be rolled back - and, in fact, must be increased - until [some other bad law] gets fixed first. Terribly impractical, but also wildly unjust.
So, I'm of the mind here that the arguments are facile and insincere. I know conservatives and libertarians make them, but based on their other arguments and ideas, it's unlikely that they truly believe the government should regulate and ban more because of the welfare state.
This is the best response you've written. That's the answer, I'm sure. This doesn't resolve the contradiction and doesn't address the problem, but it's a realistic assessment of why conservatives and some libertarians are failing to apply their own principles correctly.
Adriana: There's a difference between stated principles and applied principles.
As social conservatives are conservative, it's clear that limited government is not fundamental to conservatism. You are correct, though, that when a conservative (or anyone) espouses a belief in limited government, they should be consistent in their view.
Adriana: Conservatives are pulling back on social issues in recent years, so I'd say limited government and free markets are becoming more fundamental to conservatism than the social control.
You mean the Republican Party is pulling back from social issues, but that is a tactical shift, not a philosophical one. There are still plenty of social conservatives.
Adriana: Immigration is an economic issue.
Immigration has both economic and social aspects. Some people are worried about jobs. Others are worried about what they consider worrisome changes to society.
Adriana: So, they reject socialism because it's different? Unfortunately, you have a terribly narrow view of what makes a conservative (tradition versus change). I don't think this rings true.
conservatism: belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conservatism
Adriana: This is the best response you've written. That's the answer, I'm sure.
Common ground!
Adriana: This doesn't resolve the contradiction and doesn't address the problem, but it's a realistic assessment of why conservatives and some libertarians are failing to apply their own principles correctly.
If you treat the concerns as absolutes, then it leads to contradiction, but if you treat them as weighted concerns, then it's a matter of balancing the concerns. That's why people often reach different conclusions, even when they share much the same philosophical starting point.
It's clear that social conservatives don't want to admit that limited government is at odds with some of their beliefs, at which point cognitive dissonance sets in and they try to find a way to make their big-government social controls acceptable. They'll either respond with "democracy" or procedural rules (federalism, courts, what have you). Rather than confront the inconsistency, they'll sidestep the issue entirely.
In practice, they're not good stewards of limited government, but many still do believe that they are. That's the issue at stake.
No, I mean conservatives. You seem to be defining all conservatives as social conservatives. I'd disagree there. Many self-styled conservatives aren't that socially conservative, or they're socially conservative relative to the left, but not compared to social conservatives. Even the social conservatives are much less socially conservative than they used to be. Sure, the GOP is doing it somewhat tactically, but attitudes are shifting, too.
Yes, but that doesn't resolve the economic and big government complaints. If I said, "limited government is good" and then I said "we really need to set up concentration camps where we lock poor people away and sterilize them," it wouldn't be sufficient to respond to your objections and appeals to limited government with "well, I have social and economic concerns so this isn't solely a limited government issue."
So, did you not scroll down to the full definition that called for lower taxes and limited government? You're cherry-picking the very narrow definition you like and ignoring the more complex definition of a conservative in American politics. What's more, I'd say a lot of what conservatives argue for isn't traditional or established, and is in fact a radical departure from the past. Conservatives just aren't opposed to change and upholders of tradition. They like some traditions and they adamantly oppose other traditions. That's why any attempt to define conservative this way just falls flat.
No, that tells me why people violate their own principles and contradict their own arguments, but doesn't solve the problem.
I knew a person who said "all consensual acts between adults should be legal." Another individual responded, "But what about dueling?"
That person answered, "Oh, you always get me with dueling! That shouldn't be legal."
So, clearly that person has weighted concerns. He doesn't like the thought of people just killing each other outside the judicial system. Maybe this person thinks it's uncivilized or wrong for some other reason. That's the plain explanation of what's occurring here.
That doesn't fix what's happened, though. Clearly "all consensual acts between adults should be legal" isn't a belief this individual subscribes to, yet he continues to make the argument because it evokes certain positive feelings inside or because of how powerful it sounds.
That's my objection. When conservatives speak about limited government and free markets in such glowing terms and reject socialist arguments so resoundingly, and then immediately turn around to use those same socialist arguments they just derided in favor of immigration restrictions, there's a conflict in principles that must be addressed. I get that their concerns are weighted, but that doesn't make the contradiction nonexistent.
Adriana: Rather than confront the inconsistency, they'll sidestep the issue entirely.
As conservatives, they want to maintain existing traditions and mores. Even if they see big government as a threat, they balance that concern against the threat of societal breakdown. Of course, some people further to the political right are sometimes roped into the term "conservative", those that advocate turning back the clock.
Adriana: You seem to be defining all conservatives as social conservatives.
No, but social conservatives certainly belong in the set of conservatives.
Adriana: attitudes are shifting, too.
Of course. The center has been moving left since the Renaissance.
Adriana: If I said, "limited government is good" and then I said "we really need to set up concentration camps where we lock poor people away and sterilize them," it wouldn't be sufficient to respond to your objections and appeals to limited government with "well, I have social and economic concerns so this isn't solely a limited government issue."
We agree that if someone advocates limited government, they should avoid advocating large government for their own social causes without a good explanation of why it works in this case, but not others. However, there is a balance involved, and most people choose a middle ground. Limited government is a good, but not an absolute good. A conservative might argue that an expansion of government is warranted in some cases. Most staunch conservatives still advocate for a large military, especially in wartime.
Adriana: You're cherry-picking the very narrow definition you like and ignoring the more complex definition of a conservative in American politics.
Not at all. We chose the most common definition, and the only one that is consistent with social conservatism.
@Titan28: I don't think you've fully understood all of Caplan's points. Because one thing he argues is that 4 billion people would *not* swim here tomorrow. Certainly some would but most would not.
While it's true that the US is under no obligation to provide taxes, support, citizenry to immigrants, they are under a moral obligation to stay out of the way as people attempt to improve their lives. Immigration restrictions are exactly akin to the story that Caplan cites in his article where someone prevents a starving person from going to a store to purchase life saving food from a willing seller. The person who blocks that access has moral culpability on their hands.
It appears to me that you have either not read Caplan's article or not understood it. As for me, I find Caplan's academics more convincing than your objection.