As soon as they discover that I, like most legal immigrants, reject America’s promiscuous immigration policies, open-border enthusiasts invariably tell me to go back whence I came (Canada and before that South-Africa). I’ll save them the effort: I fully agree that Americans have little use for me. I’m a troublesome scribe with a love of the English idiom and an annoying attachment to the American ideas of limited government and self-governance. You wouldn’t want to import too many such subversives, who’ll agitate for a return to the values that made this place great, if only fleetingly. A word of caution, however, before you send the spouse packing. Squeaky clean, screened-to-the-hilt, highly-skilled newcomers like him will become increasingly essential in subsidizing America’s immigration free-for-all.

Speaking of which, America’s immigration policies already select for the following qualities: unacceptable risk-taking, law-breaking, and general low moral character, an undesirable feature that’ll be further refined by the imminent passing of the amnesty bill. Most of our South-African friends, all highly qualified, middle-class, upstanding family men and women, have opted to go to Australia or the UK. Why? Well, legal immigrants don’t “wait their turn,” as the uninformed pointy-heads keep chanting. It is usually their qualifications that, indirectly, get them admitted into the U.S. The H-1B visa, for one, is a temporary work permit—and also a route to acquiring legal permanent resident status. However, if one loses the job with the sponsoring company, the visa holder must leave the U.S. within ten days. What responsible, caring, family man (or woman) would subject his or her dependants to such insecurity and upheaval? As I say, most of the people we know would never contemplate breaking the law by remaining in the country illegally. And not because they’re dull or unimaginative (an “argument” I’ve heard made by a libertarian who praised immigration scofflaws for their entrepreneurial risk-taking, no less). But because they have the wherewithal—intellectual and moral—to weigh opportunity costs and plan for the future, rather than discount it in favor of immediate gratification. Unhip perhaps, but certainly the kind of people America could do with.

America’s immigration policies are, moreover, predicated mainly on family reunification rather than on skills relevant to the American economy. If ever we were to import our family, we’d add two or three, elderly, English-speakers to the nation. Small extended families, however, are not the norm among most immigrant families, because of a multicultural, all-nations-are equal quota system, which effectively has resulted in an emphasis on mass importation of people from the Third World. Birth rates being what they are in the Third World, one qualified legal immigrant from, say, Africa is a ticket for an entire tribe. The initial entrant—the meal ticket—integrates and pays his way; the rest remain, more often than not, unassimilable and welfare dependent.

Left-liberals and utopian libertarians cannot hear about any barrier intended to prevent undesired or undesirable human acts without launching into maudlin impersonations of the sainted Ronald Reagan, RIP. Mention a security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, or one that separates Israeli from Palestinian territories and, on cue, these characters invoke the portentous metaphor of the Berlin Wall, deafening their opposition with shouts of, “Tear down this wall!”

The Israeli barrier has already cut by 80 percent the deaths by suicide bombers in Israel proper. To some, that’s a bad thing. The proposed 700 mile security fence along the U.S.-Mexico border has the potential to considerably reduce rampant crime against border communities—rape, murder, and property transgressions. According to researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein, “Approximately 27 percent of all prisoners in Federal custody are criminal aliens. The majority (63 percent) are citizens of Mexico.” (More on the REAL effects of this influx on crime, culture, the environment, health, labor, and national security, courtesy of Congressman Tom Tancredo.)

It will also stem the tsunami of illegals that has flooded—and devastated—schools, hospitals, and other services in these crumbling outposts, and beyond. Most illegal aliens do not come to the U.S. to wage war, but the reality is that, once in the country, almost all wage welfare. Because these are unskilled, low-wage workers, the taxpayer is compelled to supplement and subsidize every aspect of their existence.

As George Borjas, professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, has documented, since the 1965 Amendments “the United States has been granting entry visas to persons who have relatives in the United States, with no regard to their skills or economic potential.” “Immigrants today,” writes Borjas, “are less skilled than their predecessors, more likely to require public assistance, and far more likely to have children who remain in poor, segregated communities.”

Why do left-liberals and open-border libertarians ignore—or lie about—this unconscionable burden?

Neither does George Bush care much about reality—not the reality created by mass immigration or the one he engineered in Iraq. He has instructed that “No one should claim that immigrants are a burden on our economy because the work and enterprise of immigrants helps sustain our economy.”

Sorry, bubbles; facts tell a different tale.

For example, it’s been estimated that “California immigrants now receive about $9.3 billion more in state expenditures than they pay in state taxes.” And “native-born Californian households paid $1,174 annually in federal, state and local taxes in a net subsidy to the immigrant presence in their state.”

The problem is not unique to “The Golden State.”

A security fence is an infinitely civilized—and passive—form of self-defense. Emperor Hadrian built a wall in 122 A.D. to keep barbarians out of Roman Britain, thus ensuring three centuries of peace. And the Chin Emperor sought the same goal when he erected the Great Wall in the third century B.C. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Kumbaya Crowd that unlike the Roman, Chinese, Israeli, and yet-to-be-constructed American-Mexican barrier, the Iron Curtain was constructed to keep people in.

(A few hysterics have prophesied that a fence along the Mexican border will morph into a pen for Americans. They claim the totalitarian state won’t let its citizens exit. Such hyperbole usually emanates from individuals who’ve never experienced totalitarianism.
America is in trouble. Times are not good, but the United States is still the freest place I’ve lived in, and that includes the socialist Canada. Take it from someone who has lived under a dictatorship—and who left South Africa with her property (the proceeds from the sale of my apartment) stuffed in her shoes, because the state prohibits one from taking all one’s money out. )