This article is for people like Elon Musk and his supporters who litter X with falsehoods about immigration. Our immigration policy suffocates the economy, but the government spends our money to keep it. The budget for border protection and immigration control is larger than those for the CIA and FBI combined. Our government spends our money to limit our freedom. We do not need a Department of Government Efficiency. There is human capital on X, which, at Musk’s will, can be turned into a virtual think tank, working around the clock on a better immigration policy. Musk can start today by presenting for critique my proposal for the Freedom of Migration Act and asking the public for better solutions. The article below outlines the approach. If we develop an immigration policy concept that will eliminate illegal immigration and stimulate the economy, it will be a double win. If not we, then who? If not now, then when? HAK
For as long as the oldest among us can remember, U.S. immigration policy has always been out of order. Why? Because it is founded on a bunch of falsehoods. None of the concepts circulating among the elites of politics and media will ever work.
You did not cause the problem; you inherited more than a century of systematic misinformation. However, it is your responsibility as an American citizen to fix it. To do that, you must figure out where the problem is and force politicians to act on it.
Who invented the ‘immigration problem,’ and when?
By the end of the 19th century, most new immigrants came from impoverished Eastern and Southern Europe. There was a cultural and language clash with already established Anglo-Saxons. The vibrant ethnic neighborhoods of New York and Chicago felt like foreign countries.
In 1907, Congress commissioned a study of immigration in response to the growing anti-immigration sentiment. Vermont Sen. William P. Dillingham led it, delivering the final 41-volume report in 1911.
Under scientific pretenses, the Dillingham Report justified drastic restrictions on immigration. At that time, eugenics claimed that people of certain ethnicities were of a worse stock, ergo undesirable in the U.S.
Jews were one example. In New York, researchers found enclaves of Jewish communities that had not assimilated. These same researchers raised concerns that Jews already made up a significant minority at Ivy League universities. In the “science” of eugenics, the inferiority of Jews did not need proof; hence, regardless of whether they stayed in Brooklyn or went to Yale, it was considered bad for America.
In the 1920s, this kind of science shaped the immigration policy, which, in its core principles, still stands.
Professor Katherine Benton-Cohen wrote the book “Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy.”
Illegal immigrants act rationally
What should a foreigner who intends to immigrate legally to the United States do? Which form should that person fill out, and which United States agency takes those applications? You probably do not know that a form like that does not exist, and there is no place to submit it. The logic of our immigration policy is that, in principle, immigration is not allowed, even though it is never expressed literally.
As it is absurd, we have a gazillion exemptions – after a costly and lengthy process, a limited number can get in legally. Family-based and employer-sponsored immigration are the best-known exemptions, while the Green Card Lottery is the most ridiculous one.
You likely do not know that about 50% of legal immigrants are so-called status adjustments. It means people who trespassed the border or came to the U.S. without claiming the intention to settle but later found a legal path in the intricate immigration law.
As a result, we have massive illegal immigration, but not due to the evil intentions of people aspiring to become Americans. Status adjustment is the most efficient way to legally immigrate to the United States. Those who utilize it are acting rationally. You, most likely, are delusional and believe that we can make our immigration policy work by tweaking it or enforcing it mercilessly. Good luck with that; it has never worked and never will.
Guest workers instead of immigrants
Many immigrants work for The Trump Organization, some likely undocumented with fake papers. No one ever asked Donald Trump, “Will the businessman Trump hire good Mexicans or those who are rapists, gang members, and drug dealers? Can the presidential candidate Trump trust the businessman Trump that he would hire foreigners worthy to become our compatriots? Who can make a better decision: the businessman Trump, who puts his money on the line, or an anonymous bureaucrat in Washington, instructed by — let us say — President Trump, with both of them knowing very little about your business and the applicant?”
Employers can scrutinize potential immigrants better than any government bureaucrats can. After a security check, the government should issue a guest worker visa. Then, after working for, let us say, five years, that newcomer would qualify for a green card, opening the path to citizenship five years later.
When asking to make America great again, Donald Trump does not check how America was made great the first time. Before 1921, the immigration policy was, in fact, a guest workers policy. Europeans had barely any restrictions on coming to America. We do not have full travel records, but representative data collected by Dillingham researchers tells that one immigrant was returning home for every three immigrants arriving. What is wrong with many trying their luck in America, but only those who prosper settling in?
Why didn’t Kamala Harris go to Ireland?
After the fall of the Soviet Union, formerly backward Eastern European nations joined the European Union in 2004. Doomsayers warned about millions of immigrants flooding Western Europe. They did, but everyone benefited.
The Irish experience is telling. Having no established anti-immigration lobby, Ireland was more open to guest workers than others. Between 2004 and 2006, the population of Ireland increased by about 5%. It would be like 17 million guest workers coming to the U.S. within two years. That is as much as the combined population of all working-age people in Guatemala and Honduras. The sky did not fall. To the disbelief of many, the more guest workers arrived, the more signs that read “We are hiring” appeared. Newcomers contributed to the “boom, which was in fact, the longest recorded period of continuous growth in the Irish economic history,” as Professor Joel S. Fetzer reported in his book.
When looking for the solution to our immigration conundrum, Kamala Harris did not go to Ireland. She went to Guatemala to tell them, “Do not come.” Why? Would it not be better to look for ways to turn the immigration problem into a prolonged period of prosperity? You, and all of us, could use some, too.
Our political and media elites will not seek how to turn the immigration problem into an economic boom unless you force them to do that.
I did not speak out — because I was not an illegal immigrant