Immigrants beware: George Bush this week gave the go-ahead for a high-tech wall along 700 miles of the US border with Mexico, at a cost of $1.2 billion. Worse, he has for now dropped the sensible part of his immigration plan – a temporary-worker programme that would provide a legal pathway for foreigners to come do the jobs that Americans can’t or won’t do, and allow illegal immigrants to emerge from their shadow world of lawless exploitation and regularise their situation.
Immigration
Britain benefits from immigration
There are few people I respect more than Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for the Financial Times and author of Why Globalization Works, a man with a towering intellect and impeccable liberal convictions. Yet I profoundly disagree with his increasingly anti-immigration stance.
Migration madness
As the great and the good gather in New York for the United Nations’ jamboree on international migration, Spain’s decision to expel 1,000 illegal migrants back to Senegal reminds us that our current immigration system is creaking at the seams.
The foaming mouth of fear and loathing
Perennial presidential failure Pat Buchanan has written yet another polemic
warning of the apocalyptic consequences to the US of immigration. According to a
leaked excerpt of State of Emergency: Third World Invasion and Conquest of
America on the Drudge
Report, his new book begins thus:
The children born in 2006 will witness in their lifetimes the death of the
West. One in every twelve people breaking into America has a criminal
record. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics concentrated in
the US Southwest.
The quiet voice of truth
If you deploy the National Guard, they’ll slip around them. If you
build a 60-metres-high wall, they’ll find a 61-metres-high ladder
Father Prisciliano Peraza Garcia, who runs
a migrant shelter in Altar, on Mexico’s border with US, told Newsday.
Hunger is stronger than fear.
Sick and twisted
Some opponents of immigration are so utterly shameless that they will use any sick and twisted nonsense to further their cause.
Britain’s immigration muddle
In last year’s UK general election, Labour lambasted the Conservatives for plastering posters all over the country declaring that "It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration". But now John Reid, the home secretary, has started sounding a lot like Michael Howard.
He says he wants to end the "daft, so-called politically correct notion that anybody who talks about immigration is somehow a racist", and he plans to set up an independent advisory committee that would help "tell us the optimum level of immigration … beneficial in terms of enhancing the economy and commensurate with our social stability".
Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them
Hurrah! My new book finally has a title: it is "Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them". I finished writing it in February, but the wheels of publishing houses turn slowly if you are not fortunate enough to be J.K. Rowling. I should be getting proofs back early next week, and once I have corrected them I will be placing a preview of the book on here.
UPDATE: I’ve now posted up Immigrants‘ synopsis and the book is now available for pre-order.
Jenni Russell on immigration
Intelligent articles about immigration are few and far between. Jenni Russell’s article in today’s Guardian is an exception. I don’t agree with everything she writes, but it is still a breath of fresh air to read something positive and realistic about global migration.
Who needs “progressive nationalism”?
David Goodhart, the editor of Prospect magazine, has just written a pamphlet for Demos where he argues that
“A progressive, civic British nationalism – comfortable with
the country’s multi-racial character and its European commitments – is the best
hope for preserving the collective values embodied in the welfare state and a
thriving public realm. Progressives, especially in England, have
an anachronistic hostility to national feeling. It is no longer about
militarist jingoism, it is the last vehicle for meaningful collectivism.”
I disagree.
Bush’s border muddle
President Bush is trying to have it both ways in America’s great immigration debate. To placate anti-immigration conservatives, he plans to send 6,000 National Guard troops to patrol the Mexican border temporarily while the civilian Border Patrol recruits 6,000 new staff. To keep pro-immigration businesspeople on side, he proposes a temporary guest-worker programme that would allow illegal immigrants in the US to regularise their situation and provide a legal channel for foreigners to come work in the US in future. His political calculation appears to be that if he can reassure ordinary Americans that their borders are secure, most will be amenable to having large numbers of immigrants doing the jobs that Americans can’t do or won’t do. More likely, his mixed message will leave everyone confused and end up satisfying nobody.
Miami is where it’s at
Mr Clash of Civilisations, Samuel Huntington, is not just terrified by the Muslim menace to America, he also feels threatened by what he sees as the enemy within: Hispanic Americans. God help America, he warns, if Spanish-speaking immigrants continue to flock there: out will go the Anglo-Protestant virtues that make it great, in will come the Latinos’ different – read "inferior" – ways. Yet visit Miami, as I am doing to speak at the Poder Forum on immigration, and you will see that the most Latino city in the mainland US is hardly the cesspit of Huntington’s nightmares. It is a thriving all-American success story.