Mike B., a Facebook friend and an immigrant like me, invited me to give my views about what should be the US immigration policy. I can only do a little here but, it’s worth the effort. Let me point out first that I have a fairly up-to date, reasoned description of American legal immigration (legal) posted here. I mention this because I have learned through the social media and also, by watching Fox News, that American conservatives are often ill-informed about the relevant laws and facts. I will pretend below that I have been selected by a Republican partisan Congressional commission to make immigration policy recommendations (unfortunately, on a pro bono basis). Below are some disparate thoughts on the topic. (I am not worried because the competition appears to be today sparse and shallow.) Here they are, more or less in order of priority.

Lightly Rethinking the Main Issues

First things first. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear a fellow conservative, a local or a national pundit, even a Congressperson, declaring directly or by implication, that there are proper, legitimate, legal ways to emigrate to the US that contrast with the illegal kind. That’s mostly not true. There is nearly zero way for the average unmarried Mexican, for example, to move to the US. It’s not a racial issue: The average Norwegian is even less likely to be able to do so. (See my longform essay here at NOL for a classification of different kinds of admissions.) Incidentally, an unmarried Mexican has a better chance because one quick way to be admitted is to marry a US citizen. (Has to be a real marriage. You may be fined for not sleeping in the same bed as your supposed spouse!)

Next, two changes in our collective ways of thinking about it must precede any significant reform of our immigration system, I believe. First, Americans, and especially, their lawmakers, must free themselves from an important conceptual confusion that’s obvious in the public discourse. It’s about the relationships between American society and potential immigrants. We must remember to distinguish clearly between immigrants we want to come in and immigrants who want to come in. The two categories should be treated differently as a matter of policy. The fact that there is always some overlap between the two – there are foreigners who want to join us that we would like to have – does not change this fact. Ignoring the distinction causes us too often to treat the ones with more sympathy than is warranted, and the others insultingly. It muddles our thinking.

Put another way: We should respond differently to the same 26-year- old male stranger in the strength of his age with no English when we think he has come to eat from our plate and when he is the guy who arrived to move the truck parked across our driveway.

Secondly, it’s useful to frame the problems (plural) that immigration poses as a balancing act between our economic and other societal needs (think bilingual au pair girls), on the one hand, and the requirements of sovereignty, on the other. The first force opens doors, the second tends to close them. At any rate, there are doors. Doors can be shut or open; there is nothing in-between.

[Editor’s note: this is the first part in an 11-part essay. You can read the essay in its entirety here.]