by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/p>\n Open borders are a disaster. They undermine respect for the law, imperil homeland security, allow Mexico to export its apparently unwanted people rather than embrace much-needed economic reform, and preclude unionization by poorer, entry-level American workers.<\/p>\n One proposed solution, a new guest-worker program, ignores why the old bracero program was scraped decades ago, when laborers resented the idea that they were good enough to work for, but not to live among, Americans. The proposed program also lacks enforcement provisions to deal with the millions of aliens who will not participate in the program but still try to cross the border.<\/p>\n There is a reasonable approach to the United States’ immigration problem, but it would require concessions all around.<\/p>\n The right would have to quit calling reformers “nativists” and “protectionists” and accept strict employer fines for hiring undocumented aliens. These conservatives should then expect to pay more for unskilled labor and see it organized and unionized. They’d also need to accept a legitimate, foolproof national identity card, and grant a one-time amnesty \u2014 not the periodic pardons of the past \u2014 for the millions of Mexicans who have lived in the United States for at least five years.<\/p>\n For its part, the left would have to jettison the tired “racist” slurs and accept that a nation has the right to secure and patrol its own borders. Liberals should concede that Mexican illegal immigrants do not have greater rights to entry than legal emigrants from the Punjab, the Philippines or South Korea who queue up for years waiting for proper documentation.<\/p>\n Latino immigrants must also make concessions. We are a melting pot, not a salad bowl \u2014 a multiracial not a multicultural nation. So those who come north should expect, as do those from Asia, to learn quickly to speak and read English, forgo the romance of\u00a0la Raza\u00a0<\/i>(“the Race”) and welcome their own integration, assimilation and intermarriage into the American body politic.<\/p>\n Finally, we citizens who are in the middle must restore our lost work ethic and accept that our children are better off working in the yard than at the mall, remembering that not long ago our beds were made, our concrete poured and our food cooked without imported cheap labor from Mexico.<\/p>\n Let us also accept that there is something morally wrong in inviting thousands of youths from central Mexico \u2014 without legality, English or education \u2014 to work cheaply in permanently unskilled jobs until they age and tire, only to be cast by employers onto the near bankrupt entitlement industry, while we invite a new cohort of healthier and younger workers in to replace them.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Los Angeles Times Open borders are a disaster. They undermine respect for the law, imperil homeland security, allow Mexico to export its apparently unwanted people rather than embrace much-needed economic reform, and preclude unionization by poorer, entry-level American workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[789],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-18O","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6814,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ignoring-history-the-folly-of-our-iran-pact\/","url_meta":{"origin":4390,"position":0},"title":"Ignoring History: The Folly of Our Iran Pact","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Dictatorships abandon treaties when they become inconvenient. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted.\u00a0 The agreement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11746,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/proposed-voting-changes-are-about-power-not-principles\/","url_meta":{"origin":4390,"position":1},"title":"Proposed Voting Changes Are About Power, Not Principles","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 30, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Progressive candidates and new Democratic representatives have offered lots of radical new proposals lately about voting and voters. They include scrapping the 215-year-old Electoral College. Progressives also talk of extending the vote to 16- or 17-year-olds and ex-felons. 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Thornton FrontPage Magazine The moral and intellectual corruption of American universities has recently manifested itself in the California State University system, the largest in the country. A group of faculty and administrators has sent a letter to Chancellor Charles Reed asking that he not approve the reinstatement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4796,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-election-of-1864\/","url_meta":{"origin":4390,"position":4},"title":"The Election of 1864","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Advantage: Commander-in-chief. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The standing ovation for the chairman of the interim Iraqi Governing Council, the systematic refutation of all the tired canards \u2014 \"unilateralism,\" \"preemption,\" and \"hubris\" \u2014 praise and admiration for Afghans, the peroration about the historic times we are in and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2004"","block_context":{"text":"January 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/january-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3497,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/please-not-another-farm-bill\/","url_meta":{"origin":4390,"position":5},"title":"Please–Not Another Farm Bill","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The House this July passed another five-year, multi-billion-dollar farm support bill. The Senate now has its own version under discussion. And we can probably expect that the compromise bill that passes will be at least the $286 billion allotted by the House. 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