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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Is Illegal Immigration Moral?
Dimensions the debate too often ignores.
We know illegal immigration is no longer really unlawful, but is it moral?
Usually Americans debate the fiscal costs of illegal immigration. Supporters
of open borders rightly remind us that illegal immigrants pay sales taxes.
Often their payroll-tax contributions are not later tapped by Social
Security payouts.
Opponents counter that illegal immigrants are more likely to end up on state
assistance, are less likely to report cash income, and cost the state more
through the duplicate issuing of services and documents in both English and
Spanish. Such to-and-fro talking points are endless.
So is the debate over beneficiaries of illegal immigration. Are profit-
minded employers villains who want cheap labor in lieu of hiring more
expensive Americans? Or is the culprit a cynical Mexican government that
counts on billions of dollars in remittances from its expatriate poor that
it otherwise ignored?
Or is the engine that drives illegal immigration the American middle class?
Why should millions of suburbanites assume that, like 18th-century French
aristocrats, they should have imported labor to clean their homes, manicure
their lawns, and watch over their kids?
Or is the catalyst the self-interested professional Latino lobby in politics
and academia that sees a steady stream of impoverished Latin American
nationals as a permanent victimized constituency, empowering and showcasing
elite self-appointed spokesmen such as themselves?
Or is the real advocate the Democratic Party that wishes to remake the
electoral map of the American Southwest by ensuring larger future pools of
natural supporters? Again, the debate over who benefits and why is never-
ending.
But what is often left out of the equation is the moral dimension of illegal
immigration. We see the issue too often reduced to caricature, involving a
noble, impoverished victim without much free will and subject to cosmic
forces of sinister oppression. But everyone makes free choices that affect
others. So ponder the ethics of a guest arriving in a host country knowingly
contrary to its sovereign protocols and laws.
First, there is the larger effect on the sanctity of a legal system. If a
guest ignores the law — and thereby often must keep breaking more laws —
should citizens also have the right to similarly pick and choose which
statutes they find worthy of honoring and which are too bothersome? Once it
is deemed moral for the impoverished to cross a border without a passport,
could not the same arguments of social justice be used for the poor of any
status not to report earned income or even file a 1040 form?
Second, what is the effect of mass illegal immigration on impoverished U.S.
citizens? Does anyone care? When 10 to 15 million aliens are here illegally,
where is the leverage for the American working poor to bargain with
employers? If it is deemed ethical to grant in-state-tuition discounts to
illegal-immigrant students, is it equally ethical to charge three times as
much for out-of-state, financially needy American students — whose federal
government usually offers billions to subsidize state colleges and
universities? If foreign nationals are afforded more entitlements, are there
fewer for U.S. citizens?
Third, consider the moral ramifications on legal immigration — the
traditional great strength of the American nation. What are we to tell the
legal immigrant from Oaxaca who got a green card at some cost and trouble,
or who, once legally in the United States, went through the lengthy and
expensive process of acquiring citizenship? Was he a dupe to follow our laws
dutifully?
And given the current precedent, if a million soon-to-be-impoverished
Greeks, 2 million refugee North Koreans, or 5 million starving Somalis were
to enter the United States illegally and en masse, could anyone object to
their unlawful entry and residence? If so, on what legal, practical, or
moral grounds?
Fourth, examine the morality of remittances. It is deemed noble to send
billions of dollars back to families and friends struggling in Latin
America. But how is such a considerable loss of income made up? Are American
taxpayers supposed to step in to subsidize increased social services so that
illegal immigrants can afford to send billions of dollars back across the
border? What is the morality of that equation in times of recession?
Shouldn’t illegal immigrants at least try to buy health insurance before
sending cash back to Mexico?
The debate over illegal immigration is too often confined to costs and
benefits. But ultimately it is a complicated moral issue — and one often
ignored by all too many moralists.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover
Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The
Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. © 2010 Tribune
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