Michael's Corner

The people who oppose immigration are just being plain mean. But as Howard Beal, a mad prophet of the airwaves, once asked, “What does that have to do with the price of rice?”

Over the past few years, Kathy and I watched as some of our empty-nest friends, although reluctantly, allowed their adult children to move back home. We also watched other empty-nest friends, who have enjoyed their well-earned privacy, lay down the gauntlet.

There’s no right or wrong answer for helping a generation that doesn’t have access to the market the way their predecessors did. Moreover, there are only two solutions: bring them back home, or help them where they live. Kathy and I chose the latter. I don’t believe that makes us anti immigration, as there is something to be said for helping people where they live instead of absorbing them into your bosom.

Is immigration a form of theft? The very notion sounds absurd. Nevertheless, let us run a thought experiment: Nation A welcomes in a portion of Nation B’s citizenry. Who among Nation B would dare unroot themselves based on potential and not certainty? The answer? Its most ambitious, energetic, and capable people. So one could make a case that Nation A enriches itself by depleting Nation B of its best resources. Meanwhile, high-minded Nation A shrugs and says, “Well, maybe if Nation B formed a constitutional republic with some democratic principles, it wouldn’t lose its assets.” When Nation A makes such commentary, it’s based on the faulty assertion that governmental explantations are little more than weekend home-improvement projects. It’s why the study of history is important. For example, if the American colonists had ended up losers in an eight-year revolutionary struggle, they might have found themselves as immigrants, desperately seeking another shore to escape tyranny and oppression.

Pro immigration? Anti immigration? Helping revolutionaries? Looking the other way as bad regimes cannibalize nations? History is complicated. Borders are complicated. And so are the motivations concerning immigration… either way.