Zeal For Truth

I am a first generation american - my father came here in the 1970’s from the state-owned coal mines and military imperialism of the United Kingdom in Ireland. In England he lived in a government housing project, worked in a government coal mine and joined the military to participate in peacekeeping in Northern Ireland during the bloodiest years in Northern Ireland’s modern history. Those were his options. The military took him to South America in the mid seventies where he served out his time.

He ran into some Texans in Belize who picked him up and drove him to Harrisburg, Oregon. There he met my mother and decided to marry her and was promptly deported - barely managing to get a visa. He started his life with her in a spare room working a temporary job in a local manufacturing facility. Now, though he still retains his British citizenship, he is Worldwide Director of Quality for a large manufacturing outfit based in central Los Angeles owned by an Iranian and staffed by pacific islanders and Mexicans.

My father is clearly not part of the problem - he has come over to work for himself and what he holds dear. He has done this in the likeness of the immigrants in the 19th to mid-20th century - gambling with all he has to make a better life for himself.

But some of today’s immigrant are different. They come to the United States with no intention of staying and rather than work for themselves, they quickly seek to gain access to America’s vast welfare net. They have children while in this country to get them taken care of by the state as well.

It is, of course, perfectly correct to place the blame for these actions on the immigrants that are doing this. At the same time, we have to ask ourselves a tough question - is there anything different about modern America that is contributing to this? Surely there are still hardworking immigrants; but why aren’t we getting more of them?

America has set itself up for the current immigration problem over the past eighty years. Indeed, immigration itself is not actually even the issue here. Yes, today’s immigration problems are actually the unintended consequences of domestic policy decisions originally intended to help Americans.

There was absolutely no attraction in 19th century America for the kind of immigrants that are now entering the country in droves. Immigrants faced thsi reality: work hard - or suffer. There was no safety net, no free health care, no free education, no free retirement and no legacy of amnesty for law-breakers. However today’s America represents an attractive entitlement prize for anyone who can just get here long enough to have a child or get bailed out by amnesty bills.

Thus, the immigration problem was not caused by lack of a fence, lack of border security or lack of some other kind of further government involvement - the immigration problem has been caused by government and it most definitely will not be solved by government. We are merely reaping what we have sewn. The answer then is not more intervention - but less.

We have to take a critical and honest look at the consequences of our welfare state expansion if we are going to fix this. We have to be willing to allow America to again be a land of opportunity (and risk) for any who would seek to come and gamble for a better life.

The reality is that the American dream is a dream of immigrants, like my father - and it takes immigrants to rejuvenate that dream in every generation. As it stands now, we are attracting people who dream of a handout and materialistic, lazy comfort. And the dream will die with this generation unless the cogs of American capitalism are allowed to once again be turned by citizens and immigrants working together - for themselves.