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I used to be more idealistic and advocate completely open borders. But look at the empirical evidence in France and the European countries and the situation they face with increasing Islamization - it's clear to me now that allowing too many immigrants at once could be very well counterproductive to libertarian beliefs. Here all we do is bitch, grumble and groan when we try to roll back the welfare state, and in France they
cripple the economy and
violently riot.
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Wait; is the French transit worker strike some kind of immigrant-led movement? Are the riots in France's ethnic suburbs due to the rolling back of the welfare state?
I mean, this looks like a crude and subtle attempt to say "look, bad things are happening in France, and the immigrants are at fault!"...and yet you make absolutely no attempt to actually draw a causative link between these bad things and immigration -- I mean, are we to believe France's unsustainable pension system for transit workers, Sarkozzy's attempt to roll the benefits back, and the resultant strikes which have crippled the country are somehow the fault of immigrants?
I don't think your arguing that; so what's your point in the context of the immigration debate? The French shouldn't let immigrants assimilate into their culture, because 'native' French are lazy and whiny, or Americans should try to assimilate recent immigrants into theirs, because we're chest-thumping cowboy individualists?
And what does any of this have to do with public policy, anyway? "Don't let immigrants in, because they might not assimilate"? Surprising that libertarians are going to allow the government to determine which people are fit for assimilation and which aren't. I guess state power is terrible and threatening and worthy of our ever-watchful suspicion, in all cases... except when judging the attitudes of brown people and their fitness for assimilation in our wonderful culture? If you *don't* actually think the American government should be making these kinds of determinations -- then what exactly are we debating here? I like getting on my high-horse soapbox to laud our wonderfully hard-working, industrial, individualist culture in America too; it gives me a huge hard-on. But are we really comfortable with anointing the state the power to protect that culture?
I realize you're probably not arguing for that. But I'll be candid and admit I'm not sure what you are advocating here. You "used to be for open borders", until you saw all the problems France and Europe are having, and they have immigrants too; so now you...support immigration controls?
I suppose I support 'assimilation' too. It would probably make immigrants lives easier and more prosperous if they learned English and watched baseball and ate cheeseburgers. I can get on board with that. But, assuming they're not inclined to do such things, who exactly should be enforcing those norms?