Who Should We Let In?

Freddie deBoer advocates for an open border policy as a form of humanitarian intervention:

For gay, transgender, and bisexual people in places like Russia and Uganda; for Syrians of all stripes; for those in Crimea and eastern Ukraine who fear either Putin or reprisals against linguistically and ethnically Russian Ukrainians; for those in Venezuela who agitate against the Maduro government; for women in Saudi Arabia; for liberal dissidents in Iran; for oppressed people the world over, legal entrance into the United States would represent protection against those forces that some would have us defeat with force of arms. The beauty of it is that we can accept people without having to stake a claim on every legitimate internal controversy; we merely can do so out of a desire to prevent the violence that often attends internal strife that we have no business adjudicating. I don’t suggest this as a panacea, but then, if the last decade should teach us anything, it’s the inability of military intervention to secure humanitarian outcomes. I’m willing to guess that the odds for success with this kind of humanitarian intervention are far, far higher than freedom delivered via smart bomb.

David Frum, on the other hand, wants talent-focused immigration reform:

Americans console themselves that second and third generations of immigrants will do better than the first. Many immigrants do rise in just this way. Yet the evidence for many of the largest immigrant groups—immigrants from Mexico and Central America—is not encouraging. The second generation does better than the first … but progress stalls after that. Even in the fourth generation, Mexican-American education levels lag far behind those of Anglo Americans, according to the definitive study by Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz, Generations of Exclusion.

What holds back immigrant progress? Discrimination? Inherited cultural patterns? The economic and cultural obstacles of a society where unskilled labor no longer pays a living wage? Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same. Human capital extends across generations. Those who arrive possessing that capital bequeath it to their descendants. Those who arrive lacking it bequeath that same lack. Progress across generations is slow at best and non-existent at worst—especially as low-skilled migrants to the United States adopt the same single-parent family pattern that prevails among the poorer half of the native-born population.