Tuesday, April 04, 2006

 

A pointless point about immigrants

Fareed Zakaria strikes me as a kind of pundit’s version of David Gergen; intelligent, respected by many but ultimately unpersuasive because you’re never really sure what his point is. I bring this up because he has a column in today’s Washington Post that left me asking that very question: what is his point? To Become an American

He begins by describing an experience the Germans recently had with attempting to convince Indians to emigrate to assist in developing a tech industry. He notes, probably correctly, that the program failed because it didn’t offer the Indians a path to German citizenship. Interesting….but so what?

The ‘so what’ comes out in his conclusion:

“How do we want to treat those who come in on visas or guest permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have similarly cold feelings about America.”

So who is seriously proposing to block a path for legal immigrants to obtain citizenship? The ongoing debate has been muddied by exactly this kind of strawman use. The problem many of us have is not with legal immigrants – most of us recognize they add a desirable element of work ethic and appreciation for our way of life; the problem is with illegals – those coming across the border without first going through the proper channels. Many of us do have a problem with them being rewarded with a subsequent path to citizenship as a direct result of their earlier flouting of our laws.

Mr. Zakaria has identified a problem about which he can seem reasoned and practical…and about which the solution is already in place.

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