Open Borders Except For That One Guy
On Immigration Rhetoric
Given an infinite amount of time with sane skeptics, the conversation typically goes like this:
Skeptic: I don’t want these people taking our jobs.
Me: Well, you know - immigrants create jobs. Like, if there’s a baby boom, those babies aren’t taking jobs because they also consume stuff as well as make stuff. Check out the Mariel Boatlift!
Skeptic: I don’t want these people eating up all the welfare.
Me: Well, you know uh - immigrants can pay taxes. And it’s a lot easier to find your place and contribute to the economy if you’re not starving.
Skeptic: I don’t want these criminals coming in.
Me: I mean, Florida has some pretty scary people. But if Florida somehow got devastated and they all went to a single place - we’d just build more prisons and hire more cops. You know, like - if there’s not enough postal workers to deliver all the mail, you just build another post office and hire more workers.
Eventually, you get to the fuzzier parts of immigration: culture. A guy from Windsor, Colorado hears the word “immigration” and thinks about some people from a shithole like China and worries that they’re bringing over communism, authoritarianism, or some hatred of freedom.
That guy from Windsor, Colorado might not even be a conservative! They can be a liberal who really does care about freedom of movement! But of course, liberalism is a practice of balancing rights against each other to figure out how to maximize freedom.
Windsorite: If we let all these Chinese come over, they’ll bring a hatred of America, they’ll try to take away our freedom of speech and repeal the First Amendment. Then we’ll lose everything from trying to be so tolerant.
You can go into abstractions about how authoritarian cultures from authoritarian countries typically collapse when encountering liberal cultures, due to the inherent nature of authoritarianism. If a value has never been challenged due to all opposition being crushed - then it’ll probably collapse when it enters a place that it can be challenged!
But of course, abstractions can be hard to remember without some sort of anchor.
That Bitch Dylan
Dylan, formerly sock_dem on Twitter, is a bitch. With a simple, careless, dumb tweet he caused a chain of events that ruined my week and he’s too much of a bitch to apologize for it.
I don’t actually know if he’s a US citizen or belongs to some shithole. But regardless, he’s kind of a bitch who doesn’t respect the Pomeranz Doctrine. I don’t think he’s particularly smart. I don’t think he’s particularly educated about the racial history of the United States, and furthermore I don’t think he’s interested in doing anything about that. Plus, he’s friends with people who think watching M. Night Shyamalan movies qualify as a psychology degree.
I’m pretty sure we’d essentially vote the same way at the ballot, but that’s mostly because any social policies on the ballot are watered-down just enough to coddle their closet conservatism.
That Border Sealing
I wanted to question if Dylan really belonged in this country. I pondered the potential benefit for society if he:
Took a trip to Europe
Managed to lose any and all documentation proving that he had a legal right to enter and remain in the United States
At my very lowest, I forgot my conviction for open borders.
I didn’t care that he would contribute to the economy
I didn’t care that he would pay more in taxes than he takes out
I didn’t care that he wasn’t a violent criminal
All I cared about was keeping him away. I didn’t want him to spread his cancer to the rest of the country, because it made us all worse off.
I had found myself in the same shoes as those salt-of-the-earth, simple-minded morons from Windsor, Colorado. I was Gary Doering.
That Culture Feeling
What annoys me is the fact that Dylan needs to be in this country, for all our sake. Take these two hypotheticals:
Scenario A: If we trap Dylan in, say, China, where the government constantly censors radical speech, he’s apt to internalize that bitchness and become an even bigger bitch. He’ll learn how to wield those government censorship powers and direct it towards the people who challenge him. He’ll get a job there and make money, which he’ll then use to spread bitchness around the world.
Scenario B: If Dylan stays in the United States, he doesn’t really have the comfort of staying a bitch. There’s no way for him to really shut people or his neighbors from radically challenging his bitchiness, unless he moves to Windsor, Colorado and stays off the internet for the rest of his life. Regardless, he’ll get a job and make money. He might even consider using that money to spread bitchness, but at the cost of being mocked, critiqued, or shunned by the people around him.
In Conclusion
It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
- Mahatma Gandhi
I never try to convince skeptics to be happy about immigration. Sure, I make fun of them for being against immigration, but there’s a difference between supporting an action and validating a feeling. I will probably never be happy about Dylan being in this country, and the people of Windsor, Colorado will probably never be happy about the gooks living in Aurora, Colorado. Fortunately, we don’t have to change our feelings for progress to happen.