"Low-Immigration, Pro-Immigrant" versus the Law of Return
“Low-Immigration, Pro-Immigrant.” So reads the masthead of the Center for Immigration Studies. I’m still trying to make sense of it. If someone announced a “low-in-law visits, pro-in-law stance,” we’d laugh. If you like your in-laws, you’ll welcome frequent visits. If you like immigrants, you’ll welcome immigration. You could say, “We want to limit the quantity so we can savor each and every immigrant,” but I doubt you could say it with a straight face.
Not convinced? Imagine a group with the slogan, “No-Immigration, Pro-Immigrant.”
But can’t you hate the sin but love the sinner? You can claim to, but actually feeling this way is almost psychologically impossible. If you hate what someone habitually does, you’re going to dislike them for doing it. In any case, part and parcel of the “hate the sin, love the sinner” ethos is the idea that the sinner could live a fulfilling life without sinning. For many immigrants, sadly, immigration is their only realistic path to a decent life. If you oppose the immigration of such people, their well-being is not a high priority for you.
To see the full absurdity of the Center for Immigration Studies’ masthead, contemplate Israel’s Law of Return. The law is simple: If you’re Jewish, you can move to Israel. The same holds if you have a Jewish parent, a Jewish grandparent, or a Jewish spouse. The more the merrier.
When you hear about this policy, what do you infer? That Israel is really, truly, actually, pro-Jew. The less you support a policy akin to the Law of Return for group X, the less pro-X you are. If your mission is lobbying for the approximate opposite of the Law of Return for group X, you are anti-X.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
"If you hate what someone habitually does, you’re going to dislike them for doing it."
You only immigrate once. It's not something you are habitually doing.
"For many immigrants, sadly, immigration is their only realistic path to a decent life. If you oppose the immigration of such people, their well-being is not a high priority for you."
These people are not immigrants, they are foreigners. You oppose their goal to immigrate, but if they nevertheless do it, you basically embrace them.
There is really nothing absurd or analytically self-defeating about this moto - it's perfectly appropriate for this organization's mission. I would focus my rhetorical energies elsewhere.
It’s not complicated, or “absurd.” The whole world wants to come to the U.S. By constraining immigration to legal channels, we can select the best candidates - those who bring material or intellectual capital. Plenty of countries do this, including Australia and Canada. Pretending it can’t be done, or makes no sense, is intellectually lazy at best.