Beware of Comprehensive Solutions

The preferred choice of wimps everywhere

The relentless noise and fury surrounding the immigration debate is typical of overblown mammoth legislative projects. All red-blooded conservatives should automatically have their antennae up as soon as they hear the term “comprehensive solution.” First of all, good limited government conservatives ought to be profoundly uncomfortable with the idea that it is the government’s job to “solve” problems at all. One of modern conservatism’s foundational statements is that there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

Franklin Roosevelt played a major role in embedding this idea of a problem-solving government into the American consciousness with his “Four Freedoms” speech. In that speech he redefined the core view of rights, from the positive rights of the U.S. Constitution (“Freedom to…”) to a new concept of negative rights (Freedom from… Want, Fear, etc.). In this model it was not only permissible for the government to solve problems deemed too large for people to solve themselves, it became an obligation! To one extent or another, every President since FDR has bought into this notion. We hear it echoed in President Clinton’s “I feel your pain,” and it is one of the basic underpinning of President Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism. For all of its admirable qualities (and there are many) the Bush Administration’s willingness to use government coercion to “solve” all sorts of problems is not only irksome to conservatives, but is an Achilles heel when dealing with liberals.

So here we are with a government seeking to solve the immigration issue with a comprehensive solution. But if we can get past the liberal language and give the Administration the benefit of the doubt, we should at the very least then ask “exactly what is the problem you are trying to solve?” Knowing that the response is likely to be a mish mash of political blather, we might seek to force some clarity by taking it a level deeper. We might ask “How do we know there actually is a problem?” One way to flush out the actual problems you are dealing with is to inquire: What if we were to “do” nothing? What bad things would happen? What exactly is the nature of the crisis that demands comprehensive action? Let’s take a look by area.

Economics. The economic impact of illegal immigrants is multifaceted, but how much of it is a problem? It is undeniable that illegal immigrants drive wages down. But in a country with 4% unemployment it doesn’t sound right to say that they are taking jobs away from Americans. Again in this area we have existing laws that theoretically prohibit employers from hiring illegal immigrants. If we choose to actually enforce the laws it might drive the cost of grapes up, but it would increase wages in the process. It’s all a matter of trade-offs. Perhaps a more pernicious economic impact is the supporting cost of education, health care and other public or semi-public services whose costs are borne by citizens. This is a problem, but one that could be solved very simply by not extending those services to illegal aliens. Unfortunately, that is a trade-off we seem not to want to make. We seem unwilling to make others live with the consequences of their freely chosen (and law breaking) behavior. That would make us seem mean. You know what? If we are not willing to take the simple steps to solve it, then this must not be a big enough problem to fret about.

Culture. Lack of cultural assimilation is a major issue. Both the rate of illegal influx and its non-official nature agitate against assimilation. It is reasonable to assume that continued massive influx of illegal immigrants will create problems. Every example in history cautions us against the corrosive nature of a sustained cultural balkanization. The most effective way to solve it would seem to be very straightforward – enforce existing laws and aggressively restrict entry of illegal immigrants. There are other contributing factors, but in the absence of a critical mass of rootless foreign workers they will not matter. No need for comprehensive reform here – just do what you should be doing anyway. Reduce the flow, reduce incentives for those already here, and assimilation will happen as readily with Mexicans as it did with previous iterations of European immigrants.

Politics. The “problem” for Democrats is that they cannot win elections with their current demographics. And since their core constituencies tend to do a lousy job of natural reproduction, they are desperate for a new source of votes and power. If they can become the champions of the illegal Mexican immigrant vote, they can lock in tens of millions of Democrats for years. The problem for Republicans is if the Democrats are successful. It bothers me to the bone that a crisis is being declared in order to facilitate political strategery. Even if I were a Democrat this sort of skullduggery would make me oppose the bill.

Fairness and Standards. There is a profound problem with rewarding law-breaking. No matter how wonderful the law-breakers may be, no matter what fabulous values they may have. They are still law-breakers. The American people have a huge problem with that. On the other hand, the American people are also profoundly compassionate and wish harm on no person. Quite a conflict. Quite a trade-off. But doing nothing wouldn’t make it worse, would it?

As far as I can tell, most of the actual problem identified here can be very handily addressed by enforcing the laws we already have on the books. Reduce the flow though supply (border control) and demand (actually enforcing laws against hiring illegal aliens).

But what I think I began to see emerging through the murk of rhetoric is that so much of what we have identified is actually a desire for the political and business classes to avoid enforcing the law as it exists. That’s the real problem. They want to avoid making the hard trade-offs. They want to “solve” the problem by declaring it to no longer be a problem. No illegals here by golly. Nosiree. Just lots of us Americans. Hallelujah, pass the apple pie! Problem solved.

We are becoming a nation of wimps, unable to contemplate making simple hard choices and living with them. No matter how this all turns out, this is not a good sign.

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