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Tuesday, April 12, 2024
Buckley on Illegal Immigration

By Dr. Steven Taylor @ 8:26 am

Asks William F. Buckley: CAN WE STOP ILLEGALS?. He answers by first investigating the idea of a wall:

The concept of a wall is disagreeable, but critical questions are now crystallizing. Can the United States govern its own borders? That is a very serious question because the answer to it is thought obvious: Yes – all nations control their own borders! But the question properly put becomes: Are we prepared to go to the lengths necessary to control our borders? To say yes is glibness –and glibness of a kind we are not practiced in, because maintaining the integrity of a wall, as the East Berliners taught us, requires anti-human fortifications. The Berliners began with barbed wire, which grew to high cement walls. In due course electricity was added, and finally dogs. You can’t of course do that over a stretch of 2,000 miles. But would we be willing to do that for any distance?

The answer is clearly: no–and for a lot of reasons, including cost and the very idea of a 2,000 mile wall with “anti-human fortifications” is inimical to democracy.

As such, he rightly notes:

The flow of Mexicans to the north can be strategically contained either by improving the quality of Mexican economic life, or by suppressing opportunities in U.S. life. The former cannot be done, given cultural rigidities and impermeabilities. The latter can be attempted, but at great cost to American business interests and ideals. Congress could pass a law imposing huge fines on any American enterprise that hires illegal workers. Collateral pressures could be applied, involving driving licenses, hospitals, schools. Are we willing to adopt such measures?

There is a great yearning across the land to demonstrate that we are master of our own house. As things are going, we are not. The immigration wave appears uncontainable, and we cannot generate the sentiment required to do the kind of thing the East Germans did. All of which argues that effective reduction in illegal immigration is not going to happen.

This is a realistic assessment. Talk of stopping illegal immigration is, to use the techincal term, silly talk. Not only are the logistics daunting, to say the least, but as I have noted before: when people are willing to die to cross the border, there is nothing that can be done to stop them, short of killing them. The economic exigencies of the situation are such that stopping the flow is not going to happen.

Given that fact (and it is a fact) then the public policy goal should be to manage the issue, not talk about stopping it.

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2 Comments»

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    1. William F. Buckley makes his case. Curtailing illegal immigration must be addressed at several levels. Not only increasing the inconvenience of crossing the border itself but enhancing the inconvenience on the illegal immigrant of trying to gainfully subsist in the US. On a local level, businesses look the other way because illegal immigration provides cheap labor. And on the local level it is mainly an economic issue. As the concern of illegal immigration advances to the national conciousness, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate illegal immigration from national security. So, political forces on the local vs. national level have conflicting interests.

      Comment by DaveD — Tuesday, April 12, 2024 @ 8:59 am

    2. Mr. Buckley is right. Yesterday in USAToday they had an ediorial on the Arizona milita. They were against the idea and I wanted to write and make my suggestion. Form a full theatre army headquarters at Fort Bliss and put several army/marine division on the border. Coast Guard on Texas and California border with the Navy in the Caribbean. I did not send it because I realized-why bother. Illegal immigration and drug smuggling did not cause much alarm. Only if al-Quida attacked down there would some action. Thanks for the chance to spount.

      Comment by Alan Cagle — Friday, April 15, 2024 @ 2:09 pm

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