Moral Obligation to (Whom?)
A handful of Substacks ago, I asked a question. If the migrant invasion is not displacement, what is it? Is its purpose rising crime, record drug overdoses, overburdened towns, cities, schools, families, resources, and so on? What’s the point of it? And if it is none of those things, are you trying to replace the domestic population?
Woven between the paragraphs and themes was the notion that the effect of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border and unregulated immigration were not helpful or healthy. However, I never actually said much about the moral arguments except what was inferred by iterating the observable downsides and a brief nod to providing aid for genuine refugees and asylum seekers. Konstantin Kisin reminded me today that we keep losing the immigration argument (debate) because supporters frame it as a moral issue, making it a simple matter to paint opponents and any argument against it as immoral.
Immigration is no longer seen as a policy issue. It has become a matter of morality. You may recall my recent appearance on the BBC’s Moral Maze, in which I attempted to elicit from an academic his view of the negative trade-offs of mass immigration. I might as well have asked him about the negative trade-offs of curing cancer.
So, It’s a Moral Issue?
Okay. It’s a moral issue. But having framed it as a moral issue, what is moral or even ethical about the side effects of the mass unregulated “immigration” we’ve experienced in America?
What about inviting more crime, homelessness, and vagrancy in America is morally superior to the alternative? How is more addicted or dead as a result of the increased influx of drugs morally better? I’m sure the makers of NARCAN are giddy as schoolgirls, but how is redirecting dwindling and increasingly expensive resources toward increased public health and safety or rehab as a result of this policy, moral good or better? What about the children of parents who die or are killed as a result of the crime or the drugs, or perhaps - as we’ve seen too often - victims of sexual assault by known criminal aliens who may then be released back into the country by people who argue the moral question?
Where is the morality in crowding out inner-city American minorities to make room for foreign border-crossing minorities?
Who benefits from the rise in cases of measles or other diseases we’d previously more or less eradicated in America?
What moral purpose is served by packing already failing schools with legions of kids who can’t speak English or read and write in their own language? What moral advantage is there in making teaching and learning as tricky as possible for American children - in most cases, ensuring no one learns anything (except how moral this is all supposed to be)?
Does driving the cost of labor down improve the work or the pay?
Reframing
There are many other examples; you’ll likely have a few of your own, but I can find no moral benefit in any of them to the lawful domestic population and, in some instances, the illegal migrant population, like packing disparate groups of foreigners together while ignoring the reality that many of them didn’t get along with each other back home and don’t intend to start now. So, where, exactly, is all the moral benefit?
I’ll tell you where it is—properly managed immigration. Controlling immigration is not just a superior moral means; it is—until the era of elite globalists—the template of human history. Immigration is good. America is founded on it. But proper management is essential. So, how do we get there from here?
We could reframe the argument or, as Kisin suggests, break the frame.
The correct framing of this issue, like any other, is that immigration policy is a slider. You move it to the left when you need more immigration and you move it to the right when you want less. Most Western countries have gone through periods when they were absolutely desperate for more people to come. …
[T]he attempt to present the history of our countries as one continual process of moving from a restrictionist past to a progressive utopia is not just inaccurate, it is purposefully misleading. This framing deliberately conceals the reality that the right level of immigration varies over time. It is therefore unwise and counterproductive to argue “against immigration” or “for immigration”. The correct frame is that immigration is good when it is good and bad when it is bad. And, as before, all else follows.
That’s not a flawed argument, but I'm not convinced the “moral thing to do people” will be moved by it or that it will stop them from making that case. We do benefit from letting the world’s most ambitious, hard-working, or talented become Americans. It is, dare I say, morally advantageous to invite productive people willing to embrace the American values that allow future generations of immigrants to arrive with nothing but a desire to achieve success. Controlling immigration has always been the right and moral course for the nation, but we’ve moved on from that. What we are doing now suggests that the moral course of the open-borders advocate is to destroy the possibility of individualized prosperity and the opportunity for it to anyone who is here or follows, and that’s just immoral and a little bit unconstitutional.
The US Constitution, which many open-border advocates disdain, compels us to act in the interest of the future.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It is not morally superior to deny future generations the unique opportunity of America. We are taxing people not born who have yet to earn a dime in the name of social justice (or LGBT tolerance training in Pakistan). What could convince them that the adverse effects of open borders are immoral? Kicking them all out of elected office might do it. After all, they have a moral obligation to represent you, not battalions of foreign invaders. A battle won, one voter at a time, which begins with, well, what’s so moral about (insert any of the list of negatives noted above).