No matter who gets elected president in November, the nation will see another big debate over immigration policy come January. Not even the war in Iraq generates as much emotion or attracts as many people to rallies and demonstrations as does immigration.
With this in mind, we have invited Peter Brimelow, a widely recognized critic of unlimited immigration, to debate Jacob Hornberger, an equally widely recognized advocate of open borders, to debate the issue at Heartland’s 24th Anniversary Benefit Dinner in Chicago on October 2.
Immigration is an issue that divides even libertarians. Ron Paul, the one-time Libertarian Party candidate for president and more recently a candidate for the Republican nomination for the same, comes down on the anti-immigration side on most issues in the debate. Daniel Griswold at the Cato Institute stakes out an opposite view.
Last summer, Congress failed to pass a “comprehensive immigration reform” plan negotiated by Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy and endorsed by President George W. Bush. That plan collapsed when the public grew suspicious that the promise to increase border security would be broken – as it was the last time immigration reform was passed by Congress – and when word got out that giving citizenship to the illegal aliens already here meant automatically extending it to all their relatives back in the old country who might choose to join them here.
Federal gridlock has led to a torrent of state laws attempting to deal with the situation. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 171 immigration bills became law in 41 states during the first six months of 2007, more than double the 84 laws approved in all of 2006. State and local governments have a major stake in the debate because they bear the brunt of the cost of public services used by illegal aliens, including schools, hospitals, mass transit, and criminal justice.
The anti-immigration folks can point to compelling evidence that today’s immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, impose a heavy burden on native-born taxpayers, compete with them for an ever-growing share of jobs, and are failing to assimilate to the same degree or at the same pace as past generations of immigrants. Are we at risk of losing our culture, prosperity, and perhaps our freedoms to a wave of poor and illiterate immigrants from developing countries?
The open-immigration folks counter that the economic benefits of immigration outweigh the tax costs imposed on natives by a factor of between 10 and 100 to one. They say the cost to taxpayers of securing our borders would be immense – Bush asked for $13 billion last year, and it wasn’t nearly enough – and the damage to our civil liberties caused by identifying, arresting, and removing illegal immigrants would be enormous. Do we want a national ID card? Do we want “sweeps” of workplaces and door-to-door searches for illegals? These aren’t hypothetical possibilities: National and state government policies are already heading down these paths.
Having studied the issue for quite awhile, Heartland President Joseph Bast says “I’m still not sure which side of the immigration debate I am on.” Are you?
Heartland’s anniversary benefit dinner is a great chance to meet and socialize with hundreds of freedom-lovers from around the country. Besides the great food and free booze, here’s your chance to watch two brilliant free-market thinkers slug it out over one of the most important public policy issues of the day.
Who knows? They might even change your mind.
