OPINION:
Andrew Napolitano is an insightful thinker and writer on many topics, but on immigration he is wrong, and wrong repeatedly (“The immigration conundrum,” Web, Feb. 1).
Mr. Napolitano writes that “[e]veryone knows we are a nation of immigrants.” Wrong. We are a nation of settlers. Mr. Napolitano also writes that “all people have the natural right to travel, which means they can seek entry here.” Wrong again. People may seek entry based on our immigration laws, not some “natural right to travel” to our shores. I understand the concept of natural rights, but in the context of a world organized into nation states, a natural right to cross borders is largely irrelevant. Were Mr. Napolitano to attempt to exercise this right around the world, he would often be turned away, and sometimes arrested and jailed.
Approximately 65 percent of federal spending, roughly $2.5 trillion, goes to mandatory spending (i.e., welfare, medical expenses for the poor and elderly, Social Security, etc.) — and this at a time when we’re running budget deficits of $500 billion and higher. Under our current immigration policy, each year we admit roughly one million immigrants, and the vast majority of these are granted entry based on the principle of family reunification. That means many of our immigrants are elderly parents of other recent immigrants, just the sort of people who quickly tap into social-welfare programs, pushing already overburdened programs further into the red.
Our current immigration policy is highly restrictive. Would the ethical nature of the policy change drastically if we went from one million immigrants a year to 100,000? What about 10,000? Ethics aside, if we followed Mr. Napolitano’s prescription, immigration levels would permanently change our country, and decidedly not for the better.
At low levels, “immigration” remains immigration. At higher levels, immigration transforms into settlement. The American people have a right to make an informed choice on this issue.
STEVEN LENT
Arlington
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