The following are excerpts from my review of this book to be published in The Social Contract in the Fall 2015 issue, under the title, “Immigration Wars: Jeb Bush, Clint Bolick and the Elitist Libertarian Opposition to Sane Immigration Policy.” [The proofs of the full review are, however, already available at http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/twentysix-one/tsc_26_1_hurlbert.pdf ]
Two years ago Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick published a book that assumes special relevance now that Bush is a Republican candidate for president in the 2016 election. The book: Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (Threshold Editions, New York, 2013). Bush earlier was co-chairman of a Council of Foreign Relations 19-member task force that published in 2009 a white paper titled U.S. Immigration Policy that anticipated most of the key ideas in this book.
Bush is to be commended for having had the courage to detail his position on the many different aspects of the immigration issue. No issue is so critical to the economic, social and environmental future of the U.S. Yet rarely do we get from any political candidates, let alone those for the presidency, much more than vague platitudes. The mainline media on both the left and the right rarely challenge their evasiveness. And the media and the politicians often treat as taboo the most critical topics. During the 2012 presidential campaign, for example, how many debate moderators, talk show hosts or television pundits did we hear asking candidates whether they thought total annual legal immigration should be increased or decreased and, if one or the other, by how much?
The following essay analyzes Immigration Wars for both its style and substance. It is written from the point of view of a lifelong political independent and ecologist with particular concerns about the impacts of immigration-driven population growth on environmental quality, wildlife, natural ecosystems, and future availability of resources for the U.S. economy. ….
With respect to the economy, Bush makes clear his belief (1) that we must import cheap foreign labor forever and in industrial quantities, (2) that “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation is the way to go despite the recent legislative shipwrecks occasioned by the “comprehensive” bills of 2006, 2007, and 2013, not to mention the negative consequences of “comprehensive” bills actually passed in 1965 and 1986, and (3) that “reform” requires large increases in legal immigration and in the rate of U.S. population growth.
In his own words,
Florida’s three largest industries – hospitality, construction and agriculture – could not endure without immigrant workers. The 80 million visitors per year, the $8.26 billion of agriculture produced, and the construction business – Florida is historically one of the top home-building states in the country – will all be impacted, unless we achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
Lord help us if we stop bulldozing the landscape to keep the construction industry in high gear providing housing and shopping centers for tens of millions new immigrants and their progeny far into the future. ….
In a nutshell, the thesis of Immigration Wars boils down to ten core stated or implicit propositions that may be baldly stated as follows:
1. The objective of immigration policy should be to increase the size of the U.S. population, to increase national GDP, and to increase U.S. economic dominance in the world.
2. The number of work-based visas issued should be greatly increased and allowed to fluctuate with market demand, with no upper limit or ‘cap’ imposed, and essentially all recipients of such visas will be offered, after a certain period of time, a path to permanent residency and citizenship.
3. All foreign students obtaining an advanced degree in the U.S. in a STEM discipline and then getting a job offer in the U.S. will be offered such a work-based visa.
4. Every multimillionaire in the world willing to invest $1 million in a new enterprise and create some minimum number of jobs in the U.S. will be offered an entrepreneur visa and ultimately a path to citizenship, as will their spouses and children.
5. Foreign-born parents and siblings of U.S. citizens and permanent residents will no longer be eligible for guaranteed admission to permanent residency in the U.S.
6. Citizenship will continue to be awarded automatically to all children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens or to persons on temporary worker, student, tourist or business visas.
7. Illegal aliens who entered the U.S. before they were 18 and have not been convicted of any “serious” crimes will be given a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, as will any spouses or children they may have in their home country.
8. Illegal aliens who entered the U.S. after they were 18 and who have not been convicted of any “serious” crimes will be given a pathway to permanent residency but not allowed to become citizens.
9. Enforcement of immigration laws needs to be stepped up with much greater use of technology and much greater cooperation of state and local law enforcement with federal immigration officials.
10. The negative consequences of increasing the U.S. population for environmental quality, natural resources, wildlife and wildlands in the U.S. are irrelevant to immigration policy. …..
In addition to adopting an essentially open borders immigration policy, Bush and Bolick argue that the GOP “should put the immigration issue behind us” and talk about other things where Hispanic attitudes are more concordant with “conservative” political positions. One of the more interesting of these areas is religion. The religiosity of the Republican Party is evident and its platform makes clear that non-believers are not particularly welcome in the party. Thus Bush and Bolick see hope in the fact that “Only 8 percent of Hispanics are atheist, agnostic, or unaffiliated with a church, …[t]hat most Hispanics pray every day… [and] almost half of Catholic Hispanics believe the Bible is the literal word of God…” Bush and Bolick note that “a large part of Republican successes since 1980 is attributable to mobilization of religious voters, particularly evangelicals.”
A less insultingly paternalistic way for the GOP to make headway not only with Hispanics but with many larger segments of the electorate would be for it to confront how narrow its “big tent” has actually become. What does a party supposedly standing primarily for small government gain from the anti-science, anti-environment, anti-church-state separation rhetoric that issues so relentlessly from its leaders and members? ….
In sum, Immigration Wars comes across as poorly researched and poorly argued, one-sided paean to the sort of mass immigration and population anarchy long favored by institutions such as the Wall Street Journal and Cato Institute and their many fellow travellers. The clarity and specificity of the book’s recommended policies combined with its authorship by a presidential contender make it an especially useful and timely book, however. It should be digested by all with an interest in immigration policy. Other political candidates will resist, as usual, giving us more than vague, soporific platitudes on most policy matters treated in Immigration Wars. But this book and Sen. Sessions’ equally specific Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority provide a diabolically good opportunity for the electorate to hold all 2016 presidential pretenders’ feet to the fire, if enough honest and bold journalists, editors, columnists, debate moderators, and other pundits rise to the challenge and grip firmly the usual squirming ‘greased pigs.’
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The clarity and specificity of the book’s recommended policies combined with its authorship by a presidential contender ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015
