The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today. To mark our 10th anniversary, we invited several of our valued contributors to reflect on the decade past and, at least indirectly, on the years ahead. More specifically, we asked them to address this question: "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last 10 years- and why?" Their responses follow.
TEN YEARS AGO, I thought of immigration as a technical and law-enforcement issue, easily dealt with. Back then, I was already concerned that the skill level of legal immigrants had dropped off sharply since 1970. (Before 1970, foreign-born Americans on average earned higher wages than native-born over their lifetimes; after 1980, they began to earn substantially less.) I was concerned too about the rise in illegal immigration, despite the tough new enforcement measures promised as part of the immigration amnesty of 1986.
It seemed to me then, though, that the worst was probably past. Americans were so very obviously angry about the harm done by misconceived immigration policies that some politician was sure to come along and reclaim the issue from the xenophobes, just as Richard Nixon had reclaimed law-and-order from George Wallace in 1968.
Was I wrong!
Over the past decade, the will to enforce immigration rules has collapsed to something close to zero. Imagine if the United States enforced its drug laws the way it enforces its immigration rules. Local governments would be building open-air drug markets the way they now build hiring halls for "day labor." The federal government would forbid private employers to use drug tests, as it now forbids them to ask non-English-speaking employees for proof of legal residence. It would make it as easy to relabel illegal drugs as legal as it now makes it for illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses and other identity papers. When it intercepted a shipment of drugs, it would charge the smuggler--and then release the drugs back onto the market for resale. It would be nonsense then to talk about "illegal" drugs, wouldn't it?
The fact is that the United States has a single immigration policy, of which illegal immigration is regarded by the authorities as simply the lowest-paid component. The commitment to the non-enforcement of the law is so strong that not even 9/11 could shake it. And so today the United States is debating yet another amnesty and a guest-worker program that would in effect open the borders to pretty much anybody who wished to enter.
My own thinking, since that's the question here, has evolved in this direction: The immigration laws need to be enforced. As acts of Congress, they stand as the supreme law of the land, and state and local governments cannot be allowed to ignore and defy them. Talk of amnesty and guest-worker programs is not only premature, but profoundly improper. Legal immigration should be reoriented as a way to recruit skilled labor and mitigate shortages in specific labor categories. The total number of immigrants to be accepted should be set in line with the birth rate. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that births to immigrant mothers now account for one out of every four American births; births to illegal mothers, for one out of every ten. Like wine with food, immigration is splendid as an accompaniment to natural increase, dangerous as a substitute. Refugee admissions should remain generous--the United States, Canada, and Australia have a special role to play as the ultimate refuge for people and groups under threat--but asylum should be focused on situations of true and acute danger and should not be allowed to expand into yet another route around the law, as has happened in Europe.
Is this a change of mind? Maybe it would be more accurate to describe it as an opening of the eyes.
David Frum is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.