Immigration has always been controversial in America, but things are particularly bad today because America is no longer a “melting pot” that puts enormous pressure on immigrants to conform to our culture. We’re no longer bringing in immigrants who are extremely similar to the people who are already here. And we’re just plain old bringing in way too many immigrants. The number of foreign-born people in America is at its highest level since the mid-1800s:
So, how do we fix this? By choosing merit-based immigration that revolves around some simple, common-sense principles.
1) Immigrants should be ineligible for welfare long-term: If we allow someone into our country who works for 10 years, then breaks his back in an accident, there’s certainly a good case for giving them disability pay. However, as a general rule, immigrants simply shouldn’t be allowed to collect welfare of any sort except under unusual circumstances. There’s simply no benefit to bringing welfare queens into our society.
2) Immigration should not significantly change the racial or religious demographics of the country: There’s no way we should be massively changing the racial and religious demographics of our country via immigration. That’s not saying that every immigrant should be a white Christian, but it is saying we shouldn’t be demographically replacing white and Christian Americans via immigration, which is something our current immigration system is doing.
3) Blue-chip prospects and people who marry US citizens should get special treatment: Should we be willing to fast-track a leading AI researcher or the owner of a half-billion-dollar business who wants to move it here? You bet we should. We should make allowances for elite talent that can add to our country. It’s also ridiculous how time-consuming and difficult it is for people who marry someone from a foreign country to get them here as citizens. In the best-case scenario, it usually takes 12-15 months and costs up to $10,000. If we take some basic steps to ensure that marriages aren’t fraudulent, there’s no reason it should be so punitive and time-consuming to bring a spouse here.
4) We should prioritize needed skills: If we need doctors, nurses, engineers, or rocket scientists, why not make adding those people a priority for our immigration system? Let’s be honest, we don’t need manual laborers. We could easily get five times as many strawberry pickers, roofers, and maids as we need through guest worker programs, while making sure they pay taxes. There would be no need or legitimate reason to give those people citizenship here that will ultimately hurt Americans as they grow older, get too broken to do manual labor, and live the rest of their lives on the dole.
5) Being fluent in English should be mandatory: This is an English-speaking country, and if you can’t speak English, what are you going to do here? Wash dishes? Pick fruit? The idea that we should have signs in foreign languages or politicians speaking in a foreign language to appeal to their constituents is repellent. If you can’t handle English, then this isn’t the country for you.
6) The vast majority of our immigrants should be coming from successful countries or countries with proven track records: Yes, there are diamonds in the rough everywhere, but every country and culture is not equal. If we’re talking about a group of a thousand immigrants, the chances that the ones from Sweden or Japan are going to be successful here are many orders of magnitude higher than it is if we’re talking about immigrants from Yemen or Somalia. Why bring people here who we statistically know are more likely to fail and be a drag on our society when we could bring people here that are much more likely to succeed?
7) Committing a felony should cost an immigrant their citizenship: Granting citizenship to a foreigner is a great privilege, and it should come with some very basic strings attached. You commit a felony? You lose your citizenship. You join a terrorist group or a gang? You lose your citizenship. We don’t need people like that in our country, and it is only common sense to get rid of them if we make the mistake of bringing one here.
If we put all these rules in place, immigration would become a huge plus for America instead of a mixed bag, and as an added bonus, it would be ten times less controversial with everyone who isn’t trying to use it to fundamentally change America for the worse.
I would add one more condition. No piggy-backing family members beyond children and parents. The people we want here probably wouldn’t make that a problem, but the ones we don’t want here use their foot in the door to drag over as many cousins (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, uncles, aunts, and whoever they can sneak by, amounting to a family line that extends to 100’s. No.
That just makes so much sense. Well said.