Amnesty by Another Name
14th April 2025
Professor James Hankins has written a sincere but largely misguided piece advocating for what amounts to a national guest worker program with a delayed pathway to citizenship. He proposes, with appropriate modesty, that “The advantages of this [immigration] proposal may not seem obvious at first sight to Republicans.” Let me, with all due humility, suggest that the alleged advantages are not obvious because they are not there. While Hankins’s program has a slightly different taste, it is basically the same old amnesty wine in a new bottle.
His core problem is viewing immigration policy as one issue among many in which any proposed solution should ultimately be subject to a popularity contest. In reality, immigration is an existential issue, and the way we approach it defines what kind of community we will be.
The first question to add in re immigration is: What sort of people add value to the country and the people already here?
Rich people add value by spending and investing.
Successful businesspeople add value by starting and running successful business, providing jobs and tax revenue.
Intelligent people add value by solving problems and making lives better for everybody.
Criminals don’t add value (and every illegal immigrant is ipso facto a criminal)–they subtract value by increasing the natural proglodyte propensity for ignoring laws they don’t like and diluting the common shared culture that makes a society work.