Asinine Way to Treat Ultimate People Asset? NOT!
Glenn Reynolds, Virginia Postrel and Steve Forbes are worried about Bush LEGAL Immigration policy.
First, the Instapundit:
VIRGINIA POSTREL points to this editorial by Steve Forbes on immigration policy. Forbes is right: It’s asinine.
We have the worst of all worlds in our current immigration system — it’s demeaning, unpredictable, and contemptuous toward would-be legal immigrants, while being porous toward illegals. And it’s the main experience most foreigners have of dealing with the United States government. When my Nigerian sister-in-law, before she married my brother, passed her citizenship test, my brother said he was glad that the person who swore her in was so nice, because it was the first time in the entire process that the process wasn’t run by a jerk.
This is a mess, and the Bush Administration isn’t fixing it. It should.
And, Glenn what do you propose? Kindness classes for government bureaucrats? Please!
I agree it is porous for illegal immigration and that will be changed with the next President, but not before.
Steve Forbes has tough words for the Bush administration’s post-9/11 visa policies, which are hurting business (the Forbes concern) and alienating otherwise pro-American foreigners. Here’s a bit of the editorial:
The Bush administration is doing the economy long term harm by not reforming our post-9/11 immigration and visa policies. Since the terrorist attacks, foreigners have had to go through considerably more hassle to enter this country. No one is arguing about the mortal necessity of tightening our screening procedures. But it defies belief that this, the most technologically advanced of nations, can’t come up with software and hardware to expeditiously assist in determining who should and should not gain entrée.
Despite the weak dollar, the number of visitors from overseas during the past three years is down 23%. International conventions and seminars are not taking place in the U.S. because organizers can’t be sure their delegates will be allowed into the country.
More alarmingly, foreign students are increasingly turning to non-U.S. universities. Australia, Canada and other nations have been effectively luring these students by assuring them that if they qualify, they won’t have to undergo repeated, humiliating hassles at their borders. By contrast, foreign students now in the U.S. know that when they go home for summer vacation or holidays, their probability of returning to school is no sure thing.
Read the rest here. The visa hassles are no small thing, even for permanent residents and foreign-born citizens whose families want to visit them. “For the first time, I feel like a foreigner in this country,” one of Professor Postrel’s Indian-born colleagues told us at at recent party. We are needlessly alienating people who enrich our country and culture–and who would otherwise spread pro-American sentiment to their home countries. Bravo to Steve Forbes, for raising an issue most politically active people would prefer to ignore.
Flap could care less about Professor Postrel’s Indian colleague. If he is already needlessly alienated then he should return to his country of origin.
Lastly, Steve Forbes:
Steve, Flap is more concerned with America being an insane asylum for terrorists than technology companies desiring cheap immigrant labor for their “code shops”. The solution here is obvious and the market will provide it without government subsidy of off-shore labor.
Or, for state supported college and universities giving away subsidized education to foreign nationals while native born Americans whose parents have paid taxes for years cannot afford such education (albeit they subsidize it with their very own tax dollars).
Steve, I really prefer to be safe from terrorism in the United States rather than worry about the number of foreign visitors to Disneyland or Las Vegas.