"Give Me Your Poor"

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

From "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, and most well-known for being inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States and was dedicated in 1886. Since then, it has served as one of the most recognizable symbols of freedom around the world, and a physical repserentation of the American Dream. More recently, it's symbolism has been co-opted by defenders of illegal immigration, but what served our country well as a banner in the 19th century may well be less than ideal for the world of the 21st century.

Consider than when the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, the population of the United States was 50 million and there were vast tracts of unsettled, unclaimed land that we needed people to fill. We needed as many people as we could get, because if we didn't settle the land, we'd lose it. We couldn't have babies fast enough, but we were happy to get anyone brave enough cross an ocean for a shot at freedom and prosperity.

21st century America has reaped enormous benefits from what strarted as a trickle of "huddled masses" and eventually became a brain drain, sucking in many of the best educated and smartest people from around the world. And, frankly, we'd still like to get all the smartest people, but is that really what's best for the world? Similarly, what happens if America drains not just the smartest, but also the most ambitious, daring people from the rest of the world?

In a lot of ways it's good for America in the short term, but what are the long term effects? Does America want to be a bastion of wealth surrounded by the dregs of societies who weren't even able or motivated to sneak across our borders? I think that it would perhaps be better for everyone if rather than importing people, America exported liberty. How? Maybe with a "guest worker" program like President Bush has suggested, if it could ever be enforced (not likely). More realistically, America exports freedom by using our economic and military power to undermine tyrannical, corrupt governments and by empowering the ambitious and daring to prosper in their own lands.

As I've mentioned before, Mexico's economy and polity are crippled by corruption that's enabled by a flow of money and legitimacy from America. That corruption will never be rooted out and eliminated as long as the most ambitious Mexicans are fleeing to the United States and as long as the pathetic Mexican economy is propped up by more than $16 billion each year in remittances sent by Mexicans living in America. While considering how to deal with illegal immigration, I hope Congress and the President are simultaneously thinking about how to push Mexico's government towards reform. If Mexicans had a chance for freedom and prosperity in their own country, I'm sure they'd prefer it to the rampant corruption that dominates their nation now.

In the same way that a generous, rich uncle can inhibit growth and ambition among his nieces and nephews, America's well-meaning internationalism often causes more long term harm than short term good. America's Cold War nuclear umbrella provoked the self-emasculation of most of Western Europe and Canada; much of the foreign aid given by American taxpayers goes straight into the pockets of tyrants who use it to oppress their people; and our tolerance of illegal immigration may look like compassion or pragmatism, but it also undermines the people and societies we're purporting to help.

Free movement of people is an economic boon, as long as the exchange is muturally agreed upon. Most Americans know, however, that they're getting the short end of the stick with illegal immigration and don't want to make the deal, which makes the illegal immigrants thieves. Ambitious, daring, motivated thieves -- but stealing wealth from others has never lifted a person or nation out of despair.