Iraq and Immigration
By Bruce Walker (12/21/05)
Two problems seem to follow President Bush around and, although he has not made the broad, strategic connection between the two, he could and should do that soon. The long and tough business of creating a free democracy in the Arab world can be explained as good for several different reasons. Democracies do not wage aggressive wars. Democracies regard terrorists as outlaws, unpopular enough to win elections. Democracies also strongly incline toward the general idea of freedom (which is why, for example, socialist countries like Sweden have still remained freer than undemocratic nations that have tried to embrace freedom.)
Iraq is the answer to many national security and diplomatic problems, but it is also the answer to the pressing problem of immigration. The best way to illustrate this is by noting the large immigrant Iraqi population in Michigan, many of whom participated in the recent Iraqi elections. While many of these Iraqi may love America and wish to live here, it would be quite natural and perfectly right if many wished to live in their homeland, provided that it was free, safe and prosperous.
There is a large Iranian population in America as well, and like the Iraqis in America, these are productive and valuable members of our society. But it would be quite natural and right for many of these Iranians to wish to return to a genuinely democratic, free, safe and prosperous Iran, and many may yearn for the Persian culture which is both rich and ancient.
When Iraq and Iran are free, safe and prosperous, the immigration into America from these lands will slow to a trickle, and may actually reverse: America may lose these immigrants back to their native lands, the way many Italians returned home once it seem that Italy had promise. This is a very good and a very healthy thing.
What is true of Iraq and soon, hopefully, Iran is true of other nations as well.
When the Arab and Islamic world become freer, safer and happier then the pressure on Europe, which has immigration much more potentially dangerous to them than any threat to us from our hemispheric immigration, will recede as well. The consequences of that over the next ten or twenty years are incalculable.
When Castro dies (and Cuba lives) there is no reason why the new and prosperous Cuba should not become a more natural magnet for Hispanic immigrants than the United States, and helping freed Cuba become again once of the most prosperous nations on earth, which is was become Castro, should become a primary foreign policy goal.
While most Americans think of Hispanic immigrants as Mexicans, it includes people seeking better lives from Central America and even French-speaking Haitians, as well as immigrants from South America.
The liberation of nations in Southeast Asia and the liberation of North Korea would also open the potential for creating places in which those refugees could find happier homes closer to home, and, again, foreign aid and loans intelligently provided to create prosperous market economies in these newly liberated lands, when they are liberated, should be a primary foreign policy goal.
The ultimate cure for our immigration “problem” is to liberate the world, democratize the world, introduce market economies throughout the world, and then allow people to live where they chose. This emphatically does not mean that every culture should be a copy of American culture. It does not ultimately matter, in world politics, whether free democracies agree or disagree on issues or even whether they share many of the same values.
What does matter is that in a world of nations like Denmark, Singapore, Ireland, Costa Rico, Israel, Switzerland, New Zealand and Taiwan, people will be free to create the sort of society that they wish and to achieve the balance of affluence and of recreation which bests suits the national temperament.
These are nations that will not make war, will not support terrorism and will produce much smaller of numbers leaving their homelands for America or Europe or Canada or Australia. The solution to the problem of massive illegal and legal immigration largely runs through Baghdad and the Bush plan for liberating and democratizing the world.
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