Democrats Need Not Apply

At 4:10 this afternoon there were 40 bold links on memeorandum. Only one of them concerned immigration.  Is this proof that the blogosphere is out of touch?  Or is America more mature than the anti-immigration hysterics of a Michelle Malkin or a Dean Barnett would have you believe?

David Brooks'  op-ed in today's Times is in fact hysterical. He writes that the "United States is the Harvard of the world," and so we should be very selective in how we admit immigrants.

The self-described conservative pundit sees the government as a global incentivizer. The human rcae is really a mass of white mice, trying to learn the behaviors that Washington has defined that will unlock the door to their cages.

He likes that the new bill would give immigrants the incentive to:

obey the law, learn English and save money (to pay the stiff fines). Suddenly, these people would be lifted from an underclass environment — semi-separate from mainstream society — and shifted into a middle-class environment, enmeshed within the normal rules and laws that the rest of us live by. This would be the biggest values-shift since welfare reform.

(To Brooks, welfare reform was one of the greatest achievements of the last century.)

But the fact is that immigrants are already doing exactly those things Brooks wants then to do, and he knows it. On  March 30, 2006  Brooks himself wrote in the Times:

The facts show that the recent rise in immigration hasn't been accompanied by social breakdown but by social repair. As immigration has surged, violent crime has fallen by 57 percent.Teen pregnancies and abortion rates have declined by a third.

These are immigrants selected the way America has always picked them.  Actually,they self-selected by getting on the boat or puttin on their walking boots to cross our borders. Brooks now thinks we need a fancier class of immigrant, and the thinks the government should select them. He'd

prefer a system in which potential immigrants were admitted on an audition basis.

It sounds sort of like a college interview. The op-ed also implies letters of recommendation, but it fails to disclose who would write the Universal SAT's. I bet Brooks would be willing to do it himself. What he seems to be advocating is some sort of codified global caste system, one imposed by the United States. Theoretically, the needs of the U.S. economy would determine who was admitted. If we had a shortage of engineers, more of them would be admitted. In reality, it would have to be an  Administrative decision.

During the last six years, who do you think Karl Rove would have admitted? Who even would a fairer minded 'Dean  of Admissions', say a David Brooks, have admitted?

Comments

[Farmer Mark]

You are on a roll, sir. Mr. Brooks, despite the variant political leaning, shares with Mark Green the perception that opinions matter because he expresses them. They both bask in the luminescence of self-congratulations on having such incisive opinions. They don't particularly have to care if their opinions are mutually contradictory from one month to the next. You may be the only one going back to compare and contrast.

Despite their ludicrous pomposity, it may be that having a class of paid pronouncers like GreenBrooks serves a social purpose. We hear their opinions, and poking holes in their provokes us to form our own even smarter ones. Also, while the existence of a whole economy of pronouncing may be evidence of a society in deep decline, at least we'll go down laughing.

[bbbustard]

Copious thanks are due those who farm.
Not only for the freshness of their produce, but also for the fresh thinking they produce. I do think that I am able to recognize GreenBrooks in the field, but at times their camouflage of erudition eludes me.