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What About This…? 2.23.2017

By Wayne William Cipriano

Sooner or later an immigrant from one of the seven, or nine, or sixty-eleven countries identified as “poten-tially terrorist supporting” localities will do something classified as a terrorist action.

When that happens, not if but when, some will say, “See, we were not strict enough.  We did not vet enough. We should have stopped more immigration and that would have been so much better –– made us so much safer.”

Others will say, “Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have come here and caused us no trouble at all.  And, they have come from all over the world.”

Still others will say, “An immi-grant caused damage to my family.  We are victims of poor immigration policy, too loose a policy.  We should not have allowed anyone in, I don’t care how many “good” immigrants there are!”

And others yet will say, “So many innocent immigrants have come here and enriched us so much.  Some danger exists, of course, but the benefits we derive from immigration far outweigh the risks.”

If I am hurt by a terrorist, there is a much, much higher probability that such a person will be a native-born American rather than an immigrant, but if there were NO immigrants, I could not be hurt by one, no matter where they came from.

And yet I am sure about this:  Geography does not cause terrorism, hate and fear do.

Are we safer if we refuse entry to all immigrants?  Yes.  The fewer persons we admit, the less chance that one will be “bad.”  But are we better off if we refuse entry to all immigrants?  I’d say no.

How will we replace all those immigrant professionals we now employ in medicine, finance, engin-eering, technology, and so on?

Where will we get replacements for all the skilled immigrant labor like plumbers, mechanics, carpen-ters, electricians, truckers, etc. that we use now?

What about those immigrants that now fill heavy-labor, moderately skilled positions, those that clean our homes and businesses, watch our children, pick our vegetables, and so on?

And if we can populate all those places immigrants now serve us with native-born Americans, can we fill all of them?  Fill them as well?  And how will that effect the costs associated with those positions?

There is an excellent argument that we will be safer from terrorism if we refuse entry into the United States of America to anyone from a foreign country.  It stands to reason, no immigrants – no immigrant terrorists.  But, will we be better off as a county?

Whatever we decide, I am glad that the present behavior to stop immi-grants wasn’t operating when all my grandparents were on the boat, coming here from the Old Country.