A Nonsense Consensus On Immigration

The Daily Beast ^ | May 8, 2013 | David Frum

[OddLane]

TWENTY YEARS ago the leaders of Europe agreed on a bold step: a new currency called the euro. They promised that the euro would improve life for everybody—and denounced all opposition as ignorant, xenophobic, and backward. Their words gained extra plausibility because many of the opponents of the euro really were ignorant, xenophobic, and backward. Yet the backward critics were right, and the enlightened proponents were wrong. And so it is with the immigration debate in the United States.

Nothing unifies the American elite like immigration. From Barack Obama to Paul Ryan, from the editorial board of The New York Times to that of The Wall Street Journal, from the offices of Facebook to those of Goldman Sachs, everybody who counts more or less agrees.

Yes, there are differences of detail: Democrats want a quick pathway to citizenship (so that formerly illegal residents can become voters faster); Republicans want a slower one. But compared to any other major issue before the country, the differences seem vanishingly small.

Unfortunately, the broad elite agreement in favor of something like the Senate’s Gang of Eight deal says less about the merits of the deal than about the widening gap between American political and economic elites and the country they govern.

[Defiant]

Any immigration policy that let Frumpy in was a bad one.

[OddLane]

LOL.