Letter to the Editor: Legal Immigration Follies
Tom Shuford, Hickory Record, November 14, 2017
In mid June of 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy. In early polls he’s nowhere. His first move? Put a national spotlight on lawless immigration and on victims of illegal immigrant crime.
Overnight Trump became Public Enemy No. 1 of Republican, Democrat, media and business elites. Businesses – even NASCAR – severed ties. Trump’s poll numbers surged.
In an August GOP “debate,” Fox News moderators attempted a demolition of Trump. From beginning – “Can I have a show of hands?” – to end, it was great TV. Hopes soared among America’s elites that Trump’s post-debate complaint about Fox’s Megyn Kelly – “blood … from wherever” – assured political oblivion.
Trump would barrel through 16 other GOP candidates. Then he bested the ruling class’s presidential candidate 304 to 227. America’s elites recoiled in horror.
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The U. S. has astonishingly stupid immigration laws. You didn’t know that because all the immigration noise for 20 years has been about illegal immigration and whether to reward it with “a path to citizenship.”
But legal immigration is a suicidal mess. Grasp two concepts: “chain migration” and the “diversity lottery.”
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Since 1965, an immigrant can sponsor not only spouse and minor children as before, but now parents, siblings, and adult children. These relatives can in turn sponsor their own spouses, etc. This produces “chain migration.”
Chain migration has shifted source countries for future immigration from Europe to Latin America, to Asia, and, increasingly, the Middle East. Chain migration accounts for most legal immigration to America.
Then there’s the “diversity visa lottery.” Since 1990 the U. S. annually admits 50,000 people from “under-represented” countries in names-out-of-a-hat fashion.
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Trump will insist on ending chain migration and the diversity lottery in return for a DACA “kids” amnesty. It’s our only chance to rid ourselves of these follies.
