Immigration Rights 1 (published in NY Post)

In his article, “The Ethnic Remaking of America,” Scott McConnell claims that America is a “fairly [?] successful and prosperous nation” because of the “ethnic commonality” of its “predominately European” citizenship, and that therefore, we should limit the immigration of non-European ethnic groups. In essence, he claims that America is prosperous because it consists of more white people than brown people, and we should keep it that way. The word for the principle underlying these ideas, which Mr. McConnell judiciously avoids, is: racism.

 Contrary to Mr. McConnell’s views, America is something quite different than the “fairly successful” land of “ethnic commonality.” The fact is that America is the most prosperous nation in history, because it is the only nation to politically implement the moral principle which is the opposite of that which celebrates “ethnic commonality”: individualism.

As demonstrated in the writings of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, it is the protection of individual rights, including property rights, institutionalized by America’s political system of Capitalism, which has allowed individuals from various cultures to prosper in the American “melting pot.” Conversely, it is the violation of property rights, in the form of the taxes which support welfare expenditures, which underlies the current debate over immigration. In logic and in justice, to stop certain individual immigrants, as well as certain individual “native-born” Americans, from draining the economy, it is abolition of welfare that is needed, not the establishment of racist, collectivist, anti-American anti-immigration laws.

To restate the same view positively: by eliminating welfare and opening up our borders, we would attract the best, most ambitious people of all nationalities to the freest country in the world for the right reason: to pursue their own success, while in the process helping to enrich us all.