RAMESH PONNURU, a respected editor and writer of the National Review, argues recent essay This immigration limitation “quickly becomes a decisive problem for American conservatism.” Not only Republicans and conservatives are increasingly supporting closer control over immigration, writes Ponnuru, but something more sudden. Where the candidate stands on immigration, he turns into a litmus test for conservative loyalty. This explains why Marco Rubio, despite his shameless conservative voting documentation, is despised in some circles as a “moderate” republican: because he supported a two -sided bill that would extend legal immigration and offer a path of citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Immigration hardliners do not agree to everything. Some request Fence along the entire Mexican borderSome want All illegal aliens forced deportedSome call so that even legal immigration should be suspended. But this, says Ponnuru, is “a new political reality: the hard line of immigration, although it is defined, is now part of a conservative confession.”
It hurts me to think that he may be right.
I was a conservative committed since I was a teenager. My policy was shaped around the basic conservative values ​​- individual freedom, narrow government, free markets, opposition to tyranny, respect for religion, the necessity of civil institutions, gratitude to America and its blessings. I vote with a Republican more often than not, but I’m not a GOP loyalist. My loyalty is not for any party, but for conservative ideals.
One of these ideals has always been to encourage immigration as an engine of American progress and prosperity. I grew up in Ohio, a state full of Americans for the choice-in my father, who came from Czechoslovakia in 1948. As my conservatism deepened, my belief that the open and cordial immigration policy was an obvious part of the obvious part of the conservative confession. IN One of my earliest columns For Boston Globe, requests to open the door for Haitan refugees, I described immigrants as a great “growth hormone” of America’s history. “The vast majority of immigrants pay off their adopted homeland with energy, enthusiasm, hard work and new wealth,” I wrote.
I wrote it as conservatives based on the Republican. Twenty -two years later, my view has not changed. I am concerned about so many Republicans and conservatives.
Only a few election cycles ago, Nativism of immigrants and seals, were narrow to a relatively narrow piece of political law-as well as Warrior Culture Pat Buchanan, television personality Lou Dobbsand former Congressmen from Arizona JD Hayworth. Ronald Reagan’s immigration approach, the most influential American conservatives of up-to-date times, was much more common.
Reagan supported open borders long before becoming president, he supported this view As a candidate for the White HouseAnd he even repeated it in his farewell to the nation. Causing a favorite metaphor – “shiny city on a hill” – Reagan imagined America As a city “with free ports that hummed trade and creativity” and whose “door was open to anyone who has the will and heart to get here.”
The Republican, who spoke in this way today, will be ridiculed as a sale and squish, destroyed by the Talk-Radio hosts, who were called Reagan’s conservatives, but who discovered the gold of ratings in a twisting anti-immigrant mood. More than the last few GOP candidates who were in favor of Reagan’s vision – Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie – transform into immigration hardliners.
Of course, I know that all ideological camps change over time. I understand that in our policy system of a “large tent” heterodox opinions in a party or movement sometimes displace the prevailing orthodoxy. Democrats were once a segregation party. Republicans were once ardent protectiveists. Mutate public attitudes and political values ​​mutate with them.
Immigration restrictions are not demagogues and lemmings. Many are people I know are caring and fundamental – people I agree with in many issues. I think they make a deep mistake in immigration. But I can’t deny that the rush is with them and that conservatives open Borders like me became dissidents.
