Sunday, October 14, 2018

Harari does Immigration and Gets It

My new academic loadstone is Yuval Noah Harari. I gotta say, I love this guy.

Now I already told you this as I read Homo Deus, but now I am reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He sold me as a thinker when he first taught me new stuff, and now as he agrees with me, but states it better.

Regarding Immigration, he says that there are 3 major immigration conditions and we need to discuss them individually. Then, maybe,  WE ALL (liberals and conservatives) could compromise.  They are

  1. The host country allows immigrants in.
  2. In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values.
  3. If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, over time they become equal and full members of the host country. "They" become "us".
Different sides can then argue or compromise as to how many, if any, immigrants we let in. What is the criteria we choose to allow entry. The rest follow naturally, and I would say the US does better than most countries, although the prohibition of mixing of the sexes by some Muslim and some Orthodox Jewish immigrants strains our system in a new way.  But we could figure this out.

So why can't we have a discussion.

Yuval Noah Harari says that we can't have an honest discussion about this, if we are lying about the first part. We cannot have a rational debate about letting immigrants in, if we are saying one thing (like no more Mexicans) and doing a completely other (hiring them under the table to work).

Think about it: it is hard for me personally to support getting rid of all immigrants - while farms and chicken processing and Mar a lago all depend on cheap, usually illegal foreign labor.  It is hard for a anti-immigrant person to argue about letting some / any / more people in - while farms and chicken processing and Mar a lago all depend on cheap, usually illegal foreign labor.

I think the difference is I blame the farmers, owners of the chicken processing and owners of Mar a lago, while the anti-immigrant person blames the illegal immigrant. And because we don't start from the same baseline, we can't have the conversation going forward.