Just when we thought we'd cave and say something nice about Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives spoke again. And ruined it. She wouldn't even give us one news cycle to catch up.
Last week Speaker Pelosi admitted that the border situation between Mexico and the United States was a "crisis." She used that word. After all this time. She blamed the crisis on President Trump, who's been in office less than three years. But baby steps.
Then she spoke again. About the president's new merit-based immigration plan. It was in Friday's papers. More's the pity.
The best immigration plan is always one that's based on merits. That's why such systems are in use in other countries. Such as Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand, to name but four. For example, to migrate to some of those countries, the governments there would like to know what you can do for them. Are you an exceptional talent? Are you an investor type, maybe worth a bundle? Or a graduate from a college back home?
Maybe you're a skilled worker, in an industry that the country particularly needs at the moment. Or a student with impressive test scores. Do you speak the language? Can you support yourself and anybody you bring?
Some countries assign actual numbers to these factors, and grab the best scores.
President Trump might think that sounds better than open borders and the current immigration policy, which is a family-oriented system. Somebody gets in, and their families become priorities. Sounds sweet and all. But nations don't have friends, they have interests.
Last week, the president announced his merit-based system: "We are proposing an immigration plan that puts the jobs, wages and safety of American workers first. Our proposal is pro-American, pro-immigrant and pro-worker. It's just common sense."
But sense isn't common these days.
Nancy Pelosi scoffed at the plan. And took issue with the word "merit."
"It is really a condescending word," she told the press.
She must confuse condescending with essential.
She continued, unfortunately: "Are they saying family is without merit? Are they saying most of the people who've come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit because they don't have an engineering degree?"
No. Exactly nobody has ever said anything like that, nor even implied it. Until she did.
It was the late great Charles Krauthammer who once said, years ago, that immigration is one great big NFL draft, in which the United States has the first million or so draft picks. And instead of picking the best by whatever criteria we choose--that is, education, enterprise, creativity, skills--we instead make the skilled, smart and rich stand in line with everybody else, while the unskilled pour over our southern border without our permission.
America is a wonderful place, but it's not a soup kitchen or a free day care. Americans have the perfect right (as do citizens of other countries) to decide who gets in, and by what measure. And those measures can be self-serving. Should be self-serving. For that's in our interest.
Some say they plan to oppose the president's plan because it doesn't do anything to help the Dreamers--those kids brought to this country as babies. But let's not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
The Dreamers are red-blooded Americans, even if their papers aren't in order. They shouldn't be punished for the sins of their fathers. Our betters in Washington have been bickering about these particular immigrants for years now. Here's hoping they'll eventually give these young people back to the only country they've ever known.
That law can wait. Nobody's deporting Dreamers right now.
But one step toward an overhaul of this nation's broken immigration system can be taken now. It's called a merit policy. Let's take that step. Surely other steps will follow.
They always do.
Editorial on 05/20/2019