Ross Douthat explains his concerns with the immigration reform package currently under consideration in the Senate, noting that even if “we do nothing but continue on our current course, the proportion of first-generation immigrants in the U.S. population will soon reach its highest point in nearly a century and then keep going up from there.”
“What immigration reform’s conservative skeptics would prefer, rather than a society that welcomes as many immigrants as want to come and also expands the welfare state apace, is a society that maintains America’s historical balance between (at least relatively) limited government and (at least relatively) egalitarian arrangements of wealth, property and opportunity.”
“What’s up for debate right now is not whether the United States should welcome millions of immigrants and their children; it’s just whether, given the state of the American experiment at the moment, it makes sense to welcome and try to assimilate low-skilled immigrants at an even faster rate.”
