Mr. Fix-It: Immigration Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Immigration has become quite the touchy issue in today's America. With the new laws passed in Arizona everybody is taking a step back to look at the whole immigration business and what it means for America and our future. We will never be able to control illegal immigration until we make legal immigration more manageable. However, this is easier said than done. So, why all the fuss?

Since it's founding in the late Eighteenth Century, America has never been a big fan of the illegal immigrant. But that was reasonable in it's day because any mook hopping off a boat could become a citizen just by asking. We weren't that big on the whole documentation thing and we figured that we were going to need more bodies anyway to properly populate and protect the Louisiana Purchase we would be receiving in about 20 years. Some guy named Napoleon would obviously be needing the funds to invade Russia. Clearly a win-win-win. Manifest destiny requires bodies, people. Damn near every person who wanted in was welcome to our land of opportunity. We just wanted to know who you were. We set up Ellis Island and from the first Irish girl in 1892 to the last Norwegian dude in 1954 we started funneling them in.

However, today things have changed. We're coast to coast. We did it, people. We've got nowhere left to expand. The land we have is the land we've got. It is populated and protected accordingly. While a reasonable argument for the slow on immigration, I think anybody with two wits to rub together knows that this isn't the reason for the slowdown of legalized immigration. For the better part of 300 years immigration was very beneficial to America. There was an implicit relationship that was understood between immigrant and land of emigration. We knew we were getting a certain kind of person and they knew that they were getting a certain kind of place. After World War II this deal changed.

The deal I am of course referring to is that America was getting the finer spectrum of the immigrant population in terms of usefulness and immigrants were getting a country that was still trying to find itself. Sure, the cream of the crop wasn't going to immigrate to America because they had used their tremendous talents to build great lives for themselves in Europe or Asia or wherever. But we were getting fairly good immigrants because we were getting rick-takers who wanted something more and better than what they had and were willing to come to the land of opportunity to get it. We were getting the world's go-getters. The world's lazy people were staying right where they were and putting up with what they had. Immigrants who came here were accepting a challenge because America wasn't exactly the place to be. We weren't a world power like England, France, Italy, Germany, or Spain. We were a country in turmoil struggling for an identity.

The deal didn't change until America finally found itself and what we found was awesomeness incarnate. Today America is the best country to live in and everybody knows it. Sure, the HDI says countries like Norway, Canada, and Australia may be better but America is where it's at, and more importantly, where it's going to be for the foreseeable future. Everybody wants in to America without having to brave the inherent risks and uncertainty that came with immigration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Eighteenth century America was like a bar or restaurant that was glad to have the business of immigrants. Today's America is like a VIP party at a swanky club. America only wants those that will make the party more hoppin'.

Let's take a deeper look at this bar/club analogy. Let's pretend that life is a bar. America is the hottest chick in this bar. We'll call her Tammy. The other patrons represent the other countries of the world. There are some jealous chicks and scorned suitors (e.g. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela) that don't like Tammy. There are other horny guys that do. Either way, everybody is looking at Tammy. Tammy is the center of attention. Now immigrants want to come and live in America. This will be represented in our analogy by patrons who want to cum in Tammy. Some of these patrons are going to have an easier go of it than others. The British patrons, what with their charm and sexy accents, shouldn't have too much difficulty. However, Tammy is less likely to look favorably on patrons from Sierra Leone or Timor-Leste, what with their abject poverty and all. But it all comes down to what you can provide Tammy with. Tammy can't be sleeping with everybody or else people will say she's a slut. So she needs to be selective.

All the patrons can buy her drinks but she's looking for the ones who can buy her the best drinks. If you have the skills necessary to be a janitor or a migrant worker...she isn't interested. This is the equivalent of buying her a mixed drink with La Salle gin. There are enough illegals that can do those jobs...there is no incentive to let you in. Tammy doesn't do bottom shelf gin. Now, let's say you've got a business degree and are a successful international entrepreneur. You're no Bill Gates, but you do well for yourself as an importer/exporter. Tammy is ready to talk now. You are sliding a Captain and Coke or maybe a nice Bacardi drink her way. She's interested. She's still selective but you aren't wasting your time. However, what Tammy's really looking for is somebody who can really help her out. Somebody who's bringing world-class skills and name power. If you are a star athlete, a world-renowned concert pianist, a Platinum musician, or invented something really awesome you are in like Flynn. Now you are going top shelf on her. Tammy really likes the Patron and the Courvoisier and you are here to deliver. There is a sneakier option for the more cunning patrons. They can try to cozy up to one of Tammy's friends (American citizens) and use this connection to get to second base with Tammy (a Green card). However, they should know that this isn't much easier because Tammy's friends like Patron and Courvoisier as well. All ladies do.

Is this fair? That's the question we have to ask ourselves. Should somebody be shit out of luck because of the geographic location to which they were born? I say "No". This means that there are two courses of action to make sure that people get a fair shake: We can let them all into the land of opportunity or we can go make their country into a land of opportunity. Despite our best attempts, the latter apparently isn't that popular with the masses. There isn't an easy solution to this problem...but I am a solutions-oriented person. So, I'll try and tackle this quandary so complex that FDR didn't even touch it with a ten foot pole.

If we can't go make everybody else's country better by force, then we have to figure out how to servicably provide for more immigration into America without diminishing the quality of life for current Americans. We need to address the problems that are inherent with immigration. Apparently immigrants are a burden on the financial system and they also represent more bodies entering into a weak job market which will raise unemployment. We have to find some way to make immigration make fiscal sense for America. Here are a few immigration reform alternatives I would like to explore in reverse alphabetical order:

Operation Failed State: I'm totally convinced that this will work...but I'd buy that it would. The trick here is careful country selection. We select one country for every two year period and offer an unrestricted greenlight on immigration. We even offer relocation packages for expatriots of the selected country. There are two criteria that need to be considered very carefully before we select the country. One is it's population and the second is it's HDI. There are 43 countries with less than 1 million people and 24 countries with less than a .500 HDI. Unfortunately, none of these overlap. However, there are two that are close. Djibouti has only 879,000 and sits just over the extremely undeveloped line at .520 on the HDI. Guinea-Bissau sits at a Stone Age-like 0.396 on the HDI and has a population around 1.5 million.

Given their awful score on the HDI Guinea-Bissau should be the pick but with a score like that I question if they even know they can immigrate and how the hell we would get the word to them since there are clearly no radios, newspapers, or community centers in Guinea-Bissau. So, we'll start with Djibouti. Their low HDI will draw them in and their low population will destabilize them. We offer them carte-blanche immigration knowing that the maximum influx that we can get is 879,000 people. We try to get as many of them as possible. If we get around 450,000 of them to immigrate, it we will create a failed state in Djibouti.

Since we are the only country that will be able to anticipate the failed state because we caused it with the opening of our immigration flood gate we will also be able to maneuver ourselves into the best position to move in to Djibouti to stabilize the region and use their resources to more then offset the cost of the nearly half a million new immigrants we just took on. If things are going really badly in the failed state we can try offering them the be part of America olive branch that all of their Muslim brethren have rejected and see if they bite. The trick is that we aren't bringing in contractors to a war-torn region that we ravaged with bombs. We're bringing in contractors to an empty country that we voluntarily lured it's citizens out of with promises of a better life. I say we give it a try.

Operation Dumbo Swap: The problem with bringing more people into our country is that our population is spiraling up and they they will take jobs and resources that are necessary for our current citizens. But what if they didn't? What if we made supplemental immigration into a zero-sum game by implementing some eye for an eye tactics? By this I mean working with other countries to allow people to exchange citizenships. Let's make citizenships like baseball cards. In this analogy a U.S. citizenship is like a Honus Wagner rookie card. It's the most valuable one out there. However, there are those who don't appreciate the Honus Wagner baseball card because they don't even really know who he is and would rather have some Albert Pujols refractor card because it looks cool and Albert jacks some dingers.

Likewise there are tons of people in America who don't appreciate the value of the American citizenship. I say we allow them to trade their citizenship to those who really want it. We would make an agreement with as many other state departments as possible to allow for citizenship exchange. Then Americans who don't feel like being American anymore or who want to be something else can cash their citizenship in for any participating country's citizenship...because let's face it there will be a ton of buyers for that Honus Wagner card. Unlike my last idea, this one will not favor the people of developing nations. This will allow for immigrants from Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, and other countries with cool shit to gain American citizenship. This means for every immigrant who needs a job and resources that we bring in to the country we are jettisoning somebody else so that there is plenty of room. It's a zero sum game and it works for all parties involved.

Operation Dowry: This one will require a little down and dirty action because we'll need some international legislation to get it to work. Now trying to get an international board to agree on anything is approximately 192 (# of member states in the UN) times harder than getting the US Congress to agree on anything. So our work is cut our for us. But we're America. People wouldn't be buying Tammy drinks if she didn't have the goods to seal the deal. Still, Tammy's probably going to have to give it up a little to convince others to vote in what will clearly be her own self-interest...hence the down and dirty. What I'm proposing are two cutting-edge concepts in the immigration game. The first should be familiar to the likes of India, Pakistan, and the Balkan states. In these countries the family of the bride often pays a "dowry" or "dota" to the family of the groom during arranged marriages. I think it would be fair to ask other countries to do the same. Provide us with monetary support for taking on a certain number of immigrants from their land. They have less mouths to feed and we have more money to feed our mouths with. I anticipate that this will go over extremely poorly so maybe we could work out some sort of debt exchange system instead.

However, I said that I had two cutting-edge ideas for legislation...and I do. The second I am going to call "satellite citizenship". In addition to the number of immigrants we allow to become US citizens every year, we allow a hearty additional number to become "satellite citizens", or more correctly "satellite dual citizens". They don't live in our country, they don't go to our schools, they don't drive on our roads, and they don't work our jobs. This means that most of jingoistic middle-America will be appeased. However, they are allowed to vote in elections and use American consulates and embassies to petition for aid and other privileges from the American government. They are also entitled to see American doctors that work out of said consulates and embassies. They would, however, pay partial taxes to America thus strengthening our war chest without using most of the amenities that those taxes provide for. However, there would be enough intrinsic benefit, as mentioned above, to make it worth their while.

Operation Dakota Village: This is another idea that will be met with much resistance...but from a different group of people. I think that the very-liberal bleeding hearts will dislike this idea because it would be slightly limiting human freedom. I think it just asks who really wants to be an American. The main problem with letting a massive influx of immigrants into America is what I call "clutter". What happens to them all. Our cities are already congested enough. We have tons of urban sprawl in America and more people is just going to make our congested cities more congested.

The truth is that we have plenty of room. That room just isn't in Southern California or along the Eastern seaboard or in Ohio. It's in Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. So let's offer "conditional citizenship". We'll build up cities in these states as well as Idaho, rural Texas, and Alaska. We will then offer "conditional citizenship" which requires that the immigrant and their family live in these designated cities for the first ten years of their immigration. They'll be allowed to travel wherever they please, but their residence must be within an approved region and this will be monitored by the state department. They will maintain all the other rights of an American citizen and after ten years they will be free to move to New York City or Los Angeles or wherever they please.

This will help us with population disbursement and will allow us to build jobs and economy in rural areas of the country and help fight unemployment. Some liberal jackasses are going to call these concentration camps, because well we would be "concentrating" immigrants into certain areas but they are free to move as they please, they join the "conditional citizenship" program of their own free will and volition, and let's face it Idaho is a hell of a lot nicer than living in Burundi.
Sure some of these ideas are half-baked and might need some tinkering but I've offered some real solutions here. And no matter how bad some of these ideas may appear to be they're better than half the stuff that comes out of our own Congress or the President's Office. So Obama, if you need a solutions-oriented person to help you with your immigration reform issues...I am available. I will, however, want to put in my input on other issues such as tax breaks, gay marriage, gun control, and the drinking age.