Anecdotal Immigration Reform

Nick Gillespie | October 21, 2005

Over at Tech Central Station, Ilya Shapiro tells his tale of immigration woes--and calls for a rethinking of current policy, which makes it hard to gain fully legal status absent a family connection.

The United States is losing out on a host of social contributions by maintaining its current immigration (non-)policy, while creating incentives for fraud and illegality of every kind. We have all heard about the effect that new security requirements have had on foreign students in America's institutions of higher learning. Quite apart from that -- and many of those changes are quite rational -- America is losing out on the best, most competent, idealistic people that globalization offers.

Whole thing here.

I disagree with his fears about unskilled immigrants and as "throw the borders open" sort of guy, I'm not keen to draw that sharp a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, but his is an interesting tale--especially in a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment.