malvasia bianca

I was really glad to see all the pro-immigrant protests last week. Nice to see a bunch of students willing to cut school for that, which I totally wasn’t expecting – I wouldn’t have though a priori that immigration would get that sort of response. Shows how much I know, I guess. (Of course, I like to see students cutting school in general, but that’s a separate blog post.)

I’m somewhat unsure of the correct response to immigration. My moral standards suggest that there is almost no reason to restrict immigration at all. It is a fact of life that people have dramatically different rights and access to resources based on factors of their life over which they have no control. In many instances in the past, we’ve come to the conclusion that such discrimination is morally abhorrent; why is it so much more acceptable to treat people differently based on where they were born than it is to, say, treat people differently based on their gender?

But I suspect that there are some reasonable answers to that question that I haven’t seen yet – just because nativist bigots get most of the press, along with my governor equating illegal immigration to anarchy (hmm, actually I’m sympathetic to anarchists too, come to think of it), doesn’t mean that there aren’t good arguments to be made. And the pragmatics of the situation deserve a good look, which I haven’t seen. (I would have a hard time evaluating pragmatic arguments, admittedly; I should spend more time learning about economics, I think.)

How the World Works had a good post on the subject. Good blog, that; makes it worth clicking through the Salon ads every day.