About every time I hear someone praising the benefits of immigration, which sort of eulogy is a typical point of departure for concluding that unrestricted immigration is the best thing that ever happened to America and about everything that obstructs it is bad, I cannot help seeing a striking similarity between the alleged “anti-immigration hysteria” and measures that protect us from violent forces of nature.

One analogy seems particularly insightful here.

Think of floods. These highly destructive natural disasters may inflict billions of dollars in damages and cause many preventable deaths. Yet the main ingredient of any flood, water, as well as the nutrients it caries, are undoubtedly beneficial to us, human beings, to other forms of life, and to agriculture that is one of the cornerstones of our Western civilization. But this in itself doesn’t make a flood automatically a good thing, simply because to much of a good thing (say, water) in a wrong place (say, in a town or in your bedroom) may prove as detrimental to our well-being as war, disease, and punitive taxation.

So, to its apparent logicality, concluding that the national borders (particularly the fenced ones), enforcement of immigration laws, and policies that measure immigration and direct its overflow back to its source of origin are wrong and are to be abandoned because of the actual or hypothetical benefits of immigration or its aspects is a fallacy.

Below is a sketch of an imaginary situation that illustrates how those who praise the benefits of water and oppose flood control would argue if they adopted similar “logic” to that used by the open-border advocates.

Here is what would they say.

“Look what the anti-water idiots, ungrateful for the benefits that we and all life on Earth owe to water, do.

“They put roofs over their homes in order to prevent water from geting inside when it rains. And they keep whatever they can under these roofs so that these creatures and objects of theirs cannot fully enjoy the blessings of the rain water.

“They invented this ridiculous anti-water device, umbrella, that allows an individual exercise his anti-water hysteria any time he pleases (usually, during the blessings of the rain) and to express, usually in a concerted effort, anti-water hatred.

“They would build levies, dams, and drains to prevent water from spreading freely and reaching the living organisms that need it. (Besides, show me a 10 foot levy and I will show you 11 foot wave that goes over it.)

“They invented towels, blowers, driers, and dehumidifiers in order to eradicate all kinds of forms of water, no matter how residual, from their lives.

“And the list goes on and on and on.

“But water is good. Without it the life on Earth would not be possible. Without water the plants would not grow, the animals and people would get dehydrated and die. And all the healthy pleasures of bathing and swimming would have not been possible if plentiful water weren’t around.

“Floods are good, as well. They carry water. Without floods of the Nile the ancient Egyptian civilization would not have emerged. Other lands would remain infertile without repeated flooding, too, and would not be as conductive to the emergence of agrarian societies as they had been. The Western civilization evolved from an agrarian one and, therefore, is a flood civilization.

“So, we must turn down all roofs, destroy all umbrellas (both open and concealed carry of umbrella should be a felony), level all the levies and dams, fill and clog all drains, and put all the blowers, driers, dehumidifiers, and similar contraptions to where they belong: a garbage can. We must educate the people to welcome, embrace, and celebrate floods and not to prevent them and recover from them. (After all, we can’t stop all floods from flooding even if we wanted to.) And the anti-water idiots must be confined to a mental hospital or penitentiary (or just drowned). Only then would we be able to fully enjoy the blessings of this God’s gift (or nature’s gift, if you prefer), water.”

I hope you see all the absurdity in this kind of “logic”. If you don’t, just watch the news of the recent flooding in the U.S. and elsewhere on TV and judge for yourself the “anti-water hysteria” that they convey. But if you do, you can now look for similar nonsense in the “rationale” that the powerful open-border lobby is shoveling down our throats.

I am sure you will find a lot of it, just seek parallels between such good things as water and population, and between flood (a result of over-watering) and mass immigration (a result of overpopulation), both falling into the category of “too much of a good thing”, and so on. Your findings will make the open-border lobby’s job of deceiving and indoctrinating you much more difficult. Because once you have opened your eyes, you – most likely – will be reluctant to close them back.

~ A footnote seems very much in order here ~
Just like ancient floods were necessary for the emergence of some agrarian societies (one can call them “flood societies”, in particular, the ancient Egyptian civilization may be fairly characterized as such as its people literally lived of floods), mass immigration might have been a necessary precondition for the emergence of the most advanced form of Western civilization: the United States of America. But with technological advances in farming, irrigation, and food production, we don’t need any more floods in America to survive and prosper and to not starve.

Similarly, America might well have been a “nation of immigrants” in the past but she doesn’t seem to be such any more. Some pundits (usually but not exclusively of leftward orientation) have been quick to declare that the old times are over and that we are now in post-modern, post-industrial, post-whatever era. Perhaps, they should note the obvious and acknowledge that the country that we live in today is a post-immigration America. And if they refuse to do so then the chances are that due to their naivete, stupidity, political conviction, or sinister agenda (not that these are mutually disjoint categories) they do resort to the fallacies of the past that I have illustrated in this column.

August 25, 2010

~ The Author ~
Mr. Dwyer has been a continuing contributor to the Federal Observer. Mark Andrew Dwyer’s commentaries (updated frequently) can be found here. Send your comments to readerswrite@yahoo.com.