Tribalism is on the rise while classical liberalism is on the wane. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one's country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.* For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that different tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive. There is no comity without commonality.
I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. Classically liberal ideals such as toleration are no match for the ingrained tendency to revert to the tribal. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren't.
There are severe constraints on the diversity of the ingredients that can properly blend and enhance each other in the proverbial melting pot. This was well understood until about the mid-1960s.
Now aren't my points the sanest you've heard all day? They are indeed eminently sane, but not to the destructive and self-enstupidated. They now dominate the Democrat Party here in the USA.
But while what I have said is sane, it has the air of the fantastic. "How can you concern yourself with immigration policy which you intend to have the force of law when the current lawless administration promotes wide-open borders and the elision of the key distinctions without which there can be no legal immigration policy?" The objector has in mind such distinctions as the following: legal versus illegal immigrant, citizen versus non-citizen, asylum entry versus illegal entry. The granting of asylum to a political refuge from another country is an exceptional practice that grants immunity from the extradition that would normally be demanded in the case of illegal entry. To subsume all irregular entry under asylum entry destroys a crucial distinction.
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*I grant that some types of diversity could strengthen a body politic.
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