I have recently read three articles/opinions/editorials in the Washington Post espousing the view that the U.S. should open up immigration for Haitians to our country. The general reasoning is that a Haitian making meager wages in the U.S. makes much more than they might make in Haiti and that the money they (the diaspora) send back to family/friends in country far exceeds that of the money contributed to Haitian relief effort from other countries, charities, and NGO’s.
- Debate grows in aftermath of quake: Should U.S. let more Haitians immigrate?
- To help Haiti’s earthquake victims, change U.S. immigration laws
- What Haiti needs: A Haitian diaspora
Unfortunately for the Haitians, and others in similar situations around the world whose countries have been devastated by natural disaster or unnatural disaster such as lack of government, business, and functioning civil society, the U.S is just not ready to allow for mass migration of disaffected individuals to the U.S. While, according to certain pundits, such an evolution might not have as much impact on employment/unemployment as we would expect, we are not going to be able to convince heartland America of that. While I would prefer to stay out of the political arena, it would be sure suicide for the current administration to open up the flood, or perhaps I should say, earthquake, gates to Haitian immigration.
Any suggestion of a job taken away from an American by an immigrant is going to be torn up in the conservative media and rightly so. I consider myself a moderate independent and a humanitarian but until we get our house in order, our doors should be just barely ajar. If we start opening up immigration to citizens of every failed state in the world we are setting ourselves up for disaster. Where is it going to stop? Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, D.R. Congo, Eritria, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, etc? The list goes on. Maybe Cuba or Venezuela would be happy to open up to the Haitian invasion…
The U.S. needs to get its own house in order and, though we haven’t had the “natural disaster” impact quite like that of the one that affected Haiti (though I would say Katrina was significant), we still have a long row to hoe before we can start letting the rest of the world eat of our harvest unconditionally.