In a new post at the College Conservative, David Greenberg offers some advice on our current immigration crisis.

Conservative Immigration Solutions

Conservatives of every age and type get it – amnesty is a bad idea. It sends the wrong moral message and could increase the burden of the welfare state. After these important point, Conservative rarely address the issue. The closest the GOP comes to an official stance on immigration is a 2013 resolution where they request “the President and Congress to implement immigration reform during the 2013 session based upon a merit system that emphasizes the economic contribution of each working immigrant can add to our nation.” The apparent message to the normal person is: Conservatives know the current system doesn’t work, but the other guys ideas just aren’t good enough… yet. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure they get it right!

If this were truly the case, we should give up altogether. Progressives are not going to magically become conservatives because we have shown them their ideas are illogical. Barack Obama and his administration are not going to release an immigration policy endorsed by AEI and The Heritage Foundation because we have successfully shot down all of their ideas.

Historical Tradition

Conservative ideas, however, are rooted in a rich philosophic history and several case studies. This is not America’s first great population flux. AEI resident fellow Michael Barone records “A Nation Built for Immigrants” at least five other American migration and immigration movements in our nation’s short history. Each time a debate erupted over how the native populations would react to this influx. Progressives reacted to these influxes in the past with increased public education to indoctrinate the migrants and quotas on the number of immigrants. Conservatives traditionally stood in the way, proposing freer immigration and lowering quotas. Conservative Robert Clancy noted:

The foreign born of my district writhe under the charge of being called “hyphenates.” The people of my own family were all hyphenates—English-Americans, German-Americans, Irish-Americans. They began to come in the first ship or so after the Mayflower. But they did not come too early to miss the charge of anti-Americanism. Roger Williams was driven out of the Puritan colony of Salem to die in the wilderness because he objected “violently” to blue laws and the burning or hanging of rheumatic old women on witchcraft charges. He would not “assimilate” and was “a grave menace to American Institutions and democratic government.”

It is important to note that this is not against border security or against controls in immigration. Congressman Clancy was fighting against controls based on arbitrary facts at the federal level. At that time, it was the impurity of the eastern European.