The terminology of the immigration policy debate is all wrong.
Those wanting to expand migration portray themselves in glowing colors as "reformers", out to fix a "broken system", who want to "liberate" the economy and shed inhibiting practices and laws. Even an "open borders" policy sounds more attractive than a "restrictive" one.
And since, by and large, the writers and editors in the mainstream media are in cahoots with the mas-migration people, these misleading terms are widely used in reporting immigration policy.
I propose a new term for those who want to massively increase migration: pushers.
No, I am not thinking about drug pushers (though most illicit drugs do come from the same places as immigrants). My inspiration is those assertive, uniformed males who were, at least in the recent past, hired by the Tokyo subway system to push more people into already crowded subway cars. I don't know if it is still true, but a returning foreign correspondent told me the other day that the last time he was in Tokyo the subway pushers were still active.
My sense is that there are many other ways to make the subways work better — such as staggered work hours in the central city, or simply buying more subway cars — but pushing more people into existing cars requires no inconvenience to big business, no burdens on the taxpayer, and no thought. So the pushers prevail.
It does not matter that we, as a nation, do not need extra workers (look at the unemployment rate!), it does not matter that our infrastructure and our environment are already pushed to the max (like those Tokyo subway cars), the policy answer for the more-migration people is always more. Again, no thinking is required, and there is no inconvenience to the moneyed few.
Whatever the "problem" — not enough docile, young, inexpensive high-tech workers, or too few people willing to pick vegetables at current wage rates, or illegal aliens parted momentarily from their green card or citizen spouses — the answer is more legal status for more migrants.
What the pushers want to do is to continue to insert more people into the country, and if their current efforts succeed we will all be stuck in one great big jammed subway car, citizens, legal aliens, and illegal aliens alike.
