The Wonders of Immigration
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
One of the great lessons of the Cold War is that the Soviets had to build walls to keep people in. And we found ourselves reminded of that fact by events on two sides of the earth. The first was the landing at Florida of a ship full of 200 Haitians. It may be the case, as our columnist Raymond Joseph, the editor of the Haiti Observateur, observes on page four of today’s New York Sun, that the entire operation was an election-eve stunt by people from the Bahamas trying to hurt Governor Bush’s political standing. But the reason the stunt resonated is that people are desperate to leave the Haiti of President Aristide. And because America, under presidents both Republican and Democrat, has too often turned away those immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity at our shores.
The second was the news that Yasser Arafat was ready to abandon his professed belief in a two-state solution, and that he is hoping instead for massive immigration by Palestinian Arab “refugees” to Israel. That would destroy the Jewish state demographically. The reason the Palestinian Arabs would be willing to pick up from where they are now — Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza — and move to Israel if they had the right to is that Israel is a better place to live, both in terms of economic standards of living and in terms of freedom and democracy, than the places the Palestinian Arabs are living now. The Jewish immigration that would counter such an Arab influx is unlikely because many Jews live in the United States, a country that few are eager to leave.
Rich, roomy and well-established states like America have the luxury of reacting to immigration by welcoming those from foreign lands. Israel has been more welcoming to immigrants of all religions than is widely recognized. But, unlike America, Israel has been, from the moment of its inception, subject to determined, constant efforts to annihilate it. In Israel’s case, the challenge is to aid in the liberation of the neighboring countries — starting with Iraq — so that Arabs will prefer to live in them instead of Israel. Come to think of it, while we’re happy to have as many Haitians here in New York or Florida as are willing to make the voyage, that wouldn’t be a bad approach for America to take with Haiti, either.
