Well Said

Kim du Toit has written an eloquent post addressing illegal immigration and what the actual point of controlling it is about. I'm not opposed to immigration, although I believe we should be highly selective. We've enough home-grown mouth breathers without importing more.

Having seen a few other nations south of the border over time (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize), I've no desire to have a greater influx of people than can be A) useful to our society, B) successfully assimilated into our culture. It's well and good to be proud of where one came from and the highlights of that culture, but if it was all that great, why did you move here?

Having said that, if a culture is too decrepit, weak, or lazy to defend itself from involuntary alteration by external cultures, it will fall. To me, there's no "right" or "wrong" about it. It simply will or won't survive, and that is dependent on the population's measure of confidence in their beliefs and values. I unashamedly believe that we've managed to develop one of the most beneficial, humanitarian political and judicial systems in history. While far from perfect, it's vastly superior (yes, I'm aware of the implied "isms" that are leveled when one uses the word superior. I stand by it.) to a great majority of nations past and present. It's worth protecting, thus worth committing what far too many people consider one of the great secular sins: judging the worthiness of those who wish to live here. If we wish to continue to have the quality of life, both material and cultural, we now take (wrongly) for granted, it needs to be widely recognized that we cannot give away benefits to everyone who's able to show up inside our borders.

There is no inherent fairness in life, no matter how fervently some want that to be the case. And as is the case at the individual level, so it's true at the international level: Enabling one to be continually dependent on another ends in the ruination of both.