Kritiek op immigratie los je niet op met een kleinere immigratiestroom maar met een kleinere verzorgingsstaat
Der Spiegel bracht gisteren met een fact check wat rationaliteit terug in de discussie: Duitsland kent voor het eerst sinds decennia meer emigratie dan immigratie, óók, zo is te zien in bovenstaande afbeelding (opklikbaar voor beter leesbare versie; immigratie links, emigratie rechts), wat Turken betreft. Nog wat feiten:
Ive always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people: The United States before 1914, as you know, had completely free immigration. Anybody could get in a boat and come to these shores and if landed at Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration? Oh, no, theyll say, We couldnt possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. Wed be driven down to a bare subsistence level.
Whats the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. Theres a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.
