The Viability of State and Local Immigration Control

(Update: This entry has been expanded from its original.)

Look at Lawrence Auster's interesting answer to Fjordman who asks whether Separationism is a practical strategy for dealing with Islam in an age of globalization...

"Of course it's a viable policy, if there is agreement on its necessity.

There are four ways that Muslims can enter non-Muslim countries: illegal immigration, legal immigration, temporary visits for travel/business, and military invasion.

People say we can't stop illegal immigration. That is of course false. The means are all there, we just have to put them into effect. Obviously we also have control over legal immigration. Limited travel and temporary sojourns for business and diplomatic purposes can be allowed.

Any individual country has the power to do all three of these things. Therefore, separationism simply requires that all non-Muslim countries do these three things.

As for military invasion, we and other countries generally have the ability to repel military invasions. Furthermore, a plank of Separationism is the location of permanent military bases at the margins of the Muslim world and the swift destruction of any dangerous Muslim regime. If a Muslim country invades a non-Muslim neighbor, the regime ruling that country will be eliminated.

Now the response will be: "All non-Muslim countries on earth cooperating in the same policy to contain and isolate Islam? Impossible!" At this moment it seems impossible. But the first thing to remember is that we don't have to wait for all countries to defend themselves before we start to defend ourselves. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that the United States passed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution (recently posted at VFR) that, echoing the language of the Thirteenth Amendment which outlawed slavery, would outlaw the practice of Islam in the United States. Other countries would follow our example, one by one, until the rejection of Islam, something previously considered inconceivable, became a broad consensus in the non-Islamic world."

Of particular interest to me is LA's concluding paragraph. When I first read it I said to myself, exactly!, this is precisely what I'm saying in defense of Constitutionally Consistent, or, State and local control of immigration policy here in the United States. One or a few states determine they don't have to, nor are they going to wait on all the states (or the fed) to protect them before they start defending themselves, and etc.

Of course, as with Auster's reply to Fjordman, what I say concerning the viability of such an internal U.S. immigration policy is predicated upon the idea of there being "agreement on its necessity."

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Be sure to check out this article over at VFR since Mr. Auster has expanded it to include my comments to the entry, AND, more importantly, where he adds a link, beneath my comments, to a VFR article from 2006 where a good discussion ensued. This is the kind of clear thinking which we must get to in order to deal rightly with these kinds of situations.