FrontPage Interview with Mark Krikorian

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and the author of the new book The New Case Against Immigration.

Over at the CIS website, where I've spent a lot of time this morning, is posted the FrontPage July interview with Mark Krikorian concerning his new book. Here is an excerpt from the exchange in which Mark Krikorian says something very familiar to yours truly:

FP: What are some of your policy recommendations for legal immigration and illegal immigration?

Krikorian: I go into some detail in the final chapter of my book about what reform would look like. With regard to illegal immigration, we need to pursue a policy of "attrition through enforcement," steadily and comprehensively applying the law to promote increased self-deportation by illegals so the total illegal population starts shrinking each year instead of continually growing. This isn't a pipe dream -- even the stepped-up enforcement we've seen over the past year seems to have caused a non-trivial drop in the illegal population. Maybe the two most important things to do in this regard are to require electronic verification of Social Security and related information for all new hires (something that's now voluntary) and to fully implement the check-in/check-out system for foreign travelers at our airports and border crossings (it's not even close to done). (emphasis mine)

Respecting the idea of self-deportation which Krikorian alludes to, I've personally always thought that the "we can't round them all up and deport them" argument is a poor one, emotionally based, and really just irrelevant to the issue. As I've said numerous times over at least the last two years, we needn't deport them, they will deport themselves if we'll remove the incentives for their being here. And this is exactly what began to happen -- they began deporting themselves -- when states such as Oklahoma and Arizona and others began to write their own laws denying social benefits and employment to illegals. As Mr. Krikorian says, it's not a pipe dream, it actually works, and we have solid evidence that it works. But of course anyone can see this who isn't a dyed-in-the-wool multicultist liberal.

But the entire interview is good, and I recommend that you read it. And even though I've not yet purchased my copy of the book (though I certainly plan to), I've read several reviews of the book by several respected authors, and based on what they've written I also recommend that you read the book. (Incidentally, here is a page at the aforementioned site which lists and provides links to numerous reviews of Mr. Krikorian's book if you're interested.)