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His desperation to prove that he isn”€™t a spat-wearing Republican for opposing immigration practices that favor the upper classes and decimate the lower ones (it’s easy to want to help the whole world when it gets you cheap nannies) is grossly hilarious. Only in 2015 could you find a progressive waxing so guilty over feeling more for his impoverished countrymen than he does for foreigners who can”€™t seem to control their fertility:

(D)o Americans today have a right to reduce immigration? To tell Javier’s cousins, perhaps, that they cannot come to America and make better lives for themselves and their families? Yes, we do. Not only do we have a right to limit immigration into the United States, as citizens we have a responsibility to do so if immigration levels get so high that they harm our fellow citizens, or society as a whole. Meeting this responsibility may be disagreeable, because it means telling good people that they cannot come to America to pursue their dreams. Still, it may need to be done.

He does quote the intuitive stat that Central Americans”€™ birth rate goes up when they move to the United States, but genteelly omits any guess as to why; I”€™ll dare to wager that perhaps it’s because our welfare system pays them a better salary per child for breeding than they can earn in the depressed wage market that their own numbers have helped to create. Oooh, criminalize the thought.

Technology, optimists might say, will dig our way out of this: Today’s young writers may very well enjoy more lucrative apprenticeships than I did, as they skip both manual labor and English-language by learning to puke out clickbait for the likes of Gawker. But clickbait is addictive, for the writer even more than for the reader; and I doubt many of these stunted youths will move beyond what moves the dial on their page-view numbers. They don”€™t even have the opportunity to get jobs in which they can learn to face boredom and their own consciences; their careers will begin and end with people-pleasing.

And most of Cafaro’s book”€”once you get beyond the reams of pages of apology for not being racially sensitive enough”€”relies on cries of compassion for Joe-the-Average-American’s attempts to feed his own kids, versus Javier’s ability to do the same. Pardon me if this is not my own first priority in advocating reduced immigration.

Am I privileging high culture above Joe’s or Javier’s ability to feed his child? Absolutely. And from any view that sees humans as more than breeding-and-eating earthworms, try to prove me wrong. If humanity is only going to exist for the purpose of feeding ever more meandering mouths, let the gods finish us off now.