Immigration is a natural inexorable movement of people across permeable

borders throughout the world. Immigrants have continuously sought distant

shores. There are myriad reasons people immigrate and various types of

immigrants. Try as they may, efforts to insure inviolable borders are

destined to fail.

The Great Wall of China impeded but did not prevent the advancement of

the nomadic Mongols; the walls of Jericho fell; President Reagan's

admonishment to Gorbachev figuratively, if not literally, precipitated

the collapse of the Berlin wall; Israel's wall of separation is merely

a rickety fence precariously constructed in shifting sand.

Whether one is a pro-immigration neo-conservative, an anti-Bush liberal,

or a classical conservative xenophobic, the continuous migration of humanity

is a certainty in what is becoming a borderless global economy.

All over the world people have been and are on the march for various

reasons. North America has experienced numerous diasporas starting with

the quasi-indigenous North Americans who probably came from Asia via the

Bering Straits, only to be decimated by the arrival of Northern Europeans

in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Institutionalized European chattel bondage brought the forced immigration

of the African people. More recently, immigrants have come to these shores

from Southern Europe, Asia and increasingly from Latin and South America.

Historically, most immigrants came to North America to avail themselves

of perceived economic opportunities, and to a lesser extent, for religious

and political freedom. The permeable Mexican border allows a relentless,

interminable northward flow of economic refugees.

Regardless of the reason of immigration, the economic, civilizational,

cultural, ideological and religious gradients connecting disparate people

ensure the fluidity of global human diffusion and integration.

Immigration is a global phenomenon inextricably intertwined with economic

globalization. In the Marxist-Leninist nomenclature, the bourgeoisie would

seek to maximize profits by the exploitation of the proletariat, whereas

the proletariat would endeavor to sell labor to the highest bidder.

Modernity has supplanted the bourgeoisie with multinational companies

and proletariats are still the working men and woman of the world.

The dawn of the 20th century witnessed the consequential effect of high

labor cost with the closing of Northern mills and the opening of replacement

mills in the southern United States.

The twilight of the 20th century saw these Southern mills shut down and

move to third world nations where even lower labor costs prevailed.

We see this economic dislocation occurring all over the world at an increasing

rate. Initially only the smokestack, heavy industry were involved, but

increasingly the service industries as well as the information and knowledge

industries are feeling the impact of globalization.

Economic globalization of production and labor is becoming a natural

adjunct of capitalism. Like water relentlessly flowing to the lowest level,

capitalism seeks to ensure the most efficient, cost-effective utilization

and exploitation of resources.

In the past, natural and artificial barriers prevented the free flow

of capital and labor. In modern times these natural and artificial barriers

have given way to ideological and cultural impediments to the free flow

of capital and labor.

The theocratic regimes of the Muslim world, the totalitarian states of

Asia and the authoritarian dictatorships scatter across the earth vehemently

oppose the free flow of ideas, capital and human labor as espoused by

most of the democratic societies of western civilization.

The efforts by these non-democratic societies to subjugate their citizenry,

to resist modernity, and to hinder pluralism will only lead to global

disaster or a new world order. Perhaps, like the erosive effects of time

on the Great Wall of China, technological advancements as the Internet

and other electronic communications in conjunction with the insatiable

desire of people to be free will relentlessly chip away on the worn ideological

stones that futilely impede the path of the immigrant.

Immigration and globalization accompanied with the free flow of ideas

have a homogenizing effect on civilizations. If the people of the world

can avoid a cataclysmic clash of civilizations, a new order of global

cooperation will coalesce under the hegemonic influence of a dominant

global entity. Hopefully this dominant entity will be based upon democracy.

Democracy, the primacy of the individual over the state, pluralism, the

right of unimpeded movement and association, and all the noble ideas expressed

Independence offer a clear roadmap for the world to follow on its ultimate,

though unknowable, trek to a future state.

The ideas that influenced the formation of Western civilization as so

eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence must not be restricted

but should be available for all mankind. Inevitably and naturally, such

ideas and the force of such ideas will chase whatever gradient is present,

enabling the dissemination and eventual assimilation of these ideas by

all earthly inhabitants.

A dam is illustrative of the transformation taking place, in that one

can impede or redirect the flow of water, but one cannot stop it. Ultimately

it flows. Ultimately the immigrant will cross the boarder. His one small

step hearkens