In this week’s Jewish Week (via Hirhurim), Marc Shapiro addresses the so-called “Jewish approach” to the immigration debate:

[T]he liberal Jewish establishment has weighed in with strong opposition to any real cracking down on illegal immigration. This pro-immigration stance is not, in and of itself, a “liberal” position. For example, The Wall Street Journal has long advocated abolishing all immigration restrictions. What is significant with regard to many in the Jewish community, however, is that as with a number of other issues its leaders lobby for, they have sought to portray their stand as the “Jewish approach,” the one in line with Jewish tradition and values.

Shapiro is skeptical and he notes a number of sources supporting restrictions on immigration to Jewish communities; in particular, the herem ha-yishuv (“ban on settlement”) that he describes as follows:

In medieval times, an era of real Jewish communal authority, Jewish communities were forced to deal with the issue of wanderers who wished to settle among them. It is understandable that many of the Jewish townspeople endeavored to ban entry to those of their co-religionists who could have provided economic competition. What is relevant today is not the economic wisdom of this step, but rather the response of the leading Jewish scholars who also served as the communal legal authorities.

Throughout virtually all of Europe, these scholars granted communities the right to control settlement. By doing so they established an important principle, namely, that local residents alone should determine who should live with them. This system became known as herem ha-yishuv (“ban on settlement”), and the standard practice in most Jewish communities was a closed-door policy. Strangers could usually stay for a short while, but were not permitted to settle permanently. Generally, the only people given settlement rights were rabbis, students, wealthy people and refugees, the latter two on the proviso that they not engage in business.

Thus, supporting immigration restrictions today would hardly qualify as an un-Jewish position.

Extrapolating to contemporary times, one would certainly be within the realm of Jewish tradition if one instituted a herem ha-yishuv in order to ensure that a nation’s language or culture not be diluted through indiscriminate immigration. (Whether this is smart economic or social policy is another matter irrelevant to this discussion.) What is relevant is that a modern herem ha-yishuv would fall squarely within the Jewish tradition that residents of a place have the right to determine their own self-interest, including who should be allowed in and who should be kept out.

I think Shapiro’s parenthetical statement is the key to unlocking this debate. That residents of a given place have a right to determine who is settles there is a basic principle of self-government. That Jewish communities regulated immigration, presumably with rabbinic permission, merely confirms this. The question facing Americans right now isn’t whether or not we have a right to restrict immigration, but rather whether it’s really in our self-interest to exercise that right.