Immigration's Failure
by neolibertarian
Wasn't immigration supposed to be the grand issue that would determine the success of candidates for the next few years? Supposedly it would rip the Democrats asunder in their attempt to play both sides, and it would sweep law and order Republicans over business Republicans. Forget that Linda Chavez already gave evidence debunking this myth.
We have some new evidence. Mitt Romney, who has unashamedly gone further than any of his major rivals in capitalizing on immigration and making a hard stand against immigrants, is faltering and unable to capture the support of Republicans. His main base of support outside Mormons seems to be the impression that he's the rally candidate, the standard all conservatives can buy into. Well he's losing and immigration isn't saving him.
He even tries to hedge, talking about how he's only against illegal immigration (if so, then why not legalize future immigrants, thus avoiding this problem?) and accusing Rudy Giuliani of racism. Tancredo hedged far less and he had to drop out weeks ago, despite running on a strongly cultural anti-immigrant platform. Duncan Hunter is running strongly on China and immigration and he gets nowhere.
Fred Thompson, who despite his anti-immigration record is my preferred candidate, has the most consistent track record on the issue. Although he is more careful than Romney or Rudy to stay within the confines of border security instead of a cultural or economic battle, even he is having trouble selling his message.
Rudy used to be unabashedly pro-immigration. He's moderated and lied and muddled into a more mainstream anti-illegal immigration guy.
Huckabee was notable for being supportive of tuition support to children of illegal immigrants. He's since been endorsed by the Minutemen and along with Romney wants to kick them all out before they can come back in.
John McCain is the most pro-immigrant, though he now agrees to prioritize border security first before addressing the immigrants here. He's not trying to send all the immigrants back and wants substantially the same immigration plan that supposedly destroyed him last year. He just won New Hampshire.
If immigration is such an amazing issue - and clearly it has pull - then why aren't Romney and Tancredo duking it out in Michigan right now? Instead, Huckabee and McCain are challenging Mitt in his dad's home state.
Immigration is just not that great an issue. Waving a Mexican flag in the US pisses people off (because it's interpreted in a hostile way, rather than a community symbol, like the irish flag in Boston). Not learning English pisses people off. And apparently, walking through the desert so that your kid can have a future also pisses people off. But are these pissed off people both numerous and organized enough that they'll put immigration as a top priority? Apparently not.
My guess is that a lot of people of different political persuasions are pissed off at the incongruence of the law versus a widespread occurrence. Count me in that group - the law should be enforced and real (though I don't want this law enforced; I want it repealed). Many people are probably upset at the cultural implications of foreign-speaking, different-looking, strange people around; others don't like the chaotic and uncontrolled nature of the situion. I am emphatically not in either of these groups.
But the people who are most affected by these issues, aside from those who are victims of a crime perpetrated by an assumedly illegal immigrant (my sense is that this group is smaller than the alarmists suggest) the only people truly affected by immigration of any type are the immigrants and those who do business with them here.
So once it's felt that the situation is being addressed, that politicians notice the problem, people calm way down. For a while, it was easy for pundits and agitators to easily claim that immigration as an issue was being overlooked (to some degree, it surely was). That made it easy for people to get their blood up. But now that everybody sees the issue and there's a broad consensus to do SOMETHING, it loses a lot of salience as an issue.
The hardcore control freaks and the racists will always keep shouting. Others will continue on being ver upset and ranking the issue highly. But for the most part, as the issue is addressed, regular Americans will chill out and we'll still have the large number of people who sell and market products to Hispanic people and the large number of people who employ or hire Hispanic people. So the strength will swing back a little towards the mildly pro-immigration side.
On a related note, isn't it interesting that Ron Paul doesn't want to fight Muslim fascists, didn't want to fight Confederate tyrants, and only supported fighting German and Japanese fascists because we provoked them into it - YET, he wants to use any means necessary to prevent Mexicans from crossing a line and going to work. Hmm, so Holocaust, slavery, terrorism are not bad enough to warrant our military's attention. But crossing an imaginary line to word in agriculture should activate the Third Army. What a reactionary dork.
Immigration and Rule of Law
by neolibertarian
Listening to a very popular regional talk-radio show, of which I'm a fan, I heard this morning two main arguments for greater border enforcement. The first was maintaining the rule of law. The second was that there's a certain limit of people that can live in one area and this country needs to decide on a maximum number of immigrants each year as such.
The idea of enforcing the immigration law simply because it's the law is obviously not the motivation for most anti-immigration folks. If that were the only issue here, then simply changing the law to allow in more (or unlimited) immigrants would mean the law was not going unenforced.
If the reasoning of immigration opponents is that any given geographic area has a limited number of people it can sustain, then America's in trouble. After all, at any moment it would be 100% legal for the combined populations of the country to move en masse into Rhode Island, our smallest state. They're all citizens, so there's no legal issue. Maybe we should just bring back Soviet control boards to authorize our movement, vacations, housing and living needs. If the need is simply to control our population movement, why should citizens get carte blanche to move wherever we want? That's where the arguments leads, anyway.
An intensely frustrating argument is made by Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen. He argues that the current immigration situation is antithetical to the rule of law and the Constitution and implies or states outright that the Founders would not approve of the current immigration situation. What he either ignorantly doesn't know or disingenuously forgets to mention is that there was no immigration law in this country until the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1880s. Citizenship law before the 1860s was very racist and unjust, but the act of moving into the country was almost completely unregulated before a bunch of California racists successfully got the Chinese excluded from coming to the land of freedom and opportunity.
As an interstate immigrant myself (across state borders, from MO to VA to DC to FL to CA) I have trouble seeing any rational reason to oppose immigration on its face. However, it's entirely plausible that people are opposed to immigration itself without racist thought or intent. But the history of the issue suggests a different story; hatred of Asians led to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Gentleman's Agreement with Japan, hatred of Catholics led to the Know-Nothings and the heightening of citizenship requirements in the 1850s, hatred of Mexicans led to government repatriations in the 1930s and 1950s, and let's not even get into hatred of Irish and Catholics. It's unfair to say for sure that racism is the root motivation for opposing immigration now, but we can say for certain it was the main cause in many of the previous incarnations of this sentiment.
Guilds Again
by neolibertarian
The majority of the history of state involvement in the free market involves privileging one group against the others. Though the reason presented nowadays is always somehow tailored as being to benefit the people at large, the act of choosing sides is essentially inseparable from the intervention.
Raising tariffs picks domestic producers over others. Raising licensing requirements picks existing professionals over future ones. And raising wages picks skilled laborers over unskilled ones.
That's the exclusionary effect of a minimum wage hike, and that's why a number of Congressmen supported the Davis-Bacon Act's provision for a prevailing wage. The migration of blacks to the North, and of Northern businesses importing temporary black (and sometimes other non-white) labor, meant that black people were visibly and unashamedly employed at honest jobs. Clearly, no good person could accept the outrage of different-looking people coming to your town to construct useful buildings and other works; something had to be done!
The prevailing wage at the time effectively meant the union wage prevailed, due to the formula used (just like Maryland's law on health care was unofficially targeted right at Wal-Mart, without being specific). Black people often found it difficult to join unions, unions being by their nature exclusionary and often based on national-origin rules (Irish unions, Italian unions, etc.). Moreover, black workers were often less skilled than union workers, and if you had to pay high wages then you might as well go with the highest-skilled worker for that wage.
The effect of Davis-Bacon was to retard black employment and to discourage blacks from seeking further employment in the North. It helped, of course, that Yankee recruiters operating in the South to recruit black workers were often heavily regulated restricted from operating entirely by Jim Crow statutes (if Jim Crow deprived black people of free speech and the right to bear arms, why not also deprive them of good job opportunities).
And so it is that Michael Dukakis has come to propose using the exclusionary, group-privileging effects of wage controls against (presumably Hispanic) immigrants. Coyote has already responded well - I highly recommend reading it. I'm not sure I would go so far as to call it blatantly racist, if only in the name of restraint and charitable debate. But it's definitely hard to reserve judgment on somebody like this. I just wanted to add a couple of things.
First, I'm glad that Democrats and socialists will come out against immigration. It helps Republicans see their natural place is for freedom and markets. It also shows that many Democrats espouse thoroughly controlling and unfree policies all the time. Somehow he thinks that the Republicans' border security issues will be circumvented without realizing his own government crackdown on wages could be and currently is being circumvented every day.
Second, it's annoying that Dukakis cites Massachusetts and California as the models for emulation. Why should, say, South Dakota, Wyoming, or most of the South, with lower property values and median incomes than MA and CA, be expected to raise the minimum wage to such a high level? Even if we accept the socialist precept that wages can be dictated by the state, and accept the moronic idea that somehow the government's dictation will work for good ends, do we really think that thrusting the states with the lowest cost of living into minimum-wage parity with the highest-cost of living states is a reasonable idea?
Third, most importantly (and also most relevantly to Coyote's charge of racism), a lot of immigrants make over minimum wage as day workers. Those gardeners you see mowing lawns and such are working for more than eight dollars. Giving a price hike isn't going to affect them. And a lot of day laborers don't work hourly; I have a coworker who once worked a Saturday picking oranges at a mangrove with a lot of Mexicans, and pointed out that they got paid by the volume, not by the hour.
I think it would be really funny if the only two effects of the wage hike were that more Mexicans wanted to come get jobs here (since the traditional Democratic argument is that the minimum wage is only good and makes jobs better, not that it reduces their availability) and that remittances to Mexico shot up.
And last, this is typical socialist thinking. Somehow Dukakis can look at the economy and assume both that his policy prescription will fix the situation and only affect this situation. But the economy is linked at any number of points. If you raise wages on, say, farmworkers, then what do you think will happen? The cost of produce will have to go up. That means everybody who is a consumer of produce or of produce-derived products -effectively every American- will have to pay more. The economy is linked, and regulations have a nasty habit of spreading their effects beyond the initial purpose.
Thank goodness Dukakis got stomped in '88.
Just Plain Creepy
by neolibertarian
I've often sensed a weird vibe from anti-immigration arguments. This Coyote post about prominent anti-immigrationist John Tanton helps bring it together nicely. Apparently Tanton is an Ehrlich-style overpopulation fearmonger at his core. But it's not just about 'sustainability' and corporations and capitalism. No, he heard all the problems about overpopulation and so he helped start a Planned Parenthood chapter, thinking birth control and abortion would be important to stemming the tide.
His views on immigration and abortion (both of them roughly opposite mine) are informed by his views on human nature, overpopulation and the natural environment. What a horrible concoction they make - yet at the same time it fits together so well. Wanting to control people in all aspects of their lives is just an honest expression of fears that they're too incompetent or short-sighted to fix it themselves. Most people in this country draw lines about what they'll fix (in part because they don't object to the behaviors and activities they don't want regulated). This Tanton guy, if this is all true, really goes all in with his social engineering.
Beyond that, the Coyote-linked article on him states that he used common fears about non-English language use in the US as a springboard for anti-immigration rhetoric. So many people disliked seeing Spanish and other languages, especially in government operation, that he tried to capitalize on it (successfully). It reminds me of a 2000 Pat Buchanan commercial, possibly that campaign's only national TV commercial. In it, some guy starts choking on his meal and dashes to the phone to call 911. He dieswaiting for the automated operator to go through the language options ('para espanol, marque numero dos,' etc.). Since Buchanan is big on anti-immigration and anti-globalization issues (as well as being a prominent anti-Israel conservative) it made sense for him to play to such a shallow feeling. Of course, the guy was choking, so even a real 911 to an immediate operator wouldn't have helped him; choking people can't talk, and the EMTs wouldn't have made it there in the short time necessary to give him abdominal thrusts before his brain died off. The point, though, was that it's funny and that anglophones are somehow marginalized by non-anglophones.
The author of the article thinks Tanton wants purity - in the natural world, in countries and their borders, and so forth. I think he fears others are making mistakes and wants to make sure the right actions are taken and the right decisions made. He wants someone to assert control of the environment, of markets, of migration and of populations. The lack of someone or something in control of these situations, I'll go out on a limb and wager, motivates him more than anything else.
I Support Amnesty
by neolibertarian
There's nothing wrong with moving across an imaginary line to live, work, play, visit, sight-see, or engage in commerce. It's morally no different than crossing a county or state line to take advantage of lower taxes or better shopping opportunities.
The immigration laws of this country are malum prohibitum, not malum in se; illegal because it's prohibited, not illegal because it's wrong. People guilty of breaking that sort of law should be forgiven from punishment. Just because something is a law doesn't mean it ought to be a law.
Amnesty is the only answer for a situation like that. Most people don't want to say it because they've accepted the anti-immigrant argument that somehow amnesty is ridiculously foolish and left-wing (even though Reagan pushed the 1986 amnesty). Well I don't accept it.
Immigrating wasn't wrong when my ancestors did it legally, wasn't wrong when the first English settlers did it when there was no law here, and it isn't wrong when people do it illegally today. It's just people trying to make better lives for themselves and it doesn't hurt anybody.
The Base's Bias
by neolibertarian
Reading Powerline (via Insta) you might have come across a post about 'what the base thinks' regarding immigration, which featured a long quote from one Bob Cunningham. Hopefully the base doesn't make statements like this one, though - or even have thoughts like it:Let's recognize that the political process has --- democratically --- designated the illegals AS illegal. Why? Because we, as a nation, decided that their presence — NOT themselves per se (as the false attribution of racism would have it) --- but their presence in such numbers for such purposes (the phony Jobs Americans Won't Do/Jobs Americans Are Not Doing) is undesirable. There are perfectly reasonable grounds for that judgment. When did we vote for the Mexification of America? ANS.: NEVER....Indeed, going back to the 1965 immigration "reforms", assurances were REPEATEDLY given (Kennedy) that such reforms would NOT lead to an influx or demographic change. And guess what? The burden of proof is NOT on the nation to justify this stance.
First of all, any time there's a policy in question, it must be justified. The absolute first idea of limited government is that the default policy is no policy. Every government intrusion and every government expenditure must at the least be justified and explained. To say that the policy need not be justified in the least simply because enough people support it is to believe in a literal tyranny of the voting majority. Of course, in this case we're dealing with a majority of elected representatives, themselves elected by pluralities or majorities, who decided to limit immigration. That's not the same thing as a nationwide plebiscite or referendum.
Whenever the government acts, it must have more reasoning than the fact that a majority of Congressmen - elected more than 40 years ago - decided the government should act.
What a ridiculous, pro-big government argument. By this reasoning, the government could do whatever it wants. This is the reason we have a Constitution to limit the Congress and the federal government. We rebelled against the British for precisely this sort of Parliamentary thinking. In the UK there is no written constitution, no separation of powers, no checks and balances, and no official limit to the parliament's powers. It's only the will of politicians and the opinions of the public that effectively restrain the Parliament.
Our Congress is designed in opposition to the absolute-supremacy style of the British legislature. It's too bad many conservatives lose sight of limited government and freedom when it conflicts with favored social-engineering policies.
But aside from the horribly authoritarian, democratically-tyrannical leanings of Cunningham, he also horribly contradicts himself with regard to bigoted views. I'll re-paste the quote above, this time with emphasis added.Let's recognize that the political process has --- democratically --- designated the illegals AS illegal. Why? Because we, as a nation, decided that their presence — NOT themselves per se (as the false attribution of racism would have it) --- but their presence in such numbers for such purposes (the phony Jobs Americans Won't Do/Jobs Americans Are Not Doing) is undesirable. There are perfectly reasonable grounds for that judgment. When did we vote for the Mexification of America? ANS.: NEVER....Indeed, going back to the 1965 immigration "reforms", assurances were REPEATEDLY given (Kennedy) that such reforms would NOT lead to an influx or demographic change. And guess what? The burden of proof is NOT on the nation to justify this stance.
He argues that the attribution of racism is phony. Fine, I'm willing to acknowledge that there are other reasons to oppose immigration (mostly, the fear of losing jobs). But some form of bigotry is necessary for most stances against immigration, even if your particular bias isn't racist (nationalist, xenophobic and linguistic biases, as well as cultural or even religious).
But he goes from this un-evidenced assertion to complain two sentences later about the Mexification of the US. If we read about a European or an Arab complaining of the Jewification of the US we'd assert anti-Semitism, right? What if somebody in the 1850s complained of Irishification, or in the 1920s about Italianification? German ancestry is currently, by the Census, the most commonly cited national ancestry for US citizens, even though this is a country largely settled by the English (as of 1790). Why complain about the Mexicans but not the Germans, Irish or Italians? Seems awfully bigoted to me. I'm not saying I know for certain what he or anyone else thinks or feels, but it's hard to see any reason why mexification is a problem unless you have a problem with Mexicans.
Some might argue in rebuttal that he just doesn't want this country to be like Mexico, not that he has a problem with Mexicans the people. Fine, but that still seems problematic for the same reason. Why is it bad for this country to get Mexican influiences but neutral or good for it to get Italian influences? It's unsatisfying to say the difference is that one has already happened.
If some people choose to eat certain foods, use certain accents, worship in a certain way or emphasize certain styles of dress or architecture, who really cares? It's not anyone else's job to decide that sort of thing.
It's so hilarious that a person would take two sentences to go from rejecting the attribution of racism to decrying demographic changes and Mexification. I don't want to call opponents of immigration racist or bigoted, but it's very difficult to come to conclusions without relying on some form of bigotry (mostly nationalistic or linguistic). I'd imagine in almost all cases it comes down to one of three motivations.
First, typical moderates. They don't want to rock the boat politically, so they'll accept immigration limits of some form simply because so many people do. This motivation is not conducive to outrage over the issues.
Second, conservative personalities. Those who oppose change as a default aren't going to want to change the law, but they also aren't going to want new people coming in. This motivation is somewhat conducive to outrage over the issue, if carried to a greater level.
And third, the presumption that natives and non-natives of a country have different rights and privileges with regard to work and residence in a given country. This assumption is reflected in current national and international law more or less everywhere, but it doesn't mean it's appropriate. It's also insufficient to explain why this should be the case, or why Hispanics should face immigration limits when the Irish and Germans didn't.
Additionally there's outright racism, which I'd imagine is not very common at high levels (though low levels of racism might very well be more common).
It's disappointing to see that the most philosophically advanced argument against immigration is "we want it and we can't be questioned." At least Democrats and tyrants go through the pretense of justifying their intrusions.
Update: The populist-socialist overtones are especially creepy; always beware when activist social-conservatism is combined with business-bashing rhetoric. Examples:
- "crass, narrow, economic special interests"
- "Their objectives --- open borders, a free flow of cheap labor --- are plain now for all to see. Some no longer even bother to pretend otherwise."
- "'guest workers' indentured servant-helot program"
- "the scofflaw employers"
Add in a heaping dose of self-righteousness, and an unashamed reliance on bashing of alleged elites, and you have a very creepy mix in the end.
GOP Future On Immigration
by neolibertarian
We're at a defining moment in the future of the GOP. The stalwart social conservatives are unaffected by the ingenuity of the President's reforming of their message.
On foreign policy, he pushed them into a comfortable, liberalist role that the GOP has naturally assumed in its history; by using the same liberal-democratic and idealist-universalist rhetoric that Republicans used in the Civil War and in the Cold War, Bush has pushed the GOP to be activist and idealist in the Global War on Terror. But so what? It's easy to convince the GOP coalition to action. The libertarian-ish faction likes the emphasis on freedom and natural rights; the practical faction likes the emphasis on getting something accomplished; the hawks love action and taking the fight to our enemies; and in this case social conservatives find it hard to not contrast Western civilization to Islamic civilization. There's something for everybody, even if the President doesn't really pander to them they can still envision it on top of what he says. And liberal-activism in foreign policy is the presumptive GOP position on issues of global ideological conflict. So that wasn't too hard to sell.
The Bush faction (expanding well beyond Bush and with Ken Mehlman as a great example) is also trying to modernize the party in regards to membership and demographics. Getting more candidates that are black, Hispanic, Jewish, whatever, is a goal for this GOP leadership. Demographics are favoring the Hispanics, because once the Hispanics start to vote in greater numbers, they'll be an enormous electoral chunk - Hispanics already outnumber black people in this country, for example.
If the Hispanics move to Bush, then that helps him in 2000 and 2004. And that did happen, since Bush received greater Hispanic support in 2004 than 2000. He jumped from roughly 65-35 loss among Hispanics to Gore in 2000 to a 55-45 loss among Hispanics to Kerry. That 10 percent gain represented 1.2% of voters in 2004, and that's 1.2% that Kerry didn't win. Dick Morris argued (supplying the stats I just used) that the Hispanic bump gave the election to Bush.
Now imagine if the GOP were successful in getting 75% of the Hispanic vote in every election, and that as Hispanics are more and more integrated they vote in greater numbers. That would be a decisive edge for the GOP in elections, and might even serve to bring the critical California back into its natural home in the GOP column.
But even if the result is that Hispanics are generally split 50-50, that's better for the Republicans than the current situation (or the status quo ante Bush) where Democrats get the edge on this growing demographic.
If the GOP nationally pursues the same strategy that the California GOP pursued, it will result in alienation of immigrants in general and Hispanics in particular. Sure, plenty of Hispanic Americans feel little in common with illegal migrants, but that doesn't mean they want to see Mexicans get a raw deal or be singled out for attention.
It's astounding the things Republicans are willing to compromise just to spite migrants who happen to be poor and non-anglophone. Let's start a short of what they're compromising:
- The appearance of being tolerant and accepting. Sure, you don't have to be anywhere near racism to be anti-immigration, but certainly xenophobia and anti-immigration arguments find a way to come together, and it's often hard to justify immigration limits without some cultural or racial reasoning.
- Freedom of individuals. People can move freely across state borders, but not international borders - that's arbitrary and unjustified. Persons should be allowed travel and sanctuary across imaginary lines on a map. The government doesn't own the country, so it can't keep people out. It can stop those wishing violence, but people fleeing their own crummy socialist hellhole country are not the same thing as an invading army.
- Freedom of commerce. It's ok for companies to go to Mexican but not ok for Mexicans to work here? Now that sounds racist. "Hey, Pancho! Stay on your side and keep working!"
- Political allies in the business community, those being targeted for the crime of getting qualified workers.
- Political allies in the Hispanic community, who feel isolated or alienated by a crusade against immigration.
What a great idea, sacrifice everything so that we don't have to hear people speak foreign languages in our own country. Well thought-out and inspirational.
Border Security Strawmen
by neolibertarian
Jon Gibson and many pundits and hournalists are covering today's immigration protest with the question: Does America have the right to control its borders? Of course, this is a fallacy on several levels.
First, conflating the idea of border security - defending a geographic area from belligerent invasion - with customs and naturalization control is an intellectual dishonesty. Keeping out those seeking work and prosperity is entirely different from keeping out organized militants intent on destruction or conquest. Since Mexico isn't going to send an army across to try and subdue the country or capture Washington, DC, that leads us to another fallacious argument: terrorism. If terrorists crossing into the US is the real fear then there'd be an equal or greater effort to clamp down on the northern border with Canada, the world's longest undefended border. You could easily in some places just buy, rent or steal a boat and cross one of the many lakes, or could get an ATV and cross some of the most sparsely-populated areas in the continental US.
The real strawman is in reframing the debate, so it's not whether America ought to take action against immigration or immigrants, and whether America has the right to do so. The legal right to do so is clear, both internationally and nationally (though it would be unpopular in many countries to our south). But asking this question is wholly separate from whether we ought to, and has the complementary effect of suggesting that most or all supporters of immigration take the opposite stand that borders must be open.
Of course, Jon Gibson is kind of an idiot and in his editorial comments tends to make simplistic and even incorrect assertions (for example, classifying John Kerry and Dick gephardt as "classical liberals"). But still, it's frustrating to see that kind of blatant message framing.
There are multiple questions involved, such as what to do with the immigrants already here, what to do about future immigrants, and what the standard should be for citizenship.
Most people like to say that illegals should get in line like everybody else, but that sort of gut-emotional fairness argument misses two things. Historically boatload after boatload of uneducated immigrants from Europe entered the country after simple health and background checks. Current migrants from Latin America find that they'd simply be rejected by the quota system. Modern Latino migrants aren't skipping ahead in line because they aren't allowed in the line. It's either skip around customs or don't come at all.
We should be focusing on providing better government service through INS and legalizing immigration. Then we could process all the immigrants at established checkpoints, leaving illegals to rough it in the desert and get rounded up by patrols.
The problem is that the anti-immigration people are the driving force behind the anti-illegal immigration movement. That makes sense, since it's hard to be upset by the illegality of illegal immigration unless you're upset by immigration itself. So the arguments tend to be targeted at the actual immigrants and their use of hospitals and schools (problems that would potentially follow legal immigrants or US citizens), rather than the technical illegality involved.
Unless you're upset at the idea of foreigners coming to this country, every potential problem is solved by or along with legalizing immigration.
The US: Asylum For The World
by neolibertarian
In a post on immigration, Coyote's last sentences mentions how Cuban refugees being sent back to Cuba. That sentence reminds me of the moral case for immigrating to the US - and for emigrating from almost anywhere else.
As far as I'm concerned, we shouldn't say that Cubans escaping horrible political repression have a right to enter the country (if they set foot on soil) while Haitians suffering economic and political repression of a different (less totalitarian) nature don't. They're all refugees in my eyes and we should have thousands of boats organized by volunteers (presumably staffed by the Cuban ex-pat community in Florida) to save people fleeing Cuba. We should have boats waiting just outside Cuban territorial waters to pick up lifeboats and stuff. It should be like people escaping over the Berlin Wall.
But at the very least, if they get here don't make them leave. That should go for everybody from EVERY country, even free, prosperous democracies. No country is fully free, but America is supposed to be the place where the oppressed can look to model or flee toward. If somebody wants to escape Canada's hyper-communist health care system (private health care is ILLEGAL if it competes with a government-provided service, which is true in North Korea, Cuba and nowhere else) then they should be able to come here, whether it's for a quick check-up or years of surgery and therapy. If somebody wants to say something stupid and totalitarian that they can't say in France or Germany (Nazism as an ideological ethos is illegal in both countries) then they should be able to say it here, even as we all make fun of them.
America should be the refuge of the world. Period. If you want to escape anything, from tyranny and genocide to taxes and licenses then you should be able to come here. I am sad and almost embarrassed to say that the freest and best country in the world has plenty of taxes and a wealth of bureaucracy, but for all who want the option, we should be available.
I can't help but be reminded of one of the best political speeches of the last century, and in particular of this section:Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Those last four sentences explain what America is about, where it came from, and why it's special.
This is also why Ronald Reagan, whatever his faults or shortcomings as a man, President or libertarian, is still one of my favorite Presidents - right up there with Washington and Lincoln and Grant (yeah, that's right, I said Grant, big whoop, wanna fight about it?). Reagan correctly captured the spirit and the principles of America, the same way Coyote did in the linked post: "Our fundamental rights, from speech to association to property, are not granted to us by any government, but belong to us as a fact of our human existence."
Another comparison between Coyote's statements and Reagan's is that they both argued that the New Deal was based on italian fascism. In 1976, Reagan argued to Time that Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. "It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say '"But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"
And to bring it back to the topic, Reagan signed the amnesty for millions of immigrants, argued that it's crazy to keep out workers while apples were rotting on the vine in New England for lack of Americans to pick them, and was an intellectual and moral leader of free trade with Canada and Mexico (and Israel, our first FTA partner).
This is the best country in the world, but more importantly none of us owns the country or the ideas that animate it. Just as liberty and the principles of good government (read: effectively-limited government) should be available to everyone, so should America be available to everyone. Aside from being the best way to show the world how liberty works, it's the best opportunity for individuals to lead free lives without waiting for foreign governments to catch on.
The Fill Prisons With Nonviolent Criminals Act
by neolibertarian
The House passed a bill to criminalize immigration, making the act of being here without INS approval a felony for non-citizens. There are protests going on in a number of cities. One question in my mind is whether knowing a person is illegal would be a criminal act - I'm almost certain there are generic provisions for making unreproted knowledge of a felony itself a crime. If so, that would mean knowing your neighbor is here illegally (depending on the final version of the bill, perhaps it would take full-blown border crossing, or perhaps as little as a lapsed visa) and not reporting it could warrant prosecution. Obviously various factors like the sheer number of people to be prosecuted as accessories to criminal immigration would deter any major actions, but the fact that otherwise perfectly innocent people could be bullied by police and prosecutors over knowing of illegal immigrants is unacceptable.
Let's remember that violating immigration laws is malum prohibitum, not malum pro se; immigration is not in itself a bad thing worthy of being illegal. Rather than being immoral and illegal, it is merely illegal.
So making it a crime, even if accessory actions are excepted, is a bad idea. First of all, it's wrong to criminalize actions that aren't coercive or even unusually harmful. The common argument is that immigrants cause hospital and school overcrowding, but if that's the focus of the issue (it definitely isn't) then we'd create a domestic INS to monitor and authorize intra-national and intra-state movements so that small communities and crowded cities wouldn't be overburdened in social services. Fortunately, this isn't a police state like the Soviet Union, so no such domestic INS will ever be created (by my reading it would be unconstitutional anyway under Article IV, Section 2, clause 1). But why should rules and principles we'd NEVER applies to ourselves or to Americans be forced upon others?
I understand fear of terrorism, and I respect attempts to enforce current laws, but before any of that we need to determine what's at stake with immigration and not just the border. This bill is about Mexicans, not terrorism. The government needs no further rules to deport people here to commit violence - existing law allows for deportation simply for being here illegally. This is about keeping out peaceful immigrants who come here illegally, and detering their return with the threat of prison.
We ought to be allowing in peaceful immigrantsso that we can focus resources at the border on finding those on terror watch lists - not fighting against a sea of largely benign migrants looking for honest work.
Immigration Rhetoric
by neolibertarian
The justifications for tighter controls on immigration and on immigrants tend to range all over the place. Usually something about crime and vandalism, something about hospital and school overcrowding, and sometimes something about language, national unity or whatever. But aside from the few people who openly make cultural arguments (immigrants come from cultures that are bad or inferior, so we don't want them here), and the very few people who openly make racial arguments, most people against the current immigration policy argue literalism.
They say words to the effect that the law is the law, and it should be enforced. That innoculates them against the inevitable argument that the entire population of this country is descended from immigrants (even Native Alaskans, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians). They can say that the good immigrants of the past, present or future are legal, thus distinguishing them from illegal immigrants.
But is that a valid distinction? Just because A is legal and B is illegal doesn't itself justify the legality of on or the other. There must be some reason to keep A legal and B illegal; there has to be a justification for why some may immigrate here legally and others only illegally.
Otherwise, the entire literalist objection could be wiped out in one blow. If all immigration to the US were legalized then that would end the "the law is the law" reason for more border controls.
Of course, unless I'm mistaken until 1882 there were no blanket immigration caps or limits in the US. There were citizenship limits set by the federal government and suffrage rules generally set by the states, and the 1875 Page Law restricted prostitutes and criminals, but there were no nationality- or race-based limits on immigration.
And it was the Chinese Exclusion Act that came in 1882, at the request of Californians (as today, the site of much immigration). California had already passed a special tax only applying to "members of the Mongolian race" two decades earlier. It wasn't until the 1920s that the national/racial quota system was set up, explicitly to favor two groups: Northern Europeans, and Latin Americans. It was supposed to disadvantage two groups: Southern/Easter Europeans, who were limited to tight caps based on US Census results, and Asians in general, who were barred outright. Professionals could generally get around the caps.
It's interesting that there were no limits set on Latin Americans at the time, even though Mexicans and Hispanics are today most of the source of tension in immigration, and that Asian immigration was the first type banned.
So to say that your ancestors got here legally is to ignore the often racist or arbitrary laws that controlled immigration. I'm sure somebody like O'Reilly could say that his ancestors came here legally, so it's okay to look down his nose at Mexicans, but his Irish ancestors never would have faced a cap in immigration until the 1960s.
To say that "the law is the law" is to ignore the arbitrary or sometimes racist historical underpinnings in immigration law. But more importantly, it's a vapid argument that doesn't justify the law's existence.
Of course, arguing about hospital overcrowding or school overcrowding is a horribly shoddy argument that comes off with racist undertones as well. I mean, are we going to limit intra-state migration of Americans to growing communities? Too many retirees moved to Southwest Florida in recent years, putting stress on the transportation and power grids, but I don't imagine they'll get blamed for it - they'll just get more roads and power plants built. This country has been growing for a long time, especially with the baby boom. There were so many boomers, in fact, that when they were born the country had a drastic shortage of hospitals (babies were often born in hallways of hospitals), when they went to school there was a shortage of schools, and yet I don't think people today would have wanted a limit on procreation of American citizens. Overcrowding is just a poor argument, but at least it moves beyond the 'status quo for its own sake' style.
Protectionism and Racism
by neolibertarian
Coming at the same time as the ports problem is a floor speech by a Congressman (I believe it was Ryan, but I couldn't be sure). I saw it on C-SPAN. I assumed he was merely a fearmonger out to make us afraid of FOREIGNERS holding our debt. He brought out a big diagram showing that the vast majority of underwritten debt was underwritten by foreign sources. He said this means we're selling off the country piece by piece to foreigners.
Ok, fine, so he makes a poor argument and is so obsessed with some gut reactive fear of foreigners that he doesn't realize they're doing us a favor (paying for the Congress' extravagance, in essence). The debt itself is bad, but he seemed more concerned with the fact that foreigners were involved in it. It's a bad opinion, and an uninformed emotional argument, but okay.
But then he moved on to a diagram showing which countries hold our debt, and a bar chart for the top eight or ten or so. He pointed out the first two, China and Japan (Japanese holding by far more than any other nationality or any other two nationalities), but skipped over the third (the United Kingdom) to point out Caribbean, Taiwan, Korea, etc. What the fuck? Why point out Japan, Taiwan and Korea but not the UK? Racism just jumps out.
Japan, after all, has had a longstanding alliance with the US for decades, and continues it today even after the Cold War's end. We have more troops in Korea than anywhere else, and we fought a war ('police action under UN aegis') to keep South Korea free. And Taiwan is an ally that we've long been promising (or threatening) to go to war to defend from China. These are our allies, and they don't deserve to be kicked around for buying our debt - which only means that 1) they believe the US is a solid investment or 2) they want to prevent the dollar from inflating.
And why fearmonger over the Caribbean? A lot of Caribbean islands have little more than climate-related industries like tourism to go on. They have very low standards of living, rely disproportionately on transfer payments from relatives working and living in the US, and are dependent on US and outside assistance when natural disasters strike. Race really seems to be a dividing factor here. It's most likely, after all, that these dollar-dependent Caribbean economies again, 1) want a good investment that will pay off, and 2) don't want to see the dollar drop in value, which would potentially harm their economies. And it's not like the Caribbean is our trade enemy, either; we have had the CBTI since the '90s aimed at promoting free trade between the US and the Caribbean Basin countries, and DR-CAFTA has expanded on that.
It's hard to see his focus here as anything but irrational, and his exclusion of the UK but inclusion of countries that are allies or completely non-threatening US-dependents as anything but mildly racist.
Rioting French Muslims
by neolibertarian
The days-long rioting of French Muslims had a lot of people searching for causes and solutions. Here's my take.
First of all, Michael Savage and some other talk radio types are idiots. France is not 'liberal.' The collective French standpoint on immigration is that it's not a good thing. They don't even like the "Polish plumber" coming under EU rules, let alone Muslims and blacks coming in for welfare. They have relatively draconian immigration rules, including a plethora of detention centers for migrants to wait while being processed.
They do not like immigrants. Virtually every French party has had major politicians insult immigrants. The National Front under Le Pen is of course known for essentially racist opinions on foreigners, and the FN splitoff under Bruno Megret (though he's not a racist, with a Greek-Jewish wife) is very anti-Muslim. The French Communist Party has also used anti-immigrant literature and propaganda, as have the mainstream parties (Chirac himself once said something to the effect that immigrant slums were filthy, the blacks themselves foul-smelling, and that they had lots of kids living on welfare).
In America, citizenship is a legal concept, and a political ideal. A person born anywhere can become an American, legally and socially. In Germany and other European countries, nationality is tied at least somewhat to heritage and ethnicity; Turkic migrant workers have difficulty being considered Muslims. France is even worse, having a hyper-nationalist sense of pride in their country (just because Frenchmen hate Bush doesn't make them 'liberal'). Even being Jewish can often interfere with being considered fully Jewish, and Jews were never officially French until the Revolution changed the laws.
So it's VERY hard to assimilate into a culture that does not like flexibility, does not like change, and does not accept your ethnic heritage as compatible with Frenchness. That's not to say all French are racist, but it's very hard to consider yourself French when most French people would consider you a resident alien.
Laura Ingraham was in the right direction here, when she criticized the non-assimilationist French tendencies. The French don't assimilate their immigrants. However, that's not due to multiculturalism,as she suggested - quite the opposite. It's due to a sense of cultural elitism and that foreigners aren't suited to their ways.
So here's what I think. By excluding Africans from even a reasonable possibility of becoming legitimately French, it greatly alienates them from loyalty to the country or their neighbors. Instead, they seek identity elsewhere, with their fellow African-extracted Frenchmen, with people from their country of origin, and with their religion. They are going to tend to exaggerate their identification with these areas, as when European-born Muslims being far more zealous and violent in their religion than many Muslims in Arab countries.
Unemployment has to be a contributing factor, since an employed person is less likely to waste time rioting, less likely to feel so disaffected, and more likely to have something to look forward to. But I think it's really the sense of identity and rejectiont hat propels this problem, and if the French could simply accept non-white people as potential Frenchmen, this sort of problem would be greatly diminished.
Of course, capitalism is also a big factor here. A closed and anemic economy is not going to provide a lot of opportunities for immigrants, especially unskilled or semi-killed ones. In contrast, the US economy has loads of jobs and opportunities for those willing to work - construction, hospitality, agriculture, and more. Hell, here in Southwest Florida we wouldn't be half as far along rebuilding from Charley last year if it weren't for Hispanic migrants (generally Guatemalan or Central American). Simply giving the French Muslims and Africans jobs, though, is a horribly incomplete solution.
They're being treated as less than full citizens, less than full human beings. When people feel they're being abused, neglected or isolated, they often resort to strange, violent or counter-productive activities in reaction. I believe that feelings of inferiority factored greatly into the rise of German Nazism, and the rise of Arab Islamism, and that the same situation is a factor in the French riots.
There's no doubt that the rioters need to be dealth with swiftly and decisively - there's no excuse for the violence they've perpetrated on their neighbors. But the lack of justification is not the lack of an explanation. French socialism, elitism, racism and xenophobia have to be recognized as contributing factors to the situation, even though the moral and legal fault for the actual rioting must fall without a doubt on the rioters themselves.
Security vs. Culture
by neolibertarian
The INS appears to have responded to the Minuteman business by intentionally keeping apprehensions in the Minuteman parts of the borders low, thus making it look like the Project was unsuccessful. This sort of thing is not that surprising, since it would mean the INS was doing a bad job and needed help from a bunch of untrained goobers with binoculars, but it ought to result in a string of terminations.
Unfortunately, this only exacerbates the tension among a certain section of the country for whom The Border! represents some mythical Holy Grail which has been lost and must be the number one priority for all segments of society to reclaim. Of course, I've never heard anyone argue with evidence that any of the Islamist terrorists that have attacked this country in 1993 or 2001 came through the Mexican border. It was easy enough to just fly in through an airport.
For those people who like to conflate the importance of filtering out Islamists and no-goodniks with the cultural and economic effects of Hispanic migration, The Border! betrays their priorities. Sure, there's a good chance that an Islamist might try to sneak through the Mexican desert and get up into the US that way. But if you were an Islamist, with access to lots of Saudi cash, wouldn't you rather try and sneak through from Canada?
After all, the Canadian border is also horribly porous around lakes and forests. The US border with Canada is far less protected and monitored, far longer, and together that makes the world's longest 'unprotected' border, so-called. So let's see, I could try and sneak through the dry, arid, dangerous, gangster-filled Mexican desert and risk getting picked up by Mexican kidnappers or the US border patrol helicopters, or I could fly into Canada, spend a few nights in a hotel in Winnipeg or Thunder Bay, and take a bus down to a lake and just rent, buy or steal a little boat and motor on over, with the only risk that the occasional boater or errant Coast Guard guy might find me.
If a terrorist were caught in Mexico, he'd probably die of disease in prison and have little chance at getting off on trial. If a terrorist were caught in Canada, he'd have an attorney and all the protections of the Canadian trial system that are superior to Mexico.
The fact is, when the The Border! people refer to problems with The Border! they mean the Mexican boundary 99.99% of the time - even though there's probably more of a risk of it coming through Canada. The Border! has almost nothing to do with security and terrorism and almost everything to do with culture and economics. It's easier for people to feel unsecured against the Southern border because so many Mexicans are coming through every day illegally, but there are huge gaps in border security with Canada as well.
Does anyone honestly think that Montana alone, the US state with the largest Canadian-shared boundary, has cameras, satellites, helicopters, patrol boats, SUVs or men covering even half that border? Of course not. You could buy an ATV and joyride right across the border if you wanted, and it's a lot safer than the searing heat of the Mexican desert.
The reason that border security gets tied in with Mexico is not that there's less security at that border than the Canadian one. They've been falsely associated by the small The Border! element because it pre-existed widespread terrorism concerns. The Border! alarmists were scared of problems with mexican immigration - losing various jobs, people who can't speak English, people practicing their foreign customs, and even religious tensions. They didn't like Mexicans coming across The Border! but they didn't really have any objection to Canadians who continue to come into America at a substantial pace. This appears at first blush to be racist but I suspect a great deal of it has to do with culture and economics and race/racism being ancillary or subsequent concerns (if at all).
It's important that we retain the dichotomy of border concerns. There's security, on the one hand, and culture, on the other. Security is not only consistent with Mexican immigration but improved by it. Allowing more Mexicans to come here legally means that the border agents will be better equipped to deal with the few people trying to sneak through the cracks. Culture, however, demands that the strange people from the land to the South be forced to stay in their socialist, corrupt, authoritarian land because they were born there.
The cultural view has nothing to do with the needs of security, whatever claims made by The Border! cult to the contrary.
Sensible Immigration
by neolibertarian
Coyote Blog has a good post on immigration that roughly captures my own take on the issue. I have trouble buying into the feelings behind the anti-immigrant people because it seems to me they are at best disastrously misguided and at worst bald, socialistic racism. After all, the vast majority of immigrants coming up from Mexico are here for jobs and freedom.
We need to separate out the different needs of immigration policy. There are two in particular that have been intentionally grafted so that the justified and important goals of one can piggyback in the darker and shadier goals of the other. The first strain is national security - keeping out terrorists with bombs and ill intent and so forth is of course important. The second strain is about jobs, ethnicity and blunt nationalism - as Michael Savage calls it, "borders, language, culture." It is beyond intellectually dishonest to associate the sensible objectives of the first strain with the protectionist and exclusionary objectives of the second strain.
This is one of my larger pet peeves about social conservatives. There's no objective ethical reason why being born in another country should mean you have to stay there. America is founded on the idea that men make their own destinies, and we shouldn't force Mexicans to be confined to their crummy destinies just because they were born Mexicans.
Moreover, we'd all be a lot safer and more prosperous if immigration were allowed above-the-table because then businesses would get the workers they need, consumers would get the services they need and the only people who'd have any call to sneak across the border would be criminals and terrorists, not would-be workers. National security is served through regulation, not prohibition.
Prohibition only forces something underground where the police have trouble monitoring it. Regulation makes it much more accessible to the authorities at the same time that it is allowed. If we regulated immigration instead of criminalized it, we'd see millions of immigrants getting the regular background check process instead of living here illegally with no checks. It would be safer for them as well, since they would not have a reason to fear the police, who currently might toss them south of the border.
They just want to work and improve their lives. I don't see how anyone can object to that. After all, they're not making you speak Spanish or eat their excellent burritos. All you have to do is not kick them in the shins when they try to cross the border to clean your toilet, pick your food or build your home.
And speaking from an anecdotal point of view, down here in SW Florida we still haven't rebuilt after all the hurricanes. A lot of people are still constructing homes and trying to finish a roof, etc. Many people still live in the FEMA trailers (18-month rent-free leases that might be extended) and massive debris piles are still common. It is only because of extensive immigrant labor - primarily I think El Salvadorans and Guatemalans - that we have gotten this far. Hurricane season starts in less than a month, and without immigrant labor (hard-working, non-union, long-hours, no-fuss) we'd be nowhere near so rebuilt from Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan.
In part, that's because most of the people here are retired or professional semi-retired. The retired people spend their time relaxing and boating, while the semi-retired people travel to New York and Miami to work and then sail in their off time. There's a precious shortage of young people in the area and immigrant labor provides a much-needed boost of those (male, primarily) aged 18-35 who are so integral to rebuilding after the disaster.
Immigrants of every nationality have helped to build (and rebuild) this country; I condemn those exclusionary tendencies that would weaken the country and harm individuals just to serve some arbitrary concept of "culture." Culture is just a made-up word that Europeans use to console ourselves. We shouldn't make our policy based on "culture." We ought to instead formulate our immigration policy based on a sensible approach to security and an inclusive approach to economic refugees from poverty-stricken socialist states like Mexico.
Reagan and Immigration
by neolibertarian
At Liberteaser, Joseph Weisenthal brings up Michelle Malkin's immigration blog as another tasteless example of the hair-pulling looniness oft found on the right that helps compete with the teeth-cracking wackiness of the left. I also recall seeing the Reagan quote associated with the country controlling its borders.
I laugh when I see it. Why? Because Reagan was probably the first politician to talk about a NAFTA-like provision. In 1979 he said we should have a North American accord to let people, goods and capital move freely across the borders of the US, Canada and Mexico. At the time, Mexicans and Canadians thought it offensive and did not appreciate the proposition. Of course, Reagan signed the FTA with Canada less than a decade later, so something went right.
It's simply absurd how the social right tries to claim Reagan for itself largely based on the perception that he was some sort of gunslinging war-hawk, when in actuality he was essentially a moderate libertarian. For evidence, check out this excerpt from Reagan's 1964 speech that shot him into Republican stardom:
You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or a right. There is only an up or down: up to man's age-old dream -- the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
Granted, it's not necessarily anything that the social right would disagree with but the libertarian right definitely prefers this kind of language and thematic worldview. Not only that, but it's incredibly positive and forward-looking, while most of the social right prefers more pessimistic, forward-slowing imagery.
I'm not saying Reagan was a doctrinaire libertarian, but I think it's incredibly ignorant or self-serving to try and claim Reagan for the social right, which is especially true regarding the close-the-borders crowd.
It's All Over!!!
by neolibertarian
VodkaPundit has an intriguing entry on the plight of Europe in the face of hypothetically worsening Islamicization and immigration and how the result might be something similar to Balkan-style ethnic warfare. The comments are even drearier.
The basic tone, at least in the comments, is that Muslims are immigrating in and they're going to be a demographic majority that will force essentially Islamist governments to rise in Europe. Or something to that effect.
I think this mentality that Muslim immigrants are going to ruin everything is incredibly defeatist, pessimistic and most of all anti-American. Why, you may be thinking, would people who are probably strong proponents of American power and prestige ever be rightly considered anti-American? Well I don't mean they oppose America, only doubt (or forget, which is essentially the same) the power of the values that Americans love.
Specifically: faith in a just outcome (happy endings), love of truth, amazing rhetorical support for liberty, and a happy embrace of material luxury and success in wealth. These are very addictive things - just ask people who escaped communism to get here. Plenty of ex-Soviets fled to the US and were shocked by all of these things.
Everyone knows we're rich, and not just rich but luxuriously so. But it's not limited to the US. Coca-cola, rap and basketball go around the world in addition to a bajillion other US staple goods. I mean, they go gaga for Levi's in Poland or pop CDs in Germany. They drink our sodas, wear our clothes, watch our movies, listen to our songs and they eat in our rstaurants. McDonald's in Europe is a different affair from in the US (they change most of the menu to fit local tastes) but it's still considered American in style.
There's resentment over this success to be sure, but whatever grumblings you get from the paleo-euro right and the paleo-green left over in Europe don't seem to be biting into the bottom line very much. They may complain, but they still buy US stuff - often BECAUSE it's from the US.
Does this mean the US gets whatever it wants? Of course not. But it does mean that we have widespread appeal. Our biggest ambassadors to the world in the last century were guys like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. These people are astoundingly famous across the world, and can often rival names like Jesus in name recognition.
But once they get here, people are amazed - the success, the wealth, the optimism and the happiness. People here are freer, richer and happier than almost anywhere else in the world. That kind of attitude is very infectious and to foreigners and migrants it's very obvious.
I just don't see an ideology that much less luxurious, much poorer, much less exciting and much less happy and polite overcoming US culture.
The problem for Europe is that they're nihilistic and depressing. They aren't just post-religious, they're post-everything. They don't have a whole lot of purpose and they don't have much of a view of the world except that it sucks and everyone should look out for his own narrow interests. It's very easy for Muslims, cut off from their ancestral countries, to cast about for a cultural and ideological niche. Seeing the hopelessness and malaise of Europe, they revert to Islamic culture even if their parents and grandparents weren't really that religious or conservative. It's a proxy for the lack of European culture and ideology.
But they won't be able to simpyl take over Europe, both because there is quite a bit of lingering European orthodoxy, even if it's not very appealing or transferrable. But moreover, they'd have to take a continent full of people who are prodigious consumers of American goods and culture and turn it into a bunch of people who are willing to forego many of the same luxuries and accept an Islamist government.
I just don't see it happening. We won't have a European Caliphate or a Eurabia. Even if Europe becomes 40 or 50 percent Muslim in a few decades, I think most of them would become somewhat agnostic and enjoy consumer goods and be vaguely yet clearly affected by the values Americans are also affected by. It's too universally adaptable and too universally appealing for freedom, wealth and success to be ignored.
If anything changes in the Islam versus the World power struggle, I think we'll be seeing the opposite: a greater influence of Western and American ideology of liberty and consumerism in the Middle East proper.
Shakedown
by neolibertarian
The feds effectively shook down Wal-Mart this week, forcing the company to pay $11 million to avoid criminal charges for exchanging money for labor with evil Mexicans. A dozen businesses that contracted the janitorial services to Wal-Mart are paying $4 million in fines and are pleading guilty to criminal immigration charges.
God forbid illegal immigrants ever manage to find employment in this country, because then they might, you know, eat and stuff. I'm not thrilled with the increasingly gray market aspects of immigration and immigrant employment either, but I don't see how this fine furthers anyone's interests except the immigrant-haters and the government people who get prestige from it.
Even the Wal-Mart haters won't get anything more than a smirk from it, since this will only force Wal-Mart to limit future raises and benefits and to raise prices on consumers.
It sure doesn't help the gray-migrants who come here by the droves with the idea that they can find work, if not exactly on the up and up. They will now have to look harder to find work, even though they're willing to work difficult or unpleasant menial jobs.
And it doesn't help businesses ( and therefore it doesn't help consumers), who will now have to contend with a more aggressive Justice Department and will have to stiffen their compliance efforts on even contracted employees or risk being sued for the malfeasance of others. I mean, Wal-Mart is getting a huge fine because they OUGHT to have known, since the actual law-breaking was done by the contractors. Maybe Wal-Mart executives did know or have an idea, and maybe they probably should have put two and two together when they saw how low the contract bids were, but the fact is that this move will only force companies to pay more accountants and lawyers to cover their asses on immigration compliance.
It's raising the cost of doing business, if only marginally, and that negatively affects employees, consumers or both.
I realize that immigration is still often a crime, but maybe we ought to realize that it shouldn't be so heavily punished. It is interesting that the Justice Department will fine employers for letting those dirty migrant workers clean toilets and mop floors but the Homeland Security Department can't be bothered to stop them from coming in. After all, the argument against Wal-Mart is that they OUGHT to have known, but the Homeland Security Department DOES know many migrants are coming across the border and yet doesn't stop it. Maybe the government ought to sue itself.
The Right and Immigration
by neolibertarian
lgf
What is the obsession of some people with immigration? It's weird, because people who otherwise seem at least somewhat clear-headed and focused on reasonable goals, achievable objectives and long-term solvency are incapable of seeing the irrelevance, futility and counter-productivity of focusing on Hispanic immigration. It goes beyond reasonable objections and extends into basic fear - fear of the uncontrolled and the dissimilar.
Your basic Hispanic immigrant isn't a terrorist. Is anyone making the argument that Hispanics represent a heightened terrorist threat than, say, Germans or Spanish? The truth is, though, this has nothing to do with terrorism. The campaign to keep out Mexicans predates 9/11 by leaps and bounds. It's just that the uncertainty and anger over 9/11 are being manipulated to turn anger at Islamists into hatred or rejection of millions of other foreigners. It's not working, however.
This isn't about security; it's about culture, religion, race, language and change in general. If you are concerned about the impact of immigration policy on security, then there's on obvious reform: legalize almost all of it, so that practically every Mexican crossing the border illegally will go through the checkpoints - to be processed, licensed and screened. Although it would take a lot of administrative funding to process them all, this policy would let us know who has a criminal record and let us screen people for being on various watchlists. The result would be that the remaining border agents could patrol for criminals and terrorists trying to cross illegally - and there would be a much improved ratio of agents to crossers.
Instead of the sane approach of regulation over prohibition, you've got various groups, such as Project Minuteman, that are essentially immigration vigilantes. This is nothing new, but it's the idea of a private citizen reporting an illegal alien to the INS for pick-up and deportation. President Bush called them vigilantes, but I think I'd demote them to something more like "tattle-tales." Sure, maybe it's legal, but we have to ask a few questions - is it helpful and productive for the rest of us (as they will no doubt claim, martyrs' crosses hoisted on their backs).
I believe they do it for cultural reasons. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and believe they're not racists. But is this really helping our security? Not really. If they want to stop street crime then they could join and organize a neighborhood watch. If they want to make sure English is the primary language of America then they could volunteer to teach English as a second language at community centers and junior colleges. If they are just trying to point out law-breakers, as they often claim, why don't they sit on lawn chairs at a busy stoplight and write down all the license plates of speeders?
Maybe some of them genuinely think they're doing something about terrorism. Any honest assessment of the question will show this is not a expeditious way to stop terrorism, or to help your community. More likely, they're keeping America safe from would-be janitors, maids and day workers - simply for speaking a different Indo-European language and believing in Jesus in a slightly different way. It just strikes me as incredibly petty and misguided.
Want to stop terrorists from crossing the borders? Get rid of thousands of Mexicans that are acting as cover. A few terrorists could hide in a border full of illegal crossers, because the agents are busy. A few terrorists have a lot more trouble hiding when all the peaceful immigrants are going through the checkpoints, and the agents have a lot fewer people taking their attention.
Want to help the country or your community? Don't waste time following the border or staring at immigrants' houses through binoculars. Volunteer for a hospital or a civic center or a neighborhood watch. There are plenty of ways to provide real help to others. This is, I would suggest, not one of them.
America, meanwhile, is better served letting peaceful immigrants work instead of hiding in the shadows and letting border agents focus on terrorists instead of migrant workers.
Immigration Again
by neolibertarian
link (tip to IP)
The immigration debate has a major problem. That problem is found in the four values of the post above, specifically the fourth one:
"Preservation of traditional values"
Immigration policy should not be a social, religious or moral litmus test. We should not try and pick the white, European Protestants before the black, African animists. Social values like these do not belong in the debate, because it's so subjective and prone to abuse. Even when not abused, doesn't that violate the whole reason behind America?
We're supposed to be the place to come when you've been persecuted for your beliefs. If we start excluding people for their beliefs and practices, when non-violent, how are we any better than 17th century Europe?
It's not only legitimate but mandatory to include security in the immigration debate. Rule of law is also an ever-important subject for all matters of US policy. National cohesion, in my opinion, is an incredibly shaky concept that could be a decent basis for policy but in matters like immigration all too often turns into a fancy word for keeping out dark-skinned folks. I'm not suggesting that the above author is racist, because I have no reason to think that. I am suggesting that 'national cohesion' is not an easy thing to direct and that it is prone to negative implications, even if the author here has no such thing in mind. After all, if everybody looked, talked, walked, thought and acted the same it stands to reason in some people's minds we'd be more cohesive than were the opposites all true.
If security and rule of law are the two legitimate concerns then there's a simple and critical two-part answer to both: dramatically increase legal immigration caps and normalize relations with existing legal immigrants.
Along our southern border, we ought to encourage immigrants to use the existing border passage sites. On the borders now, let's assume that the ratio of migrants to agents is 100 to 1. I don't know the real number, but that's irrelevant for this hypothetical. If it is currently a 100:1 ratio, then let's factor in dramatically legalized migration through the southern border. Suddenly the crossings are full and the border itself is empty. Just as a wild guess, let's say that Mexicans and others quickly realize that they can go safely through a crossing instead of sneaking through the fence - the ratio on the border drops wildly to 10:1 or 5:1 - or even lower. Why would anyone cross illegally now unless he has terrorist connections or a felony record?
Now, I don't have evidence of that, but if that did happen, it would be the equivalent of hiring ten or twenty times as many agents, and buying ten or twenty times as much fuel, vehicles and choppers. Except it would cost the same price. Those that couldn't come over legally would be a lot easier to nab because the agents would be patrolling the area instead of rounding up the same illegals over and over every week.
They should be catching Islamist terrorists from Al Qaeda or Hamas, not would-be farm hands from Chihuahua or Coahuila.
This plan would require increased funds, though. To make sure migrants continued to use the crossings, we'd have to make sure it could process them speedily. That means a hefty investment in facilities, manpower and administrative support for INS clerks and bureaucrats at or near the border. We also need to make sure INS has the resources to identify and hold a terrorist trying to migrate peacefully into the US.
I'd propose an additional solution: spreading the Hispanic immigrants around by bus. This way the cultural isolation that afflicts migrant groups will be broader but shallower instead of narrower and deeper. More relevantly, it would avoid saturating the unskilled labor markets of CA, NM, AZ and TX. We want them to come in and work, but too many in one place will make that difficult. If we don't bus them though, they'll likely move themselves; people who crossed the border for work won't bat an eye at changing states for it.
I just can't sympathize with the wildly anti-immigrant (as opposed to anti-immigration) position. Almost all the Mexicans coming over the border just want to work and live better lives. Mexico sucks and they come here for wealth, happiness, security, prosperity, and so forth. They enjoy much better lives here. How are the poor, bedraggled, Catholics Mexicans coming here for work possibly worse than the poor, bedraggled, Catholic Irish coming here for work?
Most come ready and willing to work hard, long hours often at multiple jobs that most Americans are unwilling to perform. What's the problem with the picture, that they worship the same God in a slightly different manner in a different building? That they speak a different Western European, Latin-influenced language?
We already have free trade with these people - why will we accept Mexican-made goods made in Mexico but not Mexican-made goods made in the US? That seems awfully backwards from a nativist perspective.
I think for entirely too many social conservatives the immigration debate HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SECURITY and everything to do with culture, tradition, borders and most especially language. If they really cared about security they'd let the peaceful, hard-working Mexicans through so that we can focus more of our agents' energies on Al Qaeda crazies.
I propose we let Hispanic immigrants in to work after screening for violent felonies on their records. We should normalize relations with existing illegals, allowing them to come to various bureaucratic branches to go through the screening process and become citizens. Then we should increase funding to the agents emphasizing sweeping patrols across the border and we should dramatically increase administrative budgets for border crossings so that we can process and properly screen any new arrivals. This process will be like ending alcohol Prohibition - the illegal activity (whether booze or migrants) will go from completely-unregulated organized crime to government-screened legal activity.
We can get a lot more done through regulation than restriction. We don't need to turn the border into a moat; we just need to think critically about what we're doing.
