TheAgitator.com
On Living With Immigrants
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008I’m seeing a lot from the comments section about how people who defend illegal immigrants “don’t actually have to live with them.”
I’ll go ahead and call bullshit, here. Ryan Sager wrote a nice piece back in 2006 pointing out that, in fact, the regions of the country most hostile to immigrants (legal or otherwise) tend to be the areas with the fewest immigrants. And American citizens who actually live among higher concentrations of immigrants tend to have much higher opinions of them. There are exceptions, like Prince William County, Virginia. But in general, exposure to immigrants tends to demystify them.
I happen to live in the Chirilagua area of Alexandria, Virginia, home to the largest Salvadoran population in the U.S. The only time I‘ve ever felt unsafe in my neighborhood was after an unfortunate altercation with a U.S. citizen, not an immigrant. In fact, regular exposure to immigrants (and yes, most of the immigrants in my neighborhood are illegal) has only made me more fond of them. They work hard. They’re exceedingly polite. They want a better life for their kids. They sell delicious pupusas. What’s not to like?
If there’s been some massive drain on Alexandria’s public health system, I haven’t felt it. We’ve had no outbreak of disease, and despite an influx of immigrants over the last decade, Alexandria’s one of the safest cities in the country. Violent crime is up over the last five years, but only marginally. It’s still about even with the state average, which is pretty impressive for an urban area. Property crime is actually down. (Speaking of which, guess which big, immigrant-heavy city consistently ranks as one of the 2-3 safest in the country?)
This isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of people who live with illegals and who also hate them. For whatever reason. All I’m saying is the “you only defend illegals because you’ve never had to live with them” argument is crap. I do live with them. And it has only reinforced my opinion that we ought to open our doors to more low-wage workers. And cut a break for those already here.
Here in Houston the community is very well integrated and generally without racial drama, and the hispanic population (this generation’s immigrant boogyman of choice) is huge. The little animosity I do see seems to come from the more insulated suburbs.
Hate to generalize but the immigrants here tend to be hard-working and self-reliant to a much larger extent than the native poor population. We have a huge population under the poverty line, and not much of a welfare system (Katrina is helping change that though).
I lived in a community with a huge Mexican population. Yes, the crime rate went up. The schools went down. There’s nothing like large numbers of children that don’t speak English, little interest in learning it, and high gang membership to ruin a school system.
Many are good hardworking people that work two and three jobs. That means their kids are on their own. Because standards are different back home, they think nothing of having three families with children living in a three bedroom home. Several cars in the yard. It does wonders for property values anywhere nearby.
I’m sure they’re nice people, Radley, but why are they here, at all?
It used to be that the best thing about America was, that we had cheap land and expensive labor.
Nowadays, we’re getting expensive land and cheap labor. Have a lot of money invested in real estate, do you?
Sorry Radster, you don’t live along the border … it’s still very different. And I’m sorry to stereotype, but Central Americans (El Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc) have a very different mindset than Mexican Illegal Immigrants who a lot of the time believe the “this is really OUR land” crap (ignoring the Native Americans that were here long before there WAS a Mexico). Illegals who have moved away from the border aren’t exactly the same as those who remain in the southwest. And I don’t disagree that many of them are hard working (much better work ethic than most of the poor in this country without a doubt). But if we throw out the drug dealers and criminals, the common analogy I’d use is this:
Let’s say someone breaks into your house while you’re on vacation. They damage your window or door to get in, they pretend to be you and they make themselves at home. They ALSO: take really good care of your house, clean it, take care of the lawn, act nice to your neighbors, etc. When you come home, do you just let them stay? If you can answer yes to that, then I guess we’ll just never agree on the issue.
I also have to disagree with you on this one. You’ve made up your mind on the subject and adopted the “I don’t see it so it can’t be real” attitude.
Trust your readers who have seen the problems firsthand that support legal immigration while detesting illegal immigration. There is a growing horde of us out there.
And yes, this is coming from a legal immigrant.
I live in Los Angeles, a city near the border with a very large immigrant population, and second what Radley said. Nearly everyone in my neighborhood is an immigrant (about 60% Korean/40% Latino), and every single one of them is a better person _and a better American_ than the filthy white racist garbage that flock to threads like this.
On a side note Radster, my wife is Honduran and I love stuff like Pupusas too … If you do ever go to the southwest, try to go to a Central (or South) American restaurant. The food is very different (and much better IMO) than the standard Mexican food (which is on like every corner here). Of course, you went to Argentina so I guess you know this …
And thanks for calling me ‘filthy white racist garbage’ Ken … that really helps the discussion. Did you pay attention to my post about the fact that the BIGGEST opposers to illegal immigrants are the ‘legal’ ones. You’re like these intellectually dishonest people who just call people ‘racist’ and ‘anti-immigrant’ rather than stick to the ‘legal/illegal’ part. What percentage of that Korean and Latino population is legal? That’s what I thought.
“the filthy white racist garbage that flock to threads like this”
Ken, dont sugar coat it buddy. Tell us how u really feel about us. Quit holding back. Thanks.
Funny thing is about people who claim to be “pro-legal/anti-illegal” immigration is that usually it’s a complete load. Ask a lot of them about tripling the quota for people from other countries to get into the States and they can’t start frothing at the mouth fast enough about “welfare thieves”, “undesirables” and arguments about how we need to preserve our “culture”.
As for legal immigrants who use how they were treated as justification to continue restrictive immigration practices, it’s the worst form of hypocrisy (and, actually, protectionism). “The government screwed me over so they should screw him over too” is not a rational reason to continue any policy…particularly one as flawed and economically disastrous as our government’s immigration policy.
houston is “very well integrated”, htown guy?
odd. in the 15 years i lived there, i never saw much of that. i drove a truck for UPS; my center was the ‘inner city’ one. pretty much the entire loop, north and east of downtown, was all black and had been so for decades. the hispanics were moving in when i left – denver harbor was a hispanic enclave, along with the 77009 and heights area – but white folks were few and far between. take a drive out to kashmere or forest brook highs someday, see what you see.
and the 3rd ward. and the 4th ward. (would you like to break down after dark near TSU?) and acres homes. etc etc etc.
by the time i left way back when, sharpstown – once an all-american city – was well on it’s way to becoming the state’s biggest barrio. with the attendant high crime rate.
the reason houston is “generally without racial drama” is because most folks know to avoid the hellhole sections of town. AND because htown citizens have a well-earned reputation for being armed.
still, that WAS quite the sneaky racist attack on blacks there, htown. (”the immigrants are more hard-working and self-reliant than the native poor population.”) given that houston’s “native” poor are overwhelmingly black, it would seem you’re wrong AND racist. interesting.
I live in Long Beach California and find that the integration of our neighborhoods only adds to the experience of living here. In addition, my wife is a teacher at a school where 99% of the students are Latino, and she has found that the parents, illegal and legal, are mostly all supportive of what she is trying to do and their children. Many of her co-workers are the children of illegal immigrants who went to college and became teachers. Do I believe that illegal immigrants should receive benefits from the state? No. But to say immigration, illegal or otherwise, has added nothing positive to our nation’s fabric is untrue.
Overloading local government infrastructure with unbridled immigration would be an economic disaster.
Let’s say someone breaks into your house while you’re on vacation. They damage your window or door to get in, they pretend to be you and they make themselves at home. They ALSO: take really good care of your house, clean it, take care of the lawn, act nice to your neighbors, etc. When you come home, do you just let them stay? If you can answer yes to that, then I guess we’ll just never agree on the issue.
That is still one of the dumbest analogies ever. First, the house’s ownership is not in question. Who “owns” America is a tougher question not anywhere near addressed by such a simplistic view.
Second, and parallel, you have a legitimate objection to their presence only on land you actually own. If you own no land, then you really can’t object that some other land owner wants to share/rent his property to them. I don’t own land in LA, so I don’t object when some apartment owner down there rents to illegals.
Third, leaving the issues of ownership and trespass aside, what happens when, say, the wife wants to kick the intruder out and the husband wants him to stay? Whose demand is most valid when there is equal interest in the outcome AND no majority to rule on it?
we’re supposed to “cut a break for those illegals already here”??
remember that the next time you send in your auto-insurance check. illegals add…what? 10% to the bill? remember that the next time an illegal who of course has no insurance runs a red light and t-bones you. or breaks into your house. and then runs away. back to mexico. it’s alleged the number of outstanding murder warrants in LA county is 80% illegal mexican. por que the link to bucolic, idyllic, burglar-bars-everywhere-in-the-city-even-the-rich-sections-to-thwart-illegals-burglary el paso but not LA?
why is the owner of this blog so hot to hold cops to a “must obey the law” standard, but takes a different tack when it comes to holding illegals to the same standard?
For a good video on legal immigration:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en
Trust your readers who have seen the problems firsthand that support legal immigration while detesting illegal immigration. There is a growing horde of us out there.
I want to be like you, but how can I tell the difference between the legals and illegals? I mean, right now, I pretty much have to hate all the hispanics. Please help me out.
For my part I’d say I have to draw a distinction between how I feel about illegal immigration versus how I feel about illegal immigrants.
On the one hand, as the husband (and sponsor) of a (legal) immigrant, the notion of anything approaching amnesty for people who have bypassed the legal channels to get here pisses me off.
On the other hand, the sheer numbers of people that are by definition illegal makes a pretty compelling argument that there is a supply of labor and a demand for it that no amount of legislating or enforcement is going to get rid of. The current policy of limiting immigration far below the natural equilibrium is neither reasonable nor realistic, and more of the same isn’t going to be any better.
In other words, this is the exact same problem that exists with drug prohibition.
Moreover, I find it difficult to fault people for responding to very, very powerful economic incentives. I’d like to think if I was a poor Mexican I’d have the balls to come here too.
That, and having a decent taco/burrito/torta shop around the corner from my house kicks ass.
Why is it hypocritical for people who went through the trouble of immigrating legally to be annoyed at those who don’t? Since the crooks who come here illegally are jumping in line and effectively delaying the progress of those who are trying to do things legally, I think such annoyance is entirely appropriate.
It seems far more hypocritical for Mexico and people therefrom to complain about U.S. not being friendly enough toward them, when Mexico itself is far more hostile to foreigners. Why is that never mentioned?
Seems to me that Radney was simply relating his experience with immigrants. His experience is similar to mine. I’ve met illegal and legal immigrants and, on balance, they are as hardworking and intelligent–if not more so–than native-born American citizens. Also they often speak better English.
If people really *want* to live here–and are willing to risk their lives–shouldn’t we be proud of that? Shouldn’t we welcome people who are willing to work hard and learn English? Granted, that doesn’t speak for all immigrants–legal and not.
We need to show the world that 9/11 didn’t turn us into sissies scared of our own shadows. Relax immigrant quotas, end the useless and counterproductive War on Drugs, enact the National Sales Tax, and–”Mr President, tear down that wall!”
//I want to be like you, but how can I tell the difference between the legals and illegals? I mean, right now, I pretty much have to hate all the hispanics. Please help me out.//
If legal immigration were restricted to those people willing to make enough effort to learn English as to demonstrate appreciation of their position, do you think the supply of people who were willing to learn English would be insufficient to meet labor demands?
One major principle when a host is deciding whether to accept certain guests is whether the guests will try to accommodate the host, or whether the guests will pressure the host to accommodate them. The former guests should be considered much more welcome.
Thanks for not deleting the posts of those who disagree with you!
@Z
Hate all the white guys you see too because I’m a Canadian immigrant.
The point is not to hate the right people. the point is to fix the system so that:
1) We know who everyone is and have proper records for them.
2) We can remove the person if they turn out to be a detriment to our society.
But it works both ways. If Americans want to immigrate to Mexico or Canada the system should be just as open and easy.
People who want legal immigration instead of illegal immigration want the same type of system that brought the mass immigration waves of the past. We welcome your tired, your hungry, and your huddled masses, but we want to know who the hell you are and a better ability to catch you if you turn into a menace.
Some people on participating in this discussion seem to have a REAL difficulty understanding the difference between “legal” and “illegal” immigration and making a distinction between the two. Also, Ken….just because someone disagrees with you DOES NOT make them a racists and that is a typical, ignorant, unthinking, knee-jerk reaction and the statement reveals MORE about you than the people you are trying to insult.
I’ve lived near the border of Mexico for about 28 of my 34 years on this earth. I really didn’t know there was a real problem with illegal immigration until people started telling me about five years ago. Funny thing was, they were almost all from an area of the country that wasn’t all that close to the border.
My ex-wife worked at a bilingual school that certainly had plenty of illegals, but I never really saw all the issues people complain about. Now, certainly, the first arrivals here all spoke Spanish with very little English. I’m somewhat sympathetic, because it’s hard to learn a language late in life, and it’s difficult to do so when you’re busting your ass trying to make a living. And honestly, if I moved to Germany tomorrow, as much German as I know and as much as I love the culture, I’d still speak English in my house and to my English speaking relatives. Not out of disrespect, but simply because it’s my native language and it’s far easier for me to communicate in it.
I will tell you something about all those immigrants though. Almost without exception, they did not allow their children to speak Spanish. They had fought their way here, risked imprisonment and deportation simply to give their children the chance at a better life. They knew better than anyone that if they didn’t speak English, that better life would be completely denied to them.
It takes people a while to adjust to a new country. I’m sure your ancestors didn’t fit in the second they got off the boat either. I’d also be willing to bet that if English wasn’t their native language, they probably never learned to speak it — even if that was their children’s primary language. There’s a reason for all those German street signs in places like Fredericksburg, Texas and French signs in New Orleans.
“Why is it hypocritical for people who went through the trouble of immigrating legally to be annoyed at those who don’t? Since the crooks who come here illegally are jumping in line and effectively delaying the progress of those who are trying to do things legally, I think such annoyance is entirely appropriate.”
The hypocrasy is that the US changed the immigration laws between now and our grandparent’s generation. My grandparents would certainly be here illegally if todays laws were used in the 1900s instead thier was no concept of illegal immigrant you just showed up and signed the guest book and you were in. They left a situation facing a major famine coming here looking for work. So it does seem a bit hypocritical to now that we don’t let anyone in then claim they have no right to be here.
Further it seems like illegal immigration would actually quicken the progress of those who try to come here legally. We accept ~25000 people anually from Mexico legally. If all the illegals were to sign up on the waiting list then it would slow the progress of those who would only come here legally.
Having lived in that same area, Radley, I concur completely. Frankly, it never even occurred to me to hate them or think of them as any different than my other neighbors. Hell, I don’t even remember asking myself whether any of them were “legal” or “illegal.”
How does one tell?
supercat,
Because it’s not the illegal immigrants’ fault that it was so hard for the legal immigrants to get in. It’s the government’s fault for settling a ridiculously low quota on immigrants in the 60s which we’ve refused to raise despite the fact that immigrant labor is a benefit to us. It’s American citizens’ fault for treating people who want to come to this country for a job like criminals instead of people who wish to be part of our country (national immigration quotas were pretty much nonexistent before the 20th century…when our country experienced its most dynamic growth and became the Land of Opportunity). It’s politicians’ fault for giving into xenophobia and racism all these years for roiling the waters of blatant racism and xenophobia so they can try and influence their voting demographic by energizing their bases and disenfranchising new arrivals (which is what immigration quotas are really all about). It’s labor unions’ fault for trying to keep out competition for jobs so they can keep the price of labor high.
And it’s hypocritical of new immigrants to blame illegal immigrants, since instead of fighting to change things so that the next generation of immigrants doesn’t have to suffer like they did, a common failing of our citizens is to fall back on petty vindictiveness and demand that everyone else should have to suffer under the same stupid laws they do…often so they won’t have to compete with new arrivals for jobs.
Our immigration restrictions are at best just another form of economic protectionism and at worst one of the most vile forms of public racism and discrimination. And legal immigrants should be the first ones to realize why it’s important for those laws to be changed.
There’s no moral objection to the violation of an unjust law, and restrictions on the free movement of people inconsistent with private property ARE unjust laws. “Illegal immigrants” – those who cross the arbitrary, tyrannical borders of governments in search of a better life in opposition to unjust laws are _heroic civil disobedients_. Anyone who counsels obedience to the law because it’s the law, regardless of its virtue, is either a moral infant or coward.
correction: meant “a common failing of our new citizens is to fall back on petty vindictiveness”
I lived in Houston for 5 years myself,and I loved it. Had lots of Hispanic friends and neighbors. A big factor to our perception here is money. The people I knew were legal and made a comparable amount of money to me. That is why we were in the same neighborhood. And my experiences were all positive. And I am only talking a basic middle class neighborhood here, not some country club area. We had good schools etc…and probably at least 50% hispanic, throw in some other minorities and it was definitely less than half white. The whole great neighborhood thing came from equal footing and equal money.
But the fact that everyone was legal is as important as the money. They were not second class citizens. So they were not treated that way. They did not feel that way. They had as much say about everything in the neighborhood as anyone else.
If you are here illegally, then you know you are not in the system. You are off the grid. You have no stake in making the area a better place, because you have no say. No taxes, no vote, no say.
I have no problem with giving Illegals with a job a path to citizenship. But the ones who won’t accept that, and follow it need to go. Because if your very presence here is illegal…you have less incentive to obey the other laws.
Finally, I have a small somantics issue with the phrase “illegal immigrant”. To immigrate is to follow a country’s proper procedures to live in that country legally. Illegal immigrant sounds a lot like ‘illegal legal guy’.
They may be mostly hard workers, and good people, just trying to make a better life. But they are illegal aliens. Until they immigrate. Then they are immigrants. No such thing as an illegal immigrant though.
Anyway, ‘throw them out and keep them out’ is a very poor and nonsensical stance to take. But so is ‘let them stay, they’re nice.’ They need to show that becoming Americans is their goal, not just getting in.
Because it’s not the illegal immigrants’ fault that it was so hard for the legal immigrants to get in.
Who said anything about ‘fault’?
Is there any just reason why someone who has spent a year waiting to come in legally shouldn’t have priority over a criminal who chooses to sneak across the border tomorrow?
If the government wants to first expedite its procedures so all those who are waiting to come in legally get let in, and then if need be let in more people beyond that, that would be fine. As it is, though, the current system keeps out people who should be let in and lets in people who should be kept out.
Finally, I have a small somantics issue with the phrase “illegal immigrant”.
At least it’s better than “undocumented worker”. I wonder why people don’t usually talk about “undocumented pharmacists”, “undocumented inventory adjusters”, “undocumented pyrotechnicians”, “undocumented executioners”, or (my favorite) “undocumented tax collectors”?
Yeah, I second what Balko said. I know a couple guys who entered the country illegally, and I’m humbled by them. They’re the most hard-working upstanding guys I know, and they busted their asses and risked their lives to get here. All I did was get born here. And I should go around thinking I’ve more right to live in this country than they do?
Doubt it.
Those Germans sure did settle down and become good Romans citizens, didn’t they? They just settled down, learned Latin, adopted Roman customs, and didn’t change the culture much.
Why not come out to Herndon, in the area where they proposed that day laborer site, Radley? Oh right, because out here we actually have problems with illegals raping people and killing them with machetes on the W&OD trail.
If it really were a matter of racism, the majority of the women I’ve worked with, ranging from blacks, to asians, to whites, wouldn’t be scared to death of being caught alone near the areas where the Mexican men congregate in Herndon. Not all immigrant populations are cut from the same culture cloth, dude. The Salvidorans are largely non-issue in Alexandria like they are in Harrisonburg on the other side of the state. The Mexicans, well, they’re a WHOLE different story…
“They just settled down, learned Latin, adopted Roman customs, and didn’t change the culture much.”
And it’s a mortal sin to “change the culture?” I can get really great pierogis in Chicago. For this I suppose I should be bitter that a lot of Polish immigrants settled there?
Uh, nobody talks about “illegal pharmacists” or “illegal lawyers” either. Unlicensed, yes. Illegal? Well, no, even if what they are doing is illegal. Let’s not pretend that “illegal immigrant” is any less politicized a phrase than “undocumented worker,” which at least has a basis in the failure of an alien to provide the appropriate papers certifying their “right” (read: the tyrannical government’s illegitimate and unjustified grant of authority) to work in the US. Even so, “undocumented worker” would be over-inclusive (including those who, well, don’t work). The GAO refers to them as “undocumented aliens” anyway (as does, incidentally, the Border Patrol in some places).
But really… who cares? As it turns out, there’s a GREAT reason to allow “illegal” immigrants to live peacefully in the territory currently ruled by the US government before or at the same time as those who bothered to “wait in line” — those immigration restrictions are unjust, immoral, and DESERVE to be ignored, flouted, and broken at every opportunity. They are the tyrannical actions of an immoral government, and deserve no respect.
The Poles integrated pretty well, didn’t they? Many of the Mexicans coming here have no desire to integrate into our culture. No more so than many of the German tribes wanted to integrate into Roman culture. Most libertarians of the sort who come here are entirely focused in their libertarianism on themselves, not giving a damn about preserving the culture in which libertarianism itself came into existence in, so I’m not surprised that you have such a flippant attitude toward preserving the fundamentals of the culture. This isn’t about food, but about a shift in cultural and political values from American to Mexican in many parts of the country. It’s ironic that Balko posts something about how the media cannot get it when it comes to demanding government action, but he and most of you cannot get the idea that maybe it’s bad for our culture to take in wave after wave of people from a fairly collectivist, corrupt culture. Just look at what is happening to Europe with the Muslim immigrants not only refusing to adapt to Europe, but are starting to impose their own values. Europe is a counter-example to the argument that waves of immigrants are non-issue with respect to sharply collectivist changes in the culture.
As to why I fully support controlled immigration, it’s rather simple. All individual rights can be exercised collectively. If every member of a community can protect their own home, if they are the majority, they can band together to protect their collective territory. No individual right is lost when individuals want to band together to exercise it. Restricting immigration is just a natural, collective extension of individual property rights. The American people, as a whole, own the United States. While we may not have claim to each other’s property, as a whole, we have every right to tell foreigners that they cannot come here.
“The Mexicans, well, they’re a WHOLE different story…”
Yes, all Mexicans are bad. Just admit your a racist and this thread will go a lot smoother.
#32 Mike T:
Neither I nor you have any legitimate right to dictate to our neighbors what their language, customs or culture should be. Free people in a free society make those kinds of choices for themselves.
“Restricting immigration is just a natural, collective extension of individual property rights.”
Bullshit. If Juan from Mexico City wants to be a tenant in Ted’s apartment (and Ted wants him to live there), and work in Wally’s factory (and Wally wants him to work there), and buy coffee and donuts every day at Sally’s Coffee Shop (and Sally wants him to buy coffee and donuts there) — WHOSE property rights are being respected by intercepting, detaining, and deporting Juan? Nobody’s. In fact, multiple peoples’ are being violated.
“The American people, as a whole, own the United States. While we may not have claim to each other’s property, as a whole, we have every right to tell foreigners that they cannot come here.”
Er… no. The “American people” do NOT “own” the US. Under no plausible Lockean or Rothbardian or Tuckerite theory of property rights can people acquire legitimate title to property simply because they are the victims of theft and the beneficiary of government coercion. There are vast, vast tracks of land within the Continental US which is, under any coherent and justifiable theory of property rights _absolutely unowned by anybody_ because nobody has bothered to mix their labor with the land enough to legitimately claim it.
seems to me we need more freedom and this will sort itself out… school vouchers, with the money attached to the student, instead of going to the monopolistic school district, would address many concerns here about immigration.
get govt out of health care and let the market work it out.
legalize drugs and the illegal drug trade collapses.
As it is, we’re restricting our movement by clamping down on the borders, creating a bigger black market by restricting and over-taxing cigarettes, and forcing more and more people (citizens and non-citizens) underground because of all the vice laws.
Every era has demonized some nationality of immigrant (Ben Franklin was anti-German) and we’ve never suffered because of immigrants. We only suffer when the govt stifles us with ridiculous laws and high taxes.
say, how does mexico treat ITS illegal aliens? last i checked, they’re pretty rough on them. toss them in jail. beat ‘em up. deport ‘em. don’t let ‘em get jobs. or rent a place to live. they DAMN sure don’t offer ‘em a menu of social services.
why do they do that, i wonder? it’s almost as if they seem to think that since they’re a sovereign nation and all, that they should protect and defend their borders and eject *all* those who are there illegally. as if they expect all those on mexican soil to adhere to mexican law.
is that relevant?
No, it’s not. North Korea does a lot of things too that are irrelevant. Just because Mexico treats it’s illegal immigrants terribly doesn’t mean we should. It’s not a hard concept at all.
The legal/illegal thing is ridiculous. A good steak is a good steak long before the USDA stamps it so. A cancer drug works or it doesn’t long before it’s submitted to the FDA.
Further I don’t particularly believe being born on either side of an imaginary line entitles me or prohibits me from benefit XYZ. Most complaints in this category can be addressed with welfare and labor law reform.
The tagging and tracking argument is laughable. Remember the rousing success of the terrorist watch list? Me either. Imagine a giant clusterf*ck like the terror watch list but 30 million people in length. P.S. Your papers please Comrade.
h, nobody talks about “illegal pharmacists” or “illegal lawyers” either. Unlicensed, yes. Illegal? Well, no, even if what they are doing is illegal. Let’s not pretend that “illegal immigrant” is any less politicized a phrase than “undocumented worker,” which at least has a basis in the failure of an alien to provide the appropriate papers certifying their “right” (read: the tyrannical government’s illegitimate and unjustified grant of authority) to work in the US.
Someone with the proper documentation (personal credentials and a certified death warrant) is allowed to commit homicide with malice aforethought. So why use the ugly term “murderer” when “undocumented executioner” would be just as appropriate? Likewise, why use terms like “drug dealer”, “shoplifter”, or “robber”? All of those activities are legal in certain circumstances.
An illegal alien is not someone who has a right to live in the U.S. but misplaced some paperwork. Illegal aliens have no right to live or work in the U.S. Their problem isn’t that they can’t document their right–it’s that they have no such right in the first place.
Of course, if the government weren’t making it impossible to hire on-the-books employees for anything near the cost of off-the-books employees, a lot of Americans would be willing to do the jobs they supposedly “won’t do”. But if an illegal alien is willing to do a job for $5/hour tax/FICA free, how can a citizen compete with that?
Ryan’s original analysis (in the linked article) leaves a little to be desired in my opinion.
He cites the favorable views of illegal immigrants in states with lots of them. But it only makes sense that in a place like Colorado with lots of second-generation Mexican families, the next generation of Mexican families would be less likely to be seen as a problem – legal or illegal. Is 53% (South Carolina) of people who illegal aliens as a problem really that different from Colorado (44%) when you consider their populations?
I happen to agree with his conclusions, but I think he gets there for the wrong reasons.
“The raw Irishman in America is a nuisance, his son a curse. They never assimilate; the second generation simply shows an intensification of all the bad qualities of the first. . . .They are a burden and a misery to this country.” — _Puck_, 7 June 1882 (http://museum.cl.msu.edu/Exhibitions/Virtual/ImmigrationandCaricature/7572-225.html) Mexicans will defy such expectations just as the Irish did, as long as we don’t make it too hard for them to be stakeholders in our society.
I agree with Lant Pritchett (http://reason.com/news/show/123912.html): The immigration regime we have now is neither fair nor legitimate. Mexico in particular is subject to such an absurdly low immigration quota that there is no way for the vast majority of _skilled_ applicants to get in legally, never mind the unskilled who subsidize American lifestyles with their cheap labor. It’s no good to complain “but they broke the law!” when an arbitrary and unjust law, enacted by people completely out of touch with reality, makes it practically impossible for them to enter the country legally.
“Someone with the proper documentation (personal credentials and a certified death warrant) is allowed to commit homicide with malice aforethought. So why use the ugly term “murderer” when “undocumented executioner” would be just as appropriate? Likewise, why use terms like “drug dealer”, “shoplifter”, or “robber”? All of those activities are legal in certain circumstances.”
I’m not sure how any of that is supposed to aid your terminological support… since we don’t refer to any of THOSE people as “illegal murderers,” “illegal drug dealers,” or “illegal shoplifters.” Apparently, only those guilty of the crime of disobeying tyrannical national-boundary apartheid are worthy of the title “illegals.”
But of course, what would be far more interesting than an inane terminological dispute is a legitimate moral argument as to why the US government has any right whatsoever to utilize coercion against innocent people to keep them on one side of an arbitrarily drawn line against the wishes of willing property owners, employers, etc and so on.
I’m beginning to think you should have left comments turned off.
The good news is I guess your site is reaching a wide audience. It seems libertarians ( small l, big L, leaners, and otherwise) are a minority here these days.
Just the average immigrant bashing ( scapegoating), big government type of people you would find on AOL and any general place “on the internet” that allows comments.
At least there are a few “‘good guys” around though.
I have lived, worked, and drank with Mexicans. They are not bad neighbors. I currently live in an area with a large Somoli and East African population. None are that bad, but if you compare the cultures of Mexico to that of Africa, the Mexicans are really a lot like us (regular Americans (Archie Bunker))
There is a problem with illegal immigrants. There is a problem with immigrants trying to be legal- it’s too damn hard. We need immigration reform. BUT we need to do 2 things:
1. Make it easy as hell for a legal immigrant to be here (opposite of prohibition)
2. Get rid of subsidies for immigrants (then mostly everyone)
I’m a small-gov’t conservative. Live in TN, and understand the red state people. I’m mad too. BUT they’ve been misled that the options are get rid of em OR give em amnesty. We need to switch the debate to – How can we make it easy for the ones who want to do it legally. Once that happens, we can crack down on those doing it illegally. It’s a lot like prohibition- we’re focusing everyone including on small time pot-smokers instead of the killers. Now we’re focusing on everyone including hard-working honest people. We need to make it damn easy for them- then worry about the killers/terrorists, etc.
ahhh, so we’re being too hard on the poor illegals – despite being orders of magnitudes nicer to them than their home country is to *their* illegals.
so why then not just pass a law? making ALL immigration uncontrolled and unregulated? why not just do that? while we’re at it, since we all claim to be for freedom and liberty, why not eliminate all laws and regulations forbidding the use and sale of heroin/crack/meth? and silenced, full-automatic weapons? eliminate public schools? eliminate social security? eliminate driver licensing and auto registrations? eliminate government mandated racial quotas for hiring and education? those laws ARE restrictions upon our god-given freedoms, just like the mean ol’ laws making wetbacks illegal, are they not?
no? don’t wanna do that?
why is it ok to be for enforcing THOSE laws, but not the laws restricting the illegals? can y’all BE more hypocritical? if you’re going to hold up “The Law” (cue soaring orchestral theme) as a mighty, good, high powered religion, then ya gotta hold up ALL the laws.
why isn’t that happening here?
to e. brown (#52): I am actually for elliminating most laws forbidding the use and sale of heroin/crack/meth (except perhaps where those laws concern sale to minors); I would probably also get rid of those laws against silenced, full-automatic weapons, and I’ve often thought that driver licensing was unneccessary (not sure about auto registrations), and I tend to lean against “racial quotas for hiring and education.” But, what’s your point? Do I have to be an anarchist to oppose our inane immigration laws?
And you know what, I DON’T think it’s OK to be enforcing drug laws and other laws that I think are unjust. So, I’m no hypocrite when I say that I count most immigration restrictions among those laws which I think are unjust and thus ought to not be enforced.
The law is often just an excuse for blind obidience to tyrrany. So, no, I’m not going to hold up “The Law” as something to be revered. Unjust laws deserve no respect. Period. There is no hypocracy here.
Um, e. brown? Quick tip. Reductio ad absurdum usually works best when you offer absurd suggestions. Are you new here?
Personally, I’m in favor of keeping driver’s licenses (at least I haven’t been completely convinced that they should be abolished), but that’s about it.
And someone with better knowledge of firearms help me out here: a silenced, fully-automatic weapon is a technical impossibility, right?
where did i call for anarchy, s? once upon a time, there existed a country that had no laws governing/regulating heroin/cocaine/meth; or military-style light weapons; that didn’t think a state-issued piece of paper was required to drive a vehicle; had no social security; had no medicare; had no racial quotas; and – in its past – had no government-run public schools or immigration laws, either.
that place was the USA, up until 1913 or so.
whatever labels america was described with back then, “a hotbed of anarchy” wasn’t one of them. we had (probably) 80% fewer laws on the books, but by and large those laws were enforced. civilian control of the military; small decentralized government; orderly transfers of elected power; ….. no anarchists here, boss.
i tried to say 3 things in that post:
1) we have waaaay too many laws – because the state learned that lots of laws is an excellent way to control the people.
2) obeying those laws is a choice everyone makes. if you decide not to obey them, the state will make an example of you – see ‘branch davidians’; or ‘carl drega’ – but *if you make the decision that laws should be followed*, then you’re supposed to follow them all. you don’t get to pick and choose. that’s not the way the system works.
3) since illegal immigration is against the law, it is incumbent upon law-abiding citizens – and the country that passed those laws – to follow the law. so just as cops shouldn’t be allowed to shoot little old ladies in drug raids, neither should illegal aliens be allowed to stay, much less live and work here.
your line about “no blind obedience to tyranny” was quite moving and all that, but i find it odd that lines like that are carelessly bandied about when discussing illegal aliens; and almost *never* spoken when the topic is selling heroin to schoolkids. or refusing to pay social security. or willfully discriminating against people based on the color of their skin. i’m sure there are folks who think those laws are unjust and tyrannical. should we sympathize with them when they break/ignore those laws? is someone who enslaves african-americans because they believe “all laws written after the war of northern aggression are unjust” an admirable person?
so where do you draw the line, s? who gets to say a given law is “unjust”, and therefore worthy of disobedience? since that’s impossible to know, it’s necessary to enforce ALL laws, otherwise you end up with….(drum roll)… anarchy.
i’m the guy who’s wanting the duly-enacted laws to be duly enforced. the “let’s cut the illegals some slack” crowd is evidently heading off to pick-and-choose land. so who’s the anarchist here, s?
um, madtom? quick tip: read the post. i DID “offer suggestions”. i “suggested” that the laws on the books relating to ‘immigration’ and the ‘legal right to work here be followed and enforced’, just like they are against american citizens. did you miss that?
Yeah. But you suggested that we support those laws and not immigration laws.
Not that the legal opinions of the readership of this site can be reduced to one set of opinions. But the general attitude of the libertarian mindset is that all of those laws are bad ideas and should be repealed.
Or maybe your tone set me off (you came off a little snotty*). Who can tell?
*As did I.
“snotty”, eh? like when someone calls your statement – making sure to use your name – a pointless reductio ad absurdum deal, and then condescendingly asks, “are you new here?”
you mean like that, ol’ buddy?
PS – no, i want folks to either follow either ALL or NONE of the laws. if they’re going to choose “follow”, i most definitely want them to follow the immigration laws. i have this crazy notion that illegal aliens should be held to AT LEAST the same standards of law-abidingness (hey! a new word!) that american citizens are held to and held accountable for.
Hi e. brown. Yes, in the 17yrs I’ve lived here in the ‘burbs, the Medical Center (before it cleaned up), Sharpestown (that area is doomed for a while longer), and Midtown (between the 3rd and 4th wards you tremble about), it has been a relatively (compared to other parts of the country I’ve lived in) racially harmonious.
Yes, there are discernable enclaves of particular races around Houston. Though some of the ones you witnessed are changing. The Heights is 50% yuppie new residents (mostly white and hispanic), 50% long-term-residents (mostly hispanic).
The 3rd and 4th ward are horribly poor places. And no, I’d not want to break down near TSU, not even armed. That has nothing to do with the racial composition (the area is mostly black, but my neighborhood is 20-30% black. Difference is around TSU it is 100% incredibly poor and dense)
I agree that place is extremely crime-ridden, but you picked a bad example racially. It is packed with white, brown, and black folks in significant numbers each. I used to live there and never had a problem myself, but the shootings are common. Like TSU though, you could live in Houston for a lifetime and avoid those places easily (unless you’re a UPS driver)
There are only a few ‘hellhole sections of town’ in this massive, massive city, and one of them you named is pretty racially diverse. The vast majority of the city is very safe and very friendly. And very ethnically diverse. Yes, Chinatown is mostly Chinese folks, the Hilcroft area is mostly Indian, etc. But that’s not remotely a racial issue.
I’ll bet you felt welcome in every part of the city you delivered to (except TSU after dark, see suffocating poverty comments earlier), without even knowing your ethnicity.
Not racist, just commenting on the fact that people who worked hard to get into the country seem to work harder than those who’ve been here a while, regardless of race. After a while folks seem to succomb to the notion that government should feed you and wipe your ass.
If you are old enough to remember back 40 or more years ago, you might recall how proud the USA was of it’s “thousands of miles of open borders, north and south”. Can you envision a future where a president of Mexico or Canada says ,to the USA president at the time, “Mr. So,and,so, tear down this wall !” Is the wall that we build ,meant to keep others out,or us…in? What future? you may ask. We were once great but are now afraid, very afraid.
supercat,
Actually, the better question to ask would be is there any reason that someone who wants to come to the U.S. for a job and a better life should have to wait for a year to come in?
As for the illegal immigrants being criminals…I don’t consider somebody a criminal for violating an unjust law. And our immigration laws are about as unjust as you get.
e. brown,
Actually, MadTom owned up to his snottiness (he added it to the end of his comment). As for asking if you’re new here, this is a site most often frequented by libertarians. Trying to claim that we should support immigration laws because it will undermine respect for anti-drug laws, affirmative action quotas, public schools and all of the other examples you named isn’t going to sell your point here because a great number of us think those things should be abolished along with the immigration restrictions.
And “Reductio ad absurdum” isn’t an insult…it’s just a description of a debating tactic that uses an absurd or extreme example or position to try and demonstrate the absurdity of your opponent’s position (which is what I think you were trying to do in support of immigration). What MadTom was pointing out, thought, is that this tactic isn’t effective when your audience and your opponent don’t consider your example or position absurd. Abolishing all of those things you mentioned isn’t absurd to libertarians so it’s not an effective tactic in this debate.
@ #45 Ragnar
The tagging and tracking tools employed by immigration are not laughable if used properly.
When I immigrated to the US I submitted fingerprint records and a photo. Facial recognition and fingerprinting are valid tools for law enforcement. I agree that just Visa’s are not if you referring to that type of tracking.
I also had to have documented immunization records. Since I didn’t have a copy of my records I had to receive immunization again. Simple, cheap and it ensures I won’t be putting the public health at jeopardy.
The reason I support fingerprinting and even DNA sampling for immigrants is because I am coming to the door asking for something. I believe that a nation has every right to protect it’s borders and if I want to come in to a nation that is not my own I must abide by the laws of that nation.
This is why the legal process is important. Public health and public safety. Will it protect us from wacko terrorists? No, very little will despite what the government tries to tell you. But it will prevent me from spreading Small Pox and if I snap and go off the deep end, the police might be able to get a picture of who they are looking for when a match comes up on my fingerprints.
Any silenced firearm is an impossibility. a fully automatic SUPPRESSED firearm is something else entirely.
As far as this thread is concerned, I’m with e.brown. Follow the damn laws! If you think a law is unjust, then you have the duty to have it changed. Our problem is that we have too many people who just don’t give a damn. These are the ones who are too busy or don’t want to be bothered with voting. These are the whiners who say “My vote doesn’t count anyway.”. I have to wonder how many of those people have posted on this subject. I was reading an article that states “Out of all of the people elegible to vote, only 72% are registered. Out of these 72% only 65% of them vote.”. My math might be a little rusty, but I think that comes out to about 46%. Less than half! I don’t know what the solution to the immigration problem should be. The part that bothers me is that these people broke our laws in coming here. I don’t care if you think that the law is wrong, it is the law. My concern is that they violated our laws once when it didn’t suit them, what reason do I have to believe that they won’t break other laws when it suits them? You don’t like the law? Fine, work to change it. That’s how it is supposed to be done, but until then it is the law.
I have defended immigration. I have argued that people who are “anti-illegal-immigration” are also anti-immigration in general. I have argued that the economic arguments against immigration both legal and illegal are weak to non-existent. I have argued that given the horrid outlook of Social Security and Medicare we actually need lots and lots more immigration. I also live in Southern California, near Los Angeles. Which means I live near lots and lots of immigrants, legal and illegal. Hell, my wife is an immigrant (legal), as is my next door neighbors wife, the neighbor’s wife down the street. This argument is offensive and irrelevant, and anyone making it is a complete an utter intellectual light weight.
See what I mean. Total intellectual non-entity there. They are here because of the wage differentials between the U.S. and Mexico and other Central and Latin American countries.
Funny, housing prices are on the decline.
No, he lives in DC which has its own large immigrant population. Again, another person who is ignorant.
The United States is not your private property. Hence your analogy is faulty.
Again, intellectually we see a complete vacuum here.
Ugghh.
Bingo. That is when the ugly truth starts to come out. They argue, “They are breaking the law! We don’t know which are terrorists and which just want a better life! We need to stop the illegal immigration!” So I propose large increases in the quotas for legal immigration, background checks, etc. and that is when the Bravo Sierra economic arguments come out about how we can’t let them in. Bottom line, these people are usually just simply anti-immigration.
They’ve violated a law that isn’t violent, doesn’t cause any direct harm to others. These people are alot like recreational drug users, or people who violated the prohibition of alcohol laws during the 1920’s and 30’s. Are they a menace to society on the whole? No. Are you a dope? Yeah.
Steve,
That’s the other thing that kind of offends me about a lot of the anti-immigration crowd. They seem to be operating under the assumption that they’ll just come here, suck up jobs, never spend a cent in the U.S. and never contribute. The more immigrants and citizens we have, however, the bigger our tax base and the more money that gets put in to pay off all these gawdawful debts that have gotten wracked up. Immigrants aren’t just cheap labor, they’re our salvation once the bill comes due for the debts the Bush administration has wracked up fighting their idiotic war in Iraq.
Wow, I guess this thread took off … still happy you turned comments back on Radley? :)
I think we’ve come back (as we always seem to with pure libertarians) to the ‘ideal’ verses ‘reality’ problem:
A lot of you are arguing about ‘lines drawn on a map’, ‘tyrannical government’, and ‘unjust laws’ which is all well and good but the fact is we DON’T live in a libertarian paradise where the taxes are tiny and just cover the bare minimum like defense and some infrastructure. We live in a world where law-abiding people like me, are paying unfairly through taxes for services for other people. I have a father who does anesthesia and a sister who works as an ER nurse … talk to them about the problem with illegals. Poor American citizens can’t afford their ER bills yet illegals get everything payed for? How is that fair?
The fact is, once YOU convince the government (and the rest of the US) that stealing from the rich (and middle class) and giving to the poor (and many time undeserving) is unfair, then I will be on board with ‘open borders’ and ‘no such thing as illegal’. Until then, illegals are just one more way in which my ‘playing by the rules’ most of my life means I have to pay out to someone else who hasn’t earned it. So I refuse to ignore the fact that they are breaking laws.
“The United States is not your private property. Hence your analogy is faulty.
Again, intellectually we see a complete vacuum here.”
Actually as someone who IS paying the taxes and paying for their (illegal) right to be here, I DO consider it mine …. and your stupid personal attacks still mean jack squat to me.
James D,
Respectfully, the solution to that problem is not to use bad laws as justification to create or perpetuate more bad laws. People claim that the welfare state makes open borders unfeasible because immigrants will overwhelm the system. But then that’s not the immigrants’ fault that we’ve got a welfare state, that’s our fault for having a government program in place that’s unsustainable in a free society. The immigrants shouldn’t be forced to suffer for it, nor should we complacently sit back and accept welfare hindering our individual rights and freedoms. That means that given a choice between restricting the freedom of the immigrants or abolishing welfare, it’s the welfare system that needs to get cut back or (preferably) abolished…not the number of new immigrants.
Freedom-loving people who target immigration because they feel it’s incompatible with a welfare state are aiming at the wrong target.
I may be ignorant of something here, but I don’t see the problem with ER visits as limited to illegal immigrants. Anyone can go to the ER and be treated regardless of ability to pay. So an American can just as easily go to the ER and never pay the bill as an immigrant. What’s the difference and haw is this somehow special treatment for immigrants?
Just to put my two cents in. I think that immigration (or migration) is as fundamental a human right as any. I also think that restrictions on the free movement of labor are one of the worst things you can do if you want a free (or freer) market economy. Ideally I’d say totally open borders would be ideal. At the very least, anyone who can show that they have a job here should be let in.
JamesD,
Whatever you do consider to be the case, the territory of the US is not your private property. Sorry.
If “illegals” were legalized it would be a lot easier to get them to pay taxes.
So Steve the illegal who was driving a dump truck and killed a family of six last year, didn’t hurt anybody. He decided to ignore our laws on immigration, decided to ignore our laws on the licensing of drivers, decided to ignore our traffic laws by runniing a red light and last but not least he decided to ignore our laws about not driving while stoned. Nope. Didn’t hurt anybody. I may be a dope, but at least I’m not a moron.
Steve and UCrawford, do you actually LOOK at statistics? I thought libertarians were good with that?
Here are some facts that I’ve heard over the past couple years:
- illegals cause a disproportianate amount of crime compared to the total population – proving that because they broke the law to get into the country DOES make them more likely to break more laws
- the average American pays over $1000 a year in taxes that goes directly to free services for illegals (ER visits, car insurance, etc)
- among ILLEGAL immigrants, a majority of their money is sent back to their home countries and hardly any actual money from them goes back to the US through taxes
All of these makes them a net negative … the only one who gains are the employers who pay the slave wages … if you make all illegals legal, then the slave wages go away, but then so do the jobs and the ‘cheap’ goods. You two can sit on your high and mighty horses and sneer all you want, but that doesn’t make you correct. And don’t give me any of the racist BS, my wife is Honduran.
Jim,
No more than any citizen or legal immigrant who drives a dump truck into a family of six does, drunk, stoned or otherwise. If you want to claim that illegal immigrants traffic accidents are somehow less moral than anyone else’s, then yes…you are a moron.
Sorry Zeb, you’re wrong … illegals DO get more stuff free simply because of being illegal … talk to someone who works in an ER.
I’ve lived in Texas pretty much my whole life.
I’ve lived 12 miles away from the border in South Texas (Los Fresnos, Texas).
As someone else has pointed out I did not know we had a problem with immigrants (legal or otherwise) until people started pointing it out years ago.
As others have pointed out, this is not a new problem.
Those of you that are pointing out that you’re paying for the illegals. It is not because they are illegal that you are paying for them. You are paying for them because they are poor and we have a welfare state.
My dad was born in South Central Texas in 1932. His birth certificate is in German. All church services were in German until the 50’s with the last German service (once a month) until the mid 60’s.
James D,
Addressing your points one by one.
Which crimes are you talking about, specifically? Are you lumping their violation of immigration laws in with whatever numbers you’re referring to? Because I don’t consider violation of those laws to be a crime and you’ll need to provide your methodology or at the very least a reputable source before I’ll accept your assertion here.
Abolish those “free” services and immigrants (or anyone else) using them won’t be an issue, will it? Like I said, you’re aiming at the wrong target.
Actually that’s just flat-out not true.
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060501.shtml
As for sending money home, that actually creates more stability in their home countries (I’m assuming that you’re referring primarily to Latin America and Mexico), which creates more stability, investment and opportunity there, which lessens the incentive for them to immigrate here. Do you honestly think these people would deal with our immigration system or run the risk of getting raped and murdered by coyotes if they had options back home? For the ones that stay here, they still spend money on food, shelter, clothing. That’s still money that benefits our economy. Or at least it would if our government didn’t waste even more money trying to hunt down people who came to look for a job without their say-so.
I honestly have no idea whether you’re a racist or not…that wasn’t actually what I was saying to you. But your wife’s place of origin doesn’t make your economic arguments any more valid.
So the guy not having a license, because he knew that he couldn’t get one because he was in the country illegally didn’t have anything to do with it? Didn’t know the traffic laws, because they didn’t have traffic lights, where he’s from has nothing to do with it? (no he wasn’t from Mexico)
I don’t have a problem with anyone coming into the US legally. I think our current immigration laws are crap and need to be changed. Hell, I think alot of our laws are crap and need changing. I just think that someone shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking our laws.
JamesD,
Apparently you did not notice, but my post about the ER visits included a question and an admission that I may be missing something. Personal anecdotes from ER workers do not help to answer my question. So here it is again: How is the service an immigrant gets at the ER any different from what a poor American can get? This is a real question, I really would like to know.
Jim,
There is no difference between an unlicensed illegal immigrant who goes out, gets drunk and kills someone with a car and an American citizen with no license who goes out, gets drunk and hits someone with a car. And I’ve seen plenty of stories about drunk, unlicensed American drivers. Plus, did you ever consider that the likely reason illegal immigrants are often unlicensed drivers is that trying to get their license would result in their arrest and deportation, thanks to those immigration laws? That’s also, I suspect, why many of them are uninsured as well.
Someone who pays thousands of dollars to get to the U.S., while having to trust that the coyote isn’t going to rob them, rape them, and leave them in the desert to die or get arrested by Border Patrol isn’t being rewarded for breaking the law. The reason they go that route is that going through that hell is preferable to going through legal channels because our immigration laws are designed to punish the law-abiding. None of the immigrants, legal or otherwise, are getting off easy. That’s why those laws need to go.
Jim Collins- ‘Hell, I think alot of our laws are crap and need changing. I just think that someone shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking our laws.’
So… people should be punished for breaking crappy laws?
JamesD, [q]Sorry Zeb, you’re wrong … illegals DO get more stuff free simply because of being illegal … talk to someone who works in an ER.[/q]
I don’t understand how this could possibly be true. How does the hospital staff tell the difference between an illegal immigrant and some random uninsured person at the hospital? Are they just giving extra stuff to those with a hispanic accent? I took a few years of spanish in High School would that get me extra benefits?
They took ‘er jobs!!!!!
Too-kourderb!!!!!!!
Mike,
I think they must have a special illegal immigrant ID card which gets them all of those great benefits that we citizens are locked out of.
Seriously, though, I would like to know if there are laws or regulations that somehow grant special privileges to illegal immigrants. I would certainly be opposed to such measures, but it still has no bearing on my thoughts on open borders or giving the millions already here, who are not going anywhere, a break.
e. brown: the penalties for violating those laws are typically much harsher than the penalties for violating immigration laws. Choosing to follow or break any law is a matter of cost/benefit analysis. Even if I find all of those laws you mentioned abhorrent, I find the penalties for not following them worse.
There is no requirement that civil disobedience be practiced universally. Just because one does not pay social security does not require one to manufacture suppressed machine pistols, or go into the heroin business.
Getting one of those magic illegal immigrant ID card must be tricky. I wonder if you need an actual photo of you scaling the wall, or maybe a VHS tape of you rowing a boat over from Cuba would work..
Seriously though the problem really is with the small quota’s. Suppose we have 2 million illegal Mexicans in the US. If we deported them all and let them come in legally (25K/yr quota), it would create a 80 year backlog. Are you really saying that they should get in a 80 year line? I know what I would do and that is come here illegally. Commenters have mentioned that they should work within the system and fight to have the unjust law changed. However you can only work within the system if you are part of the system. So the only viable choice for an immigrant is to come here illegally.
Yes, which is why for someone who is young, has relatively few assets, and is healthy, buying health care benefits, it isn’t insurance anymore, is a suckers game.
You may consider yourself Utar-thapa God King of the Universe, it doesn’t mean much of anything to me though, just as your considering the U.S. is equivalent to your house doesn’t mean much to me either.
Right, and not just Iraq either. Social Security and Medicare, right now, and I mean right now, today, needs $85 trillion dollars to keep going as it is currently set up and if demographic trends continue. The problem is largely one of too many elderly to too few working age people. Changing that ratio would help alot. Can we have a breeding program? Not good enough in that before those kids can start working these programs start running out of money. Bringing in a 20 something from another country sure would work. Bringing in 10 million of them would be even better. Bringing in 50 million would be even better. But lets ignore that $85 trillion and pretend that it doesn’t exist just so some people can maintain their view of what they think America should look like.
Yes, everyday. It is a major part of my job.
Why do you need help understanding the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound? Chebyshev’s Inequality? Something else?
Really, got any links to back that up? And given that illegal immigration has been a major problem–i.e. illegal immigrant population is probably growing…how come the crime rate isn’t going up? I find this a rather dubious claim without some evidence to back it up.
I probably pay far more than that for my neighbor who has 4 kids and is white. Why should I subsidize him? Seems to me it is a problem with the welfare state not so much immigrants.
Let me see if I got this straight, these people come here, illegal, and send money back and is a problem. But the one’s who come here legally and do this…that isn’t a problem?
And if they send the money back home, so what? Isn’t it money they earned? Can’t they dispose of it however they like? And since they earned somebody here in American got at least an equivalent value in terms of labor output. Really, I don’t see the problem here.
Well that last one is at worst zero-sum. The first one is an unsupported allegation so far, and the third one is a problem with our health care system in general with regards to ER rooms. The law is “treat people irrespective of ability to pay.” Change that law, and you’ll solve that problem. Isn’t that what you and your fellow travellers argue, “Well, change the law if you don’t like it.” You know the old saying about the goose, the gander, and what is good, right?
Reminds me of the Saturday Night Live episode where Eddie Murphy disguises himself as a white guy. When he goes into the bank, the white guy behind the desk opens a drawer, looks around furtively and then hands him a stack of bills. “Shh, here take this. Don’t let anyone black find out….”
Mexican goes to the ER. Mexican doctoar says, “Mr. Hernandez I see you are here because of a nasty cut on your hand, but…*looks furtively around* would you like a free heart surgery too? How about some liposuction on the house. Oh, and for your wife there, some free breast implants….shhh don’t tell whitey.”
Let me see…he crossed into the U.S. illegally some how directly lead to him running a red light in a dump truck? Have I got that straight? I’m just not seeing the connection here. Oh wait, it is root-cause analysis thingy. If he hadn’t come here illegally, he couldn’t have driven the truck that killed the family. Well lets blame his mother too. After all if she hadn’t given birth to him, then he couldn’t have crossed into the U.S. illegally. Hell, lets blame his whole family, back…mmm…75 years enough?
Serious question to James D, and the rest.
How about we up the immigration limit to 2 million a year, and add on background checks of the people coming in.
You support it or not?
Steve,
Man, and I thought I was bad with the snark :)
I’ve seen many comments with people regaling us of stories of how wonderful immigrants are. Since we’re throwing in anecdotal evidence, I might as well share.
Coming from a small town in southwestern Kansas, I too have had the benefit of interacting with illegal immigrants. Many were illegals who worked at a nearby meat packing plant, and the others were illegals that I worked with on local farms. While they showed up and did the work, one thing that I found was that they just didn’t give a shit about the laws in the U.S. If they happened to smash up someones car while drunk (this happened to a friend of mine), or have sex with underage girls (I had an illegal offer to buy beer for girls in my school if I could get them to come over and have sex with him) before they left, or got kicked out, then oh well.
Out of all the immigrants I had dealings with, I’d have to say that our country would have been a better and safer place if about 75% of them weren’t here. I got along with them well enough, but for the most part, they didn’t like the U.S. or our people, and they really didn’t care if they hurt someone here. All they wanted to do was make as much money as they could and send it home.
I really only mention this to even out the “every immigrant that comes here is a hard working America loving individual who is probably better than you” comments.
while we’re on the subject, there seems to be this idea floating around that “some people are just plain anti-immigrant”. with the unspoken subtext being that those people are morally defective in some way, and that being anti-immigrant is somehow *wrong*.
ok, i’ll bite. what’s wrong with being anti-immigration? why is a desire for the country’s borders and citizenship to be defended a bad thing? conversely, what makes being *for* immigration a good and noble stance?
Ask yourself first how it is that people here can argue with a straight face for the personal property rights of individuals, but then argue that a nation, which is a collection of individuals, has no property right to its collective territory. Extending that to the whole territory is not an assault on individual property rights, but a collective enforcement of individual property rights.
I happen to be very much in favor of expanding the H1B program to millions of qualified people, but only on the basis that it goes from everything from software engineers to lawyers. If I can hire an Indian software engineer, why can’t I hire an Indian to represent me in federal court instead of some overpriced American one? Why aren’t our universities able to staff up entirely on less expensive foreigners who carry doctorates? The real reason that the H1B is primarily limited to professions like engineering is that many of the supporters of open borders work in fields that aren’t threatened with serious foreign competition like law, academia, NGOs and such.
Robert,
Coming from a small town in south central Kansas that had its own meat packing plant I’ve encountered plenty of immigrants too. They’re no better or worse than any of the non-immigrant employees of those plants who happened to be born in the U.S. Before the immigrants arrived, plenty of the non-immigrant workers went out and screwed underage girls for beer (thus my town’s high teen pregnancy rate), committed petty crimes and didn’t give a shit if they smashed up someone else’s car when they were drunk either. Since it’s highly unlikely that your town was different than mine it sounds more like you’re falling prey to a selective memory.
e. brown,
Because it’s economically ignorant, because it’s unenforceable, because it’s usually based on racism or protectionism, because our nation’s strength has traditionally been our openness to immigration, and because only a person who’s never bothered to study or think about economics would consider it a good idea.
That about sum it up?
Here is a partial explanation of why I think being anti-immigration is wrong. I am sure others will have more to add.
First, as I said above, I consider freedom of movement a fundamental human right. I think everyone has the same rights regardless of on which side of some imaginary line they happened to be born. Beyond what is my private property, I don’t think that any part of this country or any place in the world is more mine than any other human being’s. Refusing to recognize fundamental human rights is wrong in my book.
Second, I think it is pointless. There are 11 million illegal immigrants in this country (give or take) and unless we institute an national ID and internal passports and become a police state, we are not going to deport any significant number of them. A law is useless if it cannot be enforced and current immigration law cannot be enforced. You can be anti-immigration all you want, but so what? Reality is not going to change whether or not the law is on your side. We could pass a law forbidding anything we want to, but that will not make it go away. As with the drugwar, legalization is the best way to know what is really going on and to reduce harm and hold people accountable.
e. brown,
Because rights that we grant other people are ultimately rights that we grant ourselves, and I like having the freedom to relocate somewhere else if I feel it’s in my best interests without having to get government say-so beforehand, and I wouldn’t deny that to anyone else based primarily on the color of their skin, the country they were born in, the language they speak, or the way I think they might vote.
You can make all the lame jokes you want but:
a) use Google, any of those stats are freely available … try ‘illegal immigrant crime statistics’ … i’m sure you can handle it.
b) The dumb jokes about illegal ID cards don’t take away the facts … if someone has no SSN (or an obviously bogus one) and can’t speak english, it’s pretty easy to figure out that they’re illegal … unless you know of other US citizens who can do ANYTHING in this country without a SSN?
And to answer your question Steve, Yes take in 2 million legal immigrants. But I want to know EVERY damn thing about them though before they come in … that’s only fair (same as any other country does). But realistically, once that happens, they will all be legal and then they won’t get the jobs that illegals get now. So they would mostly just become part of America’s ‘poor’ because they won’t be as cheap to employ as other illegal workers. If you just provide amnesty to all illegals already here, then you are basically telling all poor people in any other country “come here, we’re suckers and will give you more free stuff at our expense”. (watch the Roy Beck video I linked above about why that is an impossible proposition)
You keep saying the problem is the welfare state, but shouldn’t we fix that BEFORE we just let anyone in? I’d say yes. And I’d say the likelyhood of that happening is about as much as any of us being happy with a President in our remaining lifetime.
Let me fix that for ya. There is a view that many of the “anti-illegal-immigration” folks are actually just simply “anti-immigration”. Notice that not a single anti person has responded to my comment/question about raising the current limits on LEGAL immigration. They have all studiously avoided it. But maybe they are just busy at work.
As for the sub-text, there is also a feeling that there is an element of racism to this subset of individuals. How many? I don’t know, but this whole Aztlan/Reconquista stuff comes from people who have a fairly racist agenda. Do you really think that the average illegal immigrant is coming over here as a secret agent of this clandestine movement to smuggle California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona back into Mexico? Really? They want to put rich states where they are earning lots of money under the control of corrupt politicians that beggared them in the first place? Honestly? Are we going to replace the inscrutable Chinese of the 1950s and the Yellow Menace with the Wiley Mexican and his twisted Mustacchio and the Brown Menace? Seriously?
It isn’t necessarily noble, but I think you’d find it hard to argue that allowing the free flow of goods and services across geographical places a good thing. You don’t buy all your consumer goods locally, and if you did you’d find it is damned expensive. Why should labor be all that different? From a purely economic stand point, restricting the flow of labor is inefficient. From a national security stand point, okay you got something. But does that mean we have to limit all immigration? I don’t think so. I sure hope not.
Uhhmmm because we reject collectivism, generally speaking, especially when defining rights. See, I can do what I want with my property. That doens’t mean I can do what I want with the country as a whole…does this help you see where you are going off the rails? It is one of those fallacy of composition thingies.
Why limit low skilled labor? Why push up the price for unskilled labor? Seriously your response to “Americans wont do the jobs illegals are currently doing at the current wages,” is to increase those wages until Americans want to do them, and at the same time import high-end/high-skilled labor? Really?
Oh, and guess what, we are doing that in spades for Filipino nurses. There are programs in the Philippines designed to crank out nothing but nurses for export to the U.S. Why? Because there aren’t enough nursing programs in the U.S. and there are barriers to entry in that market.
Wonderful government…fucking up one more thing.
But I’m sure we need to keep those little brown people out…well except the little brown Filipino nurses. We need them. But the rest…feh, who needs them.
You’d think people would have grown out of these rather distasteful views…but I guess not.
Should read,
Sorry for the confusion.
I did, and for the most part I found dubious sources…sources I don’t trust.
Yes, and besides the point at the top of your head, what is the point? That they get better/more treatment than citizens? That when a Mexican goes in for a broken arm he also gets his teeth whitened, a hair cut, and a nose job? What? Our problems with health care are several orders of magnitude larger than what ever problems illegals cause in regards to health care.
Actually, they probably will. We are largely talking about low skilled labor. Sure you’d probably see an uptick in the numbers of skilled laborers coming in, but you’d still see lots of unskilled workers coming to the U.S.
Dragging out millions of people who have been working here and productive for what purpose? To send them to the back of a line to get in? Why? They’ve already incurred the costs of coming here, and if you make them legal, you get the same outcome as if you’d let them in legally in the first place. Increase, the limits on legal immigration, legalize those already here, and you will have gone a long way to solving most of the problem. Entering the country illegally is not costless. On the contrary, it is quite costly. Increasing the opportunity to do it legally and at low cost, and safely will disuade people from going for the illegal option.
James D,
If you want to claim that the statistics back your argument, then you need to provide those statistics. It’s not anyone else’s job to make your argument for you, so don’t pawn your research off on other people because you’re too lazy to come up with facts to support your position. Frankly, if you’d done any real, objective research on the topic I highly doubt you’d be anti-immigration.
Really? I’ve known a lot of people who can’t speak much English and don’t have a SSN who came over here as legal immigrants under legitimate programs…usually as students. And the IRS has been issuing tax ID numbers for quite a few years, many of which go to both legal and illegal immigrants (see the link I provided earlier).
Like I said, do some actual research or don’t waste other peoples’ time telling them that the “statistics” support your argument, because otherwise you’re just talking out of your ass.
Nice. Stupid Germans. Stupid Hungarians, Romanians, and Czechs…who needs them. Send them all home now.
//Notice that not a single anti person has responded to my comment/question about raising the current limits on LEGAL immigration. They have all studiously avoided it. But maybe they are just busy at work.//
Actually, above your post someone did respond to your question. And earlier I suggested that the U.S. should process immigrants in queue and then see whether we need more people.
The reason that illegal aliens often get a better deal than citizens is that if a citizen defaults on a debt or skips bail, it’s usually possible to track him down. If an illegal alien skips out, he’s gone. How does one track down a person who doesn’t officially exist?
While it would be possible for a criminally-inclined citizen to adopt the techniques that are used by illegal aliens (fake IDs and addresses, etc.) such techniques are a matter of routine for illegal aliens.
What is wrong with requiring that aliens be at least as traceable as citizens, and requiring that aliens acclimate themselves to the country they’re visiting, rather than trying to conform the country to their own expectations?
If the U.S. sent a bunch of people southward to take over some towns in Mexico, how do you think the Mexican government would react? Why should we not react the same way when Mexico sends people northward?
Heh…I ran “illegal immigrant crime statistics” through a Google search and the only reputable site that popped up in the top 10 (Center for Immigration Studies) noted that the “immigrants commit more crimes” statistic is largely a bunch of crap that people have spread about every new ethnic group that comes to this country, and that most of the time when they’re disproportionately represented in the prison system it’s because they’ve gotten railroaded through the legal system…just like a lot of minorities in this country.
So the most objective facts in James D’s suggested search seem to support my suspicions about the true motivations of the hardcore anti-immigration crowd….they’re a bunch of racist hypocrites. Thanks for the heads-up, James.
“If the U.S. sent a bunch of people southward to take over some towns in Mexico, how do you think the Mexican government would react? Why should we not react the same way when Mexico sends people northward?”
The US government should refrain from using coercion against people who cross State boundaries consistent with private property rights for reasons entirely independent of what any other country does — namely, because it’s WRONG to initiate coercion against such people. And what makes it wrong to initiate coercion against people who have violated nobody’s legitimately held rights (and nobody has a right to wall off the US-Mexico border and prevent people from crossing it) has NOTHING to do with what any other country does.
As an aside, your terminology is misleading. “Mexico” isn’t “sending” people to the US. Individual human beings who happen to have had the luck of being born in a particular geographic area are making a decision on their own, having weighed the risks and rewards, to cross into the US to find work. Independent migrants are no more “taking over” cities than I would simply by moving halfway across the country to change my job. If a group of people want to “take over” a city by renting out apartments, buying real estate, and findings jobs – by all means, let them do so.
Again, stating opinions and just calling people racist …. and UCrawford, I’m sorry one of those thousands of links isn’t good enough for you. Nice hand-picking of OLD data too. Are one of these acceptable?:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05646r.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05337r.pdf
(these are just prison statistics, there is nothing in here about the other costs associated with illegals)
You’ll have to compare to the general population yourself as these are just statistics about illegals, not illegals verses legal citizens.
or this:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html
(but I’m guessing if it’s not from Cato or Reason you’ll brush it away or something, right?)
And before Steve screams ‘racist’, it has nothing to do with being ‘hispanic’ or ‘mexican’ …. it has to do with unchecked importing of poverty and third world criminals. If we at least KNOW who comes in the damn country, then we could at least keep the known criminals out (most of them are career criminals these studies suggests – not ‘good hard-working people looking for a better life’).
And as to the overall cost of allowing illegal immigration:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
I’m sure you’ll just respond with ‘but if everything was a perfect libertarian world, it wouldn’t be an issue’. And, as I said earlier, ‘fine, but fix the welfare issues first THEN open the borders – not the other way around’.
Also this:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50441
Note the second to last sentence:
She points out that only 2 percent of the offenders in her study had no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally.
If we KNEW everyone coming in, we can exclude these kind of people.
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. The pro-immigration argument is using two different lines of argument that don’t mesh well together.
One is what you’re saying… If it weren’t immigrants causing crime and mayhem and eating up welfare, someone else would be doing it. Just look, poor native born U.S. citizens are involved in crime too, see?!?
The other is the anecdotal evidence that several people have posted about how wonderful the immigrants they’ve come in contact with are. I figured since people were telling stories about how wonderful immigrants are, I would share a few about some not so wonderful immigrants. Not only that, many commenters are explaining how patriotic these immigrants are and how much they love it here. I’m simply saying that most of the immigrants I talked to were only here for the money and couldn’t give two squirts of piss about the U.S. or it’s citizens.
The damning portion of what I said, at least to me, wasn’t in their actions, but in the way they felt about the U.S.
I’m not sure how that makes my memory selective. I certainly remember crimes that were committed by non-immigrants. I just fail to see how they fit into a discussion about immigration. As soon as you start pointing at crime from non-immigrants, it turns into a statistics pissing match in which people look up numbers, then argue about their validity.
Please tell me you didn’t just cite WorldNetDaily as an authority with a straight face.
James D,
And when you look at her methodology.
She looked for 1,500 crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Then she noted that, surprise surprise, since some states have more illegal immigrants than others some states therefore have more criminals who happen to be illegal immigrants. Wow, what a leap…that’s almost as blatantly obvious as pointing out that the overall number of crimes committed is greater in states that have more people than in states that don’t.
As for her sex offender link she notes that 2% of illegal immigrants arrested are sex offenders…meaning 98% percent aren’t, which indicates she picked a non-representative sample group from her non-representative sample (see stats blockquoted below) . And since “illegal immigrants arrested” is not necessarily a representative sample (since she doesn’t specify what they’re arrested for…committing a crime against someone else or simply being an “illegal” immigrant) that assertion is compromised and therefore useless if she’s trying to make a link to the wider immigrant population.
And this gem…
…and this one:
…are utterly misleading because she’s apparently not using a control group for comparison. Meaning that she’s claiming from the start that people who commit criminal acts are representative of the immigrant population, which is an unproven assertion on her part, therefore her entire premise (if she’s claiming that this is representative of illegal immigrants in the U.S.) is at best sloppy research and at worst a race-baiting lie.
That entire article is basically cherry-picked information from a study of a non-representative sample group, so statistically it has no merit at all in a debate on immigration unless you find a control group. But then that’s the kind of b.s. you usually find on World Net Daily.
Funny how that’s not reflected in the nation’s violent crime statistics, which have been declining for several years. But then the anti-immigration crowd has never been above making shit up to bash immigrants.
Robert,
Actually, I was using it to point out that immigrants are no better or worse than people who live here. Some of the anti-immigration crowd seem to be under the delusion that our crime rate would plummet if we deported all immigrants. Personally I’m sure that our crime rate would plummet if we dragged poor people out of their homes and executed them in the streets. But that idea is even more abhorrent to me than kicking people out of the country for doing nothing more than trying to find a job without the politicians’ say-so, so I’m not about to start advocating it, even if it would save me a few bucks once we didn’t have to pay for welfare.
I’m not under any illusion that immigrants are somehow better or worse than the average American. From my experience the scumbag ratio is about the same between immigrants and citizens. That said, I don’t really care whether they’re patriotic or not, or whether they love America or not, or whether they’re just here for the money. As long as they don’t commit crimes against other people or their property and have a job, we benefit from them so they should be able to stay, no matter what the government has to say about it.
Last I checked there was no “must unconditionally love America” requirement in our Constitution for U.S. citizens so I think it’s rather hypocritical to hold immigrants to a different standard. Especially since, thanks to our public education system, a great number of Americans would never be able to pass the tests that immigrants have to take to get their citizenship. I’m not a fan of hypocrisy.
As for where selective memory comes in, I might have misread your comment somewhat but the impression I got from your remark was that you felt crime was worse with immigrants around than before they got here. I was just pointing out that there are plenty of Americans who are just as scummy as the worst immigrants, but that we tend to forget about or fail to notice what they do because they’re not as different from us than the immigrants are. Dislike for “the other” often tends to skew our perceptions so that they don’t reflect reality.
As for James D’s link, perhaps the funniest thing about it is that if you go a little deeper into Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin’s work, it appears that she’s a world-class neoconservative “Kill all Muslims” whack-a-loon:
http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html#religion
Which is why it kind of bothers me that she apparently trains police.
supercat,
That idea might make sense…if we were a centrally planned economy where the government determined how many jobs were created and who should get them. We’re since we’re not communists, thank God, it’s a terrible idea. Our economy is a fluid, fairly free market economy so we don’t need the government to tell us how many people we need or to determine who is deserving of work. The market will tell us that…and it will do a better job than the government would even if it were competent to carry out the task.
You hire a debt collector or a bounty hunter, respectively. Don’t you watch A&E?
As long as they’re not committing a crime against property or people, so what? Who the hell cares who comes here as long as they’re just here to work peacefully?
Because the government does a terrible job with it on citizens and I can’t imagine that they’d do a better job with the other 5.5 billion people in the world. And because it’s a huge waste of time and money.
Ah…the inevitable “we must preserve the culture” argument. Dig deep enough and the anti-immigration argument always boils down to this.
It’s not the government’s job to preserve culture in a free society. When government tries to preserve culture, all they’re really doing is giving favoritism to a desired ethnic, cultural, or economic group…which inevitably leads to oppression and tyranny. Frankly, I’d prefer a free, open diverse society to a strict, controlled one full of people who look like me. But then I’ve actually travelled to other countries, tried to keep an open mind, and I’m secure in my beliefs, so foreigners and different cultural ideas don’t scare the bejeezus out of me like they do some people.
Not that it really matters anyway…eventually every ethnic group that’s come to the U.S. has adapted to our multicultural environment (while we’ve often adopted some of their traits), the Hispanics are no different, so the fears about a Mexican invasion are ultimately ridiculous anyway.
Ok, so compaints about 1 of the 4 articles I linked because of the source (yet every study done these days is biased by which group does it), yet no comment on the other 3? Who is cherry picking again?
James D.,
Did you actually read the GAO study that you linked to? About half of the arrested immigrants they studied (45%) were arrested for victimless “crimes” (immigration and drug offenses). 28% were arrested for traffic violations (which include things like speeding, having a gun in the car, possibly seatbelt violations). The violent and property crimes they listed seem about in line with non-immigrant criminals anywhere else
And they clearly caveated their remarks and said it can’t be applied in the manner you tried to apply it, on page 12:
Your own source states that it’s not an appropriate source for your argument.
James,
As for your other two sources, the Rubenstein report is published by Dr. John Tanton, a racist who founded FAIR, an anti-immigration group funded by white supremacists. Here are a couple of quotes from him about immigrants and minorities:
So I reject his literature as a reputable source.
The City Journal article you linked to wasn’t statistical analysis. It was cherrypicked data (again), mainly using vague outstanding warrant numbers and anecdotal evidence. Not a reputable source if you want to claim statistical analysis is on your side.
At least you didn’t try to claim Glenn Jones and the John Birch Society as reputable sources. They were two more of the top ten in your suggested search.
No, my remarks were to add counterpoint to the initial blog post and those that repeated the same sentiment about how wonderful all of the immigrants they’ve encountered are.
My contention is that we need to curb the welfare state, not so much because we’re giving benefits to illegals, but because we’re paying our native citizens not to work, thereby creating the market for the illegals in the first place. Thus illegal immigration is a symptom of a much greater problem.
Just to argue a bit more for arguments sake though. If we already have a bunch of scumbags floating around our society, how does it improve matters by having more scumbags move here from Mexico? Of course the answer boils down to statistics, and that just depends on whos numbers you believe.
Robert,
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on what creates the market for illegal immigrant labor (I think it would exist even if we didn’t have a welfare state), but I apologize for misreading your comment earlier.
Because most of the people who come here from Mexico aren’t scumbags and criminals. They’re not really different from us. Most of them are simply coming here to find work…and they’re workers that the market shows we need. They drive the cost of labor down, therefore they drive the costs of goods and services down. They add more consumers to our economy, they add more tax revenue (without the government needing to raise taxes on everyone else), they add new ideas and experiences. Immigration has always been a net positive for us. The only reason it’s a “problem” now is that the government is trying to restrict it for a variety of bogus reasons, and in the process are violating the rights of many people besides immigrants as they’re futilely trying to keep them out (employers, property owners, citizens).
Actually, a great number of the criminal problems we have with immigrants are a result of the existence of immigration restrictions or from factors that don’t have anything to do with people wanting to come here. The GAO survey that James noted pointed out that a large number of illegal immigrants arrested were grabbed for drug crimes. Many anti-immigration folks love to harp on the idea that illegal immigrants traffick drugs. Well, the violence associated with the drug trade are a result of drugs being illegal. Legalize drugs and the illegal immigrant population trafficking drugs pretty much disappears (because the industry is then taken out of the hands of criminals and smugglers). Or driving violations by immigrants…the anti-immigration crowd often harps on the idea that illegal immigrants are a threat because they’re unlicensed. The reason they’re unlicensed, however, is that they’d be arrested and deported if they tried to get a license so therefore the immigration laws are what’s causing that problem, not the immigrants simply being here. If you dig down into the issue, you’ll often find that the problems with immigrants the anti-immigration crowd usually cite are caused by the laws that the anti-immigration crowd supported. Except for the racism, of course…that’s entirely on the xenophobes (and it’s what the hardcore anti-immigration crowd are really all about).
Robert,
Yes, but when you dig into the anti-immigration crowd’s statistics you’ll usually find either glaring holes in their methodology, that they’ve misread the statistics they cite, or that they’re simply making things up. And being as pro-liberty people operate from the principle that the government shouldn’t regulate anything until there’s been a conclusive case made that it needs regulation, and since the anti-immigration people haven’t come close to making their case, I don’t consider their suggestions for “fixing” the immigration “problem” to be remotely acceptable. People should have a right to peacefully relocate where they wish without having to get the government’s approval.
Yep, one person responded in the affirmative while I was writing my post. And yes, we need more people, tens of millions more, if we are to keep going with SS and Medicare as currently formulated.
Please, they’ve gone to extreme lengths to get here…so they are going to suddenly bail at the possiblity of being in debt collection? I doubt it.
As noted, this is a major problem with U.S. health care even with American citizens. Why? Because if you are young, healthy, and have few or no assets then getting health insurance is a suckers game. In the event you do need health care you will get it even if you can’t pay. I’d even go so far as to say that some percentage fo the 40+ million people without insurance have made that decision rationally–i.e. they made the decision after looking at all the costs and benefits.
They would be tracable if:
A. They were allowed in legally.
B. They were made citizens if they are here illegally.
1. Mexico is not sending people here. People are coming out of their own free will.
2. They aren’t taking over anything, they are trying to make a better life.
Next non-sequitor.
With regards to crime I have not made that argument. However, I do think some of the immigrants cause crime arguments are BS. For example, the prison study data, is there a problem with holding illegal immigrants in custody because of flight risks vs. citizens? Another is the anecdote of the garbage truck driver. In that case, the persons immigrant status strikes me as being totally irrelevant. My guess is there’d have been a tragedy if the guy had a license, had come here legally, etc. Usually we call these things accidents–i.e. we view them differently than murder, rape, assault, etc.
There you have it. I wouldn’t put stock in either sets of data analysis because there is no way you can convince me that either one of them set out to do a truly objective study. Each side has a position that they’re passionate about, and they work the numbers until they appear to support what they want.
Oh, I imagine as long as things are better here than in Mexico, some people will want to leave there and come here. However, the reduction of the welfare state, along with massive government spending cuts would not only curb the market, but also make us so prosperous that we wouldn’t really care about them anyway.
There is no doubt in my mind that much of the animosity (mis)directed toward immigrants is due to people that are having a hard times making ends meet, and don’t know who (or what) to blame.
Robert,
There’s some validity to that, but if you’re operating from a pro-liberty perspective the default position must be that people have a right to do that which causes no harm to others, so the only people the state has a right to punish are those who have actually committed such a crime. The burden of proof is therefore on the anti-immigration crowd to prove that immigration itself is a crime that causes harm, therefore when they fail to do so, or when they submit compromised evidence their argument must be discounted. There is no burden of proof required for the pro-immigration side because they’re not demanding that anyone else subordinate their property rights or personal freedoms or create new laws…only to repeal laws that have shown no demonstrable benefit.
It’s the difference between believing that freedom stems from the individual or the state really.
I think that rather than curbing the market welfare and government spending cuts would probably allow the economy to expand more rapidly, so that we wouldn’t really care about immigrants coming here to work. We’re not really that far apart on this one.
I agree…social class and prosperity (or the lack thereof) are often major components in racism. It’s kind of like Gene Hackman’s character said in “Mississippi Burning” when he told the story about how his father killed his prospering black neighbor’s mule because he wasn’t going to be seen as being lower than a black man…it wasn’t the neighbor being black that was the problem, it was Hackman’s family being poor. But how you feel about yourself is still not an acceptable reason to punish somebody else for your insecurities. They’re usually not the ones at fault when you’re not doing well.
Correction…should have read “It’s the difference between believing that freedom and prosperity stem from the individual or the state”
oh, super. now the discussion has degenerated into pop psychoanalysis of those who might now strictly adhere to the official Kind and Caring position. (”how you feel about yourself is not an acceptable reason to punish someone ….[cue soaring orchestral theme]….someone *different from you*”).
well, that’s enough of that. now can we all talk about how immigration law makes us **feel**??
“might NOT”, dadgummit.
e. brown,
Here’s a better suggestion…why don’t you either provide or put together an comprehensive analysis of how laws restricting immigration have made our country a better place than in the time before immigration restrictions (since the burden of proof is on the anti-immigration lobby)? If you can show any more than anecdotal evidence or cherry-picked and compromised stats I’ll consider objectively whether your problems with immigrants should override everyone else’s individual rights.
How does that work for you?
Not really, all they have to do is say…
Robert,
LOL…nothing like an appeal to pity to get people to abandon objectivity. That was pretty good :)
“the burden of proof is on the anti-immigrationists”, crawford? why, because you say so? who says you get to define reality? you can do that all you want on *your* blog, but you’ll notice that’s not where we are right now. here in the *real world*, we’re gonna go ahead and use actual logic, ok?
so – aside from “because that’s how i *feel*” – how you figure that? the (evidently immoral and psychologically stunted) anti-immigration crowd is merely calling for existing law to be enforced and upheld. the “burden of proof”, logic tells us, is on the folks who want those duly-enacted laws to be ignored. because the “feel” those laws are mean and (i guess) immoral, just as teacher told them to.
how’s that work for *you*?
e. brown,
Because I’m not the one arguing for a position that’s going to take someone else’s rights away. Because before any new law is drafted I think it should be conclusively shown with objective evidence that the law is necessary and that there is a high probability will have the desired effect with minimal negative consequences. And because not one of the staunch anti-immigrationists I’ve come across has ever presented a case that, once someone seriously pressed them on it, didn’t ultimately boil down to “I hate wetbacks” and “The government must preserve my culture and/or save my job and I don’t care if it screws everyone else”. That’s why.
Only if you operate from a perspective that freedom and prosperity derive from state action and that individual rights are merely a subordinate enhancement to the laws to be done away with the moment we find it inconvenient. Since I, and most other libertarians, operate from the perspective that it’s the other way around, that individual rights are the basis for freedom and that it’s the laws that are the enhancement and that should be constantly re-evaluated and then disposed of once their existence can no longer be justified, the burden of proof will always be on the people who are either pushing for new laws or trying to justify old ones that aren’t working.
I agree with your “immoral and psychologically stunted” assessment. I’d also add that they’re not particularly logical or wise, since the reason immigration laws usually aren’t enforced or upheld is either a) the most effective methods for doing so are un-Constitutional or b) it’s simply impossible to do so. Hell, the government might as well make a law stating that all rivers will now run south to north…they’ll have as good a chance of enforcing that as they ever will “fixing” immigration. And they’ll probably do less damage to our rights wasting time and money on that.
no, crawford, you’re not “arguing that someone’s rights should be taken away.” but then, neither am i. i’m arguing that “the law should be followed”, and if doing so hurts the feelings of or inconveniences illegal aliens, well …. tough shit for them. they’re not citizens. they’re **illegal**. if they don’t like the current law, they can follow the law; become american citizens legally; and go through the process of getting the law changed to suit them. just like *real* american citizens have to. they DON’T get to break or ignore the law: just like american citizens don’t get to. why is that so hard to understand?
that’s the 3rd time you’ve used a hysterical and childish debate tactic in your last 3 posts. you pulled the tired old ‘unflattering pop psychoanalysis of your opponents’; and you’ve arbitrarily assigned positions to your opponents that have no basis in fact: what i referred to as “you defining reality”.
until you can answer the same question i’ve been asking for awhile now – “why is it *Wrong* for dope pushers and brutal cops to not follow the law, but a-ok for illegal aliens not to?” – in a cogent and somewhat linear manner, i think i’ll just go back to ignoring you.
e. brown,
Actually, you are. You are arguing that because of the country immigrants happen to be born in, they should be barred from our country when they come here to find work unless they receive the okay stamp of the government. You’re arguing that their movement, even when what they’re doing is not harming anyone else (which immigration isn’t) should be restricted. The freedom to go where and do what you like so long as you commit no harm against another person or their property are rights…fundamental rights anyone in a free society should enjoy. And your pro-immigration stance would deny those rights to others.
And why? Because you think for some reason that because you’re a “citizen” you are therefore more entitled to human rights than people who aren’t. You’re simply wrong, and unless you happen to be pure-blooded native American (since being otherwise would mean that you’ve got immigrants in your family tree) your position is blatant hypocrisy. And it doesn’t take any sort of expertise in “pop-psychological analysis” (whatever the hell you’re referring to) to point that out.
Actually, I’ve never argued that drugs laws are legitimate. They’re not. In fact, they’re just as illegitimate as immigration laws in my opinion. As for brutal cops, they’re actually committing harm against people and their property when they abuse their position of authority. Unprovoked violence and the threat of violence are the brightline between a criminal and non-criminal act. Drug dealers who are merely restricting their activity to non-violently selling drugs to a willing customer aren’t committing a crime. Illegal immigrants who are coming to America to find a job aren’t committing a crime. Cops who beat the crap out of prisoners who merely annoy them are committing a crime. Cops who smash down peoples’ doors because they’ve got the wrong address are committing a crime. Cops who fabricate evidence when they’ve shot the wrong person are committing a crime. See how that works?
As for your personal problems with what I’m saying, these are very basic libertarian arguments I’ve been throwing out at you and you seem to be completely unfamiliar with them. Have you actually read anything by Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand? Because if not you need to go crack a few books by libertarians before you start accusing anyone of being childish simply for using libertarian arguments. Or perhaps go review your own debating tactics to weed out some of those pretty blatant inconsistencies and logical fallacies in your arguments. Otherwise don’t whine whenever someone makes you feel out of your depth…since it’s pretty clear that you are right now.
It’s not a matter of hurting their feelings or inconveniencing them…it’s a matter of a lot of people dying as a result of our laws, for committing no harm against anyone else and doing nothing more than what any of us do on any given day.
Like I said, I haven’t met a single person who’s staunchly against immigration who, once you scratched beneath the surface, wasn’t either a racist or a hypocrite. I think your comments have demonstrated pretty conclusively that your position is rooted in both personal failings.
See you around.