Immigration
I'm so tired of this debate. I already did a piece about this, and I support the Libertarian position of open immigration, so I deem the whole issue of "amnesty" irrelevant. Illegal immigrants should be given a blanket amnesty, given visas, and allowed to come and go as they please -- subject to inspection of luggage, as called for by scanning or whatever random determination ICE may use. Subsequently, the U.S. should work with countries (okay, Mexico) to check the visas of everyone entering the U.S. -- no visa, no entry. We'd also have to grant amnesties for documentary fraud in specific cases. That'd mean a lot of new, temporary offices for legitimizing folks all over the country, and more surveillance at the border for the longer term. Again, though, that's only after we give visas to everyone who's already here -- and without liberalizing visa application, we'll be right back here again in another 20 years.
I refer you to my piece on citizenship & suspicion (link above), because some of y'all may be bleeding from the ears at the thought of TERRORISTS entering our country with impunity. Empowering platitudes aside, an individual cannot make a difference: unless you've got a virulently communicable disease or a bomb in your belly, you're no more threat to me than some redneck with a rifle in his truck. Again, the state must control the border (and once we have a functioning visa system, there shall be considerably less ambivalence on catching and detaining illegal border crossers), and in doing that, visa application background checks, and inspection of luggage, we'll oblige even the most evil and brilliant of evil geniuses to buy their tools of mayhem here. If you want to talk about black market arms et al., well, that's a whole other topic that's important whether it includes immigrants or not.
An immigrant visa is not citizenship, and we would still need naturalization procedures -- and it'd be like sampling the merchandize before committing to buying it: work and other records of immigrants would certainly give us an idea of whether we'd want them in the club for real. We'd still need records of citizenship for voting, and for claiming any other rights of citizenship. We can not hold that law enforcement, innoculations, or even emergency care are services only for citizens, because they are all designed to keep citizens safe: by stopping criminals no matter who their victims are; by preventing endemic childhood illnesses from becoming epidemic; and by removing the need show id before getting a tourniquet -- and all of these things also useful in making sure tourists aren't afraid to come to a city. Public schooling provides a means of indoctrinating and assimilating the children of non-citizens, instilling in them the insidious notion of individual rights and responsibilities, which they can spread in their home countries (spreading democracy more effectively than by military conquest). Remeber that all of these are funded by property and sales taxes at the local level, which individuals who rent property or buy goods pay, no matter what their status -- and they are provided to citizens even who are poor. Non-citizens shouldn't get Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, or other forms of federal welfare, although one should bear in mind that everyone getting a paycheck pays FICA tax; of course, y'all know what I think about Social Security.
So that's my plan. I'm sure it'll generate disagreement, which is fine. A few ground rules, though:
1) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, overwhelm local services: see above on local taxes. Also, see below on the relative effects to the tax base of a lower-wage workforce or an unemployed one.
2) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, depress wages. It is not immigrants that depress wages, but the presence all over the world of individuals who can do the same work for less money. That, and the fact that an absence of legal status makes one less likely to change jobs or report abuse. I mean, without immigrants, legal or otherwise, there would be no U.S. domestic textile industry. Remember where most of our manufacturing started going in the 1980s? Notice where our call centers and software development is going now? It is always better to have the work done and the wages earned inside your tax jurisdiction. My depressingly stupid distant relative, Dana Rohrbacher (among others), talks as though an individual has the right to a job, but true Americans know that you have the right only to such job as someone is willing to pay you to do. If you lack the skills to command a high salary, you don't get one. Hell, illegal immigrants are coming in, getting paid shit, and still sending money home, so surely Americans can do the work for the same salary. It's also important to note that Mexicans who come here illegally have already been recruited: a friend of a friend of an employee of a guy says the guy would be willing to hire the friend of the friend of the friend of his current employee, who's probably related to or from the same town as said new recruit.
3) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, represent security risks. Security is contextual: we have cops to protect us in our homes and in public spaces, and such spaces as need more have more -- and activities are dangerous or wrong no matter what the status of the individual doing them.
4) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are "destroying America". America isn't about a language, or about a religion, or an ethnicity, or a culture; it's a set of ideas that xenophobic fascists have forgotten: power corrupts, no individual's ability or virtue is knowable, that government is best which governs least. I can translate the Constitution into each of the six languages I speak besides English: the ideas transcend the language of their articulation. That means that you don't get to use the power of the state to tell someone else what language to speak, metaphysical belief to hold, color or costume to wear -- or what to do at all unless it has direct effect on another individuals sovereignty over self and property. Never mind that immigrants of this century are following the same trends as those of other centuries: the adults may never learn English, but their children always do, and they and are subjected to the same pressures as all kids to fit in -- you know, assimilate. Historical trends of immigrant populations, applicable to illegals from Mexico as well, show that by the third generation, the language of the immigrants is, in the majority of cases, no longer spoken (or spoken well, anyway).
5) No claims about ethnic superiority or inferiority, or anything else that cannot be demonstrated through evidence. You know, like that America is a Christian country.
And remember, as always: I'm right about this.
I refer you to my piece on citizenship & suspicion (link above), because some of y'all may be bleeding from the ears at the thought of TERRORISTS entering our country with impunity. Empowering platitudes aside, an individual cannot make a difference: unless you've got a virulently communicable disease or a bomb in your belly, you're no more threat to me than some redneck with a rifle in his truck. Again, the state must control the border (and once we have a functioning visa system, there shall be considerably less ambivalence on catching and detaining illegal border crossers), and in doing that, visa application background checks, and inspection of luggage, we'll oblige even the most evil and brilliant of evil geniuses to buy their tools of mayhem here. If you want to talk about black market arms et al., well, that's a whole other topic that's important whether it includes immigrants or not.
An immigrant visa is not citizenship, and we would still need naturalization procedures -- and it'd be like sampling the merchandize before committing to buying it: work and other records of immigrants would certainly give us an idea of whether we'd want them in the club for real. We'd still need records of citizenship for voting, and for claiming any other rights of citizenship. We can not hold that law enforcement, innoculations, or even emergency care are services only for citizens, because they are all designed to keep citizens safe: by stopping criminals no matter who their victims are; by preventing endemic childhood illnesses from becoming epidemic; and by removing the need show id before getting a tourniquet -- and all of these things also useful in making sure tourists aren't afraid to come to a city. Public schooling provides a means of indoctrinating and assimilating the children of non-citizens, instilling in them the insidious notion of individual rights and responsibilities, which they can spread in their home countries (spreading democracy more effectively than by military conquest). Remeber that all of these are funded by property and sales taxes at the local level, which individuals who rent property or buy goods pay, no matter what their status -- and they are provided to citizens even who are poor. Non-citizens shouldn't get Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, or other forms of federal welfare, although one should bear in mind that everyone getting a paycheck pays FICA tax; of course, y'all know what I think about Social Security.
So that's my plan. I'm sure it'll generate disagreement, which is fine. A few ground rules, though:
1) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, overwhelm local services: see above on local taxes. Also, see below on the relative effects to the tax base of a lower-wage workforce or an unemployed one.
2) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, depress wages. It is not immigrants that depress wages, but the presence all over the world of individuals who can do the same work for less money. That, and the fact that an absence of legal status makes one less likely to change jobs or report abuse. I mean, without immigrants, legal or otherwise, there would be no U.S. domestic textile industry. Remember where most of our manufacturing started going in the 1980s? Notice where our call centers and software development is going now? It is always better to have the work done and the wages earned inside your tax jurisdiction. My depressingly stupid distant relative, Dana Rohrbacher (among others), talks as though an individual has the right to a job, but true Americans know that you have the right only to such job as someone is willing to pay you to do. If you lack the skills to command a high salary, you don't get one. Hell, illegal immigrants are coming in, getting paid shit, and still sending money home, so surely Americans can do the work for the same salary. It's also important to note that Mexicans who come here illegally have already been recruited: a friend of a friend of an employee of a guy says the guy would be willing to hire the friend of the friend of the friend of his current employee, who's probably related to or from the same town as said new recruit.
3) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, represent security risks. Security is contextual: we have cops to protect us in our homes and in public spaces, and such spaces as need more have more -- and activities are dangerous or wrong no matter what the status of the individual doing them.
4) No claims that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are "destroying America". America isn't about a language, or about a religion, or an ethnicity, or a culture; it's a set of ideas that xenophobic fascists have forgotten: power corrupts, no individual's ability or virtue is knowable, that government is best which governs least. I can translate the Constitution into each of the six languages I speak besides English: the ideas transcend the language of their articulation. That means that you don't get to use the power of the state to tell someone else what language to speak, metaphysical belief to hold, color or costume to wear -- or what to do at all unless it has direct effect on another individuals sovereignty over self and property. Never mind that immigrants of this century are following the same trends as those of other centuries: the adults may never learn English, but their children always do, and they and are subjected to the same pressures as all kids to fit in -- you know, assimilate. Historical trends of immigrant populations, applicable to illegals from Mexico as well, show that by the third generation, the language of the immigrants is, in the majority of cases, no longer spoken (or spoken well, anyway).
5) No claims about ethnic superiority or inferiority, or anything else that cannot be demonstrated through evidence. You know, like that America is a Christian country.
And remember, as always: I'm right about this.
posted by heavynettle at 19:00
5 Comments:
I've often thought that even xenophobes should appreciate how lucky we are that the third-world country on our doorsteps has a culture that shares our basic Judeo-Christian ethics and values, colonial and frontier experience and mindset, and, most of all, our predilection for line dancing and accordian music. I mean, my God, where better than Mexico to get immigrants from? They're certainly more "American" than Europeans, except perhaps for the Irish.
I think the biggest problem is the simple fact that farm economies world-wide suffer seasonal labor shortages that are filled with Gypsies, Kurds, Burmese, Algerians, Central Americans or other groups of poor migrants who are usually disliked and exploited by collusion between the land-owners and the local political establishments. It's the same everywhere. Much of the immigration to the states from Central America is, of course, driven by the collapse of the Mexican rural farm economy (which was more socially and economically stable and less exploitative than the employee/employer system in the states) which resulted from NAFTA. NAFTA's main problem was that it opened Mexican markets without reforming the economy in ways that would allow it to adjust as the farm economy collapsed. For instance, I think foreigners and foreign firms are still prohibited from owning land in many parts of the country. The Mexcian political and judicial systems are also in serious need of reform. Controlling immigration--which I think is necessary in order to control de facto slavery both here and in Mexico--needs to be done through a dialog and legal reforms both in the U.S. and in Mexico. Our alternative is to end up with a boutique nation like Kuwait or Abu Dubai where the majority of residents have no political power, legal protections, or stake in the stailit of the host nation. Remember how the foreign workers in Kuwait welcomed the invading Iraqis with open arms? That a scary vision of the future the farm owners and garment factory operators in the U.S. would do well to reflect on.
To be perfectly honest though, even as a liberal, do-your-own-thing, open-the-door-to-immigrants kind of guy, the recent rallies, protests, and boycotts by immigrant groups are pretty off-putting and have a real stick-in-the-eye kind of feel to them that I wish people would stop.
Yeah, it annoys me, too. I should point out that the National Congress of La Raza actually tried to get persons to not show up on 1 May: there are polling numbers showing considerably less sympathy for illegal immigrants since the demonstrations in March.
But it's hard to blame the Hispanics for hijacking the debate, because the illegal immigration debate was already all about them: how Spanish and Hispanics and Mezkins are destroying our country with their different-ness. Buchanon's book, the Death of the West, was published in 2002, and was basically about the Reconquista. My folks forwarded a speech by Richard Lamm (whom you may remember as saying that the elderly had a "duty to die") that was basically an attack on multiculturalism and Hispanics. I just found this adorable letter from Ben Franklin in 1753, and I have to chuckle, but I choose not to engage myself further in the pathos of the immigration debate.
It is hard to draw comparisons between the U.S. and Kuwait, if only on the basis of population: Kuwait has a very thin population base, both necessitating foreign laborers and making possible a severe demographic imbalance between Kuwaitis and non-s. U.S. immigration is unlikely to create that sort of disparity, and with regards to Mexico there already is a level of control: folks who come here almost always have jobs already, and it is reasonable to assume that, if there are no jobs reported as available, they won't come. That's the point in the Cato Institute paper I linked to.
Of course, we have to encourage Mexico to reform its economy, but there's only so much we can do: Mexico is virtually feudal in its power structure, and Fox has had little success in changing things out in the 'burbs and back-country. We may have another "comic-opera war" to worry about down there, which will cause a lot more immigration thence than any economic disparity between our countries.
Sigh. This shit makes me tired.
Don't forget the results of the war on drugs. I've read reports about Mexican ex-special forces members now acting as drug enforcers/assassins on BOTH sides of the Texas-Chihuahuan border.
Talk about your comic operas; the war on drugs and its actual results (corruption of courts & militaries throughout the world, including U.S. marshalls and local police, criminalization of peasants, financing for terrorism, etc.) could not be more antithetical to its declared aims. (sigh) I wish our country could get over its shock and awe approach to everything, shelf the war metaphors, and get down to the plodding, difficult, unexciting and absolutely necessary business of long-term planning and adjustment of methods to meet stated goals.
This whole immigration debate is so much smoke and mirrors to obscure the larger issues affecting the closely related countries of the western hemisphere.
Oh, yes, your quite correct to in seeing the "immigration" problem really means "Mexican" problem. Which is of course, ridiculous. Americans have more in common with Mexicans than with Canadians, except for skin color. Maybe if Mexicans hired a marketing firm and repackaged their branding as the ever-popular "Indians" (Aztecs, Mayans, etc.), Americans would get over their paranoia.
Did you listen to any of Bush's speech on his immigration plan tonight? Other than the laugh-line about immigrants needing to learn to speak the English language (this is coming from a man who surely would fail any course on the grammar and vocabulary of his native tongue), most of the speech was very deftly crafted to seize both the moderate middle ground and the moral high ground. The devil, of course, is always in the details--such as, will "guest workers" be able to quit a job with an abusive employer without losing their status; if they are allowed to quit without deportation, how will we control fraudulent companies set up merely to provide a foot in the door but no real job, etc. But listening tonight, there wasn't really anything in his speech that didn't sound reasonable. Rove may have found his issue to make the party seem sane again. Of course, most of the proposals are exactly what most Democrats have already been proposing for years...not that the media will recall that.
The best part of the speech, as I heard it on NPR, was an interview afterwards with a small-town mayor from a villa in southern New Mexico, who put his finger right down on the source of the massive immigration: Mexico's screwed up, protectionist economy and corrupt political culture. That is the whole thing in a nutshell: fix Mexico, and 88% of our immigrants decide to stay home (which most people would rather do anyway--who really wants to leave their friends, family, and local cultural milleu for good?)
But hey, another couple years with a Republican in the White House and the U.S. economy and political culture may be bad enough to forcing us to emigrate, too.
I didn't watch Bush's address -- I found it interesting that the only station carrying it live was Telemundo. Even in Spanish, though, I can't sit through more than a few sentences from a man as disingenuous and obscurantist as he. I was at the gym by the time the other networks televised it.
From what I remember about Bush's guest-worker proposal, there was decidedly little freedom for the purported beneficiaries: their presence in this country was legitimized by and tied to the employers who brought them over. On that basis alone I opposed it, since it would do little to correct the principal effects of illegal laborers: depressed wages and general abuse of employees.
Yeah, someone needs to fix Mexico. The problem is that the folks who have tried have followed the same failed formula, caricatured so frighteningly in Atlas Shrugged -- and in Venezuela, interestingly enough.
I wouldn't presume (here, anyway) to say how to fix Mexico, but I know it's not really a Constitutional authority granted to our federal government. That Central America (and, to a lesser extent, Mexico) is as fucked up as it is results from other un-Constitutional activities of past administrations doesn't change the fact that Mexico is not our problem, and fixing our immigration "problem" doesn't require fixing Mexico. Expanding our visa process to accomodate the traffic, granting visas with very little overhead, time, or fees would allow the immigrant population here to reach equilibrium, as it allowed individuals as groups to respond more quickly to changes in the availability of spare work.
And, of course, it would force employers to actually pay decent wages and treat their employees as humans in order to keep them in the positions where they are now (and under Bush's proposal as well) bound by fear of deportation.
Of course, as I've said before, the immigration debate really isn't about jobs or tax revenues: it's about xenophobia, pure and simple. The fundamental social development of the last century has been the ability of larger and larger numbers of individuals to surround themselves, at home as well as at work, with only those others who are like themselves.
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