Two groups. Amnesty recipients and Seasonal Agricultural Workers.
By 2001, the report shows 1,775,996 people who overstayed visas or entered illegally applied for amnesty and 1,589,396 were approved. Of those approved, 630,547 were naturalized by 2001. See Exhibit 1 of the linked article.
The 1986 Amnesty eventually led to naturalization. We’re fighting ignorance here.
No, you don’t, because you do not even know what the “R” and “D” labels will mean 20 years from now. Nobody does. They have changed their meanings many times before. Today’s GOP is not the GOP pre-1965 – it is not the GOP pre-1980 – it is not even the GOP pre-2009.
Nor do you know whether he was lying or mistaken. Certainly he was in no position to fool the Pubs in Congress – was he?
I was talking about this to my wife, whose parents were Mexican immigrants. I pointed out to here that based on many things culturally, Republicans should love the idea of Mexican Immigrants coming here:
-They are very self-reliant, generally shirking public assistance which is seen as shameful in their culture (you ask for help from your family, not the government)
-They are much more likely to start up their own businesses rather than work for somebody else, even if it means selling oranges on some neighborhood corner. Similarly, they are more likely to try to sell something for a living than panhandle (refusing to resort to panhandling is a source of pride among some Latinos)
-They are religious, and socially conservative, generally being anti-abortion.
My wife pointed out that if Republicans really cared about many of these issues (abortion, small businesses, small government) they wouldn’t treat brown people like second-class citizens. She said cynically its fine to believe all this stuff as long as you are white. But if you are brown, speak a different language or believe in Jesus the ‘wrong’ way you might as well be a granola crunching communist hippie for all they care. I find it ironic.
There are, however, enough Pat Buchanan Republican Catholics. In fact, I suspect that Pat “If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built.” Buchanan is representative of a significant number of conservative Catholics. He has backed off from his comments of 20 years ago complaining that the brown Mexican Catholics were not like “us,” but he just changed his language, not his beliefs.
I think you started there with da esire to score cheap points with some ‘white people’ v ‘brown people’ tag line, they tried to work your way back to a logical or factual argument to set it up. But you failed.
If you listen to virtually any pundit on talk radio who emphasizes the issues of illegal immigration, and their worked up audience, they call for harsh sanctions against employers who hire illegals, constantly. It’s often way over the top (10 yrs in prison, $10,000 fine per worker per day, etc). So the hypocrisy you describe doesn’t really exist, beyond politicians who pay lip service to seriously addressing the issue but actually don’t do anything, which is true of both Democrats as Republicans.
Free market doesn’t mean chaos, as much as collectivists might honestly mistakenly think that, or realize it’s not true but still want to score rhetorical points by claiming so. A freer market might require fewer or less restrictive laws in particular cases. But a system where laws in effect are being broadly ignored is not ‘free market’.
And the current situation with illegal immigrants in the US is not free market because we now have a welfare state. I don’t have any deep moral problem with people who come to the US illegally to do honest work (violating the law is not in itself a deep moral wrong). But the fact is they cost local and state governments particularly a lot more in services than they pay in taxes. That might even out to some degree based on Social Security tax many illegals pay under phoney SS no’s (meaning they wouldn’t get the benefits). It might even out even more considering the economic benefit they provide as cheap labor to those who employ them…but that doesn’t compensate local taxpayers. Again if some people (employers and perhaps some consumers) are benefiting to the detriment of others by breaking laws…not free market.
The OP says ‘why don’t conservative or libertarians’ propose free market solutions, but conservatives are under no obligation to propose free market solutions for everything. There’s no inconsistency for a conservative to say a particular sphere, like having control of who enters the country, is not just a matter of markets. So called libertarians are the ones called out as hypocrites or fools on immigration. No, it’s not libertarian to limit immigration, and it’s not workable for any non fool of good will (some people do just want to destroy their own country, perverse true) to propose that everybody who can reach the US in today’s world must be allowed in.
That said, as conservative I would like to see more application of market principals in terms of, for example, increasing the emphasis on bringing capital or skills for the people who are allowed in legally, with less chain immigration of families and cutting out nonsense like worldwide lotteries. As for the illegal flow of low skilled/educated people from Latin America, it’s not beneficial to the US, nothing to do with ‘brown’ (any color whatsoever of skilled and educated people, or those who bring significant money to invest, is just fine). It should be limited as much as possible with more border security and the kind of ID and verification and employer sanctions necessary to cut down the illegal flow substantially, without creating more corrosion of the rule of law (ie no ‘long prison sentences’ etc, but reasonable measures). And of course unaccompanied child migrants should be quickly, safely and humanely returned to their home countries immediately. Only that will stop their families paying to send them on the extremely dangerous journey. It’s inhumane not to send that message strongly and clearly. But reasonable conservatives IMO must accept that the illegal immigration problem can only be ameliorated, not eliminated.
However a big problem is bad faith from the Democrats. They want illegal immigration as a club against Republicans. The GOP is far from blameless, but the Democrats have been quite cynical about it.
Cite that illegals vote? Illegals tend to try and avoid government entities wherever possible.
Yeah, in a decade, maybe. But if the Republican right stopped treating them like scum they might vote Republican. Look at the Cubans.
Laws in some respect represent a failure of market forces. If we had high enough wages and good enough working conditions and real penalties for employers hiring illegals, they wouldn’t come. During the recession they left.
As for military for profit, maybe “Hessians” rings a bell?
Yes there are costs and benefits. But the problem is, and address this yourself if you disagree, rather than linky linky to generic Wikipedia, that the costs tend to flow to different people (legally in the US) than the benefits do. That’s true of a lot of economic phenomena, but it’s a basic problem when the activity in question is illegal.
So back to my statement yours didn’t really address. It’s not deeply morally wrong just to break a law (separately from the morality of the act itself) but it’s not a ‘free market’, or a desirable or necessarily sustainable situation if some people are benefiting economically at the expense of others by breaking laws. And again this applies at least as much to people in the US as the illegal immigrants themselves. Nor IMO is there actually a broad hypocrisy about this. Most people very angry at illegal immigration are as angry at employers of illegals as at illegals themselves.
