Well, I have to pack to leave town early tomorrow morning, for a few days to see family, so this may not be as thorough as I would like. And sheesh, you are asking me to singlehandedly resolve the economic imbalances of North America, not to mention chunks of the rest of the world, in a single post? Because it is all about economics, and as I said, the U.S. immigration issue will not be resolved until Mexico (and to a lesser extent, Guatemala, El Salvador, and a few other places) gets its economic act together.
So, at risk of delving into GD territory, here goes…
No, as you can tell from this and other current threads, there is a wide spectrum of opinion in the U.S. about how much and what kind of immigration we should allow. So which people should we let decide who gets to band together in this amazing new society, and which aren’t worthy and get kicked out or excluded in the first place?
How do you know what ideas all these people have, either the ones here lawfully or the ones here unlawfully? Maybe there are some genius ideas south of the border that just have had no opportunity to be expressed. Just think of how much human potential is wasted on this planet every day through lack of education, lack of access to the marketplace of ideas, or even premature death through malnutrition or lack of medical care.
How much opportunity to effect lasting social or economic change do you think your average illiterate Guatemalan highlander has? (Rigoberta Menchu excepted, but then she eventually got the opportunity to get an education and have her voice heard.)
Except the vested interests of those already in power, depending on how corrupt they are (which is often a fair amount). Or lack of resources. Or ongoing conflicts, or a zillion other political, economic, and social barriers to improvement.
See above - those who are running the show frequently have no incentive to let anything change. And bigger guns.
Of course, but a) sometimes circumstances change and controls need to be adjusted accordingly; and b) various factions may have their own ideas about what the controls should be and how they should be enforced, or we wouldn’t be having this debate to begin with.
Who gets to decide which immigrants would have a negative effect on society? My opinions, for example, may be quite different from yours.
At risk of repeating myself, see above.
Well, at least we agree on something.
The difference with circumstances of birth is that, in a just and mobile society, people born in adverse circumstances have opportunities to change their situations. That sure ain’t the case everywhere.
Assuming they are given the opportunity and the resources to improve themselves - considering the proportion of this planet that barely has enough to eat, I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation for everyone.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the answers, but I’d like to thin I have a few of them. Let’s face it, the U.S. can do a bigger share than it has - it’s effectively already absorbed millions of people here illegally. Maybe not always as well, or as thoroughly, as everyone would like, but here they are. And I would argue that they would be much better absorbed if they didn’t have to live a semi-underground existence; the problem is self-perpetuating when you have, for example, kids who have been here since early childhood who won’t be able to further their education, no matter how talented they are, because of choices their parents made for them when they were too young to have a say in the matter.
I would argue that perhaps more important than giving more is giving differently. I am a huge proponent of the “teach a man to fish” philosophy, i.e. teach people how they can learn to help themselves. And for that matter, not behaving in a way that is so anticompetitive that we knock everyone else out of the running. It’s a tough balance, but I thinkwe can always improve.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pack.