Wrong.
Apparently it has been done before. "Operation Wetback’’ about 1954
I never heard of it and I was in high school at the time.
Slate’s account goes into more detail than Wikipedia but I don’t know where they got their info.
Obama’s deportation numbers are misleading because the government now calls turning immigrants away from the border a deportation. According to this LA times article this accounts for two thirds of Obama’s deportations. Also:
Deporting millions of settled immigrants would cost billions of dollars and, if the history of certain states which have tried this is any guide, cause a crisis in certain sectors of the agricultural system. Produce would be rotting in the fields.
I thought Americans were begging to be allowed to work in wretched conditions for a few dollars a day.
he whole area is fraught with problems … the first thing people do when they arrive is destroy any documents so the host country doesn’t know where they came from so can’t send them back - so they speak Spanish, well that narrows it down to about 15 countries. At that point their status changes … I forget, it’s an endless bureaucratic labyrinth …
It’s well over a thousand years. The earliest human societies we know of (hunter gatherers and low level horticulturalists) appear to have strongly policed the borders of their territories and been suspicious at best of outsiders.
Of course, something like your Iceland scenario actually happened in Hawaii, and has happened plenty of times in human history before.
I would actually prefer, at some level, if the United States were a bunch of smaller countries, but that isn’t the reality we live in. To your point, though, lots of societies in the past have in fact had controls over internal migration, including the Soviet Union and China.
National governments should have control, though, both of who’s allowed to enter their borders and who’s allowed to leave.
Not sure that China and the USSR are countries you want to point to when defending your policy positions. It’s like that meme going around that points out how fucked you would be to get caught entering North Korea and Iran illegally – and therefore the US should treat illegal immigrants the same way!
Well I don’t want to live in North Korea or China. I’d prefer a free country, thanks.
Yes, but your personal preferences about freedom don’t actually demonstrate that either internal or external migration controls are morally wrong.
It’s a quite valid argument. They broke the law. In addition, if they took jobs they committed a felony. If they used fake documents they committed a second felony. If they used stolen identities they committed yet another felony. It can actually take three felonies just to live here.
Then your first step should be ending the requirement of employers to get documentation.
This is a valid economic argument but you make it seem like a moral argument when it isn’t. All countries limit who can enter. I think a case can be made for open borders. No mainstream politician is willing to make that case and I’m not sure any fringe politicians are either except for the Libertarian Party.
Well, OK, then, iceburg lettuce, ten dollars a head. Now, there’s a crowd pleaser!
So the south was right, we do need slaves, we’ll just pay them a nominal wage and let them leave the country if they don’t like it.
And then there’s the issues of people who didn’t choose to move (they got moved by their parents, or were born in the country to illegal immigrants), or who entered the country legally, worked legally but at one point were told “you will now work illegally or I call the Migra on you” and may not even have had the option to go back home.
So long as the penalties are greater for workers without work permits than for their employers, blackmailing people into working illegally will continue.
Not that you’re wrong, but that valid talking point has been superseded by events. Democrats aren’t too big on penalizing employers either. That would cause self deportation and we can’t have that.
Is it your position that all undocumented persons should be tried, convicted and held in prison until a country accepts them? That is certainly what those two statements sound like.
No wait, you also said this:
So which is it, stay free or go to prison?
Just a minor point: anyone born in the country to illegal immigrants is a citizen and perfectly able to work legally.
And I’m sure I’m missing something obvious, but I’m not following this sequence: “or who entered the country legally, worked legally but at one point were told ‘you will now work illegally or I call the Migra on you…’”
No. But any immigrants caught working with fake documents should be charged just as a native working with fake documents would be.
Roughlyhalf or more of illegal immigrants have overstayed their visa.