I have a simple three step solution that will solve a large part of the illegal immigration problem in the US.
Step 1: Annex Mexico and make everyone there citizens of the US.
Step 2: Provide English as a second language to all non-enlish speakers.
Step 3: Provide Spanish as a second language to all non-spanish speakers.
What part of that process would you call simple? Would they get to vote? What happens if Mexico doesn’t want to be annexed? Should we use force?
They don’t necessarily want to learn, and some just plain can’t. Learning a second language gets much harder as you age. Besides, who’s going to pay for all of that ESL training? What happens to those who fail the training?
See #2 above.
Once Mexico has been annexed, what do you propose we do about the guatemalan illegal immigrant problem?
Step 4: Raise taxes by hundreds of billions–trillions?-- of dollars to get the new State up to par with the rest of the country.
Dude, we didn’t want to annex them back in the 19th century so I’m not sure why it would be such a good idea now. I’m not so sure absorbing Mexico in the United States is something either country wants right now.
Marc
Hmm, good point. Perhaps we should modify Step 1 as follows:
Step 1: Mexico annexes the US and makes everyone there citizens of Mexico.
Then we are faced with the much easier task of bringing everyone in North Mexico down to the living standards of the rest of the country.
Well I for one welcome our new Mexican overlords…ARIBA!!!
Mexico has over 108 million people, with plenty of jungles and mountains. We can’t control Iraq, with only 26+ million and mostly flat terrain. Trying to conquer Mexico would be a Bad Idea, and we sure can’t “annex” them without force.
It doesn’t matter anyway. North American trade agreements will merge the economies more and more until there is very little functional difference.
Is this serious?
I realize I’m providing a serious post in a ridiculous thread, but the history of economic integration and national identity suggests you’re a hundred percent wrong.
It’s long been claimed that economic integration will break down nationalism, but so far as I can tell, it’s never happened, or at least there are a heck of a lot of examples that show the opposite. After all, Quebec and the rest of Canada are far more economically integrated than almost any two nation-states you can think of and yet Quebec nationalism has not subsided with time. Free trade between the US and Canada has been in place for awhile now and Canadian nationalism is probably more strident and visible now than at any other time in the country’s history. Nationalism has long been a force in Europe even when economies became integrated - indeed, it was very common wisdom prior to 1914 that economci integration made general war impossible. Scotland is closely economically integrated within the UK and, by extension, the EU, and yet Scots might actually vote for separation - despite there being, to any external observer, absolutely no reason to do so beyond just “we wanna be separate.” Czechoslovakia broke up for more or less the same reason.
Nationalism is a remarkably powerful (and in my opinion, usually negative) force, and experience suggests economic integration doesn’t stop it at all.
Well, if we are talking ridiculous, I have a better idea, make Carlos Slim an American citizen, tax the shit out of him and use all of the money to round up all illegal aliens from whatever country they are from and send them back. Any employer found to be knowingly hiring an illegal can be fined 10 times the immigrants annual wage. Then start over, basing all new immigration levels on population, that is Monaco gets 1 a year and mexico gets a lot and give a bonus quota based on proximity to the U.S. giving North Americans a greater hope of legitimate entry. You then use all fees generated by the immigration process to police the borders and enforce the law.
I have a much simpler one-step solution.
Declare all immigrants legal. :smack:
I agree with the OP. The process he describes is “simple”. We may be referring to different definitions of that word, though. Simple:
Nationalism is only 500 years old. Your notion of timeline seems to be based largely within your own lifetime. We are seeing the breakdown of nationalism right now with a rise in the power of non-state actors such as multi-national corporations, criminal cartels and terrorist organizations.
I don’t think general war is impossible at all. My point is that free trade will make the nationalism functionally irrelevant. American states even have their own nationalist pride. Texas, California, and New York (City anyway) all have a bit of their own nationalist undercurrent. Nationalism is becoming more of a cultural phenomena than an economic one. Sure people will still have their ‘whereever I am from’ nationalism, but they will be doing business with people everywhere, as we already do.
If you haven’t noticed the evolution of warfare is becoming something analogous to highly funded gang wars, that transcend geographical turf. It’s about blowing up your enemy’s car more than it is about dominating geographical territory in the name of your nation-state. America went into Iraq and completely dominated it from a force projection standpoint, but our overall strategic aims were to create a pro-American sovereign nation that just so happened to have strong economic ties to the country that built it’s infrastructure. If the Iraq adventure is successful, the ability to invest in Iraq safely will be defended by the Iraqi government. That’s an ideological win for America, without having to dominate Iraq. The point is for the world to be safe for business. The safer it is to do business with Mexico, the more people will go across to Mexico. They are already planning to build massive NAFTA highways, and trade across the border has increased significantly. With increased communications and transportation infrastructure, more people will go back and forth as they go about their business. The whole notion of ‘guest worker’ amnesty for Mexican citizens is so that we can encourage the integration of our economies without culturally embracing Mexican citizens. It’s all incremental.
If you haven’t seen it happen within a single century then I think you haven’t been looking hard enough, and perhaps your timeline is too short. Look at how solid Europe is after World War II, the Marshall Plan and the EC. People are doing business with Russia and China like never before. The biggest threats to world security are all these emerging third world countries, mostly Islamic like Iran or Iraq. Global interconnection of business is at an all-time high, and the focus of 1st world foreign policy is to make countries friendly to investment.
While we’re at it why don’t we return to the gold standard so we can ensure that we wreck the economy totally with a nice 1-2 punch?
I’d love to be at your house after this plan is implemented when you start to wonder why the price of tomatoes has skyrocketed so quickly, and you write your congressman to complain about the sudden rash of farmers and ranchers who are going out of business.
I want to know what the OP means by “providing” all these second languages, like it’s something the government can send out with the 1040 forms.
To the poster asking about what would we do about the Guatamalen illegal immigration, my OP said we would solve most of the problem, not all of it, unless you think there are more illegal immigrants from Guatamala than from Mexico?
To the poster who said the US would have to invade and control the people of Mexico, why would we? The town I live in annexed a development outside the city limits and the town didn’t have to send in an armed force to do it.
To the poster wanting to know where and how the language classes would be held, well there are public school classrooms all over, it would cost a little to have existing teachers teach these classes.
Also, when the two Germanies re-united after the fall of communism, people were running around screaming about how much it would cost, but they did it anyway, and I haven’t heard anything about how bad Germany is doing economically.
You can’t be serious?
Actually, reunion was an econmic disaster. East Germany’s economy crashed and burned overnight, resulting in serious poverty and lasting economic damage which lasts to this day.
I don’t know about “disaster”, but to not have heard of any related economic problems does smack of ignorance. Reunification with the East cost West Germany big time. It was all over the papers.