Another problem with immigration is the fact that nonwhite people, for the most part, want in. Eventually, old white folks aren’t going to be the ones in power if immigration keeps going. They’ll lose power, almost by definition because someone will have to grow up and fillin that spot. If caucasians are only a plurality, then the likelihood that they’ll retain that spot is less (provided things are equally weighted in life).
Now, now! The neocons generally are not for immigration restriction in any case. That would be the paleocons.
http://www.americafirstparty.org/
The neocons are more in the nature of ideological cosmopolitan internationalists. And at the same time American imperial-hegemonists. (Don’t ask me!)
See post #111.
Dude. Seriously. What in the hell would I do without ya?
[dr. dick solomon]
This borders on sarcasm!
[/dds]
Why would you want more people?
Now you may use the argument given before that you need people to support others when they retire, but that is just a pyramid scheme. People are living longer. You can’t keep the retirement age at the same and then have them live longer still. If you keep bringing people in it takes more to support them. By that I mean increaded infrastructure costs, pressure on the environment and pressure on society.
I was wondering when you were going to expose yourself. Took longer than I expected.
My guess is that Krauthammer’s point was that if we seal the border and stem the tide of illegals, we can increase the number of people coming in legally, from Mexico and elsewhere.
Your last sentence hear is part of an argument separate from what precedes it. The first part is based on the ideas that we can allow people in and that we should let people in. Your last sentence implies some right that you think people have to come here. They don’t. A sovereign nation can set it’s own imigration poicy to any ends it wishes. Just look to our position in regards to Cuba. Where do you get the notion that people have the right to walk into any country they want. The concept probably had some validity in the early days of man. But as people bound themselves together and stable stationery communities melded into realms and nation-states, I am not aware of any natural rights argument that gives an individual the right you imply, as it would probably be in direct conflict with the right of people to build communities the way they want and set their own rules and laws.
Oh, no? In twenty years, after the Amnesty of 1986, we’ve continued legal immigration and had 12 million start living here illegally. If the dumb-ass cowardly senate has it’s way, you could probably double that in short order. Some estimates (The Heritage Foundation, I think) say that the idea in the senate will increase legal residents here not by 12 million, but by over 30 million. I’m all for immigration that benefits us, but the first responsibility of anything that congress does on our behalf should look to take care of the needs of citizens first.
You keep changiing your argument. Is it that we can and should let people in? Or that they have a right to come in? And would you want us to be as crowded as India?
I know you weren’t trying to construct a slippery slope argument, people rarely do. But that is the very nature of the point you were making.
Agreed. It should be near impossible to sneak in. And much easier for people to come in legally. And many more than we make allowance for now. But that number is up to us to set, no one else.
There you go again. Do you not think that a nation has a right to control it’s own borders? If not they, who? Do you think nation-states are a good thing or a bad thing?
I’m sure that would be in favor in an immigration policy that would benefit the country and be efficient as far as the processes involved.
I’m not sure what you mean. But if you’re talking about a policy that does not do things like take jobs away from citizens, yes. But, for the record, I have been arguing for the idea that people do not have a right to come here. If their desire to do so coincides with our needs, terrific. If not, they simply have to wait until things change. Period. And I’m sure that if we did control the border 100% and had an immigration policy as I describe, there are times when we would open encourage as many people as possible to come here, and times when we would close the gate, so to speak. It’s not about number as much as it is about a policy crafted by us and benefits our citizens.
You may want to watch the senate debate many of these very issues. If you can’t catch it on TV during the day, you can read the minutes, verbatim, here.
What you say is perfectly true in our society, but if it looks like the tide of immigration is growing once again, doesn’t that mean our system has to change to reflect that?
Now, why would you want more people?
Knowledge, to lower labor costs, to gain more constituents, because we don’t have a right to tell people where they can or can’t live, because you have some policies that mean you need more people, to create a one world government, to build a giant tunnel to Mars, unlimited pickup basketball games. Whatever your beliefs, pick whichever applies.
Given that the system changes to absorb, deflect, and mitigate these costs that we’re feeling now, why wouldn’t you want more people coming in?
(that’s rhetorical. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth)
What you say is perfectly true in our society, but if it looks like the tide of immigration is growing once again, doesn’t that mean our system has to change to reflect that?
Now, why would you want more people?
Knowledge, to lower labor costs, to gain more constituents, because we don’t have a right to tell people where they can or can’t live, because you have some policies that mean you need more people, to create a one world government, to build a giant tunnel to Mars, unlimited pickup basketball games. Whatever your beliefs, pick whichever applies.
Given that the system changes to absorb, deflect, and mitigate these costs that we’re feeling now, why wouldn’t you want more people coming in?
(that’s rhetorical. I’m not trying to put words in your mouth)
Yeah, I’m sure my argument might be a little hard to nail down, but I’m working to nail down a response and get what you’re trying to say at the same time.
Where do I get my belief that people should be able to emigrate to whatever country they like? I may be a bit of an idealist, but it’s a lot like how white America used to have invisible lines drawn with regards to housing. Blacks had to live behind this line, where whites could populate the rest. Nobody should draw a line that is, for all intents and purposes, invisible, and expect everyone to respect it. I understand that political boundaries are set forth by the countries themselves and that NGOs such as the UN help to enforce them. I see people as more important than states. The way I see it, a person has no right to tell someone that they can’t move from their country and live in another country if they want opportunity/to better themselves.
What’s your point with Cuba?
Sure, people have the right to build communities (like gated communities). I don’t buy that “good fences make good neighbors”. Fences divide and set things apart. They have in many places in history (this is where you’d provide places where they unite).
I also agree with you that if we’re in the process of picking who can or can’t come in, that we should admit those who help us first. Your point that we should tend to our own problems first before tackling others is the same point I use when talking about the Iraq war and striving to be world police. No real point to make here, other than I’d love to get our problems fixed before tackling others, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear laundry list of problems to do.
As far as my allusion to India, I was just wondering if we’re going to accept that country as a representative of a “crowded country”.
New York City and Los Angeles are pretty crowded cities, but I don’t think they’d rival Calcutta. If all our major cities were as crowded as those, I don’t see a giant problem with that.
Would you agree with spending more of our resources to help make other countries better so they don’t want to come here?
If we completely opened our southern border, do you think that Mexico would be completely empty?
A nation wants to keep its borders. That’s a part of the definition of a nation (having a border). Keeping those borders “secure” is another problem. Half of our borders are naturally taken care of via ocean. Canadians aren’t pouring in(Something like 80 or 90 some odd percent of all Canadians live within a hundred miles of the US border. That warrants mentioning.) The Mexican border is the only one that has problems. One reason would be because the people coming back over the border don’t recognize the border because it doesn’t exist to them and they want to go back to lands that were their ancestors’ lands before war changed that. Another reason would be because they want to raise their standard of living. I’m sure there are others, but those are the only ones I’m bringing up now (cause I’m typing too damned much as it is).
Think I’ve addressed everything you had in your previous statement. Let me know if I glossesd over or skipped something, please.
It also shares its border with Sincerity. Everyone from Sarcasm hopped over the borders because Sincerity has better weather and modern cars.
seriously, though, I appreciate the heads up
No problem. I appreciate your earnestness.
May I suggest reading about the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. The very document that created this country is based upon a concept of self determination. That we have the right to govern ourselves, and to look out for our own interests. The idea of a nation is that a group of people have common beleifs and interests and they form a government to help realize them. That government is duty bound to act in the interest of the people it represents. This is not unique to us, though. I’d say every nation on earth is operating in a way that they think benefits it. Take Mexico. It is in their interest to have as many of their citizens working in the U.S., legal or otherwise. Not only does it relieve their government of providing jobs and services for millions of people (a great number of whom are low-skilled), but the also get more than $30 billion sent back into their country, and economy, every year. I don’t blame them, as they are looking out for their own interests, except that they are not being good neighbors when they encourage their citizens to brazenly break our laws.
Due to a decades-old hate of Castro (rightly so), we have a policy for Cubans that is different than that for any other island-nation in the area, or any other nation period. The policy states that if a Cuban emigrant (escapee) can make it to the U.S. mainland, that they automatically are granted asylum. Over the years you may have seen boats of people from pplaces like Haiti sent back. This is one of the reasons that Miami has such a large Cuban population. Thid, obvioulsy, isn’t fair to other people who are as eager to get here as Cubans.
Sometimes fences are necessary. You may choose to place one on your property or you may not, as circumstances suggest. It appears that we don’t need one on our northern border, as Canada is a much better place to live than Mexico. Also, many perople come here through Mexico, from points south. North of Canada you get polar ice.
Yes. As long as we cold be sure that the money would not be stolen by the corrupt, which is very unlikely, especially in Mexico. But I do support encouraging the private sector to invest in Mexico and form partnerships to create a healthier business environment.
Right now, ten percent of the Mexican population is living in the U.S. I forget the exact number, but there have been recent polls showing that the majority of Mexicans would move here of they could. If so, Mexico will never get it’s act together. They need to vreate an engine that creates it’s own wealth. And maybe if the government didn’t have the easy $30 billion falling into its lap every year (the single largest contributor to its GNP), the people would demand that they get their act together.
Well, they have to recognize them. They are legal boundaries, agreed to by the government of Mexico through agreements and treaties. If there is a Tiffany’s store built on a block you lived on the was taken through emeinent domain, you couldn’t just choose to disregard the new situation and help yourself to the store.
I have no doubt that they are coming here to improve their standard of liviing, just as millions of other immigrants have. But you have to do it legally. Borders, and laws, have to be respected. There are many things I could think of doing that would improve my standard of living, but there are those pesky things called laws again.
Some things you might find interesting, if you haven’t already:
John Locke – Two Treatises of Governement
Thomas Paine – Common Sense
Thomas Paine – The Rghts of Man
Bernard Baylin – The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence (I like rereading it)
The writings of the Founders, particularly the letters of T. Jefferson and J. Adams
Anything on Natural Law Theory, which is at the foundation of much of the Declaration of Independence
First, where did you get the number 10% of the population? Second where did you get the $30 billion amount? And regardless of the amount of remittances, how the hell does that end up in the hands of the government?
Also for any poster, where does the number of 12 million come from? How does anyone know how many undocumented are in the US?
Sadly, all the numbers that magellan is throwing out are the (presumably) widely-accepted numbers that the media around here peppers their reports with.
As for the rest? Well, if only Mexic were to cut taxes they’d get even less of that $30B!
-Joe
I don’t know about magellan01’s numbers.
The Pew Hispanic Center reports 2003 remittances to Latin America as $30 billion. 18% of which went to Mexico.
They also report the 12 million total illegal immigrant number.
http://pewhispanic.org/files/execsum/61.pdf *PDF
In 2004, 57% of that population was Mexican
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf *PDF
Of course, not all remittances to Mexico are from illegal aliens. US Citizens and Permanent Resident Aliens also send money down there. I know. I’ve personally witnessed it.
Mexico’s population is 107,449,525. So I guess that magellan01 believes that Mexicans make up about 89.5% of the illegal aliens.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html
The 12 million (11.5 - 12) is what has been used in almost any article I’ve read. It is also the number use in the Senate, by both sides. If you have other info, simply provide it. Of course, it is an estimate. There may be more or fewer.
The $30 billion is also a number that the Senate has been using. I assume it to be corrrect as, although I have not watched all of the debates, I never saw it challenged. Based on that I am just assuming it is correct. It may not be. Again, if you have info to the contrary, simply offer it. As far as it ending up in the hands of the government, I simply meant that it benefited the governement as it entered the economy. Poor phrasing on my part perhaps. Whoever it was that made the point initially about the $30 billion, added that it was the single largest contributor to the GNP, more than tourism or oil. These numbers went unchallenged, so I tend to accept them. That is not proof of their accuracy, though.
The 10% number again came from the debate in the Senate and seemed to be accepted there. I don’t think they, or I, implied that was due to illegal Mexicans only. My quote:
I don’t have time right now, but I’ll see if I can hunt down where the numbers I heard in the Senate debates came from.
In all sincerity, I have a question for you. I’m sure where you live, as in most places, there are tresspassing laws to keep people from squatting on other peoples’ property. What if, in your town, these laws were not enforced (as the immigration laws are not enforced), and the local authorities did nothing to help if groups of people decided to just move into homeowners’ back yards? Would homeowners in your town be within their rights, and prudent, to put up fences so this would not happen? Or in the spirit of not dividing & setting people apart, should you just accept that people will squat on your property, and hope that they won’t cause you any trouble? (I am not refering to gated communities, just a regular house with a regular yard.)
Thanks for the cite. It gave some very interesting things. I see that Kennedy when the 1965 bill was passed stated that the new bill would not result in any demographic changes. So I guess that he also thought that keeping the racial mix in the US was right. It also showed that the overwhelming majority of immigrants were non-European as a result.
Maybe you can explain to me why promoting the non-Europeans over them is NOT racist. Why is it that Europeans are discriminated against and their numbers limited now? They are the most accomplished in terms of education and means compared to the rest of the immigrant population. If we were to propose legislation to keep out most of the immigrants from Asia or Latin America at a rate FAR below their numbers in the US population, I would also protest such a thing. Yet when the exclusion is applied to Europeans, no protest is raised.
Also according to the statistics given there is very little immigration from Africa and it is far below that of their part of the population. If anything, that number should be increased significantly and the Latin American and Asian radically reduced if we wish to maintain the rough balance of the composition of the American people.
Of course, if your intent is to make the US a non-European majority country, then indeed we should keep things as they are. We should ban all immigration from Europe completely, except for a few geniuses such as an Einstein or two, then the result will come much quicker. The fact is that there are more people who want to immigrate to the US than there are slots available. Like it or not each group in the US seeks to have more of its people come here than the others. When I was in Poland many years ago, the main business of the consulate I visited in Krakow was to get visas for the Poles who wished to join their relatives in the US. I imagine the Poles in the US were in the main responsible for this big push. The same has been true of virtually every ethnic group here. So the question is, what will be the basis on which we allocate the limited slots? I think a fair way is to do it on the basis of the current composition as determined every ten years by the US census. If you have a better way, I would be willing to hear it. The demographic changes as regards the composition by births and deaths will be adjusted accordingly.
Right now, the Europeans are the only demographic group that is excluded in the main. Just as the Chinese exclusion act was wrong, so too is the current system. That is why I think it should be revisited because of the practical effects and changes that have taken place since 1965.
What are you talking about? What restriction has been applied to European applicants for immigration? There are Poles and Russians that are arriving in large numbers, now, and I have never heard of any restrictions against them. Other European countries tend to not send as many immgrants because the standard of living through the rest of Europe is high enough that there is no incentive to come to the U.S.
Why are you claiming that there are special restrictions on European immigrants?