Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. still has a really generous legal immigration policy compared to most countries in Europe, Australia and even some 3rd world countries yet The Left constantly criticizes that the U.S. and some European countries are becoming Draconian by asking people to have even basic documents and go through an official immigration process.
Why is that? One of the most basic definitions of a nation is the right to control its own borders whether that country happens to be New Zealand or Yemen. It seems to me that people that are advocating for safe-havens for illegal immigrants are really just arguing for a backdoor approach to truly open borders in a disingenuous way.
This is not a philosophical problem at all. Nations all over the world ranging from Sweden, The UK, France and even Mexico are having to deal with the tide of people spilling over their borders and those people have to be dealt with with in very real ways.
What is the non fuzzy-headed solution to this widespread problem?
For the record, I have nothing against most illegal immigrants individually. I have known and liked many of them personally but that is completely different from a guide that you can use to set national policies. I am asking about the latter.
A lot of people have complained about the “line-jumping” effect of illegal immigration. Why should a law-abiding applicant have to wait and wait, while someone else bypasses the arrangement and just scoots over the border.
Yes, the U.S. should control its borders.
But it needs to be done as part of a unified package of reforms, not as a stand-alone program. “Comprehensive” is the key word here. Those who say, “Control the borders first, and only then will we discuss other reforms” are being dishonest. They have no intention whatever of following through with those other reforms. Only by making border control a part of an overall package can any real progress be made.
“You have to give me a little of what I want, before I consent to give you a great big hunk of what you want.”
“The left” is doing this constantly? Can we have some examples and can you explain how those examples are somehow representative of “the left”?
I’m guessing you are confusing what “the left” says about how we handle people who are already here illegally, not how we handle immigration, in general.
Complete nonsense. We’ve been promised secure borders since Reagan’s amnesty. There’s your “give a little”. The only way the border will be secured is if the proponents of such insist that nothing else will be done until AFTER the border is secured. Supposedly both sides think this aspect should be done (aside from the naive and nutty open borders crowd), so do what everyone agrees with, and then worry about the rest later. Hell, it’s the one thing that hasn’t be tried yet. And it’s because the Dems want to keep the issue alive, not to mention that too many on both sides are happy with the status quo: the Dems get loyal voters (eventually) and a happy hispanic bas now; the Reps get to keep a steady stream of cheap low skilled workers to their agriculture, construction and hospitality constituencies. Make them all concentrate on just securing the border. Anything else will guarantee the border will not be secured.
My solution to illegal immigration is pretty similar to my solution to illegal marijuana use. You’re trying to stop something when you should be legalizing it.
Historically, I think immigration has been a major gain for the United States. So while we could theoretically close down immigration, I would place such a policy in the same category as saying we could theoretically poke ourselves in the eye with a sharp stick.
I know some people are saying the situation has changed and that these immigrants (Mexicans) are different than previous groups of immigrants (our grandparents). But this claim is nothing new - there have always been people arguing that the current group of immigrants is just too different and will never assimilate. But all those predictions have been wrong so I see no reason why the current predictions won’t eventually be proven wrong as well.
So my solution is that we should create a legal way for people to come to this country if they’re coming here for the traditional reasons - work, family, freedom, opportunities, etc. And we should take the resources we save from not trying to stop all these normal immigrants and apply them to stopping the handful of actual problems like criminals and terrorists.
In Australia, the justification for hard line policies is that if we have humane policies, then people would be encouraged to make the dangerous journey by boat. And if they were to die on a boat journey here, we might see them die, and we don’t want that. So they need to stay in their own countries and die there. But they won’t die because they’re economic refugees who are all billionaires from a country with a perfect human rights record.
And I really hate the argument that "we take more immigrants than the rest of the world (I’ve heard both Americans and Australians make this claim). Blatant whataboutism. Saudi Arabia not being quite as bad as North Korea doesn’t make it a good place to live.
There’s an inherent conflict between the aim of preventing illegal immigration and the aim of stopping human trafficking, which seems to be the moral panic of the day. The more barriers placed to entry, the more would-be migrants need to turn to traffickers, the more lucrative the trafficking industry becomes. And also, the easier it is for those who make it in to be exploited, because the more afraid they are of the authorities.
So basically, it comes down to whether we’re more interested in protecting borders or people. For all the posturing about the latter, it’s really the former that takes priority.
Every story you have of IRS raids on places with huge numbers of illegals tells of the catastrophic consequences.
The Kosher meat packing, the tomato field; remove the illegals and the place goes to Hell.
We allow most to cross - it is not fun to try coming from Guatemala to Texas - only very strong and determined make it, and usually at high monetary cost because they are really, really, profitable,.
All of the “build a wall and shoot anyone who tries” folks should spend a month picking strawberries.
it is always the brown people who are perceived as the problem. I worked with a couple of illegals from UK. Invariably, they were courting US citizens. If you can marry one, you’re in.
The INS did not come to the office and round them up. One reported that, when dealing with INS, the agents were downright pleasant with him. A British accent still works wonders in the US. One Englishman** thought it was quite amusing that even a Cockney (in UK, a low-class accent) accent worked magic on Americans.
- the US-Mexico border is a harsh place except San Diego - crossing into the West Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona (Sonora Desert)
** - Yes, England. Yes, I know England is not the name of the Sovereign Entitiy. Keep 1707 Act of Union to yourselves. Thank you.
Answer: H1B’s who left the company holding their “Green Cards”.
Yes, I know they are no longer green in color.
Let me guess: They have recently been printing them on green stock again.
Also untrue, at least when it comes to refugees. UNHCR publishes a list every year of top-ten refugee hosting countries, and it’s always places like Pakistan, Ethiopia, Lebanon. I think Germany was on the list a couple years ago, but for the most part it’s all Asia and Africa.
Actually, both the Left and the Right are fairly schizophrenic on the topic. In the case of the Right, any suggestion that good 'Muricans should have to be able to provide documentation is met with screams of black helicopters and similar paranoia. (It is only those (brown) people who need to have to show IDs.) The Left has its own problems, but pretending that the Left is the sole group with ID issues is an error.
Similarly, utterly open borders is much more of a libertarian position than a Leftist position.
Good question. The first thing would be to discover a way for advanced countries with declining birth rates to continue to fill the labor needs of the country without greater immigration.
The ultimate best solution would be to remove the impetus for massive immigration by helping to make the countries whose people are emigrating safer and more prosperous to remove the attraction of the countries facing immigration. Fighting illegal immigration by trying to interdict supply is very similar to fighting drugs by trying to interdict supply while the demand remains high.
That’s because they are. The United States can afford to have a comparatively open border with Canada, for example, because a problem in Canada is unlikely to be left to fester long enough to cross the border. A country with good healthcare, good education and a good legal system effectively pre-screens any potential immigrants, while a country that lacks these things does not provide this initial line of defense.
Jail the people who hire illegal aliens. They’re the ones causing the problem (insofar as there is a problem, which I’m not convinced is the case).
People who hire illegal immigrants are like people who put out cat food. Inevitably, it draws more cats, mice, raccoons, dogs, etc. As long as the food is put out, the people will come.
In the case of illegal immigrants, the “food” is jobs. As long as people hire illegal immigrants, more immigrants will keep coming.
You can’t threaten the people who are desperate enough to sneak into this country and work for pennies. They have nothing to lose. If you want to stop the stray cats problem, you have to lean on the ones who set the food out for them. It’s those people who have money and social standing who create the economic niche that attracts illegal immigrants. Threaten their social standing with a little jail time and suddenly feeding the strays becomes a lot less economical.
I’m personally not recommending this course of action, because, like I said, I’m not convinced we have an illegal immigrant problem, plus, destroying the economic niche which immigrants currently fill would do a number on everyone’s economy. But, if you did think we have such a problem, this is how you solve it.
There isn’t a coherent moral case to be made on behalf of immigration restrictions, in a way that reconciles it with the general ethics of the first world west.
Generally speaking, we perceive discrimination as inherently wrong, and bad.
You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of sex.
You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of race.
You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of religion.
You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of disability.
But…you should discriminate on the basis of birthplace? Even though nobody chooses their birthplace, any more than their sex, race, etc etc, and they have no chance of changing it?
This is not a morally consistent argument.
We are aware that we’re the beneficiaries of a system of discrimination, and we’re unwilling to face that, because we fear someone might ask us to give up our unearned privileges.
We know that we won the lottery when we were born, and therefore we spend a lot of itme and effort trying to convince ourselves that the lottery is fair and right, and everyone ought to abide by the results.
Do we have any idea what the cost-benefit curve looks like? I expect that it’s asymptotic.
And how secure is secure? magellan01 says we shouldn’t do other things until the border is “secured”, but at what point is it, and does that require infinite funds?
I wouldn’t jail them but I’d hold them liable for estimated payroll taxes owed. If they knowingly accept fake social security numbers then make them liable for damages to the real SS holder in the event of identity theft. I’d make the undocumented immigrants liable for taxes owed as well or at least prove they’ve been paying taxes. If they can pay their way in, I’m fine with them staying provided they’re not violent.
That is the clever part of magellan01’s argument; the border can never be secure enough, so he never has to make any effort on the other parts of immigration reform.
Small thread derail. Nothing wrong with calling someone English in that context, I am both English and British. The only time using ‘England’ gets up people’s noses is if you use it to refer to the political entity that is the UK, or if you call someone who is Scottish/Welsh, ‘English’.
Yeah, and given where that border is it’s going to be a bitch to do. Anyone who thinks we could just build a Great Wall of America to keep those dirty Mexicans out has never been to this part of the country or taken a look at the terrain and conditions you’d be building this thing in.
Personally, wrt OP, I think we should open up our green card work program. A lot of people who are coming into the US don’t actually want to live here and become Americans…they come here for the work and send the money back to their families in Mexico or further south. I’d open up that, allow more freedom to be here legally and work here legally (and pay some taxes above board). IF they want to become citizens, then I’d open that up with no quotas to help them get through the process.
This country was built on immigration, and it seem to me we are going about this in the wrong way…we are wasting recourse trying to keep people out, when in fact a lot of our agriculture companies are sneaking them in to pay under the table (and at a lower cost) to do necessary work that most Americans don’t want to do. It’s kind of like the war on drugs…if you have a significant percentage of Americans wanting something it’s going to make it easier for criminals to bring it in, so…legalize, tax and regulate.