I’ve always been fairly open to immigration. I have a lot of immigrant friends and acquaintances. They are hardworking, mostly honest and good additions to America. Not all immigrants are the same and we should be cautious about who we let in to the country. Muslims, as much as possible, should be barred from entry. That seems obvious. Koreans, Chinese and Japanese are very successful immigrants with very strong support networks so we can be liberal with them. A country our size can easily absorb and assimilate half a million new citizens each year, maybe a little more in good times.
Now, if we shut off all immigration, as we have in the past, that’s fine too. We have roughly 40 million foreign born in the US. That’s a big number and the people would be justified in wanting a halt, in order to let the current immigrants get settled. It is only fair. Inviting these people in and then screwing them by gutting the labor market with more immigrants is pretty close to evil. If we are going to have immigration, we should make sure the immigrants succeed, as much as possible.
The problem is that immigration stopped being a public policy issue and became a rentier racket for the ruling class. Big companies like cheap labor from indentured servants. Small business likes cash labor so they can avoid paying taxes and insurance. Then we have an army of human traffickers that make money getting migrants into America. These brokers operate on both sides of the border. Of course, foreign governments have figured out to make money off this racket as well.
This story on VDare explain how the way the Mexican government, for example, profits from illegal immigration. Billions flow from America to Mexico through illegal immigration. Of course, the drug trade is intimately tangled up in the immigration rackets and with the Mexican government. All of this is facilitated by a banking system that operates beyond the reach of any government’s laws. If you go to a convenience store near where migrants live, you’ll find a wire transfer machine/check cashing machine located in the back. Western Union seems to own most of them.
The human brokers are probably the most offensive to the morality of a sane people. This story I stumbled upon from a long ago is a great example. The areas where these poultry plants operate are not suffering from labor shortages. In fact, light manufacturing locates to these areas because of the abundance of cheap land and cheap local labor. It is a hassle dealing with rural rednecks and rural blacks. They demand things like sick time and holiday pay. Slaves from Korea tend not to cause much trouble. They are much less likely to fall into a machine or blow the place up by accident.
The economics of immigration policy are easy to understand once you look into it. As the above shows, there are a lot of people making big money by flouting the laws. Getting easier laws to flout, presumably, opens up greater avenues for these parasites to profit. That’s the thing to remember. The cheap labor may mean cheap landscaping, but the American put out of work by the illegal migrant is on welfare, which drives up your taxes and social costs. In effect, these immigration privateers are taxing all of us by shifting costs to the tax payer.
On every other issue, we find politicians on both sides. Raising or lowering business taxes, for example, will get friends of business out in support of the proposals, but it also gets pols out who are emotionally opposed to profit making business. In other words, you can’t bribe Nancy Pelosi into supporting tax cuts. Immigration is the exception. Only a handful of pols dare speak out against the moneyed interests. Even pols who have nothing to gain and represent strong anti-immigrant constituencies are silent. It’s as if a madness has taken hold of the ruling elite, where any criticism of immigration is heresy.
The increasingly clownish Marco Rubio is back with a new scheme to flood the STEM fields with indentured servants. Keep in mind that his political prospects took a nosedive after he backed the last immigration scheme. Unless he is retarded, the guy has to know that the public is overwhelmingly against this. Yet, here he is throwing his career away for this cause. Even assuming he is getting bribed, why take the risk? Rubio is a young man who could be president one day. Why risk it all just for a few bucks and the pat on the head from the ruling elites?
That’s the key question. Simple bribery is never enough on other issues so why would immigration be the exception?
The answer is the secular religion we call liberalism, progressivism, multiculturalism, etc. A core tenet of this belief set is that all humans are the same. Economics and circumstance are what makes for different results. Ireland is the way it is not because it is full of Irish, but because of the accident of history. Put a bunch of Bantus on the island and before long you get black Irish who are remarkably good at track and field. It’s not just that race is a myth; ethnicity is a myth, a leftover from a bygone era.
When applied to immigration, the only morally consistent policy is open borders. After all, letting in one group over another means one group is better, innately better, than the other group. That blows apart the whole thing. It’s why Steve Sailer has it all wrong about how France can walk back from their immigration policies. Even saying that “we have reached our goal” on immigration admits that not all people are the same and therefore it is good and proper to make judgments about them based on culture. Admitting that culture is real and permanent is inconceivable.
Open borders? Sure!
Then we an simply eliminate all this Registered Voter ID brew ha ha and just let anyone passing by
weigh in on how things ought to be done!
Not only are all humans not the same, all immigrants are not the same, as immigrants.
Over the decades I have had extensive interaction with two immigrant communities: Asian, primarily Vietnamese, and Hispanic, primarily Central American.
The Asians retain strong ties to their original culture and community, but are glad to be living and working in America; they see themselves as Americans, or future Americans. The extended family may live ten to a house, but they own the house. They may send money back to the home country, but they also spend heavily in America – Asians love to shop, eat out, drive flashy cars, wear designer brands. They want to enjoy life, and for others to see them enjoying it.
Hispanics in my experience won’t spend a dime if they don’t have to. Everything goes back home. They pack themselves into rental properties, shop at Wal-Mart, dine out rarely, and drive beat up used cars.
In short, Hispanics are a drag on the American economy. The only trickle down trickles down to, say, Honduras. First, they depress wages, meaning less money in circulation; then, they ship that money out, meaning no money in circulation. With twenty million of these folks in the country, and most job creation going to immigrants, you have a big reason why the U.S. economy has remained limp. What we have here is de facto foreign aid on a massive scale, a huge transfer payment to foreign soil with no benefit to the host. We are being bled out.
I’m for shutting the border and slowing immigration to a crawl, as we did in the 20’s in order to allow the flood from the late 19th and early 20th century to assimilate. When open borders fanatics gives the speech about America being a nation of immigrants, they conveniently leaves out the fact that, for 60 years, we were not.
I propose the bacon test for immigration. If you will eat bacon, you are eligible for immigration, if not – stay where you are. Oh by the way, “eligible for immigration” means legal immigration. I don’t care if you raise hogs, if you are here illegally ..go home peacefully or otherwise.
Yesterday, on the flagship news program of Al-beeb — Britain’s left-leaning state broadcaster, funded by a tax you cannot ever avoid — there was a story about a muslim who, having decided to go and kill people in Syria, returned to the UK having planted stories on social media about his sad demise fighting for the caliphate. Alas for him the cover story of his tragic death in combat was thin and he was arrested getting off a channel ferry.
Al-beeb, as is their wont, described him as ‘British’ which is of course, a laugh of the first magnitude. He is, like so many of the many islamic imports to these islands, anything but British. He may speak the language and hold a UK passport, but he is through and through committed to another national ideal. Quite possibly one that would prefer to see Britain under some other control.
This then is what happens with immigration. The arrested man was almost certainly born here but while his parents may well have been prepared to commit to their new home, their offspring eventually start to think otherwise. Britain is a small country and while a large area like the USA can probably absorb a lot of people (though building towns and getting utilities to them may be a stretch) but this nation on the edge of muslim-invaded Europe isn’t. So into this crowded mix begin to appear the offspring of immigrants who make it clear they want another world, and are prepared to be violent on behalf of it.
I should add that I have no idea if this arrested warrior of the ‘religion of peace’ wants to actively make trouble in these islands, but he is ‘trained’ and ‘educated’ and it soon becomes a small step to take up arms in his own town.
My point is that this man is anything but British, and I suspect in the US you will soon have the sons (and daughters) of immigrants who will stop wanting to be American and revert to some other loyalty. Of course, our leaders can never imagine this happening, but it does.
Oh yes, we too in the UK have plenty of ‘corner shops’ able to wire British money abroad. I bet some of it comes back to haunt us, too.
The repatriated radical presents the biggest challenge to the cult of modern liberalism. After all, if you bar them from entry, you raise the issue of citizenship, which the Left thinks is old fashioned. If you let them in, they start murdering liberal cartoonists. There’s a third option of considering them as criminals, but then you have to invent a crime that transcends time and place. Imagine France arresting someone for shoplifting at a Ukrainian retail shop. France has no jurisdiction and no authority to force Ukrainians to abide by French law. How can that possibly work?
That’s why the Left likes calling these guys “home grown” radicals. That way they skirt the thorny issue of what to do with them and can instead shift the focus to the “social forces that radicalized these poor Muslims.”
The best part is how open border supporters make this a compassion and caring issue, while it’s DE-facto enabling exploitation.
Illegal central American workers combine the best of slavery, cheap and outside any laws with none of the liability (which slave owners had).
It’s funny how the police isn’t even allow to check someones immigration status, what a joke…
Speaking from the perspective of the ruling class. From their perspective, border control is heresy.
Not sure I understand, Z. Your last two paragraphs read like satire. Are you saying we SHOULD open the borders? Or being snarky? I know the libtards want open borders, but I sure as hell don’t.
And yes, Rubio shot down his career over amnesty.