She Does Not Speak For Me
| April 11th, 2006I saw this posting from pandagon today regarding Jasmyne Cannick’s article against immigration reform. I had to write something in response to it because I am deeply offended by her words as a black women and as a lesbian.
Jasmyne writes:
It’s a slap in the face to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to take up the debate on whether to give people who are in this country illegally additional rights when we haven’t even given the people who are here legally all of their rights.
This reminds me of how some black “leaders” said it was a slap in the face to the civil rights movement to be equated with the gay rights movement. I am sorry Jasmyne, but the oppression olympics are played out and get us nowhere in our goals of civil rights for all oppressed people. I agree that we haven’t given all of the people in this country the same rights, but what makes the struggles of gays and lesbians more important than the struggles of immigrants? Nothing does.
While I know no one wants to be viewed as a racist when it comes to immigration reform, as a lesbian I don’t want to move to the back of the bus to accommodate those who broke the law to be here. After all, immigrants aren’t the only ones who want a shot at the American dream.
While I agree that immigration reform is an important issue and perhaps it could become the next leading civil rights movement we haven’t even finished with our current civil rights movement. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts got it right when he said, “There is no moving to the front of the line.” Immigration reform needs to get in line behind the LGBT civil rights movement, which has not yet realized all of its goals.
Excuse me? Did it ever occur to her that just because it is a law doesn’t make it right? Slavery was legal for over 200 years–did that make it right? Of course not. In fact, it was only up until recently (2003) that a number of anti-homosexual laws were repealed that de-criminalized the personal sexual relationships of homosexuals–which were the anti-sodomy laws. When she was having sex with other women, it was illegal. And if she has sex with a member of the military, it is still seen as illegal and could place her in prison for up to 15 years.
Immigration and immigrant rights are a part of the civil rights movement. Does she not know of any bi-national couples? Does she not know of any queer immigrants? She lives in Los Angeles, a diverse metropolis, therefore I find this highly impossible–unless she only interacts with queer U.S. citizens. And, since she uses racialized rhetoric (back of the bus) she implies that the civil rights movement that grew out of the desires of both blacks and whites to provide equal rights for blacks has successfully finished. She says this at the same time the majority of people in prison are black, where a large number of us are living in abject poverty, where the majority of blacks are living with HIV/AIDS–but i guess, since we got to move out from the back of the bus, everything is a-ok. Hearing this from a black lesbian is appalling.
Which is not to say that I don’t recognize the plight of illegal immigrants. I do. But I didn’t break the law to come into this country.
As a black American born lesbian, you are descendants of slaves. Of course you didn’t have to “break the law” to come here, your ancestors were already brought here against their will. But what about those of us queers or even non-queers who do not have the privilege of being born here in the United States?
Both Senator Kennedy and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas backed away from insisting that guest workers would have to leave the United States after their initial two-year visa expired, basically guaranteeing that immigrant families wouldn’t be separated.
Who actually believes that this country holds the best interests of immigrant families at the center of the guest worker legislature. The guest workers would have to leave because the United States government does not want them to stay here. If they stayed, the government would be responsible for them financially and politically, where a number of laws would have to change to accommodate these new citizens, extended stay nationals, or whatever else they would be deemed as. Our country would be responsible for treating them like human beings and not the underpaid, disposable and worthless contractors the government wants them to be portrayed as.
Cannick’s words are xenophobic and reek of right wing conservatism that deploys the rhetoric of “illegal” and “broke the law” to imply that immigrants are complicit with crime and therefore pose a threat to our rights. I find this highly problematic coming from a person of color who so-called advocates for the civil rights of oppressed people. It doesn’t surprise me that a magazine like the Advocate (a very white and very conservative magazine) published her article.
Jasmyne, what is a crime is the fact that other black women like you and me, are surviving and struggling, just as much as immigants–documented or not. What is not a crime is having immigrants demonstrate their desire for civil rights, just as it is not a crime for gays/lesbians/sgl’s to demonstrate our desires for civil rights.
April 11th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
There’s nothing more pathetic that somebody in a discriminated-against group using their status as an excuse to be a bigot to others.
Glad to see you posting here.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 11th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Well, I can understand the emotions behind it. Once does just get fed up. Back in my day, young’uns, we used to call this the Myth of Scarcity. The Myth comes in many forms; in this case, it’s the assumption that there’s only so much justice in the bag to go around, and if Parties X use it all up, there won’t be anything left for Parties Y. Usually, however, the converse is true — the more justice other people have, the more other people wind up having, too. Through osmosis, because the pump’s already primed, because treating people fairly gets to be the default zeit geist. (Reads of enlightenment would include The Triumph of Meanness and The Wimp Factor — the latter because living in self-imposed scarcity is a big part of the Anxious Guy world view.)
This comment was written by Kell.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:30 am
I’m reminded of how some suffragists objected to the idea of voting rights for Blacks (which effectively meant “Black men,” since no one in government at the time was proposing that Black women should have the vote), saying that it was women’s turn first (meaning white women).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Cannick’s words are xenophobic and reek of right wing conservatism that deploys the rhetoric of “illegal” and “broke the law” to imply that immigrants are complicit with crime and therefore pose a threat to our rights.
Your attempt at satire here falls flat. What’s next, calling convicted criminals “priviledged guests.” Look, these illegals are here illegally which means they broke the law. Immigrants are people who apply to become our fellow citizens and they follow the law that Congress has set for the procedure. Every illegal who is granted amnesty is a slap in the face to people who are waiting very patiently to join us here.
Look, I can understand the nutter libertarians who want to completely dismantle the social welfare state being completely in favor of open borders. Their thinking is that the marketplace should provide opportunity to everyone without regard to meaningless (because it’s not market determined) things like citizenship. But what is up with liberals who are so eager to cripple the social welfare state? I just don’t get it. Is it because so many are shortsighted or are they just ignorant of the consequences of unrestricted open immigration?
This essay that you wrote makes me wonder why I’m out there arguing that the wage depression and increased labor supply is hurting my fellow citizens who are Black most severely and that 25% of Black men between the ages of 21-64 (not including homeless or those in custody) are idle for periods longer than a year and their workforce participation rate has had the severest drop of any demographic during the period that is coincident with this period of lax border control.
If the Black community doesn’t care about it’s own self-interest, and if Liberals are content to plant the dynamite that will take down the social welfare state, then I really shouldn’t give a damn either.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 1:01 am
where in this posting did you glean the idea tha the black community does not care about it’s own self interest? and, how is immigration reform not in the best interest of blacks—there are black immigrants too.
i guess i am just not understanding your hostility tangoman
This comment was written by Blac(k)ademic.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 3:46 am
Thanks for writing about that - that is one of the truly most insane arguments I have ever seen. “We can’t have open borders until we have gay marriage” is rather like saying “We can’t have a socialised medical system until we end rape.”
I’ve never heard the women’s turn first thing (not to say that it didn’t happen, but it was rare). My understanding of the argument during reconstruction was whether to accept the fourteenth (or possibly thirteenth) amendment, or whether to fight for an amendment that would extend suffrage to all people. It wasn’t just white women who were making that argument, but quite a few people who had been involved in the franchise and anti-slavery movements.
My understanding is that it was only after the thirteenth amendment (or possibly fourteenth) that the suffrage movement became seriously racist, and eventually almost exclusively racist in the south.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Kell and Amp, I understand the ’scarcity’ mentality and the idea that ‘excuse me, it’s our turn’–certainly there was racism from suffragists in opposition to allowing blacks to vote, but I would guess there was also a feeling, probably correct, that it was a distraction. “Oh, gosh, we’d love to get to your issue, but we’re going to get very busy helping another group first so we have an excuse to ignore you.” Divide and conquer.
But in addition to that fear, there’s plain old bigotry.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 8:57 am
This is also a class issue. People who can’t feed their children or buy them medication when they’re sick don’t have the time to jump through a bunch of hoops and then wait patiently. Their children could die. Breaking immigration laws is akin to breaking laws against stealing bread.
Do you have any data to back up your opinions about the consequences? The two problems of open immigration that you cite are wage depression and the unraveling of the social safety net. As far as wage depression goes, that’s already happened due to the illegal immigration. A big reason why companies choose to hire illegals is that they have no legal recourse when they break labor laws and pay below minimum wage (or withhold wages entirely). Taking away these advantages might actually increase wages. Even if that’s not the case - the way to raise wages is to increase the minimum wage, not to deny a huge group of people basic civil rights. As for the social safety net (such as it is), my understanding is that immigrants generally put in more than they take out and we’re going to need an influx of younger workers to provide the revenue to support the babyboomers as they retire.
This comment was written by Kate.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Actually, every illegal immigrant who is granted amnesty ought to be a clue to us that there is something wrong with the system that keeps perfectly decent people “patiently waiting” for years, while we lose their paperwork, let other people in before them, give benefits to certain nationalities rather than others, and so on. It’s also a slap in the face to businesses and industries that use legal labor, and are undercut by powerful competitors who get a wink and a nod from the government for hiring illegal workers.
Why should illegal immigrants take us seriously? We fuss about how awful it is that Those People come here illegally, when we won’t let them in legally–although, of course, we’re happy to buy cheap strawberries, move into shiny new houses, and go to restaurants fueled by their labor. We don’t run and call la migra if, working late in the office one night, we see janitors who don’t speak English and likely didn’t get here on an H1B visa. We don’t call ahead to Swanky Restaurant to affirm that it has I-9 forms for all of its employees. And our government does nothing to change any of this.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 9:38 am
FYI, Pattie Thomas has a great discussion (No. 8 in the “10 Things…” series) of this from the perspective of the fat civil rights fight, i.e. the claim that bigotry, exploitation, discrimination, injury of fat people somehow doesn’t count as “real” bigotry.
This comment was written by Kell.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 9:57 am
While I agree with Blac(k)ademic about the issue of there being more than enough justice to go around I disagree with a liberal immigration policy or granting amnest to millions of illegal aliens.
I can completely understand that a poor Mexican worker ( and other aliens too because Mexicans are not the only people from south of the border that are here illegally and there are plenty of people here from other nationalities that have overstayed their visas) would want to stay here in America and be put on the path to citizenship. If I was them I would want to stay here too.
However, to do so for them because they have been here longer- in essence broken the law longer-than another immigrant is completely unfair. There are people in African countries and Asian countries that have been on the waiting list to get into this nation for years and years, and they do not have the benefit of a shared border with the US so they cannot just be smuggled in so easily and bide their time until granted amnesty.
The millions of illegal workers are depressing wages and putting an immense strain on our healthcare and penal systems.
I don’t see the two issues as mutually exclusive though, for instance a transgendered person that cannot go back to their native country due to their lifestyle choice but they are illegally in this country.
This comment was written by SBW.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 10:14 am
No, no. I think it’s NAFTA we can pin at least some of the blame on for depressed wages. Not to mention corporate greed.
Or do you think that if I was paying an undocumented laborer $10 to mow my lawn, he’d vociferously protest if I tried to double his fee ? “Oh, no, madam. I must faithfully perform my evil function of forcing your country’s wages ever lower. Do not attempt to give me more cash to send home to my mother in Chiapas/Dublin. That would be bad.”
Give me a break.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 10:39 am
You want to reduce illegal immigration, or at least the wage depression caused by employing illegals? Then try this simple 3 step plan:
1) Enforce current laws regarding employing illegals.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.2) Change the law so that if an employer is caught paying illegals less than the local minimum wage that the employer is fined 10 times what it has thus far paid the illegals. Plus payroll taxes + the illegal’s portion of taxes.
3) Conduct advertising campaigns to advertise the fact that any illegal that turns in her or his employer for paying them less than minimum wage will get 30% of the fine leveled by the federal government & a green card & a path to citizenship.
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April 12th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Generally speaking, illegals get the minimum wage (or higher). It’s difficult to break that law and get away with it over time. Most employer mistreatment of illegals comes in other areas, like ignoring safety rules, overtime pay, breaks, and general respectful treatment.
The wage depression caused by mass immigration (legal or otherwise) has little to do with employers not paying them “minimum wage”; it’s an economic question having to do with the market value of low-skill labor. With 100,000 people of a particular skill level available for work, the market-clearing wage is X. With 1,000,000 of that skill level available, the market-clearing wage is some fraction of X.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Okay, so modify my three step plan. Offer cash rewards & path to citizenship for reporting employers mistreatment in those other areas. Combine that with raising the minimum wage to a living wage & I think that is a beginning.
Also, why is immigration so much higher in the last 20 years than it was in the 2 decades preceding that? I have no idea, but I figure that something must have changed.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Amp: I’m reminded of how some suffragists objected to the idea of voting rights for Blacks (which effectively meant “Black men,” since no one in government at the time was proposing that Black women should have the vote), saying that it was women’s turn first (meaning white women).
Except that that isn’t what happened.
Heart
This comment was written by Heart.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:20 am
i’m not sure i understand how undocumented people puts a strain on our healthcare system.
This comment was written by Blac(k)ademic.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:27 am
It’s because they’re allegedly getting “free” care that they don’t pay for, Blac(k).
Of course, this is crap, because all sorts of folks in this country are reduced to seeking “free” care in emergency rooms because they don’t have insurance.
It’s great having scapegoats, though. Because then the SBW’s among us can avoid actually examining the true sources of the problem– like outrageous insurance rates that fewer and fewer folks can afford, coupled with a for-profit system that leaves more and more care uncovered even for those of us who are still shelling out. (To cite just one major factor.) Folks like SBW can instead select the most odious (to them) symptom possible, and call it a disease.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:42 am
[Diversion, one post only, do not want to derail Blac(k)ademic's thread.]
I cannot stand it when you do what you just did, Amp. It irks me to the highest level of heaven.
Here’s what happened. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during Reconstruction, granted full citizenship to former slaves and free black people. It also introduced the word “male” into the Constitution and left it up to the states to determine which of its male citizens who were 21 could vote. The Fifteenth Amendment said U.S. citizens could not be denied the right to vote on the basis of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The suffragists wanted *sex* included along with race, color and previous condition of servitude. The inclusion of the word “sex” would have meant both white women and black women would have the right to vote. Abolitionists, including their former friend and ally, Frederick Douglass, didn’t want to push for that. He thought there was more chance of the 15th Amendment passing if the word “sex” were omitted and that while women’s suffrage was important, it was more important that black men be given the vote.
The suffragists were enraged and split. If the 15th Amendment wasn’t going to include sex, some wanted to reject it and work for an Amendment that *did* include the word “sex.” Others felt they should support it without the word “sex” and work for another Amendment that would give women suffrage.
What did not happen in any way shape or form is this:
Amp: I’m reminded of how some suffragists objected to the idea of voting rights for Blacks (which effectively meant “Black men,” since no one in government at the time was proposing that Black women should have the vote), saying that it was women’s turn first (meaning white women).
How many ways is what you posted there just so wrong. No one in the government was proposing that ANY women should have the vote. That’s the whole point. The suffragists wanted ALL women, black AND white to have the vote. White suffragists did not object to the idea of voting rights for Blacks; they objected to the exclusion of women, black and white.
Damn.
[End diversion. I will not post any more about this here if I have to cut my hands off at the wrists, though I may rant and rave my head off about it on my own blog. Damn.]
Heart
This comment was written by Heart.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:44 am
alsis39.75 - like outrageous insurance rates that fewer and fewer folks can afford, coupled with a for-profit system that leaves more and more care uncovered even for those of us who are still shelling out.
Well, I would agree that insurance rates are outrageous. It is true not only for individuals but for employers as well.
But the entire system is not for profit. HMO’s in many states (maybe most) are required by law to be not for profit. That is true here in the HMO heavy state of MN.
As far as what is covered, I’m not sure where you get your info. I have worked in the healthcare system for going on 25 years now. I can tell you, from the standpoint of state mandates, that the opposite is true. The services that are required to be covered and the level of coverage for them continues to increase, not decrease. I would challenge you to name one medical service that was covered 10 years ago that is not covered or less adequately covered today.
Now, certainly patient contributions have gone up. My deductibles and coinsurance on my employer sponsored plan suck. But as far as what services are covered under the plan, I have no complaints. In reality, I get seek a much wider variety of covered services now than I could with the same employer 15 years ago.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I periodicallly volunteer with an organization that helps people who have fled political persecution and torture gain asylum in the US. My role in the process is to perform physical exams on the refugees to document physical or psychological evidence of ill treatment in their home countries. As such, I’ve met a number of “illegal immigrants”: people who have entered the US illegally in desperate flight from unbearable conditions in their own country. Those I have met have been, without exception, exactly the people one would want as immigrants: hard working, creative, dedicated, and resourceful people who are interested in building a better life for themselves and others. People who are lazy and just want a “free ride” don’t get as far as the US. No, not even those from Mexico. You try crossing the Rio Grande and the southwestern deserts before telling me how “easy” it is. Anyone with the ambition and ability to get here has a better than average chance of being the sort of person we want for the country. Stop wasting time and money trying to keep them out and work on ways to make the transition and integration into society more efficient.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
It’s also not free. Although hospitals are not allowed to turn anyone away because they can not pay for care, they can and do aggressively pursue reimbursement for care rendered. This pursuit can include efforts to ruin the patient’s credit or seize their assets. Because of this and the fear of being turned over to the INS, many immigrants, legal or otherwise, do not get medical care. Some die because they do not.
I remember seeing one woman die of basal cell skin cancer because of this fear. Basal cell skin cancer, in case you don’t already know, NEVER metastasizes (spreads to other organs) and grows very slowly. Skin cancers of this type are so unlikely to be fatal that they are not even included in cancer survival statistics because they would screw up the data. So how did it kill her? She had a cancerous lesion on her ear. It grew and, over a period of years, invaded her neck and wrapped itself around her carotid artery, eventually eroding into it and causing her to bleed to death. By the time she got to the hospital there wasn’t anything to do. So much for lazy illegals just looking for free medical care.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Thanks, Blac(k)ademic, for this needed antidote to the division that engendered by the immigration debate.
I impatiently await the day when certain people on the left understand that human migration is a symptom , not a cause, and that we won’t resolve the matter by narrowly focusing on border control but rather by taking into account all the economic, social, political and environmental aspects of globalization. I believe globalization is inevitable, and the last thing progressives should do is buy into a notion of immigration control that doesn’t deal with the unfairness of a system in which goods, services, capital and financial capital can move freely across borders, but labor cannot.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t dislocations that must be dealt with. But the neo-isolationist, sometimes xenophobic approach we’re seeing touted even by some on “the left” will not improve matters.
(Thanks for your comment, Dianne. I saw close up in Central America in the 1980s the sometimes genocidal policies supported by U.S. policy that led to so many refugees, ironically, to flee here.)
This comment was written by Meteor Blades.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
exactly. we need to think of immigration as a global issue and examine the reasons why people feel the need to flee their home countries.
This comment was written by Blac(k)ademic.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Heart, while I don’t blame the suffragists for being angry over the exclusion of women from, I disagree that they advocated for both Black and White women.
Certainly I agree that one group shouldn’t come before another, and that the idea that we should all wait our turn is bullshit when it comes to civil and human rights. But the reaction of some of these activists went over the line and tripped into racism.
While there were plenty of women in the movement who were anti-racist and pro-suffrage for all women, there were still plenty of women who did buy into racist bullshit, who scrambled to reassure southern racists that the number of White women with the vote would outnumber those odious Black men and keep White supremacy safe. Far from advocating for suffrage for all women, some White women in the movement were quite happy to exclude Black women. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton got George Francis Train to be an ally–but advocated for “educated” suffrage, which excluded Blacks as it had been illegal to teach a Black person to read or to educate them. His programe was White women and THEN black men.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association not only barred Black women from attending its Altanta conference, but allowed chapters to bar Black women from joining. That’s not indicative of fighting for the rights of all women.
I realize I’m contributing to thread derail, but it sets me off when I see people deny misogny in progressive circles, and racism in feminist circles.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Thanks for this post, Nubian. It drives me fucking batshit when people act like we have to queue up for our civil rights. I’m the descendent of immigrants, as are many people in this country. And I find it telling that the bile I hear is often xenophobic–oh, they don’t bother to learn English (bullshit, but also, I lived overseas and I didn’t see any Western Whites speaking anything BUT English). They aren’t ‘part’ of this country. They use all of our resources and programs (yeah, right). They’re dirty/criminal/unemployed/insert stupid stereotype here.
People who freak out over illegal immigrants supposedly depressing wages or taking jobs should ask themselves why they feel they have to take such a dangerous journey here and subject themselves to this crap. Maybe it’s because they NEED THE MONEY. (And we can thank BS moves like NAFTA and CAFTA in making the economic situation worse in Mexico and Latin America.)
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
And Dianne, thanks for contributing. I spent a very small amount of time volunteering at a legal clinic that primarily helped illegal immigrants. It is un-fucking-believable how Kafkaesque the bureaucracy is.
For those who have never had the pleasure, CIS/ICE is what you would get if you crossed the IRS with a stereotypical bigoted cop.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Do you have any data to back up your opinions about the consequences?
Sure, where would you like to start? How about 2 huge commissioned studies conducted by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science back in the mid 90s. Table 7.5 in the book breaks down the net lifetime fiscal contribution of different classes of immigrants. The table shows that those without a high school education end up costing society $89,000 more than they contribute through taxes and value added from work. Those with a high school education present a smaller net fiscal drain of only$31,000. Those with education beyond the high school level are positive economic contributors and they benefit society to the tune of $105,000.
From the follow-up study they conclude:
Now keep in mind that these studies were looking at legal immigrants, not illegals, and the legal immigrants had far different proportions of education categories than do illegals who have disproportionate numbers who never went beyond 6th grade:
So, what do you think will happen to the social welfare programs when another 12 million poorly educated illegals get on the path to citizenship and fully qualify for the programs that liberals proclaim to love so dearly? For most of these illegals we’re looking at granting them an $89,000 lifetime subsidy, and keep in mind that this figure was derived in 1995, so with services like health care, education expenditures, etc rising at a rate faster than inflation, the subsidy is likely to be even larger than $89,000. If you’re bothered by the insane cost of the Iraq War, which is likely to top a trillion dollars, then the ($89,000 *12,000,000) NPV of $1,068,000,000,000 subsidy that we’re taking on to support these illegals should bother you as well. Then factor in the $45 Trillion of unfunded liabilities that face Medicare, and the Social Security funding, and you start seeing the outlines of the problem facing the social welfare state - someone has to pay for it. You can’t add another 12,000,000 net tax recipients now and then open the borders for another 5 billion who would like to come here and not expect the social welfare system to be strained.
Liberals don’t like income inequality, right? Take a look at the income inequality data and separate out immigrants and you see that that the gini coefficient is either stable or declining. Now add in 12 million (in this batch) very poor and ill-educated people and the income inequality rises. Further, the social mobility of these people and their children is impaired by either the parent’s lack of education or the children’s lack of inclination or lack of opportunity to continue on to higher education. With state funding shortfalls, states are shifting higher tuition burdens onto students and this is decreasing social mobility because education is one of the best mechanisms to insure increased social mobility.
Liberals don’t like segration, right? As the public school system gets evermore burdened with teaching the children of poor illegals we’re seeing that parents of native born children and immigrant parents of a higher SES are moving their kids out of the schools that are being dragged down to the gutter by the burdens that are being inflicted upon them:
Now what happens to the health of the social welfare program we know as public education as more of those with the ability to pay the taxes are abandoning the system and going private or charter? They will start to vote in increasing numbers to cut funding for public schooling and instead divert that money to programs that support private and charter schools.
Another front on the segregation issue is housing and if you look at L.A., which is the epicenter of the illegal invasion, you see that neighborhood segregation is increasing. We see two opposing trends at work - the broad social movement of desegregation continues and neighborhoods are becoming more mixed because there are fewer predominantly white enclaves and the opposing force is that more and more neighborhoods are becoming predominantly Hispanic:
What we’re seeing is an increase in White Flight and an increase in gated communities. The problem that arises with White Flight is that there is a loss of tax revenue and this impacts the transfer payments from net tax contributors to the net tax recipients.
What I just can’t get my mind around is how the Left is choosing to favor the interests of foreign citizens who are here illegally over the interests of the Black community and the low income community. Take a look at what is happening with Blacks today:
Or put another way:
The problem we, as a society, have is that many, or even most, employers prefer to hire illegals rather than Black people. Rather than pushing the favored Leftist prescription of social programs onto the Black community why not create more job opportunity by decreasing the supply of low skill labor and thus increasing the demand for low skill workers who are Black? If you think that Black joblessness is a no-cost issue to society, then you need to look at the issue a little more closely.
Also, take a look at what has happened to the low skill population that isn’t part of the Black community. I’ve detailed the decreasing workforce participation rates in my post Jane Galt: Modern Day Paul Erlich and the increase in Social Security Disabily recipients from 6,000,000 in 2000 to 7,200, 000 in 2004 - a 20% increase in 4 years. Who do you think is paying for this rapid rise in disability spending. I’d say that many of these “disabled” are really discouraged workers.
The problem with low wage illegals is that the economic activity they generate is, in many cases, actually less than the costs they impose on society. The illegals certainly come out ahead, so do their employers and so do the employers customers. The losers are the taxpayers and other low skill workers. Think of it this way - how would you feel if the gov’t imposed a 8% tax only on low skill workers so that it could fund foreign aid to Mexico and points south? The 8% is what Borjas calculated as being the wage depression created by illegals back in 1996. I’d say that the depressive effect is even greater today considering the increase in the illegal/low skill worker ratio.
If the proposed solution to these fiscal problems is that we just need to tax rich people more, then you have to factor in the depressive effects that such a tax increase will have. Further, what is sure to come up is the race-based transfer that will be taking place. When you look at more homogeneous societies, like Finland, you see that there is a greater acceptance of social transfer spending because it could conceivable be spent on any of the citizens. Sweden used to be the same, but now such spending is a little more controversial than it is in Finland, because the spending is being disproportionately allocated to their immigrant community (who are net fiscal drains on society.) In the US, we’ve always had that problem with our Black community, but with the increasing size of the Hispanic community and their having overtaken Blacks as our largest minority, we’re going to be seeing Whites and Asians becoming the Market Dominant Minorities sometime in the next half century. If you want to see the social trouble that results from Market Dominant Minorities then you should read Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s book World On Fire.
I could go on and on, but I’ve already gotten to long with this post, so I’ll stop here.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Sheelzebub, I could argue with a bunch of stuff there, but that would be rude in this thread, number one, number two, all I intended to do was straighten out was what Amp said instead of leaving it there like it is true because it isn’t. ALL of the suffragists — ALL, to the last woman, white and black — wanted the word “sex” included in the 15th Amendment and it would have meant voting rights for ALL women, white and black. This is undisputed. What happened after the decision was made not to push for the inclusion of the word “sex” is a whole different discussion which I don’t want to have here in Blac(k)ademic’s thread. My point is, what Amp posted there was flat wrong. The 14th Amendment left the issue of suffrage for freed slaves and free black people up to the states, but also injected the word “male” into the equation. The 15th Amendment was designed to protect voting rights throughout the country for all men, black and white, i.e., to not leave it up to individual states. Suffragists wanted voting rights to extend to all people, black and white, men and women and hence they wanted the addition of the word “sex”. Meaning, again, what Amp said there was flat wrong.
Heart
This comment was written by Heart.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
It’s also not free. Although hospitals are not allowed to turn anyone away because they can not pay for care, they can and do aggressively pursue reimbursement for care rendered.
The problem is that it’s hard to squeeze blood from a stone, it’s hard to squeeze repayment from someone who is using forged identity documents, etc. What usually happens is:
This means that the health care costs for those people who are working and on a plan are increased. This also means that employers have higher cost pressure because they’re paying for their employees’ health care and for the health care of other people’s employees who don’t have coverage and thus stiff the system.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
But is that because of immigration or because of lack of insurance?
This study finds that it is the number of uninsured individuals in an area that increases the amount of uncompensated health care services, not the number of immigrants. So legalizing all the immigrants and giving them HMO coverage or medicaid, if necessary, is likely to improve the compensation rates. Additionally, emergency care and end of life care are the two most expensive things in medicine. If people were not afraid to go to the hospital or doctor’s office when they were only mildly ill, instead of waiting until they were half dead, costs would likely go down. And sometimes refusing to provide routine treatment produces more damaging and expensive problems.
This study, admittedly from Sweden, not the US found very little difference in health care costs could be attributed to country of origin. That is, being an immigrant does not mean that one is likely to cost the country a huge amount in health care costs.
Then there’s the fact that some poor Americans, immigrants or otherwise, travel to Mexico for health care. Should Mexico start kicking out the Anglo slackers who take advantage of their relatively inexpensive, government backed health care system?
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Anyone seen this article yet? Just in case you had any illusions about where this sort of prejudice leads.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
alsis39.75,
In that lala land your living in the gardner probably isn’t getting paid $10/hr. He is probably getting paid much less because he will accept less whereas a man with kids, a house, and a car wouldn’t be able to work for that wage.
I don’t know what you’ve been taught in your economics classes-maybe you never had any-but a surplus of cheap labor drives wages down. That’s something you might want to think about next time you feel like giving an Econ lesson.
A surplus of low-skilled, illegal, workers from Mexico is not the only reason wages are low but it is a (large?) part of the reason and denying that fact does not make it any less true.
This comment was written by SBW.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
So legalizing all the immigrants and giving them HMO coverage or medicaid, if necessary, is likely to improve the compensation rates.
If all you’re concerned about is the compensation rate then you’re right that this tactic would improve the compensation rate. The problem is that it doesn’t make sense. This is like being concerned about the homeless rate, so the solution is to give every homeless person a home. Presto, the homeless rate is now 0.0%. The problem is with the financing of the solution.
If you boil the problem down to a core level you see that the US is the world’s most technologically advanced nation, and a nation that is hovering close to the top in terms of cost of living. To live at a level above poverty we each must generate enough economic value to be compensated accordingly. The days of being a well paid union member, being a fisherman, lumberjack, farmer, etc are numbered in that in today’s economic climate, especially in the economy of the US, the value that is generated from muscle power is much less than the value generated by brain power.
When the taxpayers are offering to subsidize the employees who are hired illegally what we do is stall the substitution efforts of the employeres, who absent subsidy would seek more productive employees (those who could handle technology) or substitution of captial for 6th grade educated illegals. Consider this example:
You want to put all of these workers either on state aid or on HMO plans. The problem is that in the latter case, the cost of adding health coverage will reduce, or entirely eliminate, the economic value created by these illegals. Think of it this way - an employer will hire a worker for $9 per hour if the work that is done creates value of $10 per hour. They will not hire the worker at $12 per hour to create value of $10 per hour.
Simply increasing state health subsidies for low economic value generating workers is a path to the poorhouse.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Economists simply don’t agree about the level of impact from immigration.
Here, for instance, is a very recent a study, “The Impact of Immigration on the California Economy,” which says the effect on wages is pretty minimal.
An economist quoted in an article about the study disputes the conclusions.
Strongly differing opinions among well-regarded economists are something you “might want to think about next time you feel like giving an Econ lesson.”
This comment was written by Meteor Blades.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
I’m the descendent of immigrants, as are many people in this country.
I think you can safely replace “many’ with “all”. ;P
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
One could argue that it’s in the interest of gay rights not to crack down too harshly on immigration; isn’t it likely that there are, in this country, at least a few people who are partnered with illegal immigrants of the same sex? They can’t get a Visa through marriage yet–and I’m not crazy about the government breaking up families.
This comment was written by Emily H..Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I think that the original article’s premise, which seems to be that we shouldn’t be working for the rights of illegal aliens because other groups in the U.S. that were here first or are citizens don’t have all their rights yet, is bogus.
I also think that it’s bogus that illegal aliens should be recognized as having any rights other than emergency medical care, a decent meal, and a quick ride to the border. I love the rhetoric of “the House bill will criminalize illegal aliens”. Folks, they’re already criminals; they’ve crossed our borders against our laws. People who break laws are criminals. People who break immigration and border control laws are criminals we cannot afford to tolerate in an age of ideological terrorism.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
By the way, given that a discussion of healthcare for illegal aliens has broken out here, you might all find this interesting:
Almost all of the state’s poorest residents will have to show proof of US citizenship to continue getting medical care by July 1, under a little-noticed federal law that could endanger coverage for many, as Massachusetts is trying to expand access to healthcare.
Born out of ongoing efforts in Washington to clamp down on illegal immigration, the new federal requirement compels anyone seeking Medicaid coverage to provide a birth certificate, a passport, or another form of identification in order to sign up for benefits or renew them.
No such proof is required now.
The requirement was tucked into the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law earlier this year.
The measure was part of an effort to limit the skyrocketing growth of federal entitlement programs. It has surfaced as Massachusetts begins to implement its sweeping healthcare plan, which aims to bring health coverage to almost all of the state’s uninsured, in part by enrolling those in Medicaid who are eligible but who have not signed up.
Some people are going to suffer because of this, there’s no denying it.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Anyone else think it’s amusing that she thinks there is a “line” for civil rights movements? As if we have take-a-number stations set out in front of Congress, from which we grab little white tags, assuring us of civil rights if we just wait long enough?
If anything, awareness of civil rights needs on multiple fronts increases the odds of each “movement” (not that they can be counted as separate entities).
This comment was written by ck.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
People who freak out over illegal immigrants supposedly depressing wages or taking jobs should ask themselves why they feel they have to take such a dangerous journey here and subject themselves to this crap.
For those who come here to work there’s a simple answer. Their country is so screwed up that they believe that the easiest path open to them (note I said “easiest”, not “easy”) is to come to the U.S.A. and make a living.
Mexico could support a reasonable living standard for it’s residents. My God - they export oil! But the government is so corrupt it’s breathtaking. The tax burden is actually way less than ours (about 12%), but those tax laws that are enforced are easily evaded (compare that to the IRS here). And people expect to have to bribe officials at every level to get even the most basic of government services.
Mexico is broken, and it’s their own fault. Maybe if we force Mexicans to stay in Mexico, they’ll fix it.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
ck, I’m curious. Do you think that civil rights come into play somewhere in the debate over immigration reform?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
SBW:
Duh. You have heard of sarcasm, have you not, SBW ?
You made an asinine generalization that smacked to me of scapegoating and an inability to look at the big picture. That’s why I responded as I did.
No, I’m not going to talk any more about healthcare today, since I don’t want to divert this thread any further and give your comment any more cred than I have already.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
alsis39.75 Writes: You made an asinine generalization that smacked to me of scapegoating and an inability to look at the big picture. That’s why I responded as I did.
alsis39.75, there was no scapegoating and there was no inability to look at the big picture. I just came up with a different view than you did and for whatever reason you felt the need to make inaccurate statements.
If you don’t agree with me, thats fine, but there was no need to attempt to misconstrue my words to fit your preconceived notions.
This comment was written by SBW.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
… but those tax laws that are enforced are easily evaded (compare that to the IRS here).
Are you saying that tax laws are not easily evaded in the USA? If so, I strongly suggest that you read Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston before you try to claim that again.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
SBW:
Perhaps there was “no need,” whatever that means. But you didn’t write what, say, Sheelzebub did in #26. That is, you wrote:
This makes it sound as if illegal workers are the sole and willing burden on a social system that has already been starved, looted, privatized, and starved some more– pretty much steadily over the last two or three decades.
If there is no examination of global economic issues (ie- NAFTA) and domestic issues (ie - Our moronic, ineffective, and racist drug war, which has certainly done quite a lot to pack prisons) alike, there can’t be any true understanding of why folks continue to take incredible risks to come here and work jobs that often enough, the natives don’t want anyway.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Technically true, but criminal is a decidedly loaded word. It implies mugger, rapist, etc., not illegal border crossing.
This comment was written by evil_fizz.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Response to comment #42
Ron, I’m not sure yet. I was a Spanish major in college and have some sympathy for the Hispanic population impacted by this question. But I’m torn between a desire to help those people who are here, earning a living and acting as law-abiding citizens and a desire to maintain a lawful process for granting citizenship.
However, what I was mostly commenting on is Jasmyn’s remarkt:
Which was, of course prompted by Sen. Kennedy. I think they have the guiding metaphor all wrong, and that the image of a “line” is more hurtful than anything else–as if it’s a “first come, first serve” or a matter of who has more lobbying power (which, of course, it is).
I guess the image in my mind was of a single stall bathroom in a restaurant, with a line out the front door–and the proprieter shaking their head at the folks in line holding their crotches and jumping up and down (caus’ the LGBT person is taking too much time). He says, “You just gotta wait your turn!” I say–let’s build more stalls!
This comment was written by ck.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
This makes it sound as if illegal workers are the sole and willing burden on a social system that has already been starved, looted, privatized, and starved some more”“ pretty much steadily over the last two or three decades.
We spend 23.4% of our gargantuan GDP on the “social system”. (#11 in the world in absolute percentage terms; around the top of the world in per cap terms.)
For a starving, looted, privatized system, it sure has a lot of dollars sloshing around in it.
As far as your reverse Panglossian view of thirty years of decline goes, it’s about as accurate as every other economic opinion I’ve seen you utter. In 1980, we spent less of a percentage of GDP on the entire Federal government than we spend today just on social spending. Our social programs today are bigger than the entire government was then.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Oh, the irony.
Your source link doesn’t include details, but I’ll bet my top hat that the 23.4 % of GDP spent on social spending includes more than just Federal social spending - probably it includes local spending, of which a huge portion is paying for schools. Which is a problem, because the number you’re comparing it to only counts the cost of the Federal government. In other words, you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Obviously, the conclusion that “our social programs today are bigger than the entire government was then” is not true; you’ve mistaken the Federal government for the entire government. In 1980, we spent about 31% of GDP on the entire government, which is substantially larger than the 23.4% spent on “social programs” (like public schools) today.
[Edited to account for me finding the relevant statistic for 1980]
* * *
By the way, I also think your first paragraph was needlessly attack-y - that you think her past economic opinions have been inaccurate really has nothing to do with the point at issue here.
* * *
Finally, if y’all really want to continue discussing this, I can start a new thread - I’d rather not divert this thread further.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Robert:
Total federal spending today is “only” about 20% of GDP. That 23.4% figure must include state and local spending. Government spending at all levels has been trending slightly upwards as a percentage of GDP (31% in 2004, up from 23% in 1959 and 28% in 1970, but down from a peak of nearly 34% in 1993).
Not to say that your general point is mistaken—spending on social services, both as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total government spending, has increased, not decreased, over the past 20-30 years.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Two points I haven’t heard discussed in the media yet:
1.) Employers are required by law to take documents — fake or real — ON THEIR FACE as the real deal. Which does not mean some employers aren’t deliberately getting as many illegals to work for them as possible. But it has to do with general employment hiring discrimination — as well as the unspoken notion that it’s not an employer’s job to go around doing the government’s work if there are any questions; a person shows up with documents to work, the employer must take them as genuine ON THEIR FACE, and now is required to submit basic hiring forms the employee signs not only to the IRS but to the Justice Department too.
2.) In El Salvador — this is the only country I know several illegal immigrants came from who told me about this next point, but it’s likely true of many Latin countries — the government prices the cost of getting legal papers so far out of line with what’s affordable, I mean in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, that it’s much cheaper to pay $2,000-plus to sneak across the border. The papers that make immigrants legal that they must get from their government to come here legally are just super-high-priced by the government; the government wants as much money as possible. The few Salvadorans who can afford to come here legally are generally from the capital, San Salvaldor — I know two brothers who came here legally — and are considered among the wealthiest people in their nation. They will pay what it costs for those legal papers because they can — the system is that lopsided with rich and poor — and they will get their M.D.s or whatever here and then they will go back and be that much wealthier in this highly rich-poor system.
Having said all that, none of which has been integrated into basically any major media discussion of the issues, I disagree sharply with the blogger, I mean I found the blog offensive, frankly.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Nah, let’s get back to talking immigration. Thanks for the correction; you’re right, it was apples to oranges. Nonetheless, as Brandon notes, the trend is up up up.
RonF’s point is very cogent. Mexico doesn’t reform because Mexico doesn’t have to reform. Those Mexicans who can’t stand it, leave. And, unfortunately, they also tend to be the people with the most drive and ambition - which leaves the people left behind in even worse straits.
Which leads to a larger question.
Should we as a country aggressively recruit the best and brightest from other lands to come here? Doing so makes us stronger - but it makes everybody else much worse off. Should we pursue a pro-immigration policy of strengthening the United States, and damn everyone else, or should we close the door and make the high-talent individuals of the world stay in their home nations and (presumably) work to improve those places?
In the past, I’ve leaned toward the second option. As an employer, I’m leaning towards option one.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
or should we close the door and make the high-talent individuals of the world stay in their home nations and (presumably) work to improve those places?
This sounds awfully patronizing to me. We have presumed to know what would be best in general and for those who might desire to emigrate here. “Sorry, I know you’d rather move here, but try and make the best of it in Country X.” (I suspect that isn’t what you meant to convey, but I’m not sure how else to take it.)
Incidentially, the US already cherry picks in terms of immigration.
This comment was written by evil_fizz.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
ck, I’ll go along with your critique of Jasmyn’s remarks (I’ll pass on the Senator’s remarks because I have no idea of their context). As I think was pointed out above, should all other people whose civil rights aren’t fully fulfilled have to wait until all racism is defeated? Do we rank injustices, and say “Why are we wasting time on problem ‘x’ when problem ‘y’ is extant?” It’s not the first time I’ve heard it, and it’s stupid.
What are civil rights? It seems to me that there are some rights that people have that are human rights, due all persons regardless of any other considerations. However, there are some rights that people have because they are citizens of certain countries, states, municipalities, etc. For example, I have no right to vote in Mexican elections. These rights are what are my understanding of what civil rights are. People who come into the United States and constantly violate our laws are due human rights, but not civil rights.
Note that I say that they constantly violate our laws. It’s illegal to work in the U.S. unless you are either a citizen or are in possession of some kind of work visa. Illegal aliens of course don’t qualify in either case. Every day that those that are employed show up to work, they are breaking Federal law. If they take pay in cash they are breaking tax laws.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
It used to be we just talked about Tax Amnesty. The idea was to bring all the evaders and nonfilers into the system, bringing in more tax revenue and cutting every taxpayer’s bill in the process. But never — and this is true whether the debate was over a federal tax amnesty or a state tax amnesty — does the discussion NOT include very loud and strict warnings of the ENFORCEMENT CRACKDOWN that will follow once the amnesty has ended. Anyone who didn’t come in under the amnesty, or who is caught newly evading or nonfiling after the amnesty, will be treated to the harshest extent law enforcement allows and will be hunted down. I mean there are states, like Connecticut, where the tax commissioner went on TV with ads to Blondie’s song “One Way, Or Another, I’m Gonna Get You, I’m Gonna Get Ya Get Ya Get Ya Get Ya.” And it scared the bejesus out of evaders and nonfilers — who came in, and who DID have to pay the back taxes they owed but not interest and no jail time. But enforcement is always key, and always has been, to any amnesty discussed or implemented at the state or federal level.
Here we have no provisions for an enforcement crackdown after an amnesty whatsoever. It’s not that federal lawmakers don’t know that this is a key to making any amnesty work or worthwhile — both in terms of bringing people currently out of the system in, and in terms of stopping future illegal actions. They do know. They know all too well. Amnesty talk is very common in regard to taxation. I can only conclude that federal lawmakers aren’t interested in closing the borders, period. That is the only possible conclusion.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Does it really make everyone else worse off? Might competition for the best and brightest not tend to make everyone better off, at least insofar as the conditions necessary to attract the best and brightest are also better for everyone else?
Also, the positive externalities from the best and brightest doing their thing tend to spill across borders. It doesn’t really matter where a technological advancement comes from—we all benefit. Better to have the best and brightest working abroad than to have them trying to work with inadequate resources in their home countries. Granted, this applies more to some workers than to others—we’re not doing other countries any favors by luring away their doctors.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
This sounds awfully patronizing to me. We have presumed to know what would be best in general and for those who might desire to emigrate here.
It is patronizing. If you’re an immigrant, then the United States is your patron. As such, it’s our call as to how things get handled.
We don’t presume to know what’s best in general; we presume to make those decisions for ourselves. “Well, but every point of view is valid” is lovely for philosophy class. Life isn’t a classroom; the decision has to get made. And it does get made; relativism (of the weak sort actually espoused, not the powerful sort that conservatives like to strawman) simply means “I’m not going to make the decision”. Then someone else does, instead.
Incidentially, the US already cherry picks in terms of immigration.
Well, kind of. We don’t do it systematically.
If I were to design a cherry-picking immigration system, it would work something like this:
First, we index nations on their level of Western cultural attainment. (Britain is high. Russia is medium. Zimbabwe is low.) That index value would become the base score for immigrants. These numbers should range from 0 to 100.
To that base score, add bonus points for high educational attainment, high economic attainment, and high scientific/cultural attainment. (25 points per category.) Add bonus points for youth and for number of children (5 points total) and a ten point bonus for English fluency. Have a discretionary 10 points that Congress can use to set priorities. (If you’ll enlist when you get here, we give you 5 points. If you’re a nuclear physicist, that’s worth a bonus 10. And so on.)
So you can have anywhere from 0 to 200 points. For maximum score, be a British millionaire PhD Nobel laureate, 28 years of age with 4 kids. Minimum score is to be a destitute Third Worlder with no education or skills, 70 years old, infertile.
Annually, globally rank every immigration applicant in an ordinal list. Ask Congress how many people to let in this year, X. Admit the first X people on the list.
(Lest the heartlessness quotient be too high, I do support a limited number of refugee/hardship admissions as well. Say, 10% of the total.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
It seems to me all immigrants here legally awaiting citizenship status would have a clear-cut legal case of discrimination under our laws were we to grant illegal immigrants amnesty en masse.
I don’t know what the answer is. From my three posts you can see I see many aspects of this currently not incorporated into debate or consideration. Federal lawmakers clearly have no intention of closing the southern border to illegal immigration. Granting amnesty would raise immediate legal issues with immigrants patiently awaiting citizenship and paying for it through the legal route. Cracking down on employers won’t help much until federal laws and regulations are changed so that employers do not have to take documentation — legal or otherwise — on its face as legal without being hit with hiring discrimination suits. And another key to addressing illegal immigration is the outrageous fees charged by nations illegals are coming from for getting the legal papers to go the legal route.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
The point about let’s not give x rights before y has them is definitely a bad argument.
evil_fizz
I fail to see the relevance of this. Okay, those who violate speed limits are criminals.
Should the use of the word criminal be suppressed because some people feel bad about it?
mythago:
This has always confused me about the U.S policy: Very strict in theory, but rewards those who don’t play by rules. Economic concerns aside (there are more qualified posters on that than me), this strikes me as blatantly anti-humanitarian, considering the border jumping has its risks and is fraught with scumbag human traffickers.
And the open borders for everyone everywhere -view just seems unrealistic and irresponsible.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Speaking of things that are never mentioned in the immigration debate, I haven’t seen anyone point to the most effective American tactic ever devised - sic the trial lawyers onto the problem: (sorry the original article went down the memory hole - this is a link which quotes the original article)
We have presumed to know what would be best in general and for those who might desire to emigrate here.
When taxpayers end up paying a $89,000 subsidy to every illegal without a high school education, a $31,000 subsidy to every illegal with a high school education, then it’s not presumptious at all to want people who have higher levels of education and who end up contributing $105,000 over to the economy over their lifetimes.
We are the world’s most technologically advanced society - the last thing we need to be doing is importing people with 6th grade educations.
If I were to design a cherry-picking immigration system, it would work something like this:
Why not take a look at how the Canadians do it. Go take the on-line quiz and see if you have what it takes to qualify to immigrate to Canada. They are definitely not seeking people with 6th grade educations.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Copy Canada? Never!
Besides, I barely scrape by with a 69 on their test. Lousy Canuck bastards.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
It has less than 1/4 of what we spend in this country sloshing around in it. All you do is reinforce my point for me. The system is not equipped to handle the burdens that have continued to accumulate and to become more complex, thanks to the machinations of the Reaganites and their sycophants in both parties. So simply blaming illegal workers for supposedly burdening the system all by their lonesome is nonsense.
Thanks for the smug patronization, Robert. I expect nothing else from you. Unless it’s one of your snide inferences that I’m not sane. Since that’s generally all you have to offer in your exchanges with me and since I have no particular interest in addressing you on this subject or any other, do me a favor and piss off.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 12th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
I’m pretty dubious about the argument that if we only shut Central and South Americans into their countries, they’d fix their plutocratic governments. Like a cage match, eh? The problems I have with this are, principally, that when such a country does overthrow its corrupt government the US has more than once sent armed insurgents against the new nation. The effects are bloody and lingering, and a canny reformer might well have worked out that change has to be imported from the US, one way or another. Secondly, the US has a bunch of economic rules that are (IIUC) pretty destabilizing to the poor in Mexico, who then have less time and safety to work for systemic change.
If the US stopped the flow of money and subsidized corn across the border, and didn’t take all the water out of some rivers that used to cross the border, we’d have more right and less need to prevent illegal immigration. While we haven’t fixed these problems in our system, we haven’t any right to expect the people burdened with them to fix follow-on problems in theirs.
I think the extended chronology of black/woman suffrage infighting is an elegant analogy: it’s in retreat that we come apart. If US labor was stronger, we might have an import policy that supported workers’ rights around the world, but while labor is weak here it can’t fight anyone but illegal immigrants, who are weaker yet.
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April 12th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Sorry about the double post, Amp. I expect you’ll be editing it anyway. But I don’t much care.
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April 12th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Secondly, the US has a bunch of economic rules that are (IIUC) pretty destabilizing to the poor in Mexico, who then have less time and safety to work for systemic change.
OK, they’re poor now, and living in one of the more corrupt countries on earth - where you have to have money to get anything out of the government. So they’re basically completely fucked, unless they really like lots of sunshine and hard work for no money.
So what exactly is to be so feared about the awesome evil of the US economic rules? What are the rules going to do, pitch peasant farmer Pedro Morales and his long-deceased donkey directly into the sun?
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April 12th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Precisely, clew.
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April 13th, 2006 at 4:27 am
immigration reform. I had to write something in response to it because I am deeply offended by her words as a black women and as a lesbian. Jasmyne writes: It’s a slap in the face to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to take up [...]Continue reading at Alas, a blog … posted 1:29 am at Alas, a blog
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April 13th, 2006 at 7:06 am
I fail to see the relevance of this. Okay, those who violate speed limits are criminals.
Should the use of the word criminal be suppressed because some people feel bad about it?
I’m not arguing that the word should be tossed out the window, just that it should be used a bit more carefully because of what it connotes. Also, if everyone who does 37 mph in a 35 is a criminal, the term becomes absolutely meaningless. It’s sloppy to use such a loaded term in a conversation where people are choosing to use the word differently. There is much to be said for clarity and appropriate vocabulary…
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April 13th, 2006 at 7:38 am
I suppose it then becomes an issue on how bad a crime does one consider illegal border crossing (and illegal work, residence etc.) to be.
Someone who accidentally happens to walk on the wrong side of the border (assuming the border isn’t heavily guarded, walled etc.) shouldn’t probably get the title “criminal”. I’m not so sure about deliberate illegal immigration. Probably should.
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April 13th, 2006 at 7:55 am
I’m not so sure about deliberate illegal immigration. Probably should.
Since illegal immigration is a crime against the state, rather than against the individuals, it seems to me that the appropriate metric to apply is the behavior of the state where the illegal immigrant originated.
If Joe comes from State A to State B without permission, then his criminality ought to depend on how State A treats illegal migrants. If State A treats them as criminals, then he is a criminal.
Mexico, from what I understand, is vigorous in its border security and considers illegal immigrants from the south to be criminals. Accordingly, so should her citizens be treated.
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Those Mexicans who can’t stand it, leave. And, unfortunately, they also tend to be the people with the most drive and ambition - which leaves the people left behind in even worse straits.
When I’ve thought about American history, it has occurred to me that the people who have moved here have always those who in their home culture have been the most dissatisfied, the least culturally integrated, the most ambitious. This country has been filled, by and large, with people who were probably seen in their home towns as disagreeable misfits who were the least likely to submit to the local government. Hardly a model for assembling a country where the citizenry is supposed to govern itself. Amazing how well it’s worked.
I’m pro-immigration. I don’t think any of my great-grandparents were born in America. I have ancestors from Africa, England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland - and reputedly, some that walked over the then-frozen Bering Straits some 12,000 years ago. Some of my wife’s grandparents weren’t born here. Her father wasn’t born here. Immigration has continuously leavened and enlivened and enlightened American art, science, culture, and politics, and in my view has contributed to it’s pre-eminent position in the world today.
But immigration must be regulated. We have to know who has come here, and why. Their purpose must be plain, and must fit what we as a nation perceive our needs are. And those who come here must understand that we have cultural standards that they must meet and (if not accept) tolerate.
Amp, I think you made this remark about social spending:
It has less than 1/4 of what we spend in this country sloshing around in it.
Am I right that the total fraction of the Federal budget that is dedicated to social spending is what you refer to here? What categories of spending do you include and exclude (and I realize that you’d have to paint the answer to that question with a broad brush).
It’s sloppy to use such a loaded term in a conversation where people are choosing to use the word differently.
People can choose to use words as they want, but this isn’t Alice In Wonderland; words have meanings. I do understand that stealing a pen from work is not what people think of when one says “criminal”, but in this case I feel that naming someone who violates immigration law by crossing an international border without accounting to the target country’s government a criminal is within both the letter and the spirit of that definition. The fact that other people are choosing to use the word differently is one reason why I used it as I did; to emphasize that such usage is not just accurate, but appropriate. It’s glossing over the criminality of such conduct by using euphemisms that I find inappropriate.
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:21 am
I got a 68 on the Canada test. At least I passed, eh? If I had a job waiting for me and was a few years younger (or spoke French) I’d do better.
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:59 am
How many of your ancestors came to this country legally & how many came illegally? That may have an effect on how you view the matter.
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April 13th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Ron:
It was Alsis, not Ampersand, who complained that social spending is less than a quarter of what we spend in this country. Heck if I know what her perception is, but the reality is that social spending (by government) is 23.4% of GDP (everything everyone spends), or about 75% of total government spending. In 2004, that was about $2.7 trillion, composed of:
At the federal level:
-Health: $240B
-Medicare: $269B
-Income Security: $333B
-Social Security: $496B
At the state level (Extrapolated, since I have numbers only through 2003):
-Education: $640B
-Public Welfare: $335B
(From the Economic Report of the President 2006, tables B-80 and B-86)
That accounts for $2300B. There’s another $1100B classified as “other” which presumably accounts for the remaining $400B.
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April 13th, 2006 at 11:30 am
As far as I know, all of those of my ancestors who came to the United States did so legally.
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April 13th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Thanks, Brandon. Careless of me. Alsis, could you expand a bit on the meaning of your comment about 1/4 of what we spend in this country? 1/4 of what? And where it’s going?
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April 13th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Fellows, maybe you should take that up with Robert. After all, I was using his comments as a basis. Then again, maybe getting blamed for his distortions is only fair, since it’s generally a poor tactic to base one’s discussions on a willful distortion from somebody else.
It’s not the main point, anyway. The main point is that it’s ridiculous to claim that illegal workers are stretching either medical or prison services in this country to the breaking point all by their lonesome. SBW, as I said before, confuses a symptom with an illness. I just don’t buy it.
You both already know that any exchange between us on this issue is doomed to impasse, so why even bother ? Go find somebody who you have a prayer of convincing and leave me the hell out of it.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
RonF,
Did you read past the point where Brandon Berg mentioned that it was Alsis, not Amp? Once you get past the point where he got in a pointless insulting dig at Alsis (I guess he figures if Robert can get away with pointlessly insulting Alsis, then he can too, not remembering that Robert has carte blanche and he doesn’t), Brandon then explains that it is approximately 1/4 of GDP, and then breaks down where that quarter goes. That is what Alsis was talking about. Is there some reason you need to see it repeated by her? Particularly since it is thread drift for this discussion?
On the criminal question, the house bill makes being in the country illegally a felony, where currently it is a misdemeanor. I think a reasonable definition of when someone becomes a criminal (rather than someone who has broken a law, such as speeding, or shoplifting, or stealing a pen from work) is when their crime is a felony. Now, if you routinely refer to people who have committed misdemeanor offenses as criminals, then I suppose it makes sense for you to view illegal immigrants as already being criminals. Nonetheless, making first offense illegal immigration a felony rather than a misdemeanor is a big step, and certainly increases the degree to which undocumented aliens are treated as criminals.
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April 13th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Robert: Our economic policies subsidize, e.g., corn production in this country, sometimes using water that would otherwise run to Mexico; and our trade policies require that farmers in Mexico compete with this subsidized production. They can’t. This drives them to the cities, theirs and ours, which is very profitable for people who can use a steady supply of immiserated labor. Until the massive power of the US stops using Mexico & points south to do things that aren’t legal in the US, we’re going to have a flood of the desperate coming here.
Some of my anecdotal experience suggests that US-earned money going back is creating a middle class in Mexico, which might be able to cause stable political change. Anyone know of research along those lines?
This comment was written by clew.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
All my ancestors came to the US before there was any immigration policy - well, none that Europeans recognized, anyway. I’m pretty sure some of them were in the flood of treaty-breaking across the Alleghenies that Benjamin Franklin so deplored.
This comment was written by clew.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Sorry Alsis, cross posted with you.
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April 13th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Go Alsis!
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April 13th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s hard to have a well-rounded discussion about immigration & legal vs illegal when everybody involved has no relations who were illegal immigrants. You miss at least 1/2 the conversation.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Immigration is an issue of daunting complexity it seems, but I’m given to understand that certain fears about immigration are more legitimate than others. And for those problems about immigration that are real problems, people can still disagree about the appropriate response, and indeed there may be no perfect solution that perfectly disposes of every gripe that people have about illegal immigration. Even “law and order” might actually be at cross-purposes, since a narrow focus on “enforcing the law” against illegals might have the effect of undermining social order, given that illegals are deeply embedded (if not truly integrated) in their neighborhoods and communities.
I am persuaded that illegal immigration has a modest but real depressing effect on the wages of unskilled workers (particularly in those states that have a high level of immigration), but a mildly positive effect on the rest of us, and that the costs of immigration mostly accrue at the state and local level (primarily because immigrant households tend to be younger and are more likely to have school-age children) while the benefits mostly accrue at the federal level (in the form of tax receipts). Still, I wonder if even the costs of immigrants might have more to do with their illegal status than with any essential characteristics of the people themselves.
From this article I found the interesting tidbit that when 3 million undocumented immigrants became legal immigrants 20 years ago, their wages increased by 14 percent over five years and their productivity increased dramatically. This suggests that illegals are as responsive to changing opportunity structures as everyone else, and that we should be skeptical of long-term projections of the “costs of immigration” that don’t factor in the possibility that the characteristics of the immigrants themselves may change over time, and that short-term problems may be overcome by immigrants being given the time and support necessary to integrate themselves into society and climb the economic ladder, which all evidence indicates they’re as willing to do as past generations of immigrants.
As an African-American, I’m keenly interested in the notion that Mexican immigrants are taking jobs from my people. But I’m not persuaded that they are. Most African-Americans don’t live in high immigration areas (not that we should ignore the ones that do), and in any case the desolate employment situation of young black men is the result of social, historical and economic processes that were well underway long before immigration from Mexico became a problem. Black folks don’t need to be lectured on their problems, and indeed our litany of basic demands has changed little if any: for a sane alternative to the racist War on Drugs (hasn’t happened), for enforcement of anti-discrimination laws (the current Bush budget cuts funding from EEOC, so you tell me where their hearts lie), that affirmative action not be gutted (they’re still trying), that there be serious investments in public education (vouchers and private/parochial schools keep stealing the spotlight), that the prison-industrial complex be brought to heel (its tumescence continues unabated), and that racial disparities in health care be addressed (nowhere on the agenda). If you’re not willing to engage with me on these issues and many more, I won’t look kindly upon you sucking up to me on the issue of immigration. At isn’t it interesting that anti-immigration folks can get away with such a naked appeal to racial self-interest, when black leaders are routinely vilified for doing the same thing in other contexts?
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April 13th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Things like this make me wonder if there’s any hope for any of us. Come on! Remember 1866? Oh, I guess we weren’t there. Richard Kim, Marta Donayre, Pam Spaulding, Christopher Goeken, Brian Charles Clark, Miccaela,Blac(k)ademic on Alas, a Blog, Angela D. Odom, Celia Foster, Tom McGeveran of The Politicker rounds up, but the comments are the best part. Christine Chavez responds in The Advocate, which then published an open letter signed by a who’s who of LGBT folk. On her own blog,
This comment was written by My Amusement Park.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
when 3 million undocumented immigrants became legal immigrants 20 years ago, their wages increased by 14 percent over five years and their productivity increased dramatically.
What else would you expect when these people move from the underground economy into the normal economy? I’m curious why you don’t speculate on the issue of wage sensitivity at the bottom of the “legal economy” wage ladder when these 3 million new workers were added to the labor supply.
At isn’t it interesting that anti-immigration folks can get away with such a naked appeal to racial self-interest, when black leaders are routinely vilified for doing the same thing in other contexts?
There is no racial self-interest being advocated but a taxpayer self-interest. As a taxpayer I’d rather have the large proportion of idle black men active in the workforce and climbing the wage ladder rather than out of the workforce doing whatever it is they’re doing with their free time and likely costing taxpayers more more for the additional social services that are directed at them. Further, they’re my fellow citizens and so I owe them a greater allegiance than I do the illegals who’ve come here uninvited. Lastly, I’m aware of the prejudice that exists and acts as a barrier to the job market for Black citizens and one can create intrusive, immoral, and ineffective laws to try to mitigate against that phenomonon but an even more effective process of bringing down the barriers is to create job demand from the employers. That’s very hard to do when that demand is immediately filled by illegals, who employers tend to prefer over Black citizens. Cut off the supply of illegals, and the employers will still demand people to fill the jobs, therefore they have to confront their own racist beliefs, get over them, and hire Black citizens. That benefits every citizen of the US and the only losers are the citizens of Mexico. If you’re concerned about them then send them some foreign aid.
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April 13th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
[...] ALAS(a blog) « She Does Not Speak For Me Home [...]
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April 13th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Am I the only one who sees the overt xenophobia being displayed here? I am seeing many of the same arguments being used to espouse an anti-immigration (or, if you prefer, curtailed immigration) position that were used in the early 20th century wrt to civil rights for African Americans (the economic arguments). I also see a parallel to the Racism and Empathy: Some of My Approximating Experiences post and comment thread in that none of the “illegal immigration needs to be severely curtailed” crowd don’t have any approximating experience with illegal immigrants. Lastly, why are we so focused on Mexicans? While Mexicans make up a good sized portion of illegals (the data from 1996 indicates that Mexico accounts for 54% of illegal immigrants), they are far from the vast majority.
It’s something to think about.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
… crowd don’t have any approximating experience with illegal immigrants.
Heh. Scratch the word “don’t.”
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Movie-Plot Threat Contest”. As far as I can tell, many ideas posted in the comments look quite feasible for a determined terrorist group, and would cause severe destruction and mayhem. I have to say I am (be|a)mused howvery determined the American left is to let in millions of illegal Third World immigrants, considering that those immigrants tend to pretty much oppose all things that leftists generally hold dear. For example, what do the Mexicans typically think of gays and gay
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Lastly, why are we so focused on Mexicans? While Mexicans make up a good sized portion of illegals (the data from 1996 indicates that Mexico accounts for 54% of illegal immigrants), they are far from the vast majority.
One country produces 54% of the illegals and the other 190 nations split the remaining 46%. How would you characterize the Mexican contribution in terms of its magnitude?
We are focused on Mexico because:
(a) Mexico produces the majority of the illegals.
(b) Mexican illegals are generally low-skilled people who contribute to the wealth of whoever hires them, but net out to be a substantial cost to society.
(c) The huge Mexican trafficking weakens the southern border’s attainable level of security because of the sheer volume of bodies.
Am I the only one who sees the overt xenophobia being displayed here?
What exactly is xenophobic about desiring to see our country able to control its borders, provide a good standard of living to its people (not just those who happen to own poultry plants), and set itself on a track of increasing, not decreasing, median education and mental attainments?
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
What exactly is xenophobic about desiring to see our country able to control its borders…
The fact that the arguments are the same that I mentioned from the early 20th century & a different minority, the fact that it is not “controlling our borders” that we seem to be focused on, rather the focus seems to be on who should be allowed to become a citizen, the fact that “median education & mental attainments” has not gone down over the past 2 decades of increased illegal immigration, the fact that all of us have ancestors who were immigrants at one time (many of us before there were immigration laws as such), the fact that the same arguments were made about the Italians, & Irish & so on in their time.
Must I continue? Should I even bother to respond to you? Have you actually given thought to why many comments in this thread could be viewed as xenophobic? Or is it so difficult to admit the possibility & reflect on why somebody has brought this up without reflexively saying, “Uh-uh. Not me?”
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
I guess that I must continue.
It’s xenophobic because:
An anti-immigration stance seems to contradict the pro-free market global economy position held (in general) by the anti-immigration crowd.
As alsis pointed out, NAFTA says we’re happy to integrate you 3rd worlders into our economy by paying the much lower prevailing wage (and exploiting the far lesser rights of workers) in your country. But don’t even think about moving to our country.
Anti-immigration folks don’t seem to see any parallel between their ancestors and immigrants of today. They don’t see any connection between immigration laws (or lack thereof) when their ancestors came to the US & immigration law now.
Anti-immigration policies are inimical to US style capitalism. US style capitalism depends on the economy continuing to grow and grow as fast as possible. In order for the US economy to grow, you need to increase demand. The easiest & fastest way to increase demand is to increase population. Increased population (illegal immigrant or otherwise) creates demand for food, housing and so on, thereby creating jobs (or so the theory goes).
As an aside, I’d like to have an honest discussion with you, Robert, about this. It’s just that your history of commenting makes me doubt that it is possible, thus my pessimistic statements.
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Am I the only one who sees the overt xenophobia being displayed here?
Am I the only one who sees liberals copying the annoying conservative tactic of proclaiming themselves more patriotic and moral than their heathen liberal foes when liberals proclaim themselves to be more culturally enlightened and cosmopolitan than their barbaric conservative foes.
Let’s concede, ad arguendum, that every person arguing for curtailment of illegal immigration and a restoration of law and order is the vilest of racists and the most fearful of xenophobes, so then what do Leftists propose to do about the problem (if they indeed even think it to be a problem)? Should they engage the merit of the arguments that are advanced or should they insure that they maintain their own self-images as enlightened anti-racists by never being on the same side of an issue as those xenophobic anti-illegal immigration advocates, and thus, by default, advocate poor policy?
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April 13th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Am I the only one who sees liberals copying the annoying conservative tactic of proclaiming themselves more patriotic and moral …
Gee, thanks so much for considering what I have to say. Xenophobia does not mean unpatriotic &, really, while my comment raised valid questions, your comment is nothing but an attack.
… every person arguing for curtailment of illegal immigration and a restoration of law and order is the vilest of racists and the most fearful of xenophobes…
That is severely twisting what I actually wrote into something other than what I wrote.
You’re not big on self reflection are you? You pretty much think that you’re perfect the way you are, huh? No need to think about whether what you are saying is actually xenophobic or racist. You know it isn’t, so questioning your unquestioned phrasing is a personal attack on you.
Get a grip and try to read what is written. Perhaps you can bring yourself to see if the criticism has any merit. Once you’ve done that, you might say that you’ve looked at it & say that you just don’t see it. Or that you’ve looked at it & I might have a point. Or you can just be an insulting prick. Whatever.
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April 13th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Get a grip and try to read what is written.
Perhaps you’re misreading what I wrote and, if so, then I apologize for my unclear prose. I’m not saying that xenophobia means unpatriotic. What I was trying to get across is that the Republican tactic of painting their opponents as unpatriotic is a.) a smokescreen; b.) has more to do with bolstering their own self-image; and c.) usually has nothing to do with the merits of the debate that they are having with the Democrats.
Just as I find their self-aggrandizing tactic to be a distraction, I also find the liberal tendency of doing the same thing with respect to issues of enlightenment and culture, to be just as self-aggrandizing and distracting.
Does it really matter if your opponents are motivated by xenophobia? What if the policy they advocate is a good one when judged against liberal criteria? Should the policy be opposed simply because of the motivations of those who are strongly advocating it?
You’ve heard the sayings “even a stopped clock is right twice a day” and “even George Bush can be right sometimes.” Same principle here.
Perhaps you can bring yourself to see if the criticism has any merit.
This is what I’m pointing out - who cares about what is in the heart of those who advocate against illegal immigration? And for those who do care, why do they care about the motivations rather than the actual policy and the implications of the policy? The only reason I can see, and please correct me if I’m overlooking others, that people care is that they’re more interested in reassuring themselves that they’re not damn dirty xenophobes like those who they are arguing against. I don’t see the purpose of soulful introspection of what is motivating the people who oppose illegal immigration and that’s why I conceded ad arguendum that we assign the basest of motives to such people and then figure out what to do about the illegal immigration problem when we know that it is being championed by xenophobes.
From a liberal perspective, what should be the policy towards illegal immigration and how much should it be driven by the liberal fear of not appearing racist and xenophobic?
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April 13th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
… why do they care about the motivations rather than the actual policy and the implications of the policy?
… who cares about what is in the heart of those who advocate against illegal immigration?
Do the ends justify the means? Your answer to this question will answer the questions that I have quoted. If it is, in fact, xenophobia that is the motivation, I believe that, even if anti-immigration policy is a net good, that the policies advocated based on xenophobia result in a net bad.
Also, xenophobia (by definition being unsupported by facts) is a prejudice best identified & dealt with, IMHO. As Robert has said, there are things more important than any particular single policy or position.
As to whether or not building a fence & criminalizing illegals is good policy, I think that I addressed that in comments # 90 & 91.
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April 13th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
…the liberal fear of not appearing racist and xenophobic?
Thanks for the cliched insult. You know what? There is no liberal fear of appearing racist and xenophobic. There is a dislike, a position against, racism & homophobia in the progressive political community. It is conservatives & reactionaries who, in fact, are afraid of appearing to be racist & xenophobic and who have no problem with actually being racist & xenophobic. If you want to stoop to cliched insults against your opposition, that is.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Hee, hee. Homophobia. Doesn’t really matter, but I meant xenophobia.
Essentially, progressives are against prejudice & bigotry while conservatives are (often) against the appearance of prejudice & bigotry even while promoting policies that are prejudiced & bigoted.
I do find it telling that you think that I would be concerned about the appearance of bigotry rather than be concerned about bigotry itself.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Jake, you and I think that xenophobia means different things.
I think it means mindless fear and hatred of the stranger.
I don’t know what you think it means, but apparently not that. It’s difficult for me to see how concerns about how our society will be populated and by whom and through what mechanism translates to hating everything different. If I hated everything different than me, I would be one busy camper. I’ve got enough shit to do without fitting hate into the schedule.
I am a strongly pro-immigration person. Anybody who has actually read my writing on the subject could have no possible confusion on that point. In my most recent post on the subject (/blogwhore), I propose expanding the level of immigration we accept by fifty percent or more.
But being pro-immigration doesn’t mean being a complete dumbshit on questions of national security, border control, and what type of immigrants we want.
You can call that xenophobia if you like. I call it not being a complete dumbshit.
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April 13th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Yes, Robert, that is what I think that xenophobia means. Where we differ, perhaps, is on what “stranger” means in that context. I notice that, once again, you do not address my points, instead you not so circuitously suggest that I am a “dumbshit.” Fuck you, too, you clever guy!
A big difference between me & you is that when somebody says that I am being racist or xenophobic or misogynist or any other sort of bigotry is that I don’t respond with insults (because I don’t take it as an insult). Rather, I take the criticism seriously and try to see if there is any merit in it. If there is merit in the criticism, I try to correct the behaviour/way of thinking in myself. If there is no merit, I either don’t mention it or state that I found no merit in it.
It is your utter condescension & general assholish responses to people with whom you disagree that made me doubt that serious conversation with you on this subject is impossible & you do not disappoint.
Anybody who has actually read my writing…
(to the tune of “New Math”)Hubris, Hu -u - u- bris.
Dude, why would I be expected to have read your writing? While I think that you are a smart guy, I find your playing fast & loose with facts & your style of “quoting” your opponents to redefine what they have actually said into often dumb or offensive things to be a disincentive to bother with reading your blog.
Rather than make a statement like I should know because of course I would read your writing, how about something like:
“As I have written on my blog (or in such & such a place) many times, I am a strongly pro-immigration person.”
A bit of a drift, but… compare how you interact with people with views different than your own to the comments you made to women on the “woman-only space” thread. I find a noticeable difference between your “advice” and your actions.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
Damn it! Where is my editor?
…that made me doubt that serious conversation with you on this subject is impossible…
Please read “impossible” as “possible”.
I apologize for all the errors in today’s postings. As soon as I find my editor, you can believe that they will be getting a reprimand.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I do find it telling that you think that I would be concerned about the appearance of bigotry rather than be concerned about bigotry itself.
Give me a break - this is like arguing that conservatives care more about being moral than appearing moral, all the while they’re living normal lives filled with the adultory and vice that infects all of humanity.
Need I point you to the legions of liberals who are all for diversity while living in lily-white neighborhoods, sending their kids to schools with low minority populations, etc. This isn’t every liberal by any means, but certainly quite a few. Liberals aren’t immune to human vices and, just as with conservatives, appearances matter. The anti-xenophobia and anti-racist proclamations that are the public face of liberals who don’t actually live the message are the modern form of conspicious consumption.
Maintaining appearances, in whatever favored form, is a human universal - don’t tell me that liberals are a sect apart that actually live true to their creed and are unlike conservatives in their failings. Not without evidence, that is.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
I find a noticeable difference between your “advice” and your actions.
I’m not demanding that anybody change their way of thinking and living.
The reason that I haven’t engaged your points is that your points are really, really, really wrong. If I went into the physics forum and started asking people questions that were predicated on a flat earth being carried through space on the back of a turtle, I’d be ignored. Your views on immigration appear to be predicated on similarly wildly discredited views; I can’t help you with that, and I’m not going to burn bandwidth trying. But I’ll point out where you’re making incorrect assumptions about me, even if I don’t use the language you’d like me to use.
I don’t think you’re a dumbshit. I think you have really wrong ideas. I recognize that may come across as a distinction without a difference, particularly if your cognitive view tightly binds views to intellectual competence (”only an idiot wouldn’t think [X]“); mine doesn’t, but YMMV.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 13th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Jake, my response is stuck in the moderation queue. Just so you know I’m not blowing you off.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 12:13 am
Not being an U.S citizen (with no intention on becoming one, either), I have no personal axe to grind in this issue. It is no skin of my bones if U.S gets zero immigrants, or 100 million. There goes the xenophobia issue. A ridiculous red herring it was, anyway.
Three things:
1)
It still hasn’t been comprehensively answered how this amnesty thing is fair to all those who did not decide to break the U.S law and are currently waiting their turn. Why is the willingness to break U.S laws (as evidenced by illegal immigration) considered to be something worthy of reward (amnesty). Think of the incentive system this creates for a while!
2)
I fail to see the relevance of the “how many of your ancestors were illegal immigrants?” -question by Jake Squid. So what? If I found out that some of my ancestors was a murderer or a rapist (just for the sake of example, I don’t consider them to be analogous to illegal immigration), would I be a hypocrite if I condemned those crimes? Should it affect my opinion on them?
3)
This comment was written by Tuomas.The point #91 can be turned around with relative ease. Indeed, it is amusing that some Free Market -people are anti-immigrant, but since many more socialists are pro-immigrant (while vehemently opposing “outsourcing”), perhaps there is some hypocrisy there too?
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April 14th, 2006 at 12:15 am
My personal interest in this is, to clarify, is fairness and justice. People who piss on their own country, other immigrants and U.S laws should not be rewarded. Period.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 1:48 am
Charles:
That is what Alsis was talking about. Is there some reason you need to see it repeated by her?
The reason being that I wanted to know what Alsis meant, not what Brandon thought she meant.
I think a reasonable definition of when someone becomes a criminal (rather than someone who has broken a law, such as speeding, or shoplifting, or stealing a pen from work) is when their crime is a felony.
The definition of the word “criminal” is not up to either you or me. I’ve looked it up in a few on-line dictionaries, and every single one of them says that a criminal is someone who commits a crime, and they define crime as essentially an illegal act. No mention of misdemeanor vs. felony. “Illegal alien” = “criminal” is consistent with all definitions of the words I can find.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 2:07 am
Am I the only one who sees the overt xenophobia being displayed here?
Apparently.
I am seeing many of the same arguments being used to espouse an anti-immigration (or, if you prefer, curtailed immigration) position that were used in the early 20th century wrt to civil rights for African Americans (the economic arguments).
The issue is not one of immigration; it’s one of crime, and the results that come from having 11 million criminals in the United States with no effective effort being made to prevent or solve it. My personal opinion is that the use of “anti-immigration” or derivatives of that term to describe the desire to control our international borders draws attention away from what the actual issue is here.
If people think that it’s proper immigration policy to allow these various people into the country, then petition your Congressional representatives to change immigration law so that such people can legally enter the United States. But to oppose effective measures to control our borders is to oppose respect for the rule of law and exposes the U.S. to many dangers.
Lastly, why are we so focused on Mexicans? While Mexicans make up a good sized portion of illegals (the data from 1996 indicates that Mexico accounts for 54% of illegal immigrants), they are far from the vast majority.
Actually, I don’t see a focus on Mexicans. I see a focus on the Mexican border, which is the location where the majority of illegal aliens cross into the United States. Control that border and you’ll control the biggest part of the problem. That certainly means that you’ll choke off mostly Mexican illegal aliens, but that’s a secondary effect and is not a factor in either defining or solving the problem.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 2:46 am
Apparently not. I don’t think RonF, TangoMan and Robert are a representative sample here, particularly not on the question of whether TangoMan, RonF, and Robert are spouting xenophobia (a term Robert has decided doesn’t have a long history, but instead means only its Greek roots, which he then decides can reasonably be twisted around to mean hatred of anyting different from him - wouldn’t that be Heterophobia? - thus justifying Jake’s pessimism of having a meaningful and honest discusssion with him) here.
While I applaude your efforts Jake, I can’t see much point in joining you. Robert’s just Robert (practicing humpty-dumptyism while accusing others of it, and claiming that saying his views just prevent him from being a dipshit, but then claimng that only people who think that anyone who disagrees with them is stupid would think that someone disagreeing with them was calling them stupid, as though he hadn’t just implied that anyone who fails to hold his views is failing to avoid being a dipshit), RonF seems to be in his less reasonable mode (the problem with illegal immigrants isn’t economic or a question of justice, the problem with illegal immigrants is crime, cause, see, they’re illegal, and the solution is to turn 11 million people into felons, cause then, uh, there will be less crime?), and TangoMan is an avowed racist (and is actually one of the bloggers on the infamous blog, gene expression) crying crocodile tears for the plight of black people. Oh sorry, TangoMan probably prefers to be thought of as someone who speaks honestly about the inherent inferiority of blacks or some such, as if there were a difference between that and an avowed racist.
Oh well, I guess I did just join in, if not in a terribly productive manner.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 7:26 am
“and TangoMan is an avowed racist (and is actually one of the bloggers on the infamous blog, gene expression)”
I’m curious. What sort of reputation do you believe the blog has? I’ve actually never heard of it, so I don’t know.
This comment was written by pdf23ds.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 11:09 am
I’m curious. What sort of reputation do you believe the blog has? I’ve actually never heard of it, so I don’t know.
If you’re curious go and read it. Decide for yourself what it takes to be called racist by some people. See if the threshold is held up to be very high or very low. Then see how your opinion meshes with that of Charles.
This comment was written by TangoMan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 11:52 am
When millions people who are traditionalists in the manner of their homelands become voters, there won’t be any chance of homosexual marriage passing.
This comment was written by Rob.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
I say Bull. The immigration debate has nothing do with civil rights and nothing to do with the Black civil rights movment. Blacks where LEGAL CITIZENS have rights. Gays who are LEGAL CITIZENS of this country rights. Don’t come in my country illegally and then demand you have a right to this and that. Don’t come in come in my country and demand I learn your language or that I pay for something to be translated in your language. I don’t want to be charged double for my emergency room visit because you got an MRI for free and the hospitals have to make it up somehow. We don’t need illegal immigration. I bussed tables and clean dishes, and cleaned toilets in the back of a restuarant, but I did it for the legal wage. Americans WILL do these jobs. And I find it absolutely absurd for anyone to compare Illegal immigration and the plight of black citizens of this country at all or some how say one is the same as the other. If anything they should be marching against their own president and his Mexican elite who are benefiting from free flowing money from the US while exporting his poverty. Fox” Black people won’t do the jobs Mexicans do” Vincente is a racist bastard. Ask him why Mexico’s southern border is militerized?
And as a black american, My folks weren’t Immigrants, We were invited here by force..
This comment was written by Zakia.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Entering the country without a proper visa is not a criminal offense; it is a civil offense. Furthermore, you are not automatically deported if you are caught; for instance, it is perfectly accepted to get into the US (somehow) and then apply for political asylum here. This is what many hopeful Cuban immigrants try to do, for instance. Of course the Coast Guard tries to stop them, but they are allowed to apply for asylum if they do make it to the US. So immigrants without valid visas are in no sense “criminals” or “illegal”. A better term is “out of status”.
This comment was written by Dylan Thurston.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
ISTR, that all my folks immigrated legally, and that they jumped through all the hoops to gain citizenship. I’m not against immigration, after all the United States is a country founded on immigration. I feel like giving amnesty to all those that are here illegally isn’t fair to those that are attempting to jump through all those hoops and get here legally.
The problem isn’t one of border control so much, as the illogical and often backwards immigration policies and procedures we have created. I am for reforming the laws so that those who want to come here can, and that those who are escaping starvation, torture, and bruatlity in their own countries can actually get her legally.
After all the mark of a country is how many people are trying to come in (a quote I heard made in a speech last semester) and there are hundreds that die everyday in the effort to get to the US.
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Wow, sorry for the errors. Thats what happens when I rush to post. Hopefully it made enough sense for the jist.
This comment was written by Zakia.Report this comment to the moderators
April 14th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
(the problem with illegal immigrants isn’t economic or a question of justice, the problem with illegal immigrants is crime, cause, see, they’re illegal, and the solution is to turn 11 million people into felons, cause then, uh, there will be less crime?),
Please point out where I said that we should turn 11 million people into felons.
Please also point out where I said that there isn’t an economic reason to control illegal entry into the U.S. There are a lot of economic reasons; I just think that there’s plenty of other reasons as well.
I think it’s a fair guess that if we deported 11 million criminals from this country, we’d have less crime.
There’s certainly a question of justice. How just is it to grant legal recognition and benefits and the ability to live and work in America and participate in our society to people who treat our laws with evasion and contempt? How just is it for those who respect our laws and work within them to get legal immigration status to see lawbreakers get the same civil rights they do?
Whenever I see the word “justice” used, I am minded to remember that justice is something that only God can guarantee. We humans are reduced to approximate justice with our laws, as best as we imperfectly can - that’s why the only way we can minimize the odds that innocent people will be found guilty is by allowing some guilty people to go free.
Justice for illegal aliens should be the same justice we all get under the law. A fair and speedy trial with the ability to obtain counsel and compel witnesses in front of an impartial judge and, where appropriate, a jury of one’s peers. If guilty, they should be punished as prescribed by law.
It’s also no violations of anyone’s rights, whether they are in the U.S. legally or not, to fortify America’s borders to prevent further immigration crimes. The fact that beefing up the borders to prevent illegal entry is being represented as violating immigrants’ rights is ludicrous. It wouldn’t affect legal entry into the U.S., and those who would seek to enter the U.S. illegally by definition have no right to do so.
I do note that it seems to be common to depict illegal aliens as mainly economic refugees who, having committed the crime of violating our immigration laws, stop the moment once they violate our immigration laws and become hard-working pillars of American society. Of course, that’s untrue, because every day they show up for work they commit another Federal crime. And since crime begets crime, it’s no surprise that their employers are also committing a crime by hiring and continue to employ them. Then there’s the tax laws that many people who hire illegal aliens violate.
There’s plenty of other laws they break as well. I tried to get a handle on how many crimes are creditable to illegal aliens. It’s a topic that needs research to weigh the risk that not doing a better job of blocking their entry creates. I did find some sources (such as here, here and here that indicate that there are tens of thousands of illegal aliens in jails and prisons across the country. It seems to me that people who are willing to go to all the effort and risk it takes to break immigration laws probably will have a high percentage of people who are willing to break other laws.
There’s also the issue that the vast majority of these immigrants are people with low levels of marketable skills who have come into our country to better themselves economically. Our immigratiaon laws are designed to forbid this very thing. Our immigration laws are written to benefit America, not immigrants; as such, they are set up to grant preference to relatives of American citizens and people with professions or exceptional skills. To now grant citizenship to people who a) broke the law to come into the United States and b) have limited skills stands our laws on their head and defies the will of the American people as expressed by their representatives. Our policies exist for a reason, and I haven’t see much argument as to why it’s to our advantage now to radically change those policies.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 3:14 am
10,000/ 11 million felony, punishable by a prison term. That won’t do anything to actually get anyone out of the country, but it will increase our prison population unimaginably.
We’ve granted amnesty before, so if it turns our laws on their heads, apparently it won’t be for the first time.
As to fortifying the border, people die as a result of our fortified border already. I think that violates their rights.
Still, your proof that undocumented immigrants are bad people deserving of time in prison, or merely of being kicked out en mas is that they are breaking the law against being undocumented immigrants (and the laws against working without documentation, etc, although actually, many (most?) undocumented immigrants pay taxes, both payroll and social security. If they don’t, it is because their employers are criminals, not the undocumented immigrants). That is a tautology, and one that doesn’t support your fantasies about how they are surely responsible for all sorts of crimes.
As Jake pointed out, arguments very similar to yours and Robert’s and TangoMan’s abounded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, explaining the criminality and ignorance and general ill effects that waves of immigrants were bringing to the country (you see, many European immigrants left their home countries illegally, so they too were all evil evil criminals). I don’t know about your ancestors, but some of my ancestors were among those ignorant, degenerate criminals, and many of my friend’s ancestors were also among that group. While we still have some communities in some places that are over-whelmingly composed of one immigrant community or another from that period (see, those Lithuanians/Armenians/Jews/Italians will never integrate with our Anglo society), by and large that wave of immigrants is fully integrated. No doubt the next wave will integrate as well. Will the integration of tens of millions of Mexicans and other hispanic people result in the US becoming a bilingual country? Probably not, but I really hope so. Being a monoglot nation is a huge disadvantage, and is part of the reason most English speakers in the US are incapable of learning other languages. I hope my grand-nieces and nephews (in another 20 years or so) grow up learning English and Spanish.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 3:42 am
pdf23ds,
I know gene expression more by reputation than by personal experience. However, if you want a starting point, here is a nice piece on how the stupidness of black people is what was responsible for the disasterous results of New Orleans post-Katrina (I found it because TangoMan linked to it approvingly a while back).
I am having a hard time finding the thread on Alas in which TangoMan went on at great length about the inherent IQ inferiority of blacks, but that was the point that settled for me whether TangoMan was an ardent racist. Here is one where he went on a little about it as an aside. As I said, TangoMan obviously thinks of himself as someone who is simply willing to speak honestly about the inherent inferiority of blacks, but I really don’t see the difference.
As to where I set the bar on racism, I set it really low. I assume that pretty much every white person in the US who hasn’t done a lot of retraining to stop being racist is racist (I think I have done enough to be aware of the degree to which I’m racist, but not enough to not still be racist). However, the bar for being an ardent racist (or an avowed racist) is a good bit higher. If you are aware of your racist beliefs, and you think they are right and true, then I think you are an avowed racist. If you spend a lot of time trumpetting your racist beliefs in public, then I can only assume you are an ardent racist, and that being a racist is important to you. While TangoMan appears to be not quite enough of a racist (or, more likely, too tactically skilled) to not bristle at being called a racist, that is about the only test of being an ardent and avowed racist that he seems to fail.
Read up thread where TangoMan goes on about how kicking out the Mexicans might mean less idle Black men, and how that would mean less government waste for some racist crocodile tears. Read it uncharitably and you will get a sense of how a pure IQ inferiority racist like TangoMan slides smoothly into the kind that wear sheets and hoods.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Charles:
I don’t think you’re being fair. To believe, rightly or wrongly, that there are certain differences between the races in the aggregate (yes, I know “race” is fuzzy, but that doesn’t make it totally meaningless), is not inherently racist. Racism is believing that these aggregate differences trump individual variation, and using them to draw unwarranted conclusions about specific individuals.
In other words, it’s not racist to say that the average white person is smarter than the average black person. Racism is pointing to a black person on the street and saying he must be stupid because he’s black.
The post at Gene Expression explicitly acknowledged that individual variation was more significant than the aggregate racial differences. Note that the assumed difference between the average black person who remained and the average black person who left is greater than the difference between between the average black person and average white person in New Orleans before the storm.
The author probably could have explained this without bringing up race at all, simply by pointing out that those who remained would have been, in general, significantly less intelligent than those who stayed, but using the racial averages helped in providing rough numerical approximations.
Can you point to any flaw in the analysis, other than the fact that you don’t like it?
Regarding TangoMan’s claim about black unemployment: I may be wrong, but isn’t it fairly well established that unskilled black men are generally hit harder than others by slack labor markets? Again, can you point to any flaw in this analysis, other than the fact that you don’t like it?
I know gene expression more by reputation than by personal experience.
If you know something mostly by reputation, you don’t know it.
That said, I do agree with you about the absurdity of comparing illegal immigration to real crimes. I like my friends better than strangers, but I feel no special kinship with strangers just because they happen to have been born in the same country as me. As long as welfare benefits to immigrants are limited to a ticket home, open borders are fine with me.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Here’s one economist’s summary of what we know about the effects of unskilled immigration, with references to studies done on ‘experiments’ - like the Muriel boatlift.
My summary of the summary is, there’s no good evidence that native workers are worse off, probably because immigrants perk up the market. He is clear that there are labor policies that can disadvantage the immigrants, the native labor, and in fact the effectiveness of the market as a whole.
This comment was written by clew.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Alsis:
You didn’t base anything on Robert’s (accidental) distortion. He was correct when he said that social spending by government is 23.4% of the country’s GDP.
I can’t speak for the others, but I’m only trying to convince you of two things:
1. The claim you made, about “a social system that has already been starved, looted, privatized, and starved some more”“ pretty much steadily over the last two or three decades,” is demonstrably false. Social spending by government (to say nothing of private social spending) in this country has increased, not decreased, over the past 2-3 decades, not only in real per-capita terms, but also as a percentage of GDP. I’m perfectly willing to consider evidence to the contrary, but I don’t see that there’s any room for informed disagreement on this point.
2. We all “know” a lot of things that aren’t necessarily true, and it’s good policy to take a few minutes to check the facts before making assertions like this.
Although I disagree with Ampersand on a lot of things, I do respect his habit of consistently checking facts, and I wish more of my ideological opponents (and also my allies) would do the same. Ditto myself—I encourage anyone who ever catches me making a demonstrably false statement to call me on it.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Brandon,
If the equation of black = stupid and poor = stupid and unable to get out of the city = stupid, and black = criminal and, hell, stupid = criminal and the continued propogation of the “New Orleans collapsed into lawlessness because it was full of black people” myth, doesn’t strike you as racist and classist, well, all I can say is you set the bar pretty high.
And my objection to the crocodile tears over high unemployment among black men wasn’t an attempt to deny that there is high unemployment among black men. It was about hateful undertones. I have no doubt you didn’t see them or didn’t find them noteworthy. I did.
And, yes, TangoMan is very good at what he does, and seems to have a vast collection of facts and studies which he uses to argue that blacks are inferior to whites. Most of his individual pieces of evidence are of reasonably good quality, but it is how he uses them that I disagree with. And, the simple fact that he finds it worth his while to go around using them in that way at all makes him an ardent and avowed racist.
I think that anyone who thinks that blacks are inferior to whites is a racist. Maybe you have a different definition.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Brandon:
You praise Amp for his skills at fact-checking. His fact-checking reveals very nicely the manner in which Robert’s figures were a distortion. Yet here you are, continuing to insist that I cry “uncle” over a distortion originated by Robert, not myself. And that distortion is only peripheral to my main point, which I have now stated several times.
Please accept my civil invitation to get yourself a new fucking hobby and/or whipping girl. I don’t like you, and I don’t want any further conversation with you. Something about impending old age seems to be sapping my fondness for such exercises in utter futility.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
His fact-checking reveals very nicely the manner in which Robert’s figures were a distortion.
I made an (honest) error regarding the magnitude of how far off your base your statement was. Instead of being wildly and ludicrously off base, your statement is only really quite amazingly off base.
Where’s the distortion in that? It’s an error - like saying that Alpha Centauri is 6 light years instead of 4 light years from Earth - but if the proposition being advanced was “Alpha Centauri is a fuck of a long way from here, not just around the corner”, then I’m right, even if I got the numbers a bit mixed up.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
No, Robert. You just have a very different opinion than I of what constitutes a sufficient percentage of spending on social problems.
Now, are you, Brandon, and Ron– the manliest of the manly-men– done drifting the thread/waving your dicks around to prove to me your oh-so innate superiority ? Shall we move back to the original point of the thread ?
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
You just have a very different opinion than I of what constitutes a sufficient percentage of spending on social problems.
Apparently “more than any group of people in the history of the universe has ever spent under any circumstances” is apparently nowhere close to good enough.
Now, are you, Brandon, and Ron”“ the manliest of the manly-men”“ done drifting the thread/waving your dicks around to prove to me your oh-so innate superiority?
I tried to wave my dick, but the stupid software won’t let post a JPEG. (Millions nationwide shudder in relief.)
As far as drift goes, undrift away. Post something on-topic instead of trying to defend your ludicrous opinion.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 15th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
I’ve already made my main point, Robert. Several times, in fact.
If you want to refute it, go to town. Or if you want to hoist my virtual head on a pike and march to every blog in the sphere shrieking “PWONED,” or some such– all because I refuse to concede your point because I think it’s crap ? Feel free. It’s about what I’d expect from you. But what I expect and what I have to play along with are two different things.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 16th, 2006 at 10:09 am
[...] There’s been an argument in the comments of this post that I want to comment on, but it’s more than a little off-topic so I’m starting a new thread. [...]
This comment was written by Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Government spending is not up, up, up..Report this comment to the moderators
April 17th, 2006 at 7:57 am
As to fortifying the border, people die as a result of our fortified border already.
No, Charles, people don’t die as a result of our fortified border. People aren’t dying because they were walking around minding their own business when the border opened fire on them. They die because of the choices they have made and their behavior that they based upon those choices. They die because they try to move across desert without sufficient resources. They die because they take a risk without either understanding or preparing for what can happen.
I think that violates their rights.
What right do they have to cross our borders? What right do they have to expect that they can come into the United States in violation of our laws? Are you saying that they have the right to come into the United States anywhere they choose? What rights do you think they have that we are violating?
If you or I come across someone dying of thirst or exposure in the desert, we are under a moral obligation to do whatever we can to preserve that person’s life. But after that, we have a legal obligation to turn that person over to the authorities so that they can be dealt with according to the law.
If present or proposed law would stop people from providing life-preserving aid to anyone, it is wrong. But if it is intended to keep people from enabling illegal aliens to evade immigration law, it’s right on the money. What has made me suspicious is that advocates for illegal aliens have been saying that the proposed laws would prevent priests and ministers from providing pastoral care to illegal aliens. If by “pastoral care” they mean trying to help them with their spiritual issues, that would be wrong. But if by “pastoral care” they mean “evade immigration laws”, then that’s too bad.
The Mexican government seems to think that their citizen’s lives are not worth trying to preserve by trying to keep them from crossing the border in hazardous areas. Prevention is always better than cure, so it seems that their citizens would be better off if the Mexican government would take steps to keep their citizens from putting themselves in harm’s way, rather than depending on the U.S. to do something about this AFTER they’ve gotten lost in the desert. But it’s pretty obvious that the money that successful illegal aliens send back to Mexico is more important to the Mexican government than the lives of their citizens who die trying to get here.
Seems to me that the second best solution to people dying when they try to cross our border is for us to fortify the border completely so that no one can get across. Then no one will die. We should also revise our immigration laws to fit the needs of the U.S., so that whatever low-skilled labor we need to import from Mexico or any other country can be brought in under controlled conditions.
The best solution would be for the Mexican government to start operating in the best interests of all of it’s citizens instead of the elite few and use it’s resources to build up their economy in such a fashion that people would no longer feel the need to come to the United States to live in a free country and get a decent job, but I’m not holding my breath.
Of course, revision of our immigration laws would have to include a debate in this country on just what our need for low-skilled labor is, with the final result a vote in Congress signed off on by the Executive branch. That way the advocates of both sides could be heard, the merits debated, and everyone would get a vote in how this is to be handled, unlike the present situation.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 17th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Now, [is] … Ron”“ the manliest of the manly-men
Gee, thanks!
““ done drifting the thread/waving your dicks around to prove to me your oh-so innate superiority?
Can’t deny that I’ve participated in drifting the thread. Sorry. I did address it initially. But can you expand on how I’ve been waving my dick around and trying to prove innate superiority to anyone?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 17th, 2006 at 8:04 am
We’ve granted amnesty before, so if it turns our laws on their heads, apparently it won’t be for the first time.
That’s right, we did. And it didn’t work. Just because we made a mistake once doesn’t justify doing it again.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 17th, 2006 at 8:06 am
If they don’t [pay taxes], it is because their employers are criminals, not the undocumented immigrants).
If your employer doesn’t withold taxes from your paycheck, you are still obligated to pay your taxes. If you don’t, then both you and your employer are criminals.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 17th, 2006 at 8:14 am
That is a tautology, and one that doesn’t support your fantasies about how they are surely responsible for all sorts of crimes.
Gee, I don’t recall fantasizing about how illegal aliens are surely responsible for all sorts of crimes. I do recall pointing out that there are tens of thousands of illegal aliens in jails and prisons for committing crimes. But that’s not a fantasy; that’s fact.
As Jake pointed out, arguments very similar to yours and Robert’s and TangoMan’s abounded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, explaining the criminality and ignorance and general ill effects that waves of immigrants were bringing to the country (you see, many European immigrants left their home countries illegally, so they too were all evil evil criminals).
Irrelevant. The issue at hand is people breaking American law, not Mexican or Canadian or Polish or whatever law. The European immigrants you refer to entered the United States legally.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 6:16 am
RonF, you seem to be assuming that all European immigrants entered this country legally. This is not necessarily true, especially pre-WWII.
I also want to ask you, as a practical matter, how on earth you plan to deport or jail the 11 million illegal immigrants we have now. We couldn’t keep them from coming here in the first place, we don’t even know exactly who most of them are, and we can’t keep more from arriving every day. You seem to have this idea that The Great Big Wall can be built rapidly, that it will be 100% effective, and that once it’s in place we can turn our attention to hunting down these lawbreakers and tossing them out. I think that if you examine your stance as a logistical exercise, you will realize that it’s a Just World Fantasy.
An analogy: suppose that driving faster than the posted speed limit is illegal (which it is). Suppose that 10 years ago, 99% of speed limit exceedances were ticketed (not likely, but conceivably possible). Now suppose that The Powers That Be decided to redirect law enforcement efforts toward jaywalking, littering, and the War on Drugs instead, so that enforcement of the law on speeding dropped to 5% of exceedances. After about 10 years of this, almost everybody now drives at least 10 mph over the speed limit, increasing the effective speed limit 10 mph above the posted speed limit. Then the insurance companies decide that it’s too expensive for them to pay claims when almost everybody is driving 10 mph faster than they used to do, so they raise a fuss about enforcing the speed limit. But because almost everybody is now driving over the speed limit, actually enforcing the speed limit the way it used to be enforced will be virtually impossible, even with the help of speed cameras and so on. So the best that can be done is selective enforcement and a phase-in of the tougher standards, and maybe enforcement can be increased over time, but it would never go back to the way it was before. It’s not fair that people who are breaking the law are also getting away with it most of the time, but pragmatically speaking, what can you do without putting a police car or traffic camera on every corner?
We have not been enforcing our border-crossing policy anywhere close to 100% for years and years. After talking to some people I know who work for INS, I have come to the conclusion that even with The Great Big Wall it would be virtually impossible to prevent people from entering the country illegally. The best we can do is: 1) make it more expensive for companies to hire illegal immigrants than to hire people with green cards, guest worker visas, or citizenship; 2) establish a guest worker visa program so that people who are not intending to become citizens have documentation and can be here legally; 3) establish a path between guest worker visas and green cards so that we don’t create a permanent underclass; and 4) establish a way for illegal immigrants to get guest worker visas without having to go back to their country of origin.
I have proposed to my Senator and Representative that any illegal immigrant who can demonstrate that they filed a 2005 federal income tax return can apply for an annual guest worker visa (which I called an orange card). In order to renew their orange cards, they must continue to file federal income tax returns. (People who entered this country after 1/1/2006 must show pay stubs that have the tax deductions on them. People not here yet must apply for orange cards before they cross the border.) If they don’t file, they don’t get renewed and can therefore be deported. After 10 years with a clean record, they can get in line for a green card if they so choose. If a company or a private person is found to hire someone without a green card, an orange card, or a valid proof of citizenship, they would be subject to a huge fine.
I don’t pretend it’s a 100% solution, but it’s certainly better than what we have now, IMO (but of course I’d think that, since it’s my plan).
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 9:28 am
I also want to ask you, as a practical matter, how on earth you plan to deport or jail the 11 million illegal immigrants we have now.
The same way we jail or otherwise punish the millions of other criminals in this country; one at a time, when we catch them. Some of the illegal aliens will stay under the radar, just like some drug dealers and thieves and even murderers. But they, like the illegal aliens in question, will always have in the back of their minds that they might slip up and get caught. Too bad. Obey the law and that won’t happen.
You seem to have this idea that The Great Big Wall can be built rapidly,
If you can quote me where I offered any opinion on how fast our southern border can be effectively fortified, I’d appreciate it.
that it will be 100% effective,
Same thing here; please quote where I offered that opinion.
Israel has shown us that a border can be fortified. It may not be 100% effective, but it can be a hell of a lot more effective than it is now. Let’s not have perfection be the enemy of practical.
and that once it’s in place we can turn our attention to hunting down these lawbreakers and tossing them out.
We can turn our attention to hunting down illegal aliens and tossing them out anytime we want. But right now it’s like trying putting a colander in a half-full kitchen sink and trying to empty it by dipping a cup into the colander and emptying it into the sink. It can be a useful practical exercise given that unlike drops of water illegal aliens have identities and we may find some that require particular attention. But it’ll be a lot more effective if we turn the colander into a solid bowl, or at least reduce it so that it only has minor leaks.
We have not been enforcing our border-crossing policy anywhere close to 100% for years and years. After talking to some people I know who work for INS, I have come to the conclusion that even with The Great Big Wall it would be virtually impossible to prevent people from entering the country illegally.
I doubt that. I’m sure that some will get though, especially if they game the system with fake documents, etc. But if we put up a barrier and properly staff it with a lot more resources than the INS has right now, things can be improved drastically. Getting caught up by the Border Patrol and tossed back over the border (even if we don’t felonize the offense unless they get caught, say, 3 times) is a lot different from getting a speeding ticket.
The best we can do is: 1) make it more expensive for companies to hire illegal immigrants than to hire people with green cards, guest worker visas, or citizenship; 2) establish a guest worker visa program so that people who are not intending to become citizens have documentation and can be here legally; 3) establish a path between guest worker visas and green cards so that we don’t create a permanent underclass; and 4) establish a way for illegal immigrants to get guest worker visas without having to go back to their country of origin.
1) Sounds good. Might sound even better if we made employment of illegal aliens a misdemeanor or felony with mandatory jail time, and created a resource so that employers could more readily check who’s legal and who’s not. A database that would rapidly match SSN with name and address would be excellent. No match, no job. Use of the DB is made a presumptive defense against the felony charge, so DB errors don’t trap the employer.
2) already exists; it’s called an H1-B visa. Of course, right now that’s for highly skilled people, but then how much we really need of low-skilled workers is a matter that needs to be settled in the public political arena.
3) Agreed.
4) Why?
I have proposed to my Senator and Representative that any illegal immigrant who can demonstrate that they filed a 2005 federal income tax return can apply for an annual guest worker visa (which I called an orange card). In order to renew their orange cards, they must continue to file federal income tax returns. (People who entered this country after 1/1/2006 must show pay stubs that have the tax deductions on them. People not here yet must apply for orange cards before they cross the border.) If they don’t file, they don’t get renewed and can therefore be deported. After 10 years with a clean record, they can get in line for a green card if they so choose.
In other words, let’s legitimate criminals. I’m very skeptical. We did this years ago when we had 3 million illegal aliens in the country. It was supposed to be coupled with effective enforcement of the border. The latter was never done. So all the program did was to show illegal aliens that if they could sneak across the border, they had a chance to become citizens without all that bothersome legal business. Now we have 11+ illegal aliens.
The bottom line is that we’ve done this, and it only made things worse. Unless there’s an effective border control system set up, this is No Sale with me.
If a company or a private person is found to hire someone without a green card, an orange card, or a valid proof of citizenship, they would be subject to incarceration.
Forgive my liberties with your words, but I think that’s better.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 10:36 am
You still don’t seem to have an argument for what is wrong with having 11 million additional immigrants in the country other than ITS ILLEGAL!!111!!
So we should spend vast resources on a giant wall and on extra INS people, and increase harassment against all hispanics (do you really think that isn’t the automatic result of increased attempts to catch Mexican illegal immigrants? And why aren’t we going after the millions of Canadian illegal immigrants?) and on a hugely expanded prison system (even if we only imprisoned a fifth of all of the current illegal immigrants, that would require doubling the current prison system, a small price to pay to -um- take hard working, generally law abiding people off the streets), and we should do this so that we can enforce our border laws, cause gosh darn it, violating our border laws is a crime. A crime I tell you, just like murder and rape.
My personal fav is when you declare that undocumented immigrants are surely violating the selective service laws ’cause you say they are, ’cause they are criminals, and then you say that they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military when its pointed out that they are 5% of the military.
No matter how much evidence is piled on that undocumented workers behave pretty much like everyone else (some of them commit serious crimes and go to jail, some ofthem work under the table, most of them pay taxes and send their (frequently citizen) children to school, some of them join the military, some of them avoid signing up for selective service (a law so importnat that it deserves special mention, despite a complete lack of enforcement), you still insist on your fantasy that they are criminals criminals CRIMINALS.
Its just bizarre.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Won’t we also have to build more jails and expand the INS to tend to all these horrid criminal types ? Whatever happened to the good old days when Righties pretended that they wanted small Gummint ?
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 11:33 am
RonF, the resources necessary to find, apprehend, and deport 11 million people while simultaneously preventing more people from crossing the border into U.S. illegally are HUGE. While you didn’t state explicitly that you thought TGBW should be built, and quickly, that is what is implied by your stance (and incidentally, underlined by your colander example).
It was bad policy not to follow through on immigration enforcement after the last amnesty, I agree, so now we have to fix the situation in a way that will keep the problem from getting worse. I mean, the total population of the U.S. is somewhere around 300 million, so you are proposing that we have to round up and chuck out about 25% of the people who are here, and keep them from getting back in unless they have the proper paperwork. I don’t know about you, but I think unless we increase the INS to USPS size and/or allow each state to hire their own special immigrant-hunting posse or something like that, just this piece of immigration reform is an impossible task. Plus, under current law, people who manage to have babies on this side of the border (who are therefore automatically U.S. citizens) have some due process rights before being chucked out, which would bog down the existing process while simultaneously encouraging people to have babies once they get here just to postpone deportation (not a good thing, in my opinion). And requiring our neighbors to fix their problems instead of shoving them on us sounds good, but I don’t think we have a very good track record on pursuasion right now.
So that’s why I’m proposing that we don’t require people already here to return to their countries of origin to apply for guest worker status - there’s too many of them. And they aren’t stupid - they know that Congress would almost certainly not give our consulates and embassies the funding to process guest worker visas in any helpful or substantive way, so this “go back home and do it right” requirement is a no-win for them. Plus they might get screwed over even more if Congress gets the bright idea that we don’t need to give poor brown Spanish-speakers orange cards when (once they are gone) we can give them to English-speaking laborers, preferably with white skins.
We need to plug the holes in the border - yes, great, let’s triple the number of INS staff (and pay them properly, too, BTW, because otherwise you’re not going to be able to hire enough of them) and generally beef up the whole immigration enforcement policy. I doubt that the implementation will happen properly though, just like it didn’t happen properly before, because we’re already swimming in deep deficit waters with the war in Iraq, so all of this wonderful stuff will have to be paid for by a tax increase. If fixing the problem means that we have to grant amnesty to people who have been paying taxes while they are here, then I’ll be pragmatic and say, “Let’s do it!”
As for opening the path to citizenship for guest workers - I think that the European system of permanent guest workers kinda sucks and that we shouldn’t follow their model. The original idea was that they’d go back home after earning themselves a nice nest egg, and they haven’t. So you have a large population of people who like where they are just fine, thank you, sometimes three or four generations’ worth, and they can’t become citizens because many European countries still operate on an inheritance model for citizenship. Taxation without represenation may work in Europe, but I’m advocating a path for citizenship because I think that if you work hard and contribute to the community in a positive way and pay your taxes and so on, then it’s in our best interest to keep you vested in the American experiment by giving you an opportunity to earn the right to vote. Note that orange card workers could take 20 years or more to earn citizenship, which is not a cakewalk.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
April 18th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
I am with charles #136.
When has a giant wall ever worked for any country ? -maybe the great wall of china but that was when…
Why is the premise that immigrants with lower education are a burden to the welfare system is a bad thing - and by extrapolation illegal immigrants are a tax to the US economy.
I simply do not believe that those in power who profit from maintaining a disparity between rich and poor would destablize such a strong economic factor. If people in the US want to continue to maintain their high standard of living then this is the cost - YOU MUST HAVE CHEAP LABOR.
Illegal immigration is a must.
This comment was written by Steve.Report this comment to the moderators
April 19th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Oops. I just noticed that I put illegal immigrants as 25% of the population. It should be 2.5%. Which is still a large number of people to try to round up and chuck across the border.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 6:40 am
You still don’t seem to have an argument for what is wrong with having 11 million additional immigrants in the country other than ITS ILLEGAL!!111!!
The fact that people are breaking the law is in and of itself a justification for enforcing the law, until such time as it may be changed. What distinguishes the United States from many other countries is that from it’s very origin it was based on rule of law, not rule of individual people. If we ignore lawbreakers as policy, we break the very basis of our country. We must have respect for the law or we have no effective system of government at all. Contempt for the law is not something this country can afford.
Additionally, the ability of aliens to enter this country without our knowledge and regulation risks the entrance of criminals and terrorists, which is a national security problem. I have referenced this in previous posts. It’s also pretty obvious.
Then there’s the fact that in areas where there are a large number of illegal aliens, various social services (health care, education, etc.) are overstressed and American citizens end up paying for these services for non-citizens.
Private American citizens also are having their property rights violated. Their lands are trashed, fences are torn down, fires are set and get out of control, etc. They have a right to expect that the laws will be enforced and that their security will be guaranteed.
… increase harassment against all hispanics (do you really think that isn’t the automatic result of increased attempts to catch Mexican illegal immigrants?
On a short term basis, perhaps. But on a long term basis, people will have a much greater assurance that anyone of obviously Hispanic ancestry that they see will be in the U.S. legally, so harassment should in fact drop.
And why aren’t we going after the millions of Canadian illegal immigrants?
Perhaps you could give me a source that would back up your assertion that there are millions of Canadian illegal aliens?
and on a hugely expanded prison system (even if we only imprisoned a fifth of all of the current illegal immigrants, that would require doubling the current prison system, a small price to pay to -um- take hard working, generally law abiding people off the streets)
If we keep people from coming into the U.S. in the first place, we won’t have to lock them up. So I don’t see the need for an expanded prison system.
and we should do this so that we can enforce our border laws, cause gosh darn it, violating our border laws is a crime. A crime I tell you, just like murder and rape.
It is a crime. The relative penalties for violating immigration laws vs. rape and murder show that so far, the American public doesn’t think that immigration law violations are as serious, and neither do I. But they are still crimes.
My personal fav is when you declare that undocumented immigrants are surely violating the selective service laws ’cause you say they are, ’cause they are criminals, and then you say that they shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military when its pointed out that they are 5% of the military.
Someone else brought up the concept that they were violating the Selective Service laws. I just agreed that it was likely that some of them were. I just whipped back through this thread to check on the 5% number you quote. Didn’t see it. Was that on another thread? I do remember stating that illegal aliens should not be allowed in the military, and I stand by that regardless of the percentage involved. I have no problem with changing immigration policies so that people who wanted to trade military service for citizenship would be allowed in the U.S. legally. But people who have snuck over the border illegally should not be allowed in the U.S. military.
No matter how much evidence is piled on that undocumented workers behave pretty much like everyone else (some of them commit serious crimes and go to jail, some ofthem work under the table, most of them pay taxes and send their (frequently citizen) children to school, some of them join the military, some of them avoid signing up for selective service (a law so importnat that it deserves special mention, despite a complete lack of enforcement), you still insist on your fantasy that they are criminals criminals CRIMINALS.
It’s not a fantasy. Perhaps you might look up the word in a dictionary or two and tell me how it’s not a fantasy that they are not criminals, given that they violate various American laws every day they are in the U.S. and engage in any activity that involves either employment or receipt of government-funded benefits.
RonF, the resources necessary to find, apprehend, and deport 11 million people while simultaneously preventing more people from crossing the border into U.S. illegally are HUGE. While you didn’t state explicitly that you thought TGBW should be built, and quickly, that is what is implied by your stance (and incidentally, underlined by your colander example).
My example was meant to illustrate that the present policy of rounding up people and throwing them back over the border is ineffective in actually reducing the number of illegal aliens in this country. I don’t see where any implication of the speed of construction exists in it. I expect that anyone here would agree that the present border is porous.
It was bad policy not to follow through on immigration enforcement after the last amnesty, I agree, so now we have to fix the situation in a way that will keep the problem from getting worse.
Hell, I’d like to fix it so it gets better.
I mean, the total population of the U.S. is somewhere around 300 million, so you are proposing that we have to round up and chuck out about 25% of the people who are here,
I don’t follow your numbers here. 25% of 300 million is 75 million. The estimates of illegal aliens in the US is 11 million. 25% of what?
I don’t know about you, but I think unless we increase the INS to USPS size and/or allow each state to hire their own special immigrant-hunting posse or something like that, just this piece of immigration reform is an impossible task.
There would have to be priorities. The first priority would be to get rid of any illegal alien who came to the notice of the authorities for some other reason involving violations of the law. Actively hunting people down would be a lower priority. You don’t really need a special immigrant-hunting posse; just require that a citizenship check be done on anyone who’s been arrested. Again, checking SS# vs. name/address would be a system that would seem to be practical to implement. Right now, oddly enough, there are municipalities that actually FORBID their law-enforcement personnel from informing the INS when they arrest people that they KNOW are illegal aliens. Federal law should be changed to withdraw Federal funding from any such law-enforcement body.
Plus, under current law, people who manage to have babies on this side of the border (who are therefore automatically U.S. citizens)
I’ve been doing some reading on that. Expect to have that issue opened back up. The writers of the 14th Amendment and the various enabling laws never intended this, and explicitly excluded the possibility that people who are here illegally would have automatic citizenship for their kids. I’ll pull up some links tomorrow on that.
have some due process rights before being chucked out, which would bog down the existing process while simultaneously encouraging people to have babies once they get here just to postpone deportation (not a good thing, in my opinion).
Seems to me that this is happening now.
And requiring our neighbors to fix their problems instead of shoving them on us sounds good, but I don’t think we have a very good track record on pursuasion right now.
Persuasion isn’t what we’re talking about. They can solve their own problems, or not. We’re just telling them that we aren’t going to be part of the solution.
So that’s why I’m proposing that we don’t require people already here to return to their countries of origin to apply for guest worker status - there’s too many of them. And they aren’t stupid - they know that Congress would almost certainly not give our consulates and embassies the funding to process guest worker visas in any helpful or substantive way, so this “go back home and do it right” requirement is a no-win for them. Plus they might get screwed over even more if Congress gets the bright idea that we don’t need to give poor brown Spanish-speakers orange cards when (once they are gone) we can give them to English-speaking laborers, preferably with white skins.
What Congress decides to do can be influenced by the voters. Also, it seems to me what you are saying is “Since Congress won’t allow guest workers in, let’s circumvent the law and the will of Congress by breaking the law to benefit non-citizens.” That’s not how American society is supposed to work.
We need to plug the holes in the border … If fixing the problem means that we have to grant amnesty to people who have been paying taxes while they are here, then I’ll be pragmatic and say, “Let’s do it!”
I’m actually willing to be persuaded that this might be the most practical approach. There would have to be very strong selection criteria regarding criminal records, background checks, employment history, long waiting periods, etc., etc. But if this is not coupled with strong and effective border security, that is actually implemented, I won’t go along with it.
I simply do not believe that those in power who profit from maintaining a disparity between rich and poor would destablize such a strong economic factor. If people in the US want to continue to maintain their high standard of living then this is the cost - YOU MUST HAVE CHEAP LABOR. Illegal immigration is a must.
I really think that what ends up as official sanction for illegal aliens so that we can enjoy our present standard of living (a standard that illegal aliens have a much harder time achieving) is just completely immoral. And why does cheap labor require illegal aliens?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 7:20 am
On a short term basis, perhaps. But on a long term basis, people will have a much greater assurance that anyone of obviously Hispanic ancestry that they see will be in the U.S. legally, so harassment should in fact drop.
I’m sure that you don’t see the racism inherent in this statement. I see it & I’m not letting it go by unremarked.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 11:00 am
So do all these law ‘n order types obsessed with the CRIMINAL behavior of illegal workers also support strong anti-discrimination laws ? Wayyy earlier in this thread, Zakia said that American-born Blacks would be happy to work at jobs which right now mostly go to illegal workers. So are we to assume that it’s a coincidence ? That these jobs just fall in the laps of Mexicans or Irish workers and that Blacks are all home watching TV, unwilling to go out and seek work ? Or would it be more reasonable to assume that the folks who hire for these jobs are practicing discrimination by favoring illegal workers over American-born Blacks.
It would be nice if Righties would acknowledge that their fantasy of an unregulated market producing an inate meritocracy is just that, at least where the plight of American-born Blacks are concerned. Obviously, illegal workers get jobs because anti-discrimination laws and attendant penalties are either poorly enforced or non-existent. If anti-illegal worker Right Wingers truly are concerned about the plight of unemployed American Black men and women (and not just crying crocodile tears while they cynically pit two groups of the underprivileged against one another), I invite them to re-examine their stance on an unregulated or under-regulated market’s ability to magically produce a meritocracy. Either that, or I invite them in the name of consistency to admit that the all-knowing, un- or under-regulated businesses hiring Mexicans or Irish folks freshly arrived, sans documents, to these shores, are simply stating the obvious: That is, any random illegal worker obviously has more qualifications for wage work than any random American-born Black person has.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 11:14 am
RonF, I corrected my 25% to 2.5% above. Typos happen.
Enforcement of the laws on the books is the perogative of the executive branch of government. For almost the entire time this country has existed, there has been selective enforcement of these laws, as I pointed out with my speeding ticket analogy. If you’re planning to rely on arrests for other offenses as your means of winkling out illegal immigrants, then you will miss the vast majority of them. Just like people who drive their cars at speeds higher than the posted speed limit, most illegal immigrants are very law-abiding.
RonF: “Right now, oddly enough, there are municipalities that actually FORBID their law-enforcement personnel from informing the INS when they arrest people that they KNOW are illegal aliens. Federal law should be changed to withdraw Federal funding from any such law-enforcement body.”
First off, I think this isn’t quite correct - I think they aren’t allowed to tell the INS until after the arraignment. Secondly, in areas with large numbers of illegal immigrants, and even of recent legal immigrants, law enforcement has had to decide which is more important for the well-being of the community - chasing after illegal immigrants or solving crimes committed within those communities. Some municipalities have decided it’s more important to go after the crimes they are authorized to enforce (rape, theft, assault, murder, etc.) than to rat out people to the INS; in order to solve these crimes, however, they have to guarantee that witnesses will not be punished (i.e., deported or otherwise harrassed by the INS) for coming forward. Sometimes they also have to promise they won’t tell the INS about arrests because that could lead to the whole extended family being rounded up (or at least, that is the fear). This wouldn’t be an issue if immigration laws were being properly enforced (see above), but when local police have been explicitly told for years by INS that they are only interested in drug dealers, why waste taxpayer dollars by doing the catch-and-release thing? Why even bother telling the INS (which takes time and money) if the INS can’t or won’t do anything about it? Withholding federal funding from local law enforcement for doing the best they can with a situation created by a federal agency is illogical at best.
IMO, for your concept to work, everybody would have to have their proof of citizenship with them at all times, because it’s a crime to be here illegally - the police would be able to check up anybody at any time, ’cause you might be a criminal, you don’t look American to me! I don’t think this would prevent people from crossing the border illegally - I think this would encourage identity theft and forged documentation and a big old (untaxed) underground economy. To switch analogies, your model is like advocating the return of Prohibition, which I’m sure you’d agree was a totally successful experiment in selective enforcement.
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Alsis, many employers would rather hire illegal immigrants than black Americans because of anti-discrimination laws.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Come again ?
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Let’s say I am an unscrupulous employer. I don’t mind evading or ignoring the law. Let’s also assume I am a rational actor.
I need someone to shell beans in my bean-shelling plant. Shelling beans is a low-skill job with no advancement prospects. I would put in a robot to do it but the economic value of bean-shelling is too low. It’s cheap human labor or nothing.
Owing to the demographics of my region, I have basically two choices for cheap human labor: I can hire a Mexican illegally, or I can hire a black American legally.
If the person I hire doesn’t work out, it’s easy to get rid of a Mexican illegal. I just kick him or her out, and threaten “La Migra” if I get any lip. It’s harder to get rid of the black American. Anti-discrimination laws give that person legal tools they can use against me.
If I get caught hiring the illegal, I might get a slap on the wrist. More likely, I’ll get nothing. There isn’t much of a downside. A wrongful termination lawsuit, on the other hand, could cause me no end of problems.
I agree with the intention behind anti-discrimination laws, but in terms of the practical incentives they create, they reduce the attractiveness of low-skilled blacks compared with the other options.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I have a hard time believing that the average bean-sheller, of any color, is going to have an easy time bringing an anti-discrimination lawsuit against you for firing them. Frankly, even if they could, it should not be any excuse for breaking the law. Or do you only believe that “criminal” illegal workers should be punished, not their “criminal” employers.” Aren’t you free-market=freedom-loving types all about the joys of risking the vagaries of free enterprise ? Do you believe that risk comes with the territory and enhances one’s character in an ideal, worship-the-individualist society, or don’t you ?
If the average employer of bean-shellers really believed your version, Robert, I’m thinking that they’d be routinely inviting Union organizers into their factories and fields instead of spending millions to beat them back and to uphold anti-Union laws. Then instead of feeling like they were helpless against the big, bad, low-wage bean-picker, they’d have his/her wages being spent in part to employ a trained go-between that would hammer out the exact terms of what constituted discrimination and make such suits less likely. Not impossible, but less likely.
Also, to believe your version, I’d have to believe that historically, employers did not cynically pit new immigrants (legal or otherwise) against American-born Blacks in the decades that preceded the few anti-discrimination laws we have. Anyone who watched “The Killing Floor” in Labor Studies class can tell you that contention is just so much bushwa.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Believe what you like. Incentives affect behavior.
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April 20th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Alsis, about 10 years ago I was hiring for a technical position. I interviewed about 5 people. My boss asked me how it was going. Then she cautioned me that I should be very careful in considering hiring a black person. When I asked why, she answered “Because they are a lot harder to fire if they don’t work out.”
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April 20th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Labor Studies class? What’s the curriculum for such a course?
I have a hard time believing that the average bean-sheller, of any color, is going to have an easy time bringing an anti-discrimination lawsuit against you for firing them.
Easy, no. Easier, yes. We’re talking about the employer managing relative risk, not just absolute risk.
Frankly, even if they could, it should not be any excuse for breaking the law.
I agree completely.
Or do you only believe that “criminal” illegal workers should be punished, not their “criminal” employers.
No. In fact, I think the penalties should be much harsher for the latter than the former.
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April 20th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Robert, I don’t know what incentives have got to do with it. To me, it appears that what you desire for employers is absolute authority but no absolute responsibility for the ramifications of their choices. My goal is more along the lines of responsibility in proportion to the power the employer wields over the employee.
RonF, your annecdote and $2.50 worth of quarters will buy me a soy chai. Shall we sit here and trade annecdotes until the thread doubles in length ? In any case, I don’t automatically assume that an employer’s definition of “not working out” excludes the possibility that they are racist.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Alsis, I haven’t written a word about what I desire for employers. I have written about the incentives presented to employers by the law. The realistic potential downside to hiring a black American can be large, while the realistic potential downside to hiring an illegal alien is pretty small.
This is empirical. It has nothing to do with what I want.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
O.K., Lee, I see your point regarding the cops (for example) passing up enforcing immigration law in order to get the coopration of a witness to a murder.
ID theft and forged docs are already a big industry. So is an underground untaxed economy. For an example of the first, look at the recent arrests that were announced yesterday, where a majority of the people arrested had bogus SSNs. But, again, if employers were given access to a system whereby they could verify SSNs against addresses and names, all any person would have to do is to prove residence and give their SSN, which they were supposed to have done in the first place when they got hired. You have a hell of a time these days walking around without a document that proves your residence anyway.
If the focus was limited to people who are detained by the police because they cops have arrested, as opposed to questioning witnesses, etc., then people who hadn’t committed a crime would have no reason to worry that the cops would be turning them in. But people who are here illegally SHOULD have to worry that they will be found out and deported.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Some of the links here may help, RonF. Go to town:
http://www.afscme.org/otherlnk/weblnk04.htm
IOW, you’re talking about how the emplyor’s word that “it’s just not working out, but I’m not a racist or anything” should be the final word, even if the employee knows that he/she lives in a racist society and vehemently disagrees. Like Robert, you seemingly want employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities.
At any rate, I don’t really want to play War of the Annecdotes, but my observation has been that it’s not easy under any circumstances for an employee to sue their employer, for any reason. It’s not as if being fired under contested circumstances was a winning scratch ticket for the person fired. I hope that’s not what you’re implying.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
If it has nothing to do with what you want, Robert, why did you frame your original scenario in the first person ?
Would you hire a recent immigrant with murky paperwork over a documented native-born person of color, or wouldn’t you ? If both scenarios are too risky, why would you be in business ? Is there is a point at which the risks borne of a low salary and the quality of worker it brings in would justify raising the starting salary in hopes of getting more motivated workers– of all races ?
That, to me, is a more understandable use of the word “incentive.”
Continually using the term “incentives” as you do seems like sugar-coating to me. It seems to me that the employer wants to have his cake and eat it, too. I don’t go for it.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
What difference does it make whether it’s easy to sue or not, Alsis? The question from the employer’s perspective is risk and cost. An employee who has protection under anti-discrimination statutes has a greater ability to launch a lawsuit than an employee who lacks such protection. That’s the risk - the constant hazard of that suit. The cost comes in from the fact that a discrimination suit is expensive to defend against.
That it isn’t particularly likely to happen in the case of any particular employee is moot. No particular person is likely to hit the lottery, either, but a lot of people play, and its economically predictable how the numbers will come out. It’s economically predictable that someone hiring black Americans is likely to end up getting a bigger shaft than someone who hires illegal immigrants instead.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Blac(k)ademic, what civil rights do you think are being withheld from immigrants? What civil rights do you think are being witheld from illegal aliens?
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
It seems to me that the employer wants to have his cake and eat it, too. I don’t go for it.
You don’t have to go for it. Your opinions and your views of what is reasonable or unreasonable are all completely immaterial to the incentives facing an employer, unless you’re the employer. Many employers prefer to hire illegals over blacks. There are some sound economic reasons for that preference, particularly at certain skill levels and job expectations. Your disapproval of those reasons does not abrogate their explanatory power.
I phrased my scenario in the first person because it was literarily convenient, and under that conceit I can discuss opinions or feelings possessed by an employer without tedious circumlocutions. Apparently that was confusing; my apologies for the misdirection.
As far as my personal hiring habits go, I do not hire low-skill individuals; my business is predicated on my management time and the return from managing low-skill individuals isn’t sufficient to cover my time. As far as race goes, I do not collect that information; with the exception of one blogger I hired who has a picture on her site, I do not know the race of anyone working for me.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
IOW, you’re talking about how the emplyor’s word that “it’s just not working out, but I’m not a racist or anything” should be the final word, even if the employee knows that he/she lives in a racist society and vehemently disagrees. Like Robert, you seemingly want employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities.
I really would like to see what you think I said that meant that.
At any rate, I don’t really want to play War of the Annecdotes, but my observation has been that it’s not easy under any circumstances for an employee to sue their employer, for any reason. It’s not as if being fired under contested circumstances was a winning scratch ticket for the person fired. I hope that’s not what you’re implying.
No, it’s no winning scratch ticket for the fired person. But it doesn’t have to be. The employer isn’t just considering whether a suing ex-employee will win the suit; they’re considering how much money they’d have to spend if 1 out of 100 ex-employees sued and the employer successfully defended themselves. There’s litigation costs, community goodwill lost, attention drawn to their hiring practices, etc.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
That’s one hell of a Gordanian knot you’ve made, Robert. C’mon. Is the risk of a racial lawsuit from a native-born individual minute, or not ? If it is, do you regard it as justifiable grounds for breaking the law ? If it’s actually a signifigant, rather than minute risk, does it justify breaking the law ? There are all kinds of risks that are part of running a business.
This paragraph, too, contradicts both itself and your earlier point. Either the risk of a suit is “likely” or it’s “minute.” Please pick one. And while you’re at it, please clarify if you believe that employees should assume risks if they want to work whereas employers should not.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Is there is a point at which the risks borne of a low salary and the quality of worker it brings in would justify raising the starting salary in hopes of getting more motivated workers - of all races?
From a purely economic viewpoint, maybe not. Depends on the value of the labor vs. the cost of dealing with any legal problems that may ensue. For a high-value labor situation, it pays to get an H1-B visa. For a low-value labor situation (shelling beans), a purely economic assessment might point to hiring an illegal alien over a low-skilled American citizen; even a low-skilled non-minority American citizen who has no reason to invoke anti-discrimination laws. No matter how highly skilled you are, you can only shell so many beans in an hour. Again, we are positing an amoral employer here who doesn’t care that violating labor and immigration laws is wrong; all he or she cares about is weighing cost vs. value vs. risk.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Paragraph 2, meet Sentence 1.
Read some of the blogs by POCs linked to in this space. I have, and I don’t believe that the employer’s right to live without risks borne of racial privilege should trump the employees right to live without risks borne of being a person of color in a racist society.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
We are talking about RELATIVE risk, Alsis. The magnitude of the risk differential between two employees isn’t particularly important to the question of whether there is a discernible, and actionable, incentive for the employer to move in one direction or another. Whether the premium is $25 or $2500, it exists, and it will affect decisions. Ceteris parabus, it can be decisive; as the binary decision is “hire this guy or hire that guy”, the difference can be infinitesimal and still result in a macro-level choice which always leans to one side.
You ask what I assess the real risk of a lawsuit to be; that’s a tricky one to answer. If you hire 100 people, and the risk of a suit over a career for each such person is one tenth of one percent, the net probability of at least one lawsuit in that group is about 10 percent. In a glorious-case scenario where you only have to pay your lawyer because you are virtuous and never discriminate and the court buys it, you’re going to drop maybe 10 Gs (which is wildly optimistic). That’s a back-of-the-envelope risk premium of 10,000 * 0.1 / 100 = $10 per person. It costs $10 more to hire the protected guy than the unprotected guy - in this best of all possible worlds.
If the risk is one percent per career, and you end up getting screwed out of $250G (which seems like a good conservative estimate) the premium is 250,000 * 0.64 / 100 = $1600 per person.
Does this justify breaking the law? No. So what? People do it anyway.
I don’t understand your question about risks. Everyone has to bear risks to go on existing.
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April 20th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Interesting set of links. I looked at a couple just now. One (Cornelll) course of study seems to be for people who are going into corporate management or labor law, where they are learning how to understand and apply labor law from a corporate viewpoint or as an attorney. The other (San Jose City College) seems to focus entirely on educating advocates for workers (whether here legally or not) on how to fight for rights for workers though organizing them and appealing to public opinion. I’d have to look at a few more, but it seems a rather broad scope.
What is the movie Killing Floor about?
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April 20th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Robert:
I think that you do understand. In your original response to my post about Zakia’s earlier comment, I wanted to know whether you, or others like you, could entertain a belief that de-regulation bringing about a better world of meritocracy galore might be wrong. It was you who claimed that the employer was bound to break the law, and end up condoning other lawbreaking actions that you claim to dislike, becuase the employer’s risks were too great otherwise. It was you that blamed anti-discrimination laws for this. By implication then, the risks of being a White boss outweigh the risks of being a native-born Black person living in a White-dominated society.
I have now gone on record several times as finding that impossible to swallow. The flipside of privilege is responsibility, or it ought to be. Those who claim to chafe under the burden of responsibility should perhaps re-examine their privileges. Perhaps they should explore more ways to relinquish some of that privilege, if they dislike the Kipling-esque burdens that –at least according to what you and RonF have written, appear to be the logical outgrowth of White privilege.
Or not. [shrug] I’ve made my point as best I can. Now I need some fresh air. Excuse me.
RonF:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087554/
I took a couple of night classes in Labor Studies back in 1986-7, at Rutgers. The programs appear to have gotten a lot more sophisticated since then.
This comment was written by alsis39.75.Report this comment to the moderators
April 20th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
I wanted to know whether you, or others like you, could entertain a belief that de-regulation bringing about a better world of meritocracy galore might be wrong.
Well, if it actually is meritocracy, then no, that wouldn’t be wrong.
It was you who claimed that the employer was bound to break the law
No I didn’t.
You are mistaking explication for apologia.
…and end up condoning other lawbreaking actions that you claim to dislike, becuase the employer’s risks were too great otherwise. It was you that blamed anti-discrimination laws for this.
I didn’t blame anything for anything. I said that many employers prefer to hire illegals over blacks because anti-discrimination law makes the illegals less risky in some circumstances. That’s a description of a heuristic being followed by a thinking being, not an instance of “blame”.
By implication then, the risks of being a White boss outweigh the risks of being a native-born Black person living in a White-dominated society.
Who said anything about the color of the employer’s skin? Non-white people get sued for discrimination too, you know.
It’s invalid to compare risks in the fashion you’re attempting. As a species, we generally weigh our own risks. Other people’s risks are other people’s problems. Pretty much every single person on Earth acts in accordance with the incentives set before THEM - not the incentives set before other people.
The flipside of privilege is responsibility, or it ought to be. Those who claim to chafe under the burden of responsibility should perhaps re-examine their privileges. Perhaps they should explore more ways to relinquish some of that privilege, if they dislike the Kipling-esque burdens…
What the heck are you talking about? Nobody is chafing under any burden. All this is your own injection into the conversation. All Ron or I have done is discuss a non-controversial case of a perverse incentive.
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April 21st, 2006 at 6:53 am
Perhaps I should see this film. The thing to remember, though, is that it’s a film.
How much of this movie was dramatization and how much was documentary? I’m not saying that these people didn’t face predjudice; of course they did. Many were killed due to it. I’ve lived around Chicago for about 35 years now, have read some history, and read the paper every day. But I get suspicious of films; even straight documentaries sometimes don’t resist stretching the truth to make an advocacy or dramatic point, and I don’t know if this film was intended to be documentary or drama. How factual is this film believed to be?
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April 21st, 2006 at 6:59 am
Summary:
You said to me:
IOW, you’re talking about how the emplyor’s word that “it’s just not working out, but I’m not a racist or anything” should be the final word, even if the employee knows that he/she lives in a racist society and vehemently disagrees. Like Robert, you seemingly want employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities.
I asked where you think I said that, and you printed out this paragraph that I wrote:
“No, it’s no winning scratch ticket for the fired person. But it doesn’t have to be. The employer isn’t just considering whether a suing ex-employee will win the suit; they’re considering how much money they’d have to spend if 1 out of 100 ex-employees sued and the employer successfully defended themselves. There’s litigation costs, community goodwill lost, attention drawn to their hiring practices, etc.”
I don’t follow. How does that paragraph say that I think that an employer should have the right to hire illegal aliens in preference to black Americans, or to hire or fire employees in violation of anti-discrimination laws, or for “employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities”?
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April 21st, 2006 at 7:07 am
My point is, this is what people do. Show me where I say that it’s either legal or moral. In fact, in posts 132, 135 and 151 I make points to the contrary.
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April 21st, 2006 at 11:40 am
Robert wrote:
Oh ?
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc…
Yep. And I had invited, earlier in this thread, the folks of your political stripe to question why the bulk of retaliation for law breaking should rest low on the food chain rather than higher. I realize that you and Ron won’t, but who know ? Perhaps some lurker out there will.
I had also attempted to invite folks like Zakia to consider those who hire illegal workers as visible, rather than invisible factors in the equation. As I said wayyyyyyy earlier, the trouble with opinions like Ms. Cannick’s is that they do indeed treat illegal workers as holding all the cards in this little poker tournament. When in fact, they do not. End of story on that, thank you for your time, etc.
Oy. Robert, let’s assume that most bosses are White. Unless you’d like to trot out statistics proving otherwise, eh ?
Dude, I wasn’t the one who trotted out the comparitive risk of hiring a Mexican illegal to shell beans vs. an American-born Black to do it because I dislike against anti-discrimination laws. You were.
What I love is that you invoke the “each-man-is-an-island” schtick here, even though the very existence of this thread demonstrates what nonsense that POV is. We are talking about illegal workers, folks who were expressly not invited to this country –except perhaps under the table– to do anything. How strange that you assume them as a group to have incentives presented to them on a silver platter. Later, you go on to make your comparison of the inherent risk of hiring an illegal Mexican worker vs. hiring a native-born Black worker. There may be regions of the country where these two people are not aware of each other’s existence, but I doubt that there are that many such regions left at this point. In any case, either potential employee would certainly be aware of their superior’s existence, since the superior is standing right in front of the worker deciding whether or not he/she will work. People who end up doing mindless work for a living aren’t de facto idiots who are incapable of realizing that other people’s interests directly effect their own interests. Again, that’s pretty much the point of this entire thread. Yeesh.
Except the burden of anti-discrimination laws. Or so you say.
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April 21st, 2006 at 11:55 am
RonF:
Fine. I retract my earlier speculation as to what you think of employer practices regarding immigrants over American-born Blacks, or vice versa. The fact remains that you mentioned the annecdote of your own accord, without any deliberate prompting from me. If your point was not to express sympathy for your boss and the attendent fear of the big, bad, angry POC who was likely to sue on a whim (not out of a real sense of deprivation, unfairness or justified anger, but rather to cause trouble or to trash some well-meaning employer’s rep), what was your point in bringing it up ?
I hope you’re suspicious of every film you see then, since what you are describing is the goal of most filmmakers: To tell a dramatic and moving story even if it doesn’t unfold exactly as it would in a comparable real-life situation. If you want to stack up the film’s depiction of events against real-life accounts, my advice would be to hit the library or Amazon.
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April 21st, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Alsis, you label this:
Alsis, many employers would rather hire illegal immigrants than black Americans because of anti-discrimination laws.
an apologia.
Could you please explain how?
To me it appears to be a neutral description of what is motivating some people. I don’t see a syllable in there that comes from me.
Oy. Robert, let’s assume that most bosses are White. Unless you’d like to trot out statistics proving otherwise, eh ?
I imagine that most employers in the US are white. Most people in the US are white.
The incentive structures set up (including by anti-discrimination laws) function universally. They do not discriminate by skin color. Black employers, Asian employers, white employers, Hispanic employers, native employers - all of them have similar decisions to make, and all of them are presented with similar incentive structures.
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April 22nd, 2006 at 11:29 am
Charles:
If the equation of black = stupid and poor = stupid and unable to get out of the city = stupid, and black = criminal and, hell, stupid = criminal and the continued propogation of the “New Orleans collapsed into lawlessness because it was full of black people” myth, doesn’t strike you as racist and classist, well, all I can say is you set the bar pretty high.
That’s not at all what the argument is. The argument is that the mean IQ of the people remaining in New Orleans after the storm was significantly (perhaps by one standard deviation or more) below the mean IQ of the people living there prior to the storm, and that this may have been a contributory factor (not the only one) to the collapse of society following the storm.
No one said that “black = stupid.” The idea is that most of the more intelligent people—black or white—got out before the storm hit, leaving behind a population which was substantially less intelligent on average.
What exactly do you object to in this line of reasoning? Do you doubt that the people who left were, on average, no more intelligent than the ones who stayed? Do you doubt that there’s a negative correlation between IQ and criminal behavior?
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April 22nd, 2006 at 9:05 pm
I am, in fact, suspicious of every film I watch that purports to be non-fictional. I’m not much of a movie goer, though. I might see 6 films a year, tops, and I rarely go to one that dramatizes historical events.
I quoted the anecdote I did to show that I had a real-life experience of an employer desiring to avoid hiring a black person because they were afraid they’d be harder to fire than a non-black. I thought it was germane. I can’t offer an opinion on what she thought of black people in non-employment scenarios.
What’s a POC? I meant to ask you before ….
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April 23rd, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Unless I’m completely misguided, it is Person Of Color.
Btw, I also think that the problem of illegal immigration is in large part caused by employers hiring illegal immigrants, and the fact that they are not penalized by doing so. The whole problem is of incentives: The incentives of employers and of illegal immigrants. In other words: Both benefit from illegal immigration to the U.S. (and U.S citizens suffer).
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April 23rd, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Ummm… no. Don’t try to divert me, Robert. You can call your mention of anti-discrimination laws buttermilk waffle mix for all I care. It smells of excuses to me, and I don’t go for it. End of story.
How nice that you have such great insight into the lives of other races. Oddly enough, I think I’d prefer to hear from them rather than you about such things. Are you implying that the demands of being a boss actually override those of all other social or economic factors, including class and race ? Beware, Robert, you’ll become more of a Marxist than I could ever hope to be, if you keep this up. :p
Anyway, I’m done here. You can have the last word. Enjoy.
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April 23rd, 2006 at 1:26 pm
RonF:
But it had the appearance of sympathy for a White employer over a Black employee. Never mind then. My mistake.
And yes, “POC” = People of Color. Read some blogs by Blacks, Latinos, Asians, et al. You’ll see it quite a lot.
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April 23rd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Yes, Brandon, I doubt that the people who stayed were meaningfully stupider than the people who left (note that the Gene Expression piece actually got its largest drop in intelligence by assuming that the 18% of people who stayed were the least intelligent 18%, a simply absurd assumption). Likewise, I doubt that correlation between low intelligence and criminal behavior is at all relevant. Even granting that stupider people are more liklely to be criminals, the proportion of stupid people who are criminals is still going to be small enough to be irrelevant to society collapsing as a result.
So, the piece took the racist fantasy that New Orleans collapsed into criminality in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (it didn’t) and then claimed that a significant part of the explaination came from the fact that black people are stupid, and that stupid people (and therefore black people) are criminals. It couched it in statistical language, but only in gross and slovenly fashion (see the 18% who stayed = the stupidest 18% of the population). Had it actually worked out the math in a meaningful fashion, I doubt that the proportional increase in crime rate expected would be at all relevant to the collapse of the infrustructure of New Orleans (particularly since the actual collapse of infrustructure had nothing to do with an actual increase in crime).
So the Gene Expression writer made a weak argument (marginal decrease in IQ might correlate to marginal increase in crime rate, although those sorts of multistep uses of weak correlations are no where near inherently valid) to try to explain an event that only actually happened in the collective racist imagination of America, and used racist ideology (black = stupid = criminal) to make it seem as though it had any significant explanitory power. So, the article took a racist myth, treated it as truth, and did a very weak job of explaining it by using vaguely racist and extremely weak arguments that were then magnified into a strong argument by the addition of racist ideology (and some very sloppy and highly classist assumptions as well). That is why I thought it could reasonably be described as a racist argument, and one that suggested that someone who linked to it approvingly should be considered a racist.
I’m not going to bother to argue the question of whether or why black people have a lower average score on IQ tests than white people. I don’t find it particularly interesting or relevant.
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April 24th, 2006 at 1:26 am
The debate raged on. Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson defended Cannick against charges of bigotry, noting that she is one of many African Americans who worry about the impact of immigration on black employment. But,Blac(k)ademiclikened Cannick’s argument to the arguments made by civil rights advocates who reject gay rights. J. Bernard Jones took issue with both Cannick and her critics. Andres Duque was among the blogger-activists
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April 24th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Btw, I also think that the problem of illegal immigration is in large part caused by employers hiring illegal immigrants, and the fact that they are not penalized by doing so. The whole problem is of incentives: The incentives of employers and of illegal immigrants. In other words: Both benefit from illegal immigration to the U.S. (and U.S citizens suffer).
Supply and demand, Tuomas. Choke off the demand and there’s no economic incentive to creating a supply.
What constitutes the true source of the demand is worth considering, though. How many suburbanites turn a blind eye towards who’s mowing their lawns and taking care of their kids? How many corporations are disavowing any responsibility for who’s cleaning their buildings and maintaining their landscaping by saying, “oh, those are subcontractors”. Time to start holding those folks responsible.
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April 24th, 2006 at 6:34 am
Brandon, I’ve spoken to people who once lived in the area. It seems that in past storms, property owners have followed recommendations and left only to find their properties vandalized and looted when they returned. So many stayed and armed themselves to protect their property.
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