I've been reading some interesting posts on immigration like this one, and I got jealous. I figured we should start our own incredibly controversial thread on the topic.
Is Immigration Good or Bad for America?
It's possible immigrants take jobs Americans are eager to perform, increasing our unemployment. But this picture is incomplete. It only looks at Americans at work, and ignores them at the store.
Suppose open immigration meant 10,000 Americans lost their 25k/yr jobs. But prices decrease by $1 on some essential item, any product 50 million Americans buy at least once a month. The country's collective pocketbook has lost 250m in salaries, but saved 600m on an needed good.
If you're worried about moving money around from workers to consumers like this, we could tax the cheaper goods and provide better unemployment benefits. A fifty cent tax on these items would return the salaries to those Americans who lost their jobs while still putting cheaper food on their dinner table, and giving me a $50m bonus without anyone noticing.
Even if these numbers aren't realistic, I'm not sure we help anyone by insulating them from competition. Adam Smith pointed this folly out a long time ago.
How Should We Enforce Our Immigration Policy?
Whatever the democratic decision is on (1) after all the data is in, we should enforce our laws as if we believe in them. So while I support more open immigration policies (tied to better unemployment benefits), I'm not offended by some of the protectionists' ideas for tougher border controls.
I recommend we stop deportations back to Mexico, and begin deporting directly to Canada.
Hot air. That's what this immigration reform is all about. Does anyone know where it has come from? Just seemed to pop up in the last two-three weeks.
ReplyDeleteI had talked to zero people before this became a topic who actually felt strongly on either position.
That's why I have to believe this came from one of the Party chairs as an attempt to differentiate their party for the '06 elections. This will likely go the same direction of tort reform: lots of name calling from the Al Frankens and Rush Limbaughs of the world in an effort to reinvigorate bases for the off-year elections.
Otherwise, I honestly don't think worthy immigration reforms will pass (or be funded if they do).
Actually, this has been germinating for quite some time. I've read about it off in on for the last several years. If you google news search "immigration reform Bush", you'll see that this has been on Bush's agenda since at least Dec '03 and that in Jan '04 he specifically asked the congress to work on immigration reform with several key points in mind. Perhaps this is the result of that request?
ReplyDeleteI would agree with opening the borders, if we improved unemployment AND move to a strictly hereditary system of Citizenship.
ReplyDeleteWe created this fabulous democracy and deserve to rest on our laurels, my plan would allow working class americans to relax on welfare while hardworking Mexicans, Chinese and South Asians pay high taxes with no hope of ever gaining citizenship through naturalization.
Ooh, Lester, I smell a "citizenship should be dependent on..." thread.
ReplyDeleteUberfreki,
ReplyDeleteWhile the genesis of the idea may have been from Bush's platform, the thought remains that this is a red herring issue.
I haven't heard anyone argue against my premise that this is a low-interest issue for voters, and because of this their will be little in the form of tangible resutls. I may be wrong, it may be that with little political pressure, the Congress gets more done, in which case we should clearly feign indifference on all hotbutton issues.
EP -
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this is so low interest for voters, maybe just for voters around here. A recent NPR study has one in six participants thinking that they or someone they know has lost their job due to immigration.
So, 17% of Americans know of someone who lost a job to a Mexican. And we all know Mexicans are taking the jobs of highly active voters, right?
ReplyDeleteYou're going to have to do better than that to make me believe there is anything close to grassroots support for this, let alone a groundswell .
I do appreciate you citing that statistic and playing Devil's Advocate. Good post too.
ep,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that you have suggested two different measuring sticks, the first being whether or not the issue was devisive to begin with, or if its a ploy by poltical parties. The second is whether or not there is a groundswell of grassroots support on the issue.
Unfortunately, this is a bit of a which came first, the chicken or an the egg, type of issue. If the political parties notice an issue as being devisive and therefor exploitable, yet there isn't an established grassroots effort on the issue, does it in some way detract from the issue? Merely addressing the issue, whether intending to actually do anything about it or not can prompt grassroots attention to it.
Regardless, let me add some thoughts on just how devisive this issue is. I don't have much in the way of statistics, nor the time to try and find them, so if someone else is interested maybe they can help me quantify some of my suggestions.
Thomas's statistics would probably represent the number of people who would be against any form of illegal immigrant amnesty program or a guest worker program. Add to that those who are simply protectionist/isolationist, but haven't lost a job recently, but fear they will.
Then there's the self proclaimed minutemen in the border states that go on nightly patrol along the border, calling in to the authorities anyone trying to cross. And of course there's the opposition of them, composed of successful immigrants and evidently quite a few college students that chase the minutemen around blasting music and using spot lights to let those trying to cross know that it's not safe to cross at that location.
Let me offer up that there's the 11 million illegal immigrant's who want to become citizens, or at least be legit. No, they can't vote, but if they become citizens they can, and the logic is that they would be thankful to the party that let them become citizens. You probably won't see much in the way of a grassroots effort from these folks though since they probably want to keep a low profile to avoid deportation. Now, I'm guessing that more than a few of these 11 million people have had children since they got here - these children are American citizen's ( by birth on U.S. soil) whose parent's risk deportation - I'm guessing the issue is pretty important to them - we need a good stat on how many of them exist and are over 18.
Then there's the group of first generation legal immigrants - I'm betting there's quite a bit of compassion from that group in regards to others who wish to immigrant. It wouldn't suprise me if second generation citizens feel almost as strongly.
We've also taken alot of flak from Mexican poltician's over the last several years for our treatment of their citizens, so I'm guessing that their's probably some grassroots funding or lobbying being financed by Mexico itself. I was really hoping to prove this one, but a few google searched didn't turn anything up.
One last thought - the hispanic american population is on the verge of surpassing the african american population as the largest minority in the U.S., and in some states it already has. Does anyone know if this includes or excludes illegal immigrants? If this group is even a fraction as politically organized as the african american community, then I would find it hard to believe that there is not a large grass roots effort on this issue.
When I get back from my class tonight I'll see if I can't come up with some stat's on the topics I brought up and post them if I find any.
Trying to be liberal with my estimates I came up with:
ReplyDelete300 million Americans +
Uberfreki's 11 million illegals
17% of 300m is 51 million, giving us Thomas' American jobs lost to immigrants.
20% of 300m is 60 million, giving us an estimate on the number of Latinos.
And we'll say 20 million Americans are isolationists who meet none of the above groups.
That gives us 142 million Americans, or 45% who feel strongly in some way about this issue (again with the most liberal of estimates).
I'm not trying to argue that the issue is not important, or divisive. I simply believe that this is an issue that politicians feel they can talk for 6 months about and then abandon.
I'll eat crow if we enact and enforce meaningful legislation. My gut tells me this will be an issue debated in some way in the '08 elections, though.
Nice clarification, EP.
ReplyDeleteOf course, "I'll eat crow if we enact and enforce meaningful legislation" can safely be said about so many topics...
I can't help it if legislators cannot govern effectively.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget my much more tangible point that this will be debated again in '08. That's pretty well defined Captain Sophist.