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| The simple truth about illegal immigration |
| 2010-05-21 |
| On the matter of illegal immigration, ideally, people should be permitted to do whatever doesn't infringe on another's God-given rights. In fact, in most cases, this greater freedom results in greater benefits for everyone concerned. Employers should be free to hire whomever they want. Employees should be free to seek work wherever they want. National borders impede this free-market concept by impeding immigration – but that's not really the problem. Instead, our immigration problem stems from built-in institutional evils. Milton Friedman made this point some years back: “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.' It follows that you can't build a fence high enough, or round up enough illegal immigrants to deport, or punish businesses with fines enough to discourage billions of people from seeking something for nothing. Most of the world lives in conditions that make the lives of the U.S. poor look utterly extravagant. One of our colleagues yesterday made the obvious – yet rarely confronted – observation that the cost of providing just one student an education in California runs as high as $15,000 by some estimates. What father of four children wouldn't do whatever he could to provide his four children with the equivalent of $60,000 in free tuition – every year – rather than let them grow up in squalor and in a Third World country where they probably won't get any kind of an education? What mother wouldn't prefer to have her child born in the U.S. with the guarantee of lifetime health care (substandard as it's likely to be under ObamaCare) rather than in some backward nation where it's as likely as not the kid would be dead by age 5? When you add up everything the U.S. provides at no cost to people who don't have much income – health, education, welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing - we're fortunate we're insulated by two massive oceans or else billions of people would be flooding across the borders to take advantage. That doesn't even take into consideration the additional lure of jobs, which are vastly more plentiful here than in impoverished nations. Or the elevated comforts of paved roads, no sewage in the streets, relative safety from marauding criminals and all the other benefits of the U.S. lifestyle. As long as we as a nation provide stuff for free, people who don't have that stuff will come here to get it. You can't deport them fast enough, or build a wall high enough to discourage people lured by freebies paid for by the American taxpayer. The only way to permanently solve that problem is to permanently end the welfare state. Turn off the spigot and they'll stop coming here for free drinks. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #6 What Spook said. Strife and chaos are the default order for man of woman born. Especially in Mexico these days. Mexico is a failing state. We need our own state to be as strong as possible when it comes to securing us against this human Chernobyl that is the imploding Mexican state and its lopsided, poverty-producing, oligarch-ridden economy. Secure the f***ing border, already, and spare us libertarian lunacy. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-05-21 23:05 |
| #5 Naive libertarian bullshit about open borders. Completely ignores security concerns and the terrorists and weapons that would leverage such border policy. They have a naive belief that trading with a nation will convince them to put down the military "stick: they hold, and give up control and power. Sorry, not going to happen in a lot of cultures. They think that if everyone were left to their own, that nobody would decide to rob or steal their way, and that somehow miraculously, powermongers would no longer seek unjust power over others using unjust means and force, just to have power. Fools. They're just as bad as the collectivists waiting for the perfectable "communist man" to emerge from government conditioning and programming, discarding profit and individualism for faith and sacrifice to the collective. The libertarian's foolish "perfectable man" if formed in the marketplace and somehow discards force and a thirst for power for mercantilism. Control the borders first, then we can talk about the rest. Bottom line: "A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation." -- Ronald Reagan |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-05-21 21:31 |
| #4 If they are here illegally, they should be either be deported, used as involuntary organ donors or executed as they are here in our country illegally, in a time of war. No mercy and no amnesty. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2010-05-21 19:27 |
| #3 Control the borders first; stem the flow. Then work on the illegal problems within the country. Some of what Anonymoose said. Milton Friedman made this point some years back: “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-05-21 14:22 |
| #2 There is a back burner federal law that may be quickly enacted at any time, called the "DREAM Act". "The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The "DREAM Act") is a piece of proposed federal legislation in the United States that was introduced in 2009. "This bill would provide certain undocumented alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. as minors, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment (2005 or before, if the bill is passed this year), the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency. "The alien students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge." "Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act." This would plug a major hole, in that there are a lot of fully assimilated illegal alien children who have lived in the US almost their entire life, and know nothing of Mexico. Since they are de facto Americans, if not de jure Americans, this would grant them permanent residency status in the US, *not* citizenship, and they would no longer face deportation, *if* they behaved themselves and either got a college degree, or served in the military. As permanent residents, they would not be able to vote, so would not upset any political apple cart, and could have their residency status revoked, and be kicked out of the US, if they broke any felony law. This would mean that troublemakers and gang-bangers would be given the boot, and the police could focus on them, instead of those who are behaving and trying to improve themselves, who would want nothing to do with the bad ones, as it could cost them their residency. I would imagine that, a few years down the road, the US would be able to lighten up on the "good character permanent residents", so they could expedite their citizenship process while continuing to live in the US. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-05-21 14:01 |
| #1 As long as we as a nation provide stuff for free, people who don't have that stuff will come here to get it. It's been that way since man created towns and villages which attracted the nomads to |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-05-21 13:36 |