Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Wall!
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Filed Under: Featured
Tags: border fence • border security • DHS • due process • eminent domain • environment • government spending • illegal immigration • immigration • international • mexico • property rights
In its zeal to protect us from Mexicans who want to pick our fruit and clean our homes, the federal government is walling off our southwestern border. Congress passed the Secure Fence Act (SFA) in 2006, authorizing barriers along some portions of the 1,969-mile boundary; other stretches will be fitted with a “virtual” wall of motion sensors and cameras. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was supposed to have built almost 700 miles of physical fence by the close of 2008 and the Bush administration.
We can assume it fell short since the federal government is ever incompetent and has been tight-lipped about how many miles it has completed.
More people cross this international boundary each year than any other in the world—250 million with government permission, a fraction of that without. (Estimates range from 400,000 to a million.) Patches of the border, particularly urban ones, have been fenced and policed for decades. But this dotted line inconvenienced rather than stopped folks who neglected to secure a bureaucrat’s consent for their trip: Travelers trying to exercise their inalienable right to free movement simply went around the barriers. The feds never like being outfoxed, so they extended the fencing beyond populated areas. This drove migrants into increasingly remote and hostile terrain. There they not only had to survive encounters with America’s Border Patrol but also dehydration and other dangers in the desert. No More Deaths, a group that caches food and water along routes migrants are likely to take, estimates that at least 238 travelers perished in Arizona alone in 2006, with more than 4,000 “men, women, and children [losing] their lives in the deserts of the US-Mexico borderlands” from 1998 to the present.
Walling off Rights
You might think that would be tragedy enough for anyone. But as former President George W. Bush said when he signed the SFA, “We have a responsibility to enforce our laws. We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility seriously.” Apparently far more seriously than we do corpses or constitutional limits on government. And so the Act “authorize[d] the Department of Homeland Security to increase the use of advanced technology, like cameras and satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles to reinforce our infrastructure at the border.”
Authorizing DHS to grab more power is about as necessary as authorizing sparks to fly upward. Nevertheless, Congress exempted DHS from all federal laws as part of its 2005 REAL ID legislation. All it has to do is claim that a law impedes progress on the wall. Section 102 (c)1 of the REAL ID Act says, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.”
This immunity extends all the way to judicial review: Judges can’t “order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision,” according to Section 102 (c) 2B. So far the unrelieved victims have been mostly Americans whose property the agency has seized or destroyed. Surely even those most opposed to immigration would agree that stopping it does not excuse such tyranny and injustice against citizens.
Environmental Destruction
Among the many regulations DHS is ignoring are environmental ones. But Mother Nature isn’t as easily overridden. There are consequences for flouting the laws of physics, for example. And DHS’s insouciance towards things like gravity and water has already hurt the government’s own property.
On July 12, 2008, a heavy rain near Ajo, Arizona, clogged drains in completed sections of the fence, damming the downpour and flooding Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the only area in the United States where the plant grows wild. Park superintendent Lee Baiza told the Associated Press, “[We] had suggested that [DHS] take into consideration everything that can happen with a weather event. . . . We had a concern that this was going to happen.” And this storm wasn’t even a hurricane such as frequently roars through the Gulf and neighboring Texas.
The Rio Grande River separates Texas from Mexico for 1,254 miles before heading north. It waters a huge variety of wildlife, and that abundance draws conservancies to the area. Some are private, such as the Sabal Palm Audubon Center in Brownsville, Texas. Others are government-held lands that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife or National Parks Service manage. Over the decades, these organizations have cooperated with one another and the Mexican government to form a “wildlife corridor” so animals can range freely even if people can’t. The corridor also acts as a sanctuary for rare or endangered species. But DHS seems as hostile to animal life as it does to human life. It is hacking through this territory with a wide corridor of walls running parallel to one another, asphalt roads between, and hundreds of yards of cleared land to the north and south.
Barriers for stopping bipeds stop quadrupeds, too. This imperils animals that wander widely to feed or mate. Audubon Magazine points out that the inbreeding the wall compels will weaken if not exterminate America’s last colony of ocelots. This cat once roamed the Rio Grande and southern Arizona but now counts fewer than 100 members on the Texas side of the border.
A biologist at the University of New Mexico worries about other predators as well. Dr. Joe Cook told the Inter Press Service, “There is no quetion that jaguars . . . in the U.S. and northern Mexico would be significantly affected by the wall. . . . The only hope to preserve large carnivores in the wild is to have large areas of continuous, unfragmented habitat.”
The Mississippi and Central migratory flyways meet at the Rio Grande. Birds that once rested there during thousand-mile journeys will now contend with barren, paved land instead of trees, bushes, nuts, and seeds. Floodlights that turn desert night into day to discover migrants are already disorienting not only birds but bats and butterflies as well.
Financial Destruction
Matching the wall’s environmental disasters are its financial ones. In January 2007 the Congressional Research Service figured that 700 miles would cost about $49 billion, including maintenance. But as usual with the state’s estimates, this one probably isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, especially if the rest of the barrier is anything like the 14 miles that wind inward from the California coast at San Diego. The first fence there—ten-foot-tall walls of welded steel—went up in 1993. Next came a “secondary” wall, this one 14 feet high, about 103 feet to the north. A chain-link fence runs parallel to that, with “stadium lighting” throwing every ugly detail into sharp relief. This monstrosity was supposed to cost $1 million per mile, but that skyrocketed to $3.8 million. And construction isn’t yet finished, in part because the California Coastal Commission frets about erosion. The bit that remains unfenced meanders through more challenging terrain, with construction estimated to reach $10 million per mile. If the price for the other 700 miles escalates proportionally, we are looking at an outlay of anywhere from $200 to $490 billion.
There are other, more hidden expenses. For example, the Fish & Wildlife Service has spent $100 million of our money over the last three decades to buy and replant land near the Rio Grande. The wall will ruin that investment. It will also end “eco-tourism” and the $125 million that 200,000 visitors annually spend in the hopes of glimpsing an ocelot or a Muscovy duck.
Naturally, while most Americans pay for the fence, a select few profit. DHS hired Boeing to implement its Secure Border Initiative (SBI) in September 2006. The company will install 1,800 towers as a “virtual fence” on our northern and southern borders within three years to “detect and track intruders through the use of cameras, sensors and motion detectors,” as Federal Computer Week puts it—all for only $2.5 billion. Needless to say, Boeing and DHS trumpeted their lucrative deal as a revolutionary, unprecedented, sure-fire solution for the “border problem” the feds have created. But the Washington Post took a more jaundiced view, citing the government’s “series of failures [in] control[ling] U.S. borders.” So did agents on the ground. Rich Pierce, executive vice president of the Border Patrol’s union, told Federal Computer News, “[SBI]—it’s been tried and it’s failed. . . . They’re not going to try anything new. . . . The people in the field know it’s not going to work.”
So did the legislators voting the funds. Rep. Harold Rogers was chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee from 2003 until January. According to the June 26, 2006 issue of Government Computer News, he “noted that spending on border security since 1995 has ‘quadrupled from $5.1 billion to over $17.9 billion,’ and the number of agents has jumped from 5,000 to 12,319. ‘However, during this same period, the number of illegal immigrants has jumped from 5 million to an estimated 12 million,’ Rogers said. ‘The policy of more money and no results is no longer in effect. We will not fund programs with false expectations.’” That would explain his subcommittee’s handing $39.9 billion to DHS in FY2009 with Rogers’s “support,” as he proclaimed on his website, despite the agency’s reputation even among the feds as one of their most wasteful and dysfunctional bureaucracies.
Sending Property Owners to Limbo . . .
Knowing that the fence won’t stop immigration, that it merely allows politicians to look as though they’re fixing an issue they’ve ginned up into a crisis, must particularly gall the property owners losing homes and businesses. Most of those victims live in Texas since the feds already own much of the land along the other states’ borders.
The barriers have always been more of a sieve than a fence since they proceed in fits and starts with long gaps between. The new miles of fence will not be much different, according to the Border Patrol: Tom Rudd, the Patrol’s chief in Brownsville, Texas, is “expecting a total of nine miles of fence segments,” according to PBS. “The segments, Rudd says, will act like funnels, pushing migrants into areas where his agents will be waiting to capture them.”
Those funnels bisect plenty of private property, including homes, farms, businesses, and nature preserves, as well as national parks and even towns. Stunningly, they don’t line the actual border. Some of the wall lies as much as two miles north of it. Landowners whose properties fall within that region face a bizarre limbo, severed from the rest of the country—and from the services their taxes supposedly buy them. Audubon Magazine quotes the Society’s executive director in Texas, Anne Brown, on the fate of its Sabal Palm Center: “From what we’ve heard, we’ll have to close. We can’t figure a way to keep it open, because we’ll be cut off from the rest of the United States. Will we be insured? Will we receive city services? We can’t let Ernie [the caretaker] live here anymore.” The magazine adds, “The sanctuary and its unique plants and wildlife will be taken from the American people, and what survives will be, for all intents and purposes, ceded to Mexico.”
Ordinary owners in Limbo Land also face extraordinary challenges. Pamela Taylor is an elderly émigré from England who married an American soldier 50 years ago, then moved to Brownsville with him. If anyone should welcome the protection the wall allegedly provides, it would be Mrs. Taylor. She once arrived home to find a migrant hiding from the Border Patrol in her living room. But she fears DHS and its fence far more than she does people looking for jobs and better lives. “They said the fence was gonna go right across the street,” she told PBS. “And . . . my son-in-law asked, ‘Well, do you mind, how are we going to get out?’ And the fellow from the Corps of Engineers said, ‘Well, you know, we hadn’t really thought about that. I guess you’re gonna have to follow the border patrol out.’” Obviously, that enormously complicates even the simple errand of buying groceries. And it could be fatal should Mrs. Taylor need a doctor.
PBS asked the Border Patrol’s Rudd about ingress and egress for the Americans caught in this quandary. Rudd said there will be “gates” and that “we’re still lookin’ right now—at different—locking mechanisms of what’s gonna work best in certain areas. . . . [O]ne approach that I’m lookin’ at . . . is—a push-key type, you know, the—the number system, a push pad . . . enforced with a camera—so we can make sure that that number or that combination—doesn’t get compromised . . . basically work with the owner to find out who’s gonna be in that area, what kinda vehicle they’d be driving.” The government hasn’t touched Mrs. Taylor’s property and so isn’t offering even eminent domain’s pittance, but it robs her nonetheless. Her land will be worthless. What buyer wants a hassle every time he needs a quart of milk?
DHS plans to swipe some properties lying directly in the fence’s path in their entirety, particularly when the parcel is small because the owner is poor. Other times, the fence threatens only a portion of the property—but it might as well take the whole piece because once again it’s destroying the land’s value. Leonard and Debbie Loop and their children own a 1,000-acre farm in Brownsville. But the wall will exile 800 acres to Limbo Land.
. . . Unless They’re Rich or Connected
Given that the wall doesn’t follow the border, as well as its frequent stops and starts, its placement is arbitrary at best. Many victims have noticed that while DHS expects them to sacrifice their interests, it is skirting property belonging to wealthy, politically connected neighbors. One victim, Eloisa Tamez, is a 72-year-old woman who still lives on some of the 12,000 acres her ancestors received in a Spanish land grant. She’s been down this road before. The feds stole more than half her holdings in the 1930s to build levees, and they didn’t pay a dime for any of it. The Texas Observer reports that now they want more. But the wall gobbling Ms. Tamez’s home stops short two miles down the road. That just happens to be the edge of Sharyland Plantation, 6,000 acres that billionaire Ray L. Hunt is developing into a luxurious, gated community of million-dollar homes. Hunt, of course, is not only George W. Bush’s buddy but his benefactor, too, since he’s kicking in $35 million toward the presidential library. The wall resumes on the other side of Sharyland.
Under former secretary Michael Chertoff, DHS refused to answer questions from folks like Ms. Tamez. But silence has long been one of the agency’s favorite tactics. It almost always withholds information on the grounds that telling the citizens who pay its bills what it’s doing with their money would jeopardize national security. It will neither confirm nor deny who’s on its notorious Terrorist Watch List, for instance, not even to the victims themselves. And so it goes with the wall. DHS refuses to verify its plans or discuss its rationale for the wall’s route. That leaves many owners grappling with rumors and stomach-churning uncertainty. Others are fairly sure DHS will steal their holdings because it has already ordered them to sign waivers allowing surveyors to measure their property. Those who refuse find themselves facing condemnation of their land.
Chertoff tried to cast cooperating with the agency’s theft as a patriotic duty. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, he announced in February 2008, “I respect private property. But you cannot make border security and national security an individual choice for each individual landowner. . . . [W]hen people are smuggling drugs and human beings across the border, for an individual landowner to say, ‘I don’t care. I want to make sure that my view of the river is unobstructed,’ is not an acceptable answer.”
Dictatorical and Dishonest
That’s not only arrogant and dictatorial, it’s also profoundly dishonest. Protestors do not mourn vanishing vistas. They are instead defending their homes and businesses, some of which have been handed down through their families for generations. Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s unconstitutional jihads against those drugs and people it doesn’t like forces folks who want to transport either to smuggle them. Politicians have tried to control people’s movements and have failed at this immoral task; nevertheless, they expect the rest of us to cooperate with their new, desperate, criminal measures. Why?
Unfortunately, Leviathan has convinced most Americans that its campaign against “illegal” drugs justifies any and all abuses. So now it excuses its militarization of the Mexican border because of the marijuana crossing it. The feds take the same tack with “illegal” immigration. But they also spin things a bit differently to hide their heartlessness. They bewail the “smuggling of human beings,” conflating immigration with—incredibly enough—slavery.
In a speech on September 9, 2008, at the “Stop Human Trafficking Symposium,” conveniently sponsored by Customs and Border Patrol, Chertoff announced that “the line between so-called voluntary migration and human trafficking is not a very bold line. It is often the case that people who begin the movement across the border in a voluntary way . . . quickly turn into victims when they are held for ransom, or when they are required to work off the cost of the smuggling by paying off the vast majority of their wages to the smuggling organizations.” That may be exploitative, but it isn’t slavery since slaves seldom receive wages and so can’t “work off” any “cost.” And Chertoff ignores the fact that the government’s criminalization of migration gives those few entrepreneurs who do victimize their clients the chokehold they need: A “restaurant owner” who allegedly “trafficked hundreds of adults and children into the United States . . . threatened to turn them in to the authorities as illegal aliens if they tried to escape,” according to the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune.
DHS portrays as vicious criminals guides who conduct people through hostile terrain and help them avoid the Border Patrol. The agency then presents its own ferocious attacks on immigrants, its armed patrols and cameras, its dogs, handcuffs, and holding pens, its hunts through the desert in air-conditioned ATVs for exhausted, fleeing families, as “rescuing” them from “human traffickers.” Odd, isn’t it, that migrants pay these “traffickers” to chaperone them across the border but try to fend off their “rescuers” by throwing rocks. They seldom succeed. Rather, they play right into the government’s hands: it charges them with the “crime” of self-defense, AKA, “assaulting a federal officer.” This inflates the number of “felons” crossing the border so that the feds “save” us from an even bigger menace.
An Unconstitutional Line in the Sand
Whether they’re between states or countries, borders soon cease to be noticed by most people living along them. They marry one another, establish businesses, visit, laugh, cry, agree, disagree, and dream together. So it is along the U.S.-Mexican boundary. The wall will sunder these families and friends as mercilessly as Berlin’s barricade did Germans.
The Founding Fathers understood government’s essence, its cruelty and callousness, far better than do modern Americans. That’s why their Constitution never empowers politicians to regulate anyone’s movement into or out of the country (except for slaves, fittingly enough: What else are we when we beg a bureaucrat, “Please, may I enter?”). Article 1, Section 9 bars Congress from “prohibit[ing]” the “Migration or Importation” of “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” until 1808. If we dismiss the doctrine of enumerated powers, this implies that Congress may prohibit all the migrating and importing it likes thereafter. And if we also dismiss the literary and historical context that limits Article 1, Section 9 to slaves, it appears the feds may indeed control anyone’s immigration after 1808—but only in those states existing at the Constitution’s adoption. None of those border Mexico, and mighty few do Canada. DHS needs to relocate its wall down the Atlantic coast.
Nor does the Constitution deputize the central government to “protect” the country’s borders, much less build walls “funneling” migrants through deadly desert where cops lurk to kidnap them. Immigration ought never to have been federalized in the first place; government had no business arrogating an “interest” in it during the 1870s, then tightening its vise each decade since. Immigration is an issue of property rights—not the DHS’s infernal abrogation of them, but a decision by the folks Michael Chertoff so despises, “each individual landowner,” as to whether migrants may cross his property.
Despite its utter lack of constitutional authority, DHS will probably continue militarizing our borders. Its current secretary, Janet Napolitano, opposed a physical wall when she was governor of Arizona. As she told AP, “You show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border.” Heavily implied is her support for more border agents as well as more high-tech surveillance. Napolitano is as implacable an enemy of freedom of movement as her predecessor Chertoff was, even if her methods differ.
Meanwhile, America has another border to the north, which Boeing’s contract covers as well. Landowners there should be very worried, given the abuses their southern brothers have suffered.
Indeed, all of us should worry, if not panic, when we remember that the walls keeping others out also keep us in.
Comment by Brittancus on 21 May 2009:
SOMETIME THIS YEAR–THE PEOPLE–will be fighting against another Immigration reform package? AMNESTY! Don’t listen to the politicians who state our borders are secure or that our fence has been completed. It’s a sordid lie, rhetoric! We have a drug war going on, that’s infiltrated our border cities and towns, even to the extent of extending into communities nationwide. Our country is under assault of illegal foreign nationals who are committing, murders, rapes, home invasion robberies, burglaries and an ongoing battle against drunk while driving foreigners, using their uninsured vehicles as killing machine. The drug dealers and mass illegal immigration is just part of our national problem?
In Sanctuary cities and states such as California the very economy is under attack, because of the utter contempt of the Liberal Sacramento assembly for unceasingly giving of welfare benefits to illegal alien families. Schools cramped to the hilt, with the children of poor illegal immigrants. The Welfare lines that have been compromised by dishonesty and theft from true Americans. Prisons and jails deleted of funds. State budgets that are on the edge of financial disaster, because decades of political parties have pandered to the parasitic business world.
We have our own workforce that can be trained for any kind of job, instead of importing more and more foreign nationals. The greed of corporate world is just manifest in America, to undermine the working conditions of US WORKERS. Citizens and legal residents already here should not have to compete with more imported labor, no matter what successful rung of industry. In the British Isles the working class is turning to (BNP) THE BRITISH NATION PARTY that will end forced immigration laws dictated to the indigenous English people. Read about the growing, all encompassing membership of ordinary people who are sick and tired of growing occupation of an infestation of Middle Easterners, Commonwealth people, Asylum seekers, refugees that are being catered to, while the real British people are being ignored.
These foreigners are demanding their laws be enacted, including multiple wife’s and Sharia law. It’s disgusting and outrageous and the British parliament has used scare tactics, propaganda, as they are running scared knowing the Labor/Conservative and generic political parties may have seen their final days. Their Slogan says it all,” British jobs for British Workers.” Learn more at http://bnp.org.uk/ about this people’s party that will remain undisclosed by the Liberal/Socialist media in the US. Even my very Conservative family in England have joined the BNP, because of the complete and irrational desire of the European politicians to demand English/British worker first?
In Los Angeles the law has been circumvented to allow illegal alien criminals walk away free. Murders by gang bangers are rife in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where many illegal alien criminals still walk the streets, collecting fraudulent welfare using bogus documents. Another AMNESTY means–CHAIN MIGRATION–of poor uneducated, non-English speaking, sick, handicapped family members, that Federal mandates have imposed on US taxpayers. Another Amnesty means more foreign nationals will come bringing their unpalatable customs, contagious diseases and criminal element, all to cater for predatory businesses.
Any politicians, who are in collusion and keep pushing for another AMNESTY, must be extracted from office. Sen. Harry Reid eviscerated E-Verify, along with Pelosi. Sen. Feinstein who reintroduced the AGJOB act. Liberal Sen. Cedilla who wants drivers licenses for law breakers. These lawmakers are just the tip of the corrupt lawmakers. Remove them all–BEFORE IT”S TO LATE. Or just keep on paying higher and higher taxes to support the millions of illegal immigrants. Read the truth at JUDICIALWATCH, NUMBERSUSA, and CAPSWEB.
Comment by Foxwood on 21 May 2009:
Obaminamics is failure, but by design. He’s done so much so fast, it can’t be stupidity, but design. The list is so long for just 100+ days.
Comment by Griff on 25 May 2009:
The world is without borders or boundaries.
All attempts to make it otherwise are self-destructive.
Comment by photoradarscam on 27 May 2009:
So we should just leave it wide open so terrorists can bring nuclear weapons or other items across unabated? What exactly do you propose?
Are fences perfect? No, but the work pretty damn well. Do you have a fence around your house? Does it keep the pets in or most people out? It sure does.
Why lock your front door? Someone can just break a window.
Of course a fence helps. It\’s the minimum we need to to do secure our borders.
Comment by JUSTICEFORALL on 30 May 2009:
I have worked with thousands of illegals and have never met one that had any respect for law. Most (85% are from Mexico) and tell me that they are going to take over the U.S., throw all the “gringos” out and murder any that don’t go willingly! Their government has an agenda and is telling them that their Indians were here first. This is a huge lie! Mexican Indians are Aztecs and Mayans and were never up here. Mexico owned the SW of what is today the U.S. for only 24 years, the least of anyone who owned it. Even Spain owned it for 300 yrs.! Last week another American child was murdered in her bed as she and her parents were asleep in their own bedrooms. The Mexican illegal sodomized the 3 yr. old girl, then raped and murdered her. This happens almost every day in the U.S. but we don’t hear it as all our TV media and our newspapers are run by 6 major corporations who want the illegals here. Amongst those sneaking here everyday by the thousands and tens of thousands are violent criminals who committed crimes before ever coming here. They know if they applied they would never be allowed and illegal aliens couldn’t care less who sneaks in amongst them as long as they get what they want. And after stealing our jobs, they steal our social services, medical treatment (free for them), our kids education, etc., etc. to the tune of $346 BILLION A YEAR (you read that correctly!). The only ones who profit from this cheap corrupt labor is big business who appears to be in bed with the last administration and the present one, also. Wake up America! They are letting in all these Mexicans so one day they can tell you “we have merged the former U.S. with Mexico and Canada to make the North American Union” (dictatorship).
Comment by robert bowman on 2 June 2009:
\"On July 12, 2008, a heavy rain near Ajo, Arizona, clogged drains in completed sections of the fence, damming the downpour and flooding Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the only area in the United States where the plant grows wild.\"
While I am not impressed by the fence project, Organ Pipe NM covers about 515 square miles. Since the Organ Pipe Cactus favors rocky slopes I would question both the extent of the flooding caused by the fence construction, and the number of cacti at risk.
On the other hand, several trails and roads in the Monument have been closed due to the presence of narcotics trafficers and other illegal activities. Signs as you enter the Cabeza Prieta Game Refuge, which adjoins the NM to the north also warn of illegal activities. Well worn trails with signs of recent passage document the flow of goods and people north. For some reason, the sneaker prints never point south.
Comment by scott g on 3 June 2009:
Multicultural societies are failed societies. The uber wealthy and their intellectual supporters have never had to move from neighborhoods taken over by aliens…………only the working man has to do that.
And they probably never have left their academic posts to even visit these uninviting neighborhoods, especially at night.
Open borders have depressed the wages of the American underclasses, and have cost more in social services than their presence is worth. The statistics are out there, but are always ignored by the effete intellectuals and politicians.
Comment by John Anello on 4 June 2009:
This is an issue where I part from my libertarian friends. We support extremely limited government. How do you expect that we accomplish our agenda with 20-40 million Obama voters pouring across the nation’s borders? Hispanics have historically been tax and spend liberals. Libertarianism will never achieve any victories as long as free immigration exists.
Like Milton Friedman said, we cannot have both free immigration and a welfare state. I would support tearing down the wall providing that we end all social welfare programs.
Comment by John Beach on 5 June 2009:
3 cheers for Ms. Ayers. I am disappointed by the responses. I expected more sophisticated opposition to MS. ayers. what are the rest of you trying to do? You are turning the USA into a Soviet republic emeriti. this country is already full of prisons. We have more people in prisons than any other country in the world. Is this the land of the free? Is this a failed state or what? The people of this country are being forcibly deputized to spy on their fellow Americans. They must report and verify citizenship status for employment, education, drivers licences, apartments-just like in the old USSR and presnet day N. Korea. Mind you we have two political parties instead of one!
The wall is racist. It is motivated prely by racial hatred of the Indians entering from the south. Where is the Canadian wall? We don\\\’t want to offending them do we? We view them as the right race. Not a single terrorist has been identified as coming in from Mexico. Several terrorists have been defintely identified as having entered from Canada. Again, where is the wall for that border?
Was is it Samuel Johnsn that stated \\"a people that wanst security and liberty deserve neither\\" How sad, how true.
John Beach reporting from Soviet America
Comment by John Beach on 5 June 2009:
3 cheers for Ms. Ayers. I am disappointed by the responses. I expected more sophisticated opposition to Ms. Ayers. What are the rest of you trying to do? Are you trying to turn the USA into a Soviet republic emeriti. You learned nothing from the twentieth century. Some of you claim to love liberty, but you don’t understand the basic concept of what it consists of. This country is already full of prisons. We have more people in prisons than any other country in the world. Is this the land of the free? Is this a failed state or what? The purose of the state should be to promote personal /economic empowerment. This is no longer the case. The people of this country are being forcibly deputized to spy on their fellow Americans. They must report and verify citizenship status for employment, education, drivers licences, apartments-just like in the old USSR and presnet day N. Korea. Mind you we have two political parties instead of one!
The wall is racist. It is motivated purely by racial hatred of the Indians entering from the south. Where is the Canadian wall? We don’t want to offend Canada do we? We view them as the right race. Not a single terrorist has been identified as coming in from Mexico. Several terrorists have been defintely identified as having entered from Canada. Again, where is the wall for that border?
Was is it Samuel Johnsn that stated “a people that want security and liberty deserve neither.” How sad, how true.
John Beach reporting from Soviet America
Comment by John Beach on 5 June 2009:
Final point. We need to rehabilitate the inane, ineffectual, imbecile and incompetant Soviet/police state system we placed on ourselves with the assistance of these pusillaminous politicians.
John Beach reporting from Soviet America
Comment by reportndeport on 5 June 2009:
The elite living in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and other affluent areas are sheltered from the urban decay brought about by illegal immigration. Working Americans ell the burn when we have to wait in the ER for 10 hours, when our kids come home from school having been bullied by illegals who have taken over, when we have to move out of a neighborhood because the crime rate has sky rocketed. Build the wall now!
Comment by John Anello on 5 June 2009:
Mr. Beach,
You seem far too intelligent to resort to calling all those who do not support open borders racist. I reiterate the central thesis of my original post. How do you expect the government to contract and individual liberty to thrive with 20-40 million Obama voters pouring across our borders? If illegal aliens are granted amnesty and are allowed to go to the polls, the Obama neo-Marxists regime will rule forever, we are not in Soviet America yet, but we are well on our way.
Comment by Mark Axinn on 5 June 2009:
Mr. Beach (and others):
I believe the quote was from Benjamin Franklin, not Samuel Johnson, and went something like this: “Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for security deserve neither.”
How true.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 5 June 2009:
Ms. Akers is either unaware or has forgotten Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution which indicates the Congress has the power:
\"To establish a uniform rule of naturalization…\"
The Founding Fathers didn\’t embrace the concept of unregulated and illegal immigration into the US.
The concept that “Freedom of Movement” applies to foreign nationals moving into the US in violation of US immigration laws and sovereignty is also unsupportable.
It is dishonest for Ms. Akers to wrap \"illegal aliens\" in the grander semantics blanket of \"immigrants.” The concept that \"illegal aliens\" and \"naturalized immigrants\" are the same creature is entirely specious as well as disingenuous.
Regardless of if Immigration Law is \"broken\" or not the concept of \"equality\" demands that everyone should have the same chance to enter this nation based on his or her merits rather than geographical proximity.
Ms. Akers is aware that protecting freedoms isn\’t a core issue in her paper or she would have spent more time discussing Constitutional guarantees and less time on fiscal, engineering, and environmental issues.
I would appreciate it if Ms. Akers, or one of her supporters, would explain why preference should be given to a Latino alien that entered this country illegally five, six, seven, etc. years ago over a Greek immigrant that has been trying to become a citizen since 1985, a full year before Simpson-Mazzoli and decades before McCain-Kennedy?
If we truly value liberty and the Constitution that protects our Rights, we must value the rule of law. If we don’t, we’re no better than the nations these people are trying to escape.
Comment by Niccolo on 5 June 2009:
The xenophobe comments above completely miss the article – not to mention logic.
First, to the guy who said 20-40 million “Obama supporters” would flood the country.
A. This doesn’t matter. It’s no reason to deny people the right to live and travel freely. If you’re so concerned about the country going to hell in a hand basket because ‘dem Mexicans keep stealin’ are jabs and vote fer are presadants, then you weren’t living free to begin with – you were always dependent on what the government would or wouldn’t do.
B. You’re simply uninformed about where most Mexicans stand politically – though this is still dangerous collectivist speak maintaining that all those who are not WASPs are pinko-commies.
Like most other speakers of the Romantic languages in more ruralized countries. Compare 20th century Germany to 20th century Spain. One went socialist, the other went Anarchist – Anarcho-Syndicalist, yes, but more individualist than the National Socialism of Germany. It’s usually true that in more rural areas, like the American Southwest, Italy, Spain, or Mexico, you have people that are both more independent from their governments and governments that are more incapable of stopping their people from being independent.
If you knew half the amount of Mexican people I know, you’d know they are more libertarian minded than most Americans. Hispanic people are family oriented, independent minded people. Look at the culture of Texas, it’s just a mirror of the Mexican side with a more corrupt government.
In fact, when asked 43% of Hispanics in the US were said to support secessionist movements compared to only 17% of white people.
http://24ahead.com/blog/archives/007857.html
C. Immigrants help the economy. Wanting to prevent them from coming in for cultural reasons makes you a conservative, not a libertarian pragmatist.
You’re on the wrong site.
Second, to scott g,
You’re not talking about any statistics I’ve seen. Illegal immigrants negligibly weigh down wages for American high-school drop-outs. Knowing dozens of those people, I can tell you, I honestly don’t care if they’re thrown into the ocean. Most American drop-outs provide nothing to anyone, period.
Maybe you should actually research the topic.
Comment by James C. Green on 5 June 2009:
While I agree the southern wall is a huge waste of money and an embarrassment to the country… I do not agree we should open our borders to anyone. We’ve not done that in the past and we should not be doing it now.
Legal immigration can be regulated and used in a proper way to ensure the survival of our republic. Illegal immigration by “Criminal Invaders” should be prevented as much as possible— or it will be our undoing.
You’re right, it is about property rights— and this is NOT their property. Send ‘em home, let ‘em apply legally!
Captain Jim Green
Comment by Becky Akers on 6 June 2009:
“Disingenuous\"? \"Elite\"? Come on, guys, I\’m not a politician or bureaucrat, just a lil ole freelance writer.
I didn\’t reiterate the Constitutional arguments against the Feds\’ controlling immigration because I explored that topic at length in \"Can We Tell Those Huddled Masses to Scram? Immigration and the Constitution\" (The Freeman, Nov. 2006, available at http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/can-we-tell-those-huddled-masses-to-scram-immigration-and-the-constitution/). That piece touched on the history of US immigration, too, so I didn\’t rehearse that here either. But we did indeed \"open our borders to anyone\" for the first century of our national existence (and lived to tell about it, I might add). Rather than being \"aware that protecting freedoms isn\\’t a core issue in her paper,\" I hoped to avoid wearying readers with repetition. Freedom is a core issue not only in this paper but in everything I write.
Second, let\’s remember that disapproving of the State\’s controlling immigration is a separate issue from approving of other peoples and cultures. Arguing that among our inalienable rights is the right to move freely neither includes nor implies \"multicultural\" acceptance, any more than arguing that government has no moral authority to prohibit prostitution (by free-lancers rather than politicians)implies approval of such immorality. Go ahead and hate Mexicans if you like; that\’s your prerogative, and while I disagree that it\’s either a wise or neighborly thing to do, your feelings are no one\’s business. But if you love freedom, you\’ll need to support a Mexican\’s — and everyone\’s — inalienable right to cross borders without asking a bureaucrat\’s permission: the government that\’s strong enough to keep Mexicans out is strong enough to keep us in.
BTW, I\’m kinda mystified at excluding folks for fear they\’re \"Obama voters.\" What, McCain voters are better? Forfeiting freedom so that one of Leviathan\’s two interchangeable arms can triumph over the other makes about as much sense as voting does. Meanwhile, the fact that \"a Greek immigrant\" has to wait to become a citizen stems directly from the immigration dictatorship that so many of you applaud. Wouldn\’t it make more sense to demand that the Feds abide within their constitutional limits than to bemoan the resulting tragedies when they don\’t?
Third, the laws that many of you want \"illegal\" immigrants to honor are immoral, arbitrary, byzantine, and exhaustive. But don\’t take my word for it: Google \"immigration law firms\" to see how many flourish thanks to the confusion Congress has created. Americans once prized civil disobedience; it\’s a shame mindless allegiance to The Law seems to have displaced that. Would you argue that Russians should have obeyed the Kremlin\’s rules about turning in dissidents?
The stats on how much welfare immigrants, legal or otherwise, use are inconclusive. For every study showing they absorb more than natives, there\’s another study showing the opposite; ditto for how much they \"contribute\" to the system. We should certainly oppose the welfare state, but claiming that we want liberty restricted until we live in a free country again is about as self-defeating as it gets.
Finally, DHS has many schemes to interfere with domestic travel as well, beyond what it already does at airports and other places with the TSA. When you champion its power over immigrants, you are handing it a weapon that it will ultimately use against you.
For liberty,
Becky Akers
Comment by John Anello on 6 June 2009:
Niccolo,
Data does not support your conclusions. The Center for Immigration Studies utilized data from the 2007 U.S. Census to conclude that “33 percent of immigrant headed households are using one major welfare program, compared to 19 percent for native households.” Is that what you call stimulating the economy? The study further concluded that immigrants are more likely to be in poverty and lack insurance than natives. Does that stimulate our economy?
http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back1007.pdf
Furthermore, regarding where Mexicans/Hispanics stand politically, polls show that Obama dominated among Hispanic voters in key states like Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona. If the number of Hispanics increases by 20 percent over the next eight years our democracy will quickly transform into an autocracy.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/where-does-hispanic-vote-really-matter.html
As I stated in my original post we cannot have free immigration and a welfare state. I would support a free immigration system provided all social welfare programs are eliminated. Only then can we enjoy true international mobility and the benefits of immigration.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 8 June 2009:
Ms. Akers,
I appreciate the reply.
I examined your other article, “Can We Tell Those Huddled Masses to Scram.” (Scram) and I find the same problems with that paper as with this one. (I accidentally posted this reply under the Scram article.)
You mention that Congress has the power to control naturalization in the first portion but minimize the importance of this and go on to talk about “Unconstitutional” laws based on the concept that Article I, Section 8 (AIS8) is somehow insufficient or doesn’t control immigration because the word “immigration” is never used. “Naturalization” means “to admit to citizenship” and is conceptually interchangeable with the word “immigration” so the Founders clearly and intentionally put this power in the hands of the Congress.
Rather than being some unimportant afterthought, this power was so important it is defined before the power of Congress to coin money, establish courts, and declare war so it isn’t quite as insignificant as your Scram article would lead the reader to believe.
The Constitution is not overly verbose by design. Entire powers are defined in a handful of words throughout the entire document. For instance the power “To provide and maintain a navy” is outlined in those six words exactly so it is counterintuitive to think the Founders would dedicate entire paragraphs to immigration specifically in anticipation that their intent would be subverted in the future.
“To establish a uniform rule of naturalization …” was sufficient for their needs and desires. They didn’t expect someone to argue “Freedom of Movement” applied to foreign nationals entering this nation any more than they expected the word “militia” in the Second Amendment to be used to undermine an individual’s right to bear arms.
Freedom of Movement describes my ability as a US citizen to move from State to State not to cross the boarder with Canada or Mexico for a visit, much less to work and take up residence, without the hindrance of paperwork.
Even if I were to concede the point that national boarders somehow conflict with a basic human right to migrate wherever (s)he sees fit, international legal precedent holds this assertion to be false. Ergo, if the US is going to allow unlimited undocumented immigration the reverse is not true for any other nation. The concept of doing this unilaterally is every bit as unworkable as unilateral disarmament.
For instance, Mexico may advocate open boarders when it comes to emigration of their citizens into the US but they don’t recognize my “right” to enter their country and illegally take up residence. If I were go into Mexico in the same manner as hundreds-of-thousands of their citizens enter the US every year, I would be detained and deported to my country of origin, even if I came from the US. In fact, Mexico jealously guards its southern boarder while ignoring the north. As such “Free Movement” would be one way.
I would also point out that none of the free immigration policies you outlined in Scram predate the early 1900’s. While interesting this does not wound the concept that Congress had the authority to act to reduce immigration in the 1800’s only that they decided not to.
At the time the US had made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 representing more than 800,000 square miles of territory as well as winning the Mexican Cession in 1848 representing another 500,000 square miles. So the US had an extra 1.3 million square miles to fill but the 1850 census put the population at a little over 23 million. Illegal immigration wasn’t a concern because we had scads of territory to fill, less than a tenth of the population we currently have, and very few nations were bursting with excess populations except in times of famine or drought (Ireland). On a prima facie level the situation in 1809 or 1859 and 2009 are not even remotely similar.
In addition to this our society has also changed drastically over this same period. Social programs were almost nonexistent in the 1800’s. Education wasn’t costing $6,000 or more per child per annum. Medical and Medicaid didn’t exist. Emergency rooms were not required to treat anyone that crossed their threshold. In the past 150 to 200 years we’ve become far more governmentally altruistic.
Regardless of if we agree with the existence of these programs the fact is they do and they represent a significant drain on the infrastructure. Contrary to what some have posted above, an increase in the number of poor and unskilled workers does not enhance the economy of a nation, especially one that offers nearly unlimited social programs.
What’s worse is when these “entitlements” were introduced they were supposed to be privileges for citizens not foreign aid used to finance and support a subclass of workers that are exploited by the rich. If you want an historical analogy, this is indentured servitude or share cropping revisited which is the antithesis of freedom.
There are over 6 billion people on this planet. It is impossible for the US to absorb even a fraction of that number unscathed regardless of where they originate. If the people in these nations want the liberty and prosperity the US offers it would be better for everyone if they transformed their country into a nation that offers these same opportunities rather than expecting unlimited access to the “American Dream.” We’ve set the precedent all they have to do is find the courage to follow.
It would be far better for Central and South America if we helped them become copies of the US rather than allowing uncontrolled immigration to turn the US into a copy of these countries.
It is much wiser to share prosperity rather than poverty.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 8 June 2009:
Niccolo,
\"Immigrants help the economy.\"
If you\’re talking about illegal aliens your assertion is intuitively incorrect. The number of poor and uneducated in a country does not \"help the economy.\" If it did the poor and uneducated wouldn\’t be fleeing nations where their populations continue to explode because their economies would grow richer every time they birthed another child. Latin America, China, India, and Africa prove this assertion to be false.
Comment by Matt R. on 8 June 2009:
\"BTW, I’m kinda mystified at excluding folks for fear they’re \"Obama voters.\" What, McCain voters are better?\"
– Yes, I would say so. Why I don\’t always agree with McCain, he\’s much more friendly to free markets and fiscal conservatism. And while hawkish on foreign policy, he is against torture.
On a side note, I\’m tired of Central American men in my neighborhood getting drunk, passing out and/or urinating behind my home. This is a continuing problem in my area. These folks also have little regard for traffic laws, as they routinely cross in the middle of an intersection without regard to anything or anyone. If this part of their \"culture,\" then I guess I do have problems with it
Comment by Stephen B on 14 June 2009:
No, walls will not stop immigration. But then again, locks don’t keep burglars out of houses either. So by that logic, we shouldn’t bother to put locks on our doors?
Comment by TL Winslow on 20 June 2009:
Mister Obama, tear down them walls! There\’s a better way!
The age-old pesky U.S.-Mexico border problem has taxed the resources of both countries, led to long lists of injustices, and appears to be heading only for worse troubles in the future. Guess what? The border problem can never be solved. Why? Because the border IS the problem! It\’s time for a paradigm change.
Never fear, a satisfying, comprehensive solution is within reach: the Megamerge Dissolution Solution. Simply dissolve the border along with the failed Mexican government, and megamerge the two countries under U.S. law, with mass free 2-way migration eventually equalizing the development and opportunities permanently, with justice and without racism, and without threatening U.S. sovereignty or basic principles.
For details, click the url.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 23 June 2009:
Mr. Winslow,
That\’s an interesting theory but you manifesto is skewed.
Your default is that people that oppose illegal immigration think Latinos are \"vermin\" that should be shot, ad nauseam. As such, even if your \"Megamerge\" were a panacea the presentation is entirely unpalatable.
For instance you write:
“The logical end of this thinking is robot armies along the border to kill everything that moves 24/7/365, always look on the bright side of life, just autozap them, like vermin in the kitchen at night.”
This is a straw man argument since no one is suggesting homicide as an apt form of boarder control. It is also an ad hominem argument since you’re also offering that people that disagree with illegal immigration think Latinos are “vermin” and are therefore racist. Neither of these are default opinions for boarder control advocates.
Boarder control is a responsibility the United States Government has to its citizens to ensure that people which are allowed entry into this country can integrate and contribute to our society. I, as a citizen, have a right to know that the people coming into this country will contribute to this nation rather than being a burden or a threat.
Part of the immigration process includes testing that demonstrates an understanding of US history, familiarity with the English language, as well as a background check by the FBI. These controls require that new citizens have the necessary tools to take part in this republic. It also ensures that access to the opportunity and prosperity of our economy, our natural resources, and other programs are used by contributing citizens. I pay taxes to support the infrastructure of the US, not to help foreign nationals whose seminal act of entry into this nation is to violate our laws.
I appreciate that they are here to build a better life but that is true for all immigrants. It is entirely inappropriate to allow someone that crossed the boarder illegally to take precedent over the millions of people that have been waiting for years, if not decades, to enter this country legally.
We have finite resources in this nation and it is the responsibility of the US government to ensure the “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” for our citizens before extending charity to other nations regardless of this assistance takes the form of foreign aid or turning a blind eye to illegal immigration.
Until such a time as Mexico petitions the US to become the 51st State we recognize their sovereignty and the right to run their nation in whatever way they see fit. It would be nice if they would extend us the same courtesy.
Comment by TL Winslow on 26 June 2009:
“This is a straw man argument since no one is suggesting homicide as an apt form of boarder [sic] control. It is also an ad hominem argument since you’re also offering that people that disagree with illegal immigration think Latinos are “vermin” and are therefore racist. Neither of these are default opinions for boarder control advocates.”
Stop right there. What world do you live in? Just on YouTube alone user comments far worse than calling Mexicans vermin are spread all over as thick as flies in July, along with many suggestions about shooting them as trespassers.
Not that this has anything to do with my Megamerge Dissolution Solution proposal. My early paragraphs are there to draw readers in with some humor before I get into serious arguments and data. If you would read farther, I’m assuming you didn’t, since you quote nothing more, the key to it is overcoming racism first, on both sides of the border (a boarder is somebody who pays to live with you), after which the solution will erase the existing border and expand the size of the U.S. by 750K sq. mi., creating a new bigger better border, after which we can go back to real border control vis a vis people on other continents. Only racists have anything to lose.
All I ask is that you read it before commenting.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 30 June 2009:
So a couple of nutters on You Tube represent the consensus for my side of the debate? MeCHA offers; “Por la raza todo. Fuera de la raza nada.” (For the race everything. For those not of the race nothing.) Is this the default stance for your side of the debate then?
Hopefully we can agree that extremists are useless.
You have something like 96 paragraphs and trying to critique the entire diatribe point for point isn’t practical. The intent of my previous post was to point out your plan is obscured by the constant proselytizing about “xenophobia”, ”racism”, “gringos”, ad nauseam. If you want me to author a multi page reply for you to post on your site I’d be happy to accommodate you but I don’t think this is an appropriate forum for such a lengthy counter thesis.
Even if your ideas are 100% feasible the presentation is such that most people aren’t going to see paragraph 70, 80, or 90 because they’ve already dismissed you and moved to a different site long before they reach paragraph 10.
People are more likely to take you seriously if they don’t have to wade through verbose nonsequiturs either accidentally or intentionally designed to poison the well by linking boarder control with racism. You mention race, xenophobia, and racism no less than 60 times, most of this in your opening paragraphs. Is this paper about a “Megamerge” or is it about race advocacy in a nation that you perceive as hating Latinos?
It takes you 10 paragraphs to make a statement that you should have put in the first. “Mexico’s government doesn’t work.” Excellent and agreed, but other than this statement paragraphs 3 through 10 are essentially filler where none is needed.
After that you hide the concept that the “US should merge with Mexico under US Law” in another 10 paragraphs. By this time the reader is 20 paragraphs deep and all that’s clear about your proposal is that “Boarder control is racist and Mexico’s government doesn’t work, ergo we should merge with Mexico.” Even if this statement were inviolate, why did it take you a couple thousand words to explain it?
So now we reach paragraph 21 and you offer that this merge has to be done legally with Mexican states petitioning the US to join the Union and this process will take between 5 and 20 years which is blazingly overly optimistic.
Once again I’m faced with 10 more paragraphs where I’m desperately searching for something that explains why Mexico’s government would consider giving up its sovereignty in an effort to cure illegal immigration but not finding anything particularly compelling.
The best explanation I could locate in what you wrote is “Mexican’s aren’t stupid.” That may well be a fact but that doesn’t mean they’re going to ignore Mexican nationalism and become a junior partner and that’s especially true with the ill-informed “Reconquista” crowd beating the war drum.
The last time a Mexican state tried to cede and join the US it resulted in two wars inside the span of 10 years. I don’t think Sonora asking for independence would be any better received in 2009 than Texas’ declaration in 1836 and Mexico would not appreciate US attempts to encourage such a cession.
Mexicans are no less proud of their county and their independence than we are. Rather than starting a domino effect that would result in Mexico joining the US it would reinforce rhetoric about US imperialism and make Mexico suspect of the US. Tensions between our countries are already strained due to 9/11, the drug war, illegal immigration, and sundry other issues. Such an offer would seem unlikely to help the situation.
I hope you will forgive me if I don’t address the next 60 paragraphs in a similar fashio. Hopefully this is enough to demonstrate that I took your request seriously.
Comment by John Beach on 4 July 2009:
Reply to Anello & others:
The GOP began the march to the current police state. Lamentably few of its supporters understand concepts they are promoting such as liberty.
First the GOP brought communism to America. The GOP controlled White House knew in the 1950s that F.Castro was a communist. The State Dept cables from Havana were explicit on this matter. State Dept advisors to the Pres were clear on this pt, but it was beleived Castro would not beocme a stooge of Moscow (delusional?)
The current TARP program was inititated under a GOP White House. Pres Reagan inititated the DARE program encouraging children to inform police if their parents were involved w/ narcotics. The GOP encourages people to spy on their neighbors wherever they control the political system @ the Federal, state or municipal level. Employers have been unofficially deputized to report (spy) on their employees, i.e., citiizenship status, reporting of income collection of taxes (emplyers responsibilit–similar to KGB/STASI tactics. These activities are statism–right wing communism/left wing fascism-call it what you like. P.S. why has the loyalty of every racial,ethnic, relgious group in US been questioned except for WASPs. In civil war hx-the conflict is known as a brothers war. Were not the Indians who died with Custer also Americans? Can it be we just don’t like others? Could it be we are not a true nation, but a federation?
J.Beach
Comment by John Anello on 5 July 2009:
I have not posted here in a while because James Madison Fan has been doing an outstanding job at tearing apart the open borders one world anarchy argument. But since I have been addressed by name I suppose I should respond.
Mr. Beach, for all the faults of the GOP, and there are too many to enumerate here, it has still produced the only presidents and politicians that have, at the very least, entertained the idea of free markets (e.g. Ronald Reagan). I cannot name a Democratic president from the last 100 years who has been friendly to free markets. I think you would have to agree that if a libertarian had to choose between Reagan and Obama for president they would have to select Reagan based on his support of free markets and smaller government.
Back to the illegal immigration argument, which is what this thread is all about; Ms. Akers is simply misleading right from her first sentence. “In its zeal to protect us from Mexicans who want to pick our fruit and clean our homes, the federal government is walling off our southwestern border.” Pick our fruit and clean our homes? If this is true, then why is 76 percent of the American agriculture industry made up of American workers? Why are Hispanics twice as likely as whites to be unemployed and 50% more likely to be on welfare?
He is an article by Thomas Sowell arguing against illegal immigration based on free market principles.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmQwZGU0Njc2MDlkNzM3MmJjZGYxOTM3NTk1ZjM5ZmU=
Jared Taylor also addressed some of these issues here http://www.amren.com/interviews/gutierrez/20060428/transcript.html
It is an outright lie to say that jobs illegal aliens take, like picking fruit, are “jobs Americans won’t do.” If wages a low enough almost any job is a job an American won’t do. Illegal aliens are forced to take these jobs at slave wages because they have very limited options once they are in this country, due to their lack of education, inability to speak the English language, and lack of identification. Supporting the illegal migration based on the principles of the free market is fraudulent. A close examination of the issue reveals that illegal immigration actually runs counter to free market principles. Illegal aliens drive down the wages of certain jobs below real market wages in large part because they lack other employment opportunities. Greedy businesses hire them because, unlike Americans, they have nowhere else to go and basically no other employment options except in the lowest strata of wages. To support illegal immigration as it currently exists is to support modern day slavery.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 7 July 2009:
So the GOP is Satan incarnate. Great. If you want to make the GOP your whipping boy that’s fine with me. I don’t think either side of the isle has a monopoly on idiocy so they are equally useless to me. With that said, how does that apply to illegal immigration?
This keeps getting wrapped up in racism and sundry other issues because around 90% of illegal immigrants come from Central and South America. I don\’t care if they come from Mars, the question isn\’t about race. It isn\’t about immigration. It is about – illegal – immigration.
Are we Libertarians or Anarchists? Ms. Akers talks about civil disobedience. From where does a foreign national get the authority to disobey our laws? We’ve already determined it isn’t from the Constitution.
This is our country and we, The People, have a right to determine who enters this nation and our Government has the responsibility to enforce the law as mandated by the Constitution. If we want more people immigrating here there is a mechanism to do so, all that needs to be done is to increase the quotas for each nation.
As it stands we allow approximately half-a-million – legal – immigrants into this country every year. If that isn’t enough then let’s expand it so everyone has the same opportunity to enter this nation regardless of their nation of origin, not just those fortunate enough not to have an ocean between their country and ours.
If Ms. Akers, Mr. Beach, and the like minded envision a single global free nation that is a noble goal. I would love to see the Earth united, perhaps even expanding into the cosmos, exploring the vastness of space. These are wonderful ideas and ideals that have been explored in fiction for generations.
Unfortunately this isn’t something that can be accomplished overnight by eliminating national sovereignty and erasing boarders when most nations have uncontrolled birth rates, support oppressive governments, can’t contain religious fanaticism, don’t support human rights much less women’s rights, embrace racism on a level that makes the KKK look progressive, and a whole plethora of issues the US has either contained or conquered.
As powerful as the US has become over the last century we’re still an island of freedom in a sea of oppression. Much of Europe followed suit after our Revolution to one degree or another but the countless slaughtered in the breakup of Yugoslavia should remind us that as placid as Europe appears in the 21st century, there are still unresolved issues that have lingered for centuries, if not millennia. The issues facing Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are every bit as entrenched. Until the rest of the world embraces the founding concepts of this nation a truly global existence threatens our freedoms rather than fostering them.
As a Libertarian it seems to me that our goal should be preseving our hard fought rights and freedoms in an effort to export these beliefs to other nations to the benifit of their citizens and the world rather than importing an undocumented, unrestriced, and unending flood of poverty and ignorance negating any incentive to change the status quo.
Comment by Patricia L. on 8 July 2009:
In the debate about “open borders,” it’s important to remember that all of our international airports are borders too. It’s an attractive and pro-freedom idea to open the border with Mexico – but if we truly support individual freedom of movement, what about the millions and millions in China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc., etc. who would eagerly scrape together or borrow the funds for a plane ticket to seek a better life in the U.S.?
As the spouse of a US consular officer overseas for 13 years, in 5 countries, I have witnessed the huge demand and eagerness for US visas. In many countries, over 90% of requests for travel visas are denied, because it is assumed that the person would stay in the US.
The individuals wanting to come to the United States mostly just want better economic opportunities in a place where social mobility and entrepreneurship are possible.
As a lover of liberty, I sympathize deeply with every individual wanting to move to the United States. But what about the chaos of the sudden movement of millions and millions of people? (This is truly not an exaggeration — of the billions in China and India, 155 million in Bangladesh, 166 million in Pakistan, 148 million in Nigeria, how many would come?)
I think it is much better for us to promote free trade, free markets and education, and to fight corruption and excessive regulation (in non-coercive ways), so that these millions and billions can enjoy better opportunities at home instead of migrating to the US.
One country that shows the way is Chile, which has radically opened its markets and successfully fought corruption, lifting millions of people out of poverty. We lived in Chile for two years, and refreshingly, almost no one approached us for help obtaining a US visa.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 31 July 2009:
UPDATE:
I had not checked my email until recently and I found this reply to one of my previous posts from Ms. Akers. I do not know why she chose to send it to me rather than adding to the public debate so I am putting it up.
**********
Hello—
You are factually incorrect and anachronistic in many of your presuppositions below. \"Naturalization\" refers only to the process of becoming a citizen, not to the act of immigrating itself. And the Founders had no conception of \"legal\" or \"illegal\" immigration, nor did they empower govt to control movement as I explained at length in the piece you claim to have read. I haven\’t the time to reiterate all that here; it likely wdn\’t do any good, anyway.
Second, arguing that we must curtail liberty b/c the world is different now doesn\’t cut it. Torture\’s apologists argue the same thing, as do defenders of the police state at the airports. Liberty\’s principles are immortal and transcendant, changing with neither time nor circumstance.
Third, asking the Feds to restrict our freedom b/c other countries restrict their citizens\’ liberty…well, that serves the interests of govt, not of us its victims. Does Leviathan employ you or your spouse?
We disagree so profoundly on the nature of the State and of liberty that I doubt we gain by continuing this discussion. And I suspect you may be as pressed for time as I, so let me thank you and bid you farewell.
For liberty,
Becky
Comment by James Madison Fan on 31 July 2009:
Ms. Akers,
My apologies for not responding sooner. I have not had the opportunity to check my email recently and I was not expecting your correspondence away from this site.
You find my opinions anachronistic while I find yours anarchistic. I tend to favor law based on an elder document called the Constitution of the United States of America written by brilliant men long dead who many also think is outmoded so I am guilty as charged. How about you?
There is no need to take the time out of your busy schedule to repeat what I have already read. Just because I disagree with you does not mean that I did not read what you wrote any more than your failure to accept my stance means that you did not read my replies.
I would not be at all secure in the validity of my stance if it relied quite so much on the challenge of separating related words from each other in a battle of semantics.
Immigration is a non-native establishing a presence in a foreign nation mode and reason not withstanding. Naturalization is a non-native establishing a presence in a foreign nation with the intent of becoming a citizen. Illegal Immigration is a non-native establishing a presence in a foreign nation in violation of said nation’s immigration and naturalization laws.
As you point out, the Founders had no reason to write about illegal immigration because the concept did not exist. In their age you were either a US citizen or you were not. If not then you lacked any of the rights associated with being an American. Atomic energy in not specifically mentioned in the Constitution either but that does not mean the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is unconstitutional. By vesting the power of law in the Congress the Constitution adapts to every new development unscathed. So even if the naturalization clause were insufficient to regulate immigration the power to make law is vested in the Congress regardless of if immigration is specifically enumerated or not.
You keep calling immigration laws “unconstitutional” when the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the sovereign right of the US to deport foreign nationals under the law. The power to deem a law unconstitutional is vested in the Judicial Branch of the government not in some writer for an obscure Libertarian magazine. Just because you – feel – these laws are unconstitutional does not make it so. I am not looking for perfection but a little accuracy would be nice. Has a National Enquirer mentality completely usurped the legacy of Ernie Pyle and Walter Cronkite?
In your second and third points you offer that these laws somehow curtail liberty but you have yet to demonstrate how this infringes on the liberty of US citizens rather than foreign nationals.
The first responsibility of any Republic is to citizens and the laws endorsed by those citizens not to foreign nationals trying to make a life by illegally crossing the boarder under cover of night in protest of that nation’s immigration laws. By enforcing these laws the government is protecting my rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” over those of a non-citizens.
Police states build walls to keep people in, not out. If we were living in a police state you would know it because the moment you tried to leave you would be arrested and sent to an camp for reprogramming or simply shot. I can leave the US any time I want, stay away as long as I want, go anywhere I want, and come back any time I want. All I have to do is show my passport when I arrive so they know I am a citizen and get a ride home.
We live in a Republic so we get the laws we want. The “People” do not want open boarders. If we did then McCain-Kennedy would have passed to the cheers of millions rather than resulting in one of the largest deluges of negative phone calls in the history of Congress ramming a sure thing down Baby Bush’s throat. “I’ll see you at the bill signing” my left nut W. If that wasn’t liberty in action I don’t know what is.
Vox populi. Vox dei.
Comment by John Beach on 11 August 2009:
To James Madison fan:
Vox populi. Vox dei? Really you give yourself too much importance. the word dei should be written as Dei.
John Beach
Comment by James Madison Fan on 11 August 2009:
John,
It has nothing to do with self aggrandizement. I use dei rather than Dei because I want to invoke the word “god” as a generic rather than the Christian “God.” I really do not care who someone prays to as long as they understand that ultimate power comes from the people.
Comment by John Beach on 12 August 2009:
To James Madison Fan:
Ultimate power comes from God; not the people! That is why Jefferson in the Dec of Independence that all people “were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” He added that “nature’s God entitle them” to rights. Hitler and Goebbels understood the power of “ultimate power from the people, so do the communists, the Klan, and the para-military minutemen. The foundation of freedom is God’ word, not a mob of resentful people.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 12 August 2009:
John,
The US is a Republic, not a Theocracy. I really do not care what you believe just so long as you understand that President Obama was voted into office by The People not miracled into the White House by Yahweh or some other deity.
Hitler was not a pagan or an atheist. He was born and raised Catholic. He considered himself a Christian and was greatly influence by Anti-Semitic Christian authors such as Karl Lueger. Hitler even worked on creating “Positive Christianity” until he gave up on it around 1940. He incorporated aspects of Christian doctrine into Nazism as well as Islamic doctrine which he admired for its militarism. Even after abandoning literal Christianity he remained religious believing that God wanted Germany to rule the world.
A major icon of the KKK is a burning Latin cross. WASP means: White Anglo Saxon Protestant so religions intolerance of non-Protestants (Christians) is also a part of the KKK. Atheism is not embraced much less promoted by the KKK. It was not uncommon for members of the KKK to lynch someone Saturday night and go to church Sunday morning because they were doing “God’s Work.”
The Minutemen are made up of Americans from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, most of which are Christian.
You do not have to be restful to call the cops when someone commits a crime. Just because I pity someone’s poverty does not mean they have the right to break the law.
There are over six billion people on this planet and growing most of which are impoverished. We cannot support all of them. The only way to make a real effect on these countless lives is to encourage them to change their nation of origin in an effort to promote prosperity rather than expecting the US to absorb an infinite supply of economic refugees. It is in everyone’s best interest if we help the rest of the world achieve our level of freedom and fiscal strength rather than allowing an unending and unregulated flow of poverty from these nations to drag us down.
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time.” – Chinese proverb
Comment by IMVirulent on 12 August 2009:
Bravo, John Beach and Becky Ayers. Freedom is borderless moral principal–a basic human right, not one to be doled out on the basis of birthright and chance or legislated by beaurocrats. Yes, free borders are inconsistent with social welfare which immorally redistribute wealth from productive earners to societal leeches. But which is the injustice to be abandoned?
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Comment by John Anello on 12 August 2009:
Was that John Beach making a Burkeian conservative statement about God?
I don’t believe it. It surely must be an imposter.
Comment by John Beach on 13 August 2009:
To James Madison fan:
Your problem is with the arguments and vision of the founding fathers. By the way–the UK and Canada have no separation of state and church and they are free societies.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 13 August 2009:
IMVirulent,
That\’s from the \"New Colossus\" written by Emma Lazarus circa 1883. It sits at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Though a lovely poem, it has as much legal weight as a South Park episode.
Global birth rates are staggering especially in India and Latin America. A little under two decades after Ms. Lazarus wrote this oft quoted poem the total population of Latin America was approximately 60 million persons compared to 600 million today and India’s population exceeds 1 billion with a higher birth rate than China.
The population of the US when Ms. Lazarus lived was around 50 million persons compared to 305 million today. Global population totals went from less than 2 billion to more than 6 billion in a century. Instead of spending scads of money on a war on drugs we cannot win, we need to start spending money handing out birth control or the liberties we know and love will have to be sacrificed at the alter of practicality, including the right to Life.
As Senator Kennedy points out there have been several immigration booms in the US such as the Italians, Irish, and Chinese. However none of these booms lasted over a quarter century or represented anywhere near the same number of bodies that we currently face. Absorbing immigrants caused by periodic droughts and famine is noble, but the current flood is not transient, it is an ever increasing flood without an end.
In the 1800\’s we had hundreds of thousands of acres to fill and no social programs to bankrupt us. If someone came here when Ms. Lazarus held quill in fist, feeding, clothing, and housing them didn\’t come out of Ms. Lazarus\’ pocket at the expense of her children and household or she might not have been quite so inviting.
The third world needs to get a handle on their reproductive proclivities or we are going to have trouble feeding everyone much less protecting our freedoms. When families cannot feed their children law and liberty are the first victims.
John B.
While I enjoy a good theological debate I am not certain why you think a discussion about “God” is applicable?
\"Vox populi, vox dei\" is not supposed to be a religious statement. It means that representatives in a Republic should listen to the voice of their constituents as they would the voice of their god, regardless of if their deity of choice is YHVH, Jupiter, Odin, Allah, Vishnu, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM).
I am also curious why you think the governments of the UK and Canada are applicable? We had a Revolution and set up our own government back in 1776 and a major reason the Founders did not want a state religion was due to the insanity caused by bloody purges, persecution, and chaos in England every time a new monarch took the throne and the state religion changed. No thanks.
You might also consider that Islam is the fastest growing religion on the planet. What happens when the Congress is 51% Muslim and they want to change the state religion? Does that sound like a good idea to you? Don’t think it can happen? Take a look at France. Inside the next quarter century there are going to be more Islamic immigrants and children of said immigrants than native French. The birth rate for Franks is around 1.6 Children per Household. That’s .7 CPH below replacement rates. If this continues the French will go extinct in a couple generations. What do we call France then? Morocco North?
Comment by John Anello on 13 August 2009:
Excellent point JMF.
Those lines were added to the Statue of Liberty in 1903. The Statue of Liberty represents the virtues of our democratic republic, our shining city on a hill. It is not a beacon of immigration nor was it ever intended to be.
Although our country has benefited from immigration in the past, we live in different times now. We can no longer afford to accept the world’s huddled masses of economic and political refugees who have made messes out of their home countries. They do not seem to understand or want to assimilate to our culture, of which capitalism is an intricate part.
Furthermore, liberty is not a God-given right endowed to every human being on the planet. It is a product of heightened civilization and a conscious realization of the sacredness of the human condition. It is clear that some cultures are not ready to accept liberty. Some people do not know what to do when they have liberty thrust upon them, as our adventure in Iraq demonstrates.
I just do not see how allowing the world’s poor hungry masses into our nation will help us solve our daunting challenge of preserving our liberty and fighting the ever burgeoning nanny state that threatens our individual freedom. We claim to be fighting poverty yet we allow the importation of millions of poor immigrants into our country every year. We need want affordable medical care, yet we import people who have infectious diseases and no way to pay for their treatment.
This article and subsequent blog have provided no satisfactory answer to my concerns.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 14 August 2009:
John A.
Actually aside from a select few replies this has only fueled my belief that people are myopic, focusing on a single issue without seeing how it fits into the “big picture.” As far as I can tell the opposition argument boils down to the following:
“Hey let’s let everyone that wants to immigrate come here right now! 300 million. 3 billion. What’s the difference? The more the merrier! We’ll have plenty of food, water, jobs, land, and other resources to go around and it will have absolutely no effect on our lives and liberties whatsoever! Everyone on the planet thinks exactly the same way we do and even if they do not it does not matter because maintaining the culture that birthed and fostered the Constitution and the freedoms it protects isn’t important! If you disagree with me you are a nativist, culturalist, racist turd! Have a nice day.”
WTF are they thinking? We need to export the seeds of the Tree of Liberty so these other nations can grow their own. Ours is already woefully over burdened.
Comment by IMVirulent on 14 August 2009:
If we need to sow any seeds of liberty it is HERE. Our nation is “woefully overburdened” not from immigrants who come to improve their lives through better opportunities to see the fruits of their labor rewarded, but from our own government, wealth redistribution, entitlements, socialist programs, and crazy levels of taxation.
In a free society where no one takes from anyone else, population additions — even huge ones — needn’t detract from society. They should simply create a larger pool of ingenuity, efficiency, potential business, jobs, and collaborators. If people want to be your neighbor and are willing to stand on their own two feet without taking from others via a socialist safety net, how are they a threat?
A big government society is a bloated sloth that leaves people to abandon moral and ethical principles. If you are on a lifeboat and human beings want on and you have the physical space, do you stomp on their fingers?
We should stop arguing over whether we should have free borders and start dismantling the systems that require us to stomp on the fingers of those drowing around us.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 14 August 2009:
IMVirulent,
Issue 1:
We need more liberty here but we are not going to get it by turning the US into a third world nation by allowing an unending flow of poor and uneducated into this country.
As I keep saying and you keep ignoring, if a surfeit of poor and uneducated was good for a country then India, Africa, and Latin America would surpass the US economically and technologically but not a single nation with uncontrolled population growth and overwhelming illiteracy rates has a market that approaches parity with the US. Until your side of the debate can answer how an unending flood of poor and uneducated makes this nation better your entire side of the issue is a gigantic straw man.
There are over a billion people in India, the largest Republic on Earth with approximately four times the population of the US, and their economy doesn’t rank in the top 10. The poor and uneducated –cannot- add to the “…ingenuity, efficiency, potential business, jobs, and collaborators” because they do not have the tools to do so in a technological market that requires reading, writing, mathematics, familiarity with business machines, and sundry other skills you cannot learn without attending school. Population does not equal prosperity.
To be clear, a plank issue for my side of the debate is: An unlimited number of poor and uneducated people are a burden on an economy / society / culture –not- a benefit.
Issue 2:
In one breath you talk about dismantling social programs and in the next you talk about “stomping” on the fingers of those “drowning” around us. However in the scenario you offer a poor and uneducated immigrant can come to the US without the tools required to make it here and when he fails we get to watch him and his family starve in the street. How does that make any sense?
If that was not bad enough the eventual outcome of a couple million immigrants starving in the streets is disease and death as well as the beginning of social unrest and revolution. That does not sound like a particularly attractive goal to me.
The fact is that by raising the floor you also raise the ceiling the poor in the US are better off than the middle class in most nations on Earth and by building on this base the rich are far richer than the rich in most other nations on Earth. Even the poorest in the US usually have access to food, water, and shelter while the poor in India pick corn out of dung for breakfast. Is that the kind of poverty you want to import here? No thanks.
To be clear, a plank issue for my side of the debate is that uncontrolled immigration especially without safety net programs will lead to gross unemployment, hunger, death, disease, social unrest, and revolution.
Issue 3:
Taxes are a function of any government. The concept that we should not pay taxes to protect and promote this society is ludicrous on a prima facie level. Jefferson himself promoted the concept of public education being a necessity for this Republic and that means taxes. The motto of the Founding Fathers was, “No Taxation Without Representation” – NOT – “No Taxation.” Point me to the writings of a single founder that even suggest his opinions even hinted that taxation was equivalent to tyranny. Madison did not favor public charity but that does not mean he was against taxation.
To be clear, a plank issue for my side of the debate is that reasonable taxation is required for any society rather than tyranny incarnate.
Issue 4:
Even if I were to agree that social programs are anathema in a free society we live in a Republic and it is entirely unrealistic to think an increase in poor and uneducated which feed on these social programs are going to vote them into non existence.
Even if you could convince the employed to vote away these programs the influx of poor immigrants would put them back in place. That is the danger of a Republic sans education in a capitalist society. Greed runs the market. The voters run the government. The voters are greedy. The more poor voters you have the more likely they are to vote to implement excessive social programs.
To be clear, a plank issue for my side of the debate is that an unlimited flow of poor voters into the US will result in a dramatic increase in social programs.
We gain nothing by allowing ourselves to be dismantled by excessive philanthropy either through social programs or excessive immigration. We either give the US time to absorb a nominal number of immigrants that prove they will contribute to this nation and allow them to integrate and become part of this culture or we will be overwhelmed and this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the Earth.
Comment by IMVirulent on 15 August 2009:
I simply don’t view immigration as ‘philanthropy’, and feel that is a distorted view that does not play out in history. Yes, the immigrants are presumably ‘poor’, but why must they be deemed ‘uneducated’ or lacking in value? Most countries churn out individuals who are far more educated than the average American student. I recently saw a statistic citing that India has more honors students than America has students!
In my experience, immigrants are people who seek opportunity, not a handout, as they are typically fleeing societies where corruption and/or oppression have driven them, often with nothing more than the clothing on their backs, to risk their lives for nothing more than an opportunity to earn a living. Fears of immigrants being ‘takers’ has simply not proven in reality. The uneducated provide hands willing to work under often deplorable conditions, and work gratefully, doing work that America’s own lowest class would shun. If these immigrants are socialists wanting to take, they could just stay in their communist countries where everything is provided. In contrast to (what I perceive to be) irrational fears, immigrants are our country’s biggest champions of freedom as they have left socialist, corrupt or communist regimes and want none of it (Ayn Rand, for example).
I just read a fascinating article written in May of 2007 on ‘punctuated equilibrium’ as it applies to the financial markets. The whole article is worth a read, but in particular I found Page 3 interesting.
http://www.eipny.com/pdf/IPIForumKeynote05232007.pdf
The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 suddenly added 3 Billion genrally impoverished, capital-lacking, workers to the global marketplace. They came from behind the iron-curtain living under socialist/communist regimes presumably indoctrinated in ways counter to ours. The result of this labor ’shock’? ‘Better than expected growth, a sharp improvement in labor productivity, a surge and record highs in profits and corporate profits in G7 nations.’
I think we only need to fear immigration when we change what we stand for. If we stand for the values embued in our Constitution, then anyone attracted to those values are additive. If we become a nation of wealth redistribution and free rides (where we are sadly headed), then immigration is a threat, and typically the right people stop wanting to come to America.
The solution is not to stop immigration but to stop the socialism.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 17 August 2009:
IMVirulant,
I am disappointed that you did not address the plank issues but I will not dwell on this.
First of all I need to reinforce the fact that there is a difference between an “immigrant” and an “illegal alien.” Immigrants go through a process where they are tested and evaluated so they typically have some financial base, are educated, have command of the English language, and can contribute to this society. Illegal aliens are typically poor, uneducated, do not speak English and are a drain on this society. My point being that the average illegal immigrant is not an honors student from India or any other country. Those tend to come here legally via a work visa, education visa, or through naturalization, not via stealth.
This is an important distinction which supporters of illegal-immigration try to obscure by lumping them in with “immigrants” as a whole. This is a disingenuous ploy that I find offensive. If we want to increase legal immigration to this country so honors students from Europe, Asia, Africa, or somewhere else has an equal opportunity to come here as an honor student from Latin America that’s fine with me but as it stands around 90% of illegal aliens are poor and uneducated economic refugees from Latin America so it is grossly unfair and a terrible drain.
With this in mind, you keep saying, “stop the socialism.” I agree. So let’s take a look at this issue since it seems to be a core issue for you.
The US is a Republic.
When poor people come to this nation and vote they tend to vote to increase social programs because they are the recipients of these programs. The rich and middle class have little to no interest in long-term social programs for themselves. The middle class support safety-net programs in case they fall on hard times but the concept of cradle to grave benefits is not something most citizens support, ergo the constant demand for Welfare Reform.
Since the US is a Republic there is no way to dismantle these programs. It cannot happen. Even if the Supreme Being miracled an end to social programs this very minute the next election cycle would see them re-implemented as PAC’s started whining about “the negative impact it has on their constituents.”
Even without the political pressure from special interest groups there would be an uproar the moment the news started doing human interest pieces on mothers starving in the streets, minimum wage workers not being able to get medical care, communicable diseases running rampant in minority communities, and a host of other sob stories that would tug at the philanthropic heart strings of America.
If you want a real world analogy take a look at what Obama is doing: “We need to nationalize health care because there are 40 million Americans without insurance.” So we’re going to dismantle a system that covers 90% of the nation with the best health care on the planet and completely reinvent the wheel based on the “success” of Britain, France, Canada, and Medicare? That’s like basing a military on the “success” of post-Napoleonic France or Italy after the fall of Rome.
It is easy to say, “Let’s stop the socialism.” It is a very lovely sentiment. I’ll chant it with you from dawn till dusk but it will have exactly zero effect. I prefer to deal with what is, not what isn’t and won’t be.
The only hope we have of keeping government out of our wallets is to ensure that employment and wages are as high as possible. I know that the Baby Bush administration loved the concept that there are “jobs Americans will not do” and I am sorry that you bought this load but W failed to add a key phrase “… for the wages being offered.”
Ms. Akers mentions agro business above but that is only one example of an unlimited supply of slave labor being imported from a foreign market. For instance the face of American fast food has shifted from fresh faced teenagers working their first job to haggard middle-aged to elderly illegal immigrants working as many minimum wage jobs as they can just to make ends meet. The problem is they typically cannot make ends meet so we end up supporting them.
For every dollar you save on produce in the market you pay multiples of that same dollar in taxes to support the infrastructure they exploit regardless of if it is in the form of schooling for their kids, ER visits, Welfare, HUD, or some other program originally designed to help US citizens on hard times rather than 20+ million foreign nationals and that doesn’t include the effect of crime on property values, insurance, and personal security.
There is nothing good about unrestricted immigration especially when they can capitalize on the social programs you rally against so your own core issue is an excellent arguement against unrestricted immigration in addition to the issues I bring to the table.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 17 August 2009:
IMVirulent,
This is a “brief” assessment of Mr. Priest’s Treatise for those not interested please scroll ahead:
“Gould asserted that, when evolution does occur, it happens sporadically and occurs relatively quickly compared to a species’ full duration on earth.”
Actually PE does not replace Gradualism. They can both coexist as evolutionary tools. Sometimes changes take place over eons and sometimes something happens that forces radical adaptation in a very short time (geologically speaking).
“While these new laborers offered the willingness and ability to work, they did not bring any additional capital with them.”
This is not even remotely accurate. I had to read it twice. I am still not sure he is saying what I think he is.
They brought access to the USSR, East Germany, Poland, and a dozen other repressed markets that had stalled under Communism that were hungry for Western goods and financing. While the USSR may not have been able to compete with the USA and the “West” economically the infrastructure was in place to capitalize on free trade once the inhibitors were removed.
It took years to catch up and they still haven’t ironed out all the kinks but offering that they didn’t bring any capital with them is ridiculous. The Ukrainian breadbasket, the oil fields, mineral wealth, access to millions of acres of Siberian forests represent much more actual and potential capital than the US has to offer, they just needed an economic system properly exploit it.
“The net effect of all these sudden and widespread changes was better-than-expected growth, a sharp improvement in labor productivity and a surge in profits, causing corporate profits as a percentage of GDP for the G-7 countries to reach record highs.”
This is true but not because there was an influx of 3 billion new workers pitched into the market. For the most part these workers remained geographically isolated in the countries in which they originated. There wasn’t some grand exodus to Western Europe. There was a terrible depression in these ex-Soviet-allied nations as their market attempted to equalize with the West. We made money the same way we did rebuilding Germany and Japan after the war. We provided low interest loans to prop up the fledgling Republics during their transition to Capitalism. It is the interest on these rebuilding loans that resulted in the bump not access to untapped foreign labor.
What Mr. Priest fails to mention is that while the GDP of these nations may have gone up, wages in boarder areas dropped. So the rich got richer by exploiting cheap labor, investing or buying undervalued capital, and making loans while the average worker got screwed. This is one of the reasons the Russian Mafia and Black Market did so well. There was tons of cash, tons of poverty, and a weak government presence which is the perfect environment for exploitation.
From Page 7 on Mr. Priest goes on to talk about increased wealth over the past quarter century and predicting the current recession based on failed confidence in mortgage loans and a “bursting of the liquidity bubble” which I would compliment more vigorously if it weren’t for the fact that this was hardly prophetic in May of 2007 so the revelation didn’t represent a risk to his reputation.
I scanned the remaining 14 pages with an eye towards immigration issues but didn’t see anything salient. His assessment of the current situation in regard to the economy of “feeder nations” was well written and aside from the glaring issues outlined above the paper seems competent. If there is a specific section I missed that you would like me to examine please direct me to it.
Comment by IMVirulent on 18 August 2009:
James Madison Fan,
I felt I addressed all of your Plank issues, but perhaps they were not organized linearly enough. See if this helps):
Plank 1. “An Unlimited Number of Poor and Uneducated people are a burden on an economy/society/culture – not a benefit.”
————————————————————-
This is a red herring. A society/culture/economy thrives and grows from the productivity and ingenuity of the people in it, which may or may not be correlated to **pre-existing** wealth. Most immigrants – illegal or otherwise – are “poor” upon arrival, and within 1-2 generations virtually all have leveraged freedom and opportunity to generate wealth, not just for themselves but for those around them. Moreover, if by “poor” you mean lacking in assets or capital, I would argue that an immigrant (illegal or otherwise) simply lacking capital and assets is doing far better than a good percentage of American citizens who presently have negative wealth and debt they will likely have to bankrupt their way out of, thereby redistributing their debt burdens onto others or society at large.
To the issue of “education”…
1) You seem to have data proving that immigrants – illegal or otherwise – are less intelligent than the average U.S. public school educated person, or that lacking in some formal “education” equals a lack of value or human potential. Please share that data. Even most 3rd World countries have compulsory education which, if you value those metrics, probably provide superior skills vs the average U.S. public schools, particularly in the area of Math and Science.
2) Let’s say for the sake of argument that you are correct and that upon arrival, immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are lacking in “traditional education” vs. the average U.S. citizen. Simply by figuring out how to get themselves to another country where they don’t speak the language, they have the following “skills”: ingenuity, enterprising , courageous, confident enough in their own abilities to take the plunge, hungry for opportunity. In short time, most of these individuals become bilingual—a skill the vast majority of Americans do not possess. Further, if education was a prerequisite of wealth generation, Jessica Simpson and half of the Athletes in America would not be earning millions per year.
Plank 2: “Uncontrolled immigration especially without safety net programs will lead to gross unemployment, hunger, death, disease, social unrest, and revolution.”
——————————————————————
Response: Since you insert “especially without safety nets”, I need to break this down into two parts.
1. Uncontrolled immigration will lead to gross unemployment, hunger, death, disease, social unrest, revolution.
Response: Again, a red herring as it seems to assume that people are mindless lemmings who will flood into the United States despite gross unemployment, hunger, death, disease, unrest. People (immigrants) follow opportunity. If we even began to approach the catastrophic purgatory you envision, why do you think people will continue to clammor to get in? How many people are presently clamoring to get into Africa? I envision an equilibrium in the global movement of people, wherein countries compete with one another for immigrants – those that provide freedom and opportunity will be blessed; those that shackle, steal from citizens and redistribute wealth from the productive to the unproductive will lose the productive.
2. The second part seems to suggest that we must pair “safety nets” with “uncontrolled immigration”. Well, Cuba has all kinds of “safety nets” but they aren’t really suffering from a mass influx of immigrants are they?
Plank 3: “reasonable taxation is required for any society rather than tyranny incarnate.”
—————————————————————-
Response: Great, sure. (Are we now going to sidebar into a debate on what is “reasonable”?) I’m not sure what this plank adds to the argument unless you are suggesting that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, do not pay “reasonable” taxes. Which I would argue is patently a false premise in light of 8-10% sales tax or 20% gas tax or tolls, licenses, fees. Many illegal immigrants have money withheld from paychecks but, because they provide a false social security number, never file a tax return which would otherwise refund them a large part of that money paid in, due to the income threshold.
Plank 4: “An unlimited flow of poor voters into the US will result in a dramatic increase in social programs.”
——————————————————————-
This assumes that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, came here in search of a free ride or wanting social programs. I have already rejected this argument. Have you ever pondered why George Bush proposed to instantly naturalize 12 million illegal aliens in the state of California? It is because he knew they would vote conservative and hand the Republicans the state, an outcome not likely without the \"illegals\".
—
Regarding the link to the epoch article, I thought it was a prescient piece. You state that it was “hardly prophetic” in May of 2007. I disagree. The top of the DJIA was Oct 12 2007. Even one year later, May 2008, the DJIA was over 13,000. I would say that calling a major crisis five months ahead of the market top and a full year ahead of the @#$% hitting the fan is pretty darned impressive relative to other poohbahs in May of 2007. Anyway, I thought there were some lessons we could glean from the fall of the iron curtain with regard to the present debate. Fine, you disagree.
FINALLY, there was an excellent article in today’s In Brief newsletter on immigration that I think addresses many of your “Planks”, and perfectly expresses my feelings on the subject.
It is the twisted machinations of large government and “the taking state” that cause us to lose sight of the righteousness of freedom and the most basic tenets of human decency. Ask yourself what twisted perversion allows an otherwise gentle and moral human being to accept in his government the fining of fishing vessels at $3,000 per head for the \’crime\’ of rescuing imperiled human beings at sea fleeing tyranny and seeking opportunity? I guess law abiding U.S. citizens are supposed to let human beings drowned instead.
No. Never. I do not comply.
http://fee.org/pdf/the-freeman/schoolland0102.pdf?utm_source=In+brief&utm_campaign=2c0dcee2ac-In_brief_8_05-2009&utm_medium=email
Comment by James Madison Fan on 19 August 2009:
IMVirulent,
It makes it difficult to take you seriously when you dismiss economic concepts such as Supply and Demand, the Substitution, Unsustainable Growth Rates, Scarcity, etc. as “Red Herrings.” Economics has rules just like Science. Just because you find these rules inconvenient for your side of the debate does not mean you get to ignore them.
Since you asked for statistics I am prepared to accept the PEW Hispanic Center (link below) as a source even though they have an illegal alien bias demonstrated in their use of terms such as “Unauthorized Migrants” (by the same logic a burglar is thus an “Unauthorized House Guest” and a bank robber is making an “Unauthorized Withdrawal.”). PEW also tends to understate the numbers, minimize the negative effects, and maximize the positive but I find this preferable to spending time debating source bias.
http://pewhispanic.org/
Plank #1. “An Unlimited Number of Poor and Uneducated people are a burden on an economy/society/culture – not a benefit.”
I would direct you to your own answer in Point #2:
“How many people are presently clamoring to get into Africa?”
That is my point exactly and you make it well so why do you choose to ignore it? You do not see people clamoring to get into Latin America, China, or India either and yet they still have multiples of the population in the US. They do this via something called “child birth.” You may have heard of it? Every year the population in India goes up by 25 million people. Every year the population in China goes up by 21 million people. In the span of 100 years the population in Latin America increased 10 fold.
If population growth in the 21st century remains unchecked there will be 18 Billion people on this planet by 2100, 6 billion in Latin America alone. Unfortunately that cannot happen because we are already pushing the limits of the Earth’s resources.
California has the seventh largest economy on the planet and is the highest taxed state in the Union but we have the lowest credit rating of any state and are on the verge of bankruptcy. Can you admit that servicing the needs of 5 million illegal aliens (nearly 50% of the total IA’s in the US and 13% of our population) is contributing to these problems or are you so dedicated to your side of the issue that you are completely immune to this concept?
You do not need to guess what the future holds for the US when California is providing a prophetic model of what happens when population growth exceeds infrastructure and resource capacity.
Education Sub #1:
I never said IA;s are “less intelligent.” I said they were “poor and uneducated.” Ignorance can be cured through education but that does not mean I want to pay $7,000+ per child per annum for everyone that manages to wander across our boarder. If half of the 5 million IA’s in CA are K-12 eligible this means a drain of over 17 billion dollars from our school system alone.
Compulsory education in the third world is a joke. Mexico is one of the best but their CE limit was 6th grade until it was raised to 9th grade in 1992. A third of IA’s come to the US with less than a 9th grade education. 50% do not have a HS diploma and 75% have never seen the inside of a university much less attained a degree. This also assumes academic parity between our systems which is certainly not a given and does not take into account school aged children of IA that are assumed to be ignorant.
Education Sub #2:
Do not mistake desperation for courage and confidence. Rats do not need to be “courageous and confident” to flee a sinking ship. If IA’s truly had the strengths you offer then they would have already transformed Latin America into paradise.
If these countries did not have a safety valve for their excess population they would have to fix these problems.
Jessica Simpson and sundry are the exception, not the rule as are Donald Trump and Bill Gates. Contrary to popular belief the majority of wealth in the US is generated the same way is has for the past 250 years – preparation and perspiration. If we didn’t do it better than everyone else we wouldn’t have the largest economy on the planet.
Plank #2:
Sub #1: You write: “People (immigrants) follow opportunity. If we even began to approach the catastrophic purgatory you envision, why do you think people will continue to clammor to get in?”
Which is exactly what I am trying to avoid. Your “cure” for the immigration issue is to let IA’s overwhelm the US so it becomes a third world nation that no one wants to immigrate to. No thanks.
Sub #2: Actually my point is that in a draconian capitalistic society sans safety net programs you end up with a lot of people on the street regardless of if they are unemployed, underemployed, indigent, etc. If we inject more poor and uneducated into this model it results in more people on the streets.
Plank #3
IA’s typically do not pay income tax which is where the majority of Federal taxes originate as well as taxes collected by the Franchise Tax Board. Even if they did the amount of money collected from the unskilled positions they typically fill is negligible.
IA’s typically earn at or near minimum wage so even if they did pay into the system they would collect more when they filed than they paid. This is yet another social program they can capitalize on.
False social security numbers play havoc on legitimate taxpayers and can take years and cost thousands of dollars to resolve. If you do not have the right to work here, don’t.
IA’s export 20 billion dollars to Mexico every annum representing the second largest source of income for Mexico (PEMEX is #1). That is 20 billion removed from our economy injected directly into theirs, approximately 10 billion of this coming from California, which added to the 17 billion being drained from education brings the total up to 27 billion. So they are using infrastructure and exporting wealth while contributing nil to the tax base.
Plank #4:
That assumption is yours, not mine. They do not need to be “searching for a free ride” to have a negative economic effect. If IA’s do not find work they end up on social programs. If IA’s find work they displace citizens so they end up on social programs. Either way we end up with more people on social programs.
Fast food jobs are supposed to be “entry level positions” not careers. Trade wages such as roofing and drywall have remained stagnant or even dropped for the past two decades. 75% of US workers are moderate to unskilled labor. Importing additional moderate to unskilled labor from a market means an decrease in labor scarcity and this means a decrease in wages.
Lastly,
I find it strange that Ken Schoolland finds inspiration in the writings of Ayn Rand when she was an Egoist and founder of the Objectivist Movement. She was staunch advocate of property rights to the point of fanaticism and wrote vigorously against any sort of altruism considering it a vice rather than a virtue.
The ultimate property right is national sovereignty and as an Egoist she would not support giving unlimited and unending access to a market they did not contribute to building. She would absolutely loath the impact of the social programs as well so I am perplexed why Mr. Schooland invoked her name when I doubt she would support his stance, especially based on current population trends.
If Latin America, China, India, ad nauseam want to produce billions more people over the next century, that’s fine with me but do not expect me to sacrifice my standard of living or that of my daughter and grand children to finance their sexual escapades.
If they want their standard of living to rise then invest in infrastructure, educate their people, and buy a box of condoms rather than expecting us to absorb a sea of offspring spawned by their unquenchable libidinous urges.
Comment by IMVirulent on 20 August 2009:
Ah, you live in CA. Now we’re getting at the crux of it. More on that later.
I haven’t studied Ayn Rand, but what little I’ve read, I like. I can’t envision her support of any bureaucrat dictating where peaceful individuals can freely go and not go. In fact, I just found this article from the Ayn Rand Institute on open immigration: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4620
“Any restrictions on immigration–large or small–trample the rights of both employers and job-seeking immigrants. Opponents of immigration, want to repudiate the vision [of the “American Dream”] by turning it into a privileged preserve for those who want the law to set aside jobs for them–jobs they cannot freely earn through their own efforts.”
Indeed. Your arguments evoke imagery of the American Autoworker’s Union (which I presume you oppose since you are a James Madison Fan on the FEE board), except on a global scale. (“If ‘they’ want to buy a box of condoms rather than expecting us to absorb a sea of offspring spawned by their unquenchable libidinous urges…\" Come on…seriously?!) Like the dysfunctional Autoworkers Union, your “nationalistic union” is fear-based and entangled in the fixed pie fallacy.
And, since you’re tossing around basic economic terms, here are some for you to brush up on with regard to those tearful jobless teenagers with their noses pressed up forlornly against that McDonald’s window: “protectionist”, “cartel”.
My dear James Madison Fan. You are living in California and you are understandably enraged. You reside in a state grossly mismanaged by a dismal excuse for a legislature. You should be grabbing your pitchfork and executing your constitutional right to rise up and remove your government rather than succumbing to non-productive ethnic scapegoating. (History is chock full of all sorts of unsavory villains of this mindset. Surely you aspire to more noble societal contributions than blocking, repelling and taking away the opportunities of one human being in some perceived support of another. Leave that to the socialists.)
Guess what? While you were ranting about that \"condomless\" Mexican father toiling 12 hours a day in the hot sun picking fruit at below minimum wage taking some phantom treasures from you, your daughters and your grandchildren, your government is robbing you blind. If Mexicans were to blame for your state’s woeful economic plight, Texas would be in equal shambles.
Your moronic legislature has repeatedly trampled on the constitution with impunity and sold your misguided fellow residents a bill of goods. They are now getting a nice big heaping dose of what they voted for. Stop whining about the Mexicans, global overpopulation and other smokescreens. Your time would be far better spent figuring out how to get rid of the reckless idiots running your state into the ground than chasing \"criminals\" whose only offense is the same yearning for opportunity that somehow, by the grace of god or some ancestor\’s ingenuity, landed you here.
This has been fun, but I’m over this thread. Since it doesn\’t sound like this pursuit is making you very happy, and I wish you the best of luck in finding your higher cause.
\"Adios Muchacho\".
Comment by James Madison Fan on 20 August 2009:
IMVirulent,
I live in Santa Ana. If you are unfamiliar with this lovely city it is mostly Latino and the illegal alien population is around a third to on half of the population. Rather than being a paradise where hard working immigrants have built Nova Roma off the sweat of their noble brow, they have turned a perfectly good city into Tijuana north. The crime rate is astronomical, neighborhoods are slums, English is the exception, and the gang map looks like a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. I know the face of Nueva Unido Estados and it is a grim future where we join Latin America in abject poverty rather than rescuing them from themselves.
If the discussion did not make me happy I would not post. I am every bit as happy to debate against illegal immigration as I am to debate against a flat Earth because each time you offer empty rhetoric and I dispel it, the more likely someone is to read this and understand the failure of your side of the debate.
That is the whole purpose of debate and I welcome it with open arms. I believe in the Socratic method of learning. Unsupportable points of view need to die a Darwinian death leaving fact, logic, intellect, and science more visible by their passing. If I cannot support my stance then it should change. I just wish the opposition held the same belief.
In an effort to demonstrate how committed I am to locating the truth I even went so far as to provide a source that is hostile to my side of the debate rather than forcing you to provide one to counter a supportive source. If I were any more accommodating I would be arguing against myself.
If you wish to abandon the topic that is certainly understandable but do not do so under the disingenuous guise you are doing so for my benefit rather than your own. I understand your fear. I have seen it written on the faces of many Creationists when they realize the Bible might be incorrect as thus their core beliefs. Most run rather than admit their folly but a brave few accept that the secular is superior to the sectarian. Hopefully you can find this courage but I understand if you cannot.
With that said, limited resources in a nation and on the globe are not “fixed pie fallacies,” they are scientific and economic facts. The entire basis of the study of Economics is the understanding of Scarcity. If you want me to help you understand these concepts I would be happy to educate you but I fear your ignorance is intentional. You choose to believe there are infinite resources so you do not have to confront the uncomfortable reality that things need to change or they will get progressively worse as populations continues to explode.
I am quite familiar with the concept of protectionism. What you do not understand is that it is an economic tool not an obscenity. Protectionism is perfectly valid when two markets that are not at parity interact. If we use Mexico’s market as an example it is nowhere near parity and access to the market in Mexico is restricted geographically. As such the labor portion of the Mexican market is accessible in the US but the undervalued capital is not available to US citizens. In addition to this Mexico has various laws restricting certain portions of their market such as a law prohibiting non-citizens from owning land within 20 miles of the coast.
The exportation of labor is a unilateral interaction between the two markets. If the markets were truly interacting in an attempt to find equilibrium I could go down there and buy a couple hundred acres of beach property and build a couple thousand condos and homes for a fraction of what it would cost me in the US but Mexican businesses do not want to compete with US businesses any more than US workers want to compete with Mexican workers.
Why is it that the US does not have the same problems with Canada that it does with Mexico? Mexicans represent 56% of IA’s but the number of Canadian IA’s does not exceed 1%. Why? Canada has economic parity with the US. Their workers make a comparable wage. They have a similar standard of living. They have a similar technology base. Their birth rate is similar as well. For all wants and purposes Canada is a northern extension of the US with its own sovereignty.
So why is Mexico a rat hole? Too many people. Too little infrastructure. Notice that I did not mention resources. Mexico has vast resources but their government is corrupt and what little tax base they have gets siphoned off. Rather than lynching the dishonest politicians and building up their own infrastructure and market they run across the northern boarder.
We are not doing the nation of Mexico any favors by allowing the status quo to continue for entire generations. At some point they need to deal with their own domestic issues such as corruption, crime, over population, education, ad nauseam rather than expecting the US to keep turning a blind eye to their inadequacies and helping their citizens at the cost of our own. This is like an indulgent parent ignoring the disruption of a petulant child. At some point the kid has to be held accountable.
The current model consists of Mexican breeding an unending host overwhelming the limited infrastructure the crooked politicians begrudgingly build at a glacial pace and the US absorbing the rest. The problem is that the flood is overwhelming our infrastructure as well as that of Mexico so it needs to change or both our markets are going down the commode.
As much as I loath the moronic legislature in Sacramento I am far more annoyed with my idiotic congressmen and senators that are so eager to please their corporate and PAC masters that they refuse to see the disastrous economic reality of importing an unlimited and unending sea of poverty and ignorance.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 20 August 2009:
IMV,
I printed out Dr. Binswanger\’s article. It is interesting from a philosophical point of view and I appreciate you directing me to it. I would comment on it but I want to spend more time examining his arguments. Since you went through the trouble of posting it I felt compelled to make sure you did not think I had ignored it.
Comment by Justin O. Case on 25 August 2009:
When did the EPA apporve the Environmental Study for the fenced in area?
Comment by James Madison Fan on 26 August 2009:
Justin,
As of now I do not think the EPA has performed a comprehensive study of the effects but they have commented on various environmental impact studies such as the ones below:
http://www.epa.gov/region09/nepa/letters/prop-constr-ops-prop-tact-infra-sdiego-brdr-deis.pdf
http://www.texas.sierraclub.org/Conservation/lrgv_eis_epa_comments.pdf
To be fair to Ms. Akers environmentalist plea, I do not doubt that the impact will be significant however there are ways to mitigate this as long as we take reasonable precautions. We have highways and freeways running the length of the continent. I doubt this fence will prove to be any more disruptive than Route 66 or similar construction.
It seems odd to me that Ms. Akers is using a Green argument to overcome a basic Libertarian principle of property rights. Maybe she should be writing for a Green publication rather than a Libertarian one?
Comment by Robert on 22 September 2009:
Most of you people just make me sick with your xenophobic nationalism. The international border is just an arbitrary line in the sand, get it? People, birds and mammals have crossed it freely going both north and south since the beginning of time, and God willing, they will continue to do so.
Stop crying about lost jobs to Mexicans. Immigrant Mexicans are the only people I will hire today and for the past 30 years, because they are the only ones that are willing to put in a days work. I can’t get a white kid to work anywhere near as well as an illegal. So I pay them what I would pay any American in cash under the table. Starting wage, $12.00 per hour, tax free! God bless them. They know the value of the dollar unlike US people do. They are trustworthy as maids and nannies. They will even arrive for work on official holidays- imagine?! I even give them keys to my home so that if I am at my home abroad, they can continue to enter and clean, use the bathrooms, even spend the night should it be necessary because of Border Patrol Nazi’s and the Homeland Department of Stupidity. This is the American way!
Everyone here was once an immigrant unless you are a native American. My family has been here since 1613 and we arrived and bettered ourselves by purchasing slaves and raising tobacco. We prospered for many generations, moving with the times and always bettering the prior generation. So much better than we did in old Europe. The American dream and melting pot. That’s all these people want to do, have a chance to better their lives. My head gardener’s children are all going to the University of Arizona now, one to become a doctor. This is the American dream!
Last century it was ‘No Irish or dogs on the lawn’, then segregation with whites only drinking fountains. Now it’s the Mexicans we deride and cast our aspersions upon. And heaven forbid, don’t forget the gays and their wanting to marry! Why is it that the people of this country founded in Liberty, just have to have someone to hate? Why can’t people go about their lives letting others alone causing no harm to others? Why do we need laws regulating what consenting adults read or do in the privacy of their own homes? Tell me, who is better than myself to decide what I can or cannot do as long as I do no wrong to someone else? Such Puritanism b…s…
The only thing this fence does is to challenge us more on how to safely bring others across. It won’t stop anyone from crossing who wants to, but I only worry that it may keep us in. Our freedoms erode daily in Congress and by illegal Presidential signings. Today the former Soviet satellite of Latvia is more free than the USA. Very scary. I think everyone is missing the bigger picture here, remember the Berlin Wall? That was built to keep immigrants out of Berlin but in reality it kept ‘free’ Berliners in. Remember the Berlin Airlift? Learn from history. With secret detainment camps being built in this country by subsidiaries of Halliburton, what is our future in this police state? Now a new ID we will have to carry? “Your papers please…”, remind you of anywhere?
I for one may soon relocate to sunny Mexico or Costa Rica with my family (and our ‘illegals’ who wish to come), so that perhaps we may live a life of freedom as it was envisioned by our Founding Fathers with few taxes, if any, and beautiful tax-free property. I only hold back to see if either New Hampshire or Hawaii succeeds from this Union as I would happily expand my holdings on Hawaii and relocate there.
Open your eyes people, this country has PLENTY of room for more people to live on and just because you made it in before the wall went up doesn’t give you the right to say, “Ha, ha, I got in but you brown people have to stay out now!” You’re nothing but phobic racists!
-A Native Arizonan
Comment by James Madison Fan on 23 September 2009:
Robert,
Yet again you show the disingenuous nature of your side of the debate by lumping illegal aliens in with immigrants.
If you want to be taken seriously you need to present a rational argument and enter into a discussion rather than screaming “RACISTS! XENOPHOBES! NATIVISTS!” and pretending like this addresses the point. This is especially true when you post something as racially motivated as the following:
\"Immigrant Mexicans are the only people I will hire…\"
Next time you want to throw around the word “racist,” you should remember these words and look in the mirror.
We are a country of laws. You may not like these laws. There are some I don’t like either, that doesn’t mean I get to break them. I think I should be able to drive 100 MPH but the law says I can’t so occasionally I get speeding tickets. Oh no! The police are infringing on my civil liberties! Wake up people! We are living in a police state where we actually regulate our highways (just like every developed nation on the planet) as well as our boarders (just like every developed nation on the planet)! Sorry Rob, the histrionics are getting old.
You like illegals because you can pay them $12.00 an hour under the table and pretend like you are striking a blow for freedom. You cannot get US workers because no one is going to do back breaking labor for $12.00 an hour. Even if they did you would have to pay taxes as well as match their contribution to Social Security. This saves you thousands of dollars every year. You are taking over where your ancestors left off except the slaves are brown instead of black and you pay them slave wages rather than keeping them in a stable. If they complain about the conditions or pay you fire them and hire a new batch because the old one got “infected by lazy Americans” when the truth is they just got tired of being exploited. How many members of the United Farm Workers do you employ? Do you allow them to take off on Cesar Chavez day or is that one of the many holidays you fail to celebrate? Then you turn around and congratulate yourself on helping these poor unfortunates as well as striking a blow against tax tyranny. The savings are just a strange coincidence, right Rob?
Now on my side of this I have friends from Europe that want to immigrate here. One friend, Tasos, is from Greece. He has a Masters in Chemistry and holds three patents on chemicals currently used in the Stealth program. He has been patiently waiting in line since 1986, coincidentally that is the same year Simpson-Mazzoli passed which I naively voted for. Why? Because Uncle Ronny promised me that if we gave amnesty to the 8 million illegals already here he would regulate the boarders and make people wait their turn just like my family did. He lied to me and I am really getting sick of deceit being the status quo in Washington. When Washington fulfills the promises outlined in Simpson-Mazzoli, we can talk about McCain-Kennedy. Until then it is a non starter. Race be damned. Hate be damned.
I’m one of the descendants of the Irish immigrants you mention. When my ancestors came here most of them did it according to the laws of this nation, we only came here while Ireland was suffering from famine, the total number of Irish that came here was approximately 3 million, the flood stopped when the famine passed, and many went back.
Meanwhile PEW indicates 70% of illegal aliens come from Latin America, 56% from Mexico alone. This has been going on for more than three decades and it increases every year rather than decreasing regardless of how prosperous Mexico gets. Mexico is not using the US as a temporary place to store citizens while it recovers from a disaster, it is sending people here wholesale without any desire to curtail this practice. Even using the most conservative (i.e., smallest) numbers at least 12 million illegal aliens are currently in residence in addition to 8 million naturalized overnight by Simpson-Mazzoli. That means at least 20 million people that got here by breaking the law. This is not even remotely similar to any of the previous immigration booms, Italian, Irish, or Chinese if for no other reason than these new immigrants – are – not – following – the – rules.
Do you know what you call 20 million people illegally crossing your boarder in violation of your national sovereignty? An invasion. When Germany did this to Poland it started World War II. I guess the Poles were xenophobes? What were they thinking protecting their nation? They were all obviously Racists and Nativists with an over developed sense of nationalism Just think, if the rest of the world shared your insight and that of Ms. Akers millions would still be alive today that died defending these “arbitrary lines in the sand.” So what if the NAZI’s took over?
As you point out my ancestors were indeed imm immigrants. My great aunts came here as indentured servants. Essentially this was white slavery because even though the “servant” had the option to buy their contract it was set up in a way that this was nearly impossible. One of the sisters ended up marrying a wealthy American businessman that bought both of their contracts and freed them. Several years later they sponsored my great-grandfather to come here from Scotland. Notice the word “sponsored.”
When Pop came here you had to have a job lined up as well as someone that would take responsibility for you and swear you were a productive citizen. He spent the next decade plus working in the Chicago coal mines and eventually died of black lung in 1973. My great-grandfather served this nation in WWI. My grandfather served this nation in WWII (his ship had 5 battle stars). My father served on the USS Midway which has been decommissioned and is a Navy Museum in San Diego.
Now explain to me in words as clear as the human mind can form why my family had to jump through every hoop in the book to come here and some guy can walk across the boarder breaking our laws and violating our sovereignty – sovereignty my family lost and spilled blood to protect – and expect the same rights and privileges my family earned over four generations?
The American Dream has a price and part of that is waiting your turn. I do not care what color your skin is we have laws. Get in line. There are Asians, Africans, Europeans, as well as Latinos that have been waiting years, if not decades, to come here and rewarding a dishonest group that have slipped past our boarders under cover of night while others are kept out by something as noble as their honor and ethics is entirely indefensible.
Supporting those that break the law is Anarchy, not Liberty. Not tolerating crime is not xenophobia, racism, or nativism. It is common sense.
Comment by curious on 27 September 2009:
I am vehemenently opposed to the ridiculous fence that is being built. It won’t work and will cost too much.
I am 100% in support of building the equivalent of Hadrian’s wall on the southern border and stationing 300,000 military troops along the wall to secure the border.
Hadrian’s wall had two purposes. First, was to eliminate illegal traffic, including armed incursion, across the border. Second, was to facilitate legal traffic across the border.
Hadrian’s wall had gates and facilities every few miles. Anyone who had legal business would find anything they needed to help them in their travels.
That is the kind of wall I would support. A gate every mile with customs and immigration officers present to assist anyone who had a legal and legitimate purpose to travel across the border. Modern facilities located at each of these points.
The wall to be augmented with motion detectors, infrared detection, sound detectors, radar, cameras, and anything else needed to detect unauthorized intrusion.
The 300,000 troops to be well trained in community service and community outreach so that they are a positive force in the areas.
A wall like this would put an end to illegal crossings of our border while facilitating and encouraging legal crossings.
On the private property issue, this is an overwhelming national security issue. I’m sorry but national security trumps private property in this case.
On the “environmental” issue, the illegals are doing far more damage to the environment than building a wall would. Anyone who is saying I am wrong on this has not been to the border area and seen the huge mountains of trash that the illegals leave. Also, there is an enormous environmental cost in terms of the damage being done to hundreds of thousands of human beings who are at the mercy of the criminals who control the smuggling trails. Not to mention the damage being done by the free flow of drugs across the border. We know how to build walls and minimize environmental impact. The “environmentalists” conveniently overlook the enormous environmental damage being done to human beings because of this free for all situation on the border.
For those who will now call me a racist. Race has nothing to do with it. Protecting our country from illegal activity is an obligation that we have. I am 100% for LEGAL immigration, my family came to America in 1848.
Now, if your argument is that our legal immigration is too restrictive, I would probably agree. So, work with your Senator and Representatives to get the laws changed.
Comment by curious on 27 September 2009:
One of the biggest problems I have with illegal immigration is this.
Our laws make people who are here illegally into criminals because they exist. So, they are criminals due to their national origin. Hmmm, what other country made criminals of people because of their national origin? NAZI Germany comes to mind. This idea that a person can be a criminal because of who they are is an idea that the United States fought wars over to eliminate. We even fought each other over this issue.
For our country to allow large numbers of people to cross our borders illegally knowing that they will become criminals because of the fact that they exist, that is just immoral. We have an obligation to secure our borders and then to give the illegals who are already here some sort of legal status so that they can have basic human rights defended by our rule of law. To continue to allow tens of millions of people to live with no human rights because of who they are and to continue to allow millions more to enter our country is obscene.
Comment by James Madison Fan on 28 September 2009:
Curious,
Illegal Aliens are not criminals “because they exist” any more than a burglars are criminals “because they exist.” Each of these criminal groups made a decision to break the law. One broke into your home the other broke into your country. Giving IA’s amnesty would be equivalent to the police arriving at your house and saying, “I’m sorry Mr. Curious, but he’s already raided your fridge and made himself comfortable on your couch so we’re going to let him stay.”
Property rights are a core principle of Libertarianism. What Ms. Akers, Ms. Rand, and others that support open boarders fail to recognize is that personal property rights are a function of national sovereignty. If national boarders are “arbitrary lines in the sand” then nations do not have the legal authority to grant title to land within these “arbitrary” boarders. This means the property lines on your lot are every bit as “arbitrary” as our nation’s boarders.
The legal authority that allows – The People – to seize land in the Revolutionary War that was previously owned by Great Britain or purchase land that was previously owned by France or Mexico or Russia, is the same legal authority that allows – The People – to divide this property into parcels and assign ownership. You cannot have private property without recognizing the State’s right to acquire said property in the first place. That means national sovereignty. No sovereignty = no property rights.
Our ownership exists because the US has the legal authority to grant title and the military strength to enforce these claims not because you paid a mortgage. The People took / bought the land. The People broke the land into parcels. A Developer eventually bought the parcel and built homes. You bought the home. If the initial claim of ownership by – The People – was illegal then they did not have the right to grant title and your purchase was illegal as well.
I do not have the right to enter your home without being invited regardless of if you leave the doors and windows open or not. The same is true for entering the US. Negative behavior must have negative consequences or the behavior will be repeated. In this case more than 20 million times.
Comment by Max on 4 February 2010:
“Like Milton Friedman said, we cannot have both free immigration and a welfare state. I would support tearing down the wall providing that we end all social welfare programs.”
To this condition I would add the requisite removal of the promise of free primary and secondary education and college tuition assistance, bilingual assistance and medical care (you can’t be turned away from an ER regardless of your ability to pay and immigration status).
Ain’t gonna happen any time soon…so don’t tear down that wall yet!