In my experience, it seems that most of those vehemently opposed to immigration usually start off ranting about immigrants not learning the language and that any increased crime rates are directly attributable to immigration. This has recently been shown by several studies in different states to be a false assumption. And, recently, Lou Dobbs has been spreading an unsupported story that there has been a huge increase in leprosy in the United States caused by immigrants. Minimal research through the reports of the CDC and other agencies has shown this to be false.

So these things could lead one to think that the anti-immigration folks view immigrants as disease-ridden criminals who “won’t talk english good” like us “Real Amurricans” ALWAYS do. Which sounds pretty racist to me, but, hey. Whadda I know?

I have also noted that most anti-immigration folks generally tend to froth at the mouth mostly over Asians and Latinos. I never hear anything at all from the anti-immigration folks about immigrants from Canada or the former Soviet Union. So do Canadians and former Soviet citizens speak “gooder” english or something such that the anti-immigration folks don’t mind them so much? Hell, if speaking coherent english is the be all and end all of criteria, Bush must be deported immediately even though he is a “Real Amurrican”.

I also believe that employers must be held accountable for hiring illegals at sub-standard wages and sub-standard work conditions. Which they can then use to subtly, or not so subtly, intimidate “Real Amurricans” with the not-so-veiled threat that any “Real Amurricans” who might complain could easily be replaced with illegals. It is a win-win situation for employers. Yet any propopsed sanctions against the employers who hire illegals is rejected time after time by our so-called government representatives.

Another thing that bothers me about this immigration thing is that it isn’t like the 12 million, or whatever the number is, illegal immigrants just suddenly showed up today. This has been going on for decades. Why is it suddenly perceived as a monumental problem? It seems to me that this is a smoke-and-mirrors diversionary setup purposely created by a couple of talking heads on television. It is fear-based garnering of ratings and money and I don’t think the perpetrators care one way or the other except as to the bottom line of ratings and money. A mind paralyzed by fear cannot think rationally and is easily led into becoming the angry mob of villagers with torches going after the perceived enemy. So what if a few legitimate immigrants, or native born citizens who LOOK like immigrants, get caught up in the fever? They are just collateral damage right? Not OUR fault!

I don’t know the answer to this problem. I do know that I cannot blame anyone for wanting a better life so badly that they will pay big bucks to cross into the country and risk being murdered and/or left in the desert locked in the trailer of a semi-truck by the coyote to whom they paid thousands to get here.

To me, this suggests that part of the spirit of America was the idea that a nation founded on universal principles would open its citizenship to all who applied. Such that once they’re on our soil, sharing in the labor of the country and the responsibilities of republican government, they’re our citizens.

Just to touch on your point about infrastructure – this a major area where I see much less of a zero sum game. Fixing our roads, improving the quality of the air and the water, improving our schools and hospitals, etc. is something that benefits immigrants and citizens equally.

Look, it seems a little too convenient that you personally benefit from illegal Immigration, and yet you just happen to be supporting it on the moral merits of the matter. It’s extremely annoying that everyone else is racist for looking at their own personal self interest, and yet you think of yourself as a wonderfully liberal human being when you so clearly advocate keeping lower class Americans in their place and you speak so condescendingly of economic matters.

I appreciate the rest of your comment, but I still can’t understand how you expect to have categorically open borders as well as demand that the U.S. Government equally apply human rights to even *non-resident* aliens and this not be a dissolution of the American nation-state.

Look, aside the morality of the argument that there should be no distinction between American citizens and the rest of the world population with regard to government responsibility, there’s also the practical issue that at some point this does indeed become a zero sum game. The government’s — any government’s — resources are finite. You really mean to say that these resources are just as appropriately used to serve & protect & provide for citizens of another country as they are for a citizen of this country?

I don’t at all mean to insult you at all with this because I’m glad you care about what I think enough to take the trouble to give such a lengthy reply, but I have to say it: transferred to foriegn policy this is *exactly* the Trotskyite Internationalist-cum-neoconservative rationale for.. doing what it does. I mean, I’ve read Christopher Hitchens say the exact same thing — as when he attacked John Kerry for arguing that the money blown supposedly on Iraqi Firehouses would have been better spent here since we need refurbishment of that kind of infrastructure. Hitchens called this chauvinist and parochial and denied that zero sum games ever apply to government funds.

First, there is the issue of human rights. Or more precisely stating human rights as derived from conceptions of natural rights. No matter that the U.S government is obliged to respect the rights of its citizens first and foremost, it is also true that we have also obliged ourselves to respect the rights of all human beings regardless of their citizenship. This is a long-standing part of the American tradition, dating back long before the codification of modern human rights law in the post WWII era: the Declaration of Independence was couched in universal terms, “all men are created equal…and guaranteed certain natural rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Bill of Rights is famous for the fact that many of its important protections are accorded to “persons” not to citizens.” Thus, the argument can and should be made that the United States should extend certain rights to all peoples no matter their citizenship. This is a classical liberal perspective.

Second, from a historical perspective, America had open borders for peoples arriving to the US from within the Western Hemisphere up until the 1965 immigration reform. Mai Ngai’s Impossible Subjects is a very good take on how essentially the U.S’ illegal immigration problem, in so far as it extends to the Western Hemisphere, is one we created by changing legal definitions.

Third, assimilation is not a necessary part of immigration. Accommodation is. Assimilation takes the position that the immigrant must surrender their culture and heritage and take on the culture and heritage of their new country. Accommodation takes the position that the immigrant can maintain their culture , as long as they add to that certain key values of their new country within that idom. A great example of this would be the experiences of German-Americans before and after WWI. Before WWI, German immigrants had a lively German-language community, with its own press, social organizations, political clubs, etc. – all of whom were dealing with key aspects of American culture and belief in their own way; notably, the national anthem, the U.S Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, among other important national documents were translated into German. This same pattern was true for many other ethnic/language groups, including Polish, Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, etc. After WWI broke out, many of these groups were put under extreme pressure to “Americanize” by disbanding or de-emphasizing these groups, learning English while abandoning their mother tongue, and shutting down any interest in European politics. Randolph Bourne, in a famous article titled “Transnational America” argued that America should pursue a path of accommodation of immigrant groups, since the core ties of the United States were uniquely not cultural or ethnic in nature, but rather a shared commitment to universal political ideas, which could be shared across languages and cultures.

Fourth, the issue of the impact on the American economy is double-edged. On the one hand, it can be argued that increasing the supply of labor has a depressing effect on wages; however, it can also be argued that illegalizing that labor has a depressing effect on wages all of its own, since illegal workers don’t have the same kind of bargaining position as even non-union legal workers. Would open borders depress wages? Probably, to an extent.
Would legalization of illegal aliens increase wages? Probably, to an extent.
What would be the end result? Hard to say, but my guess is that it would be a wash, trending in the direction of a positive effect, especially once you factor in the fact that many immigrants come from nations with strong left-wing pro-union cultures and would be good candidates for unionization.

Finally, the question of if you have quotas, who should get in. This becomes problematic because asylum takes on a huge problem of what you consider to be worthy of asylum from: wars? how bout famine? epidemic disease? Wholesale deprivation? Lack of economic opportunity? Any way you slice it, either you are leaving out people who deserve a place or accepting in huge slices of the world’s population such that any semblance of quotas becomes absurd. One issue that is tangential is the means in which quotas are often handed out – today, we hand an equal number to each country, which doesn’t make much sense when you consider that the effective demand to go to the U.S in a country like Mongolia is different from the effective demand to go to the U.S in a country like Mexico.

Back to the point, we live in a world were capitalism rules. You say the IMF has never succeeded, I’d offer Mongolia, Laos, Georgia, Philippines, even Argentina. I could go on. All failures according to the screeds, but all successes in their way. The IMF offers a cover for local politicians to do the necessary evil, the evil required to be part of the grand capitalist world, and then blame the hard changes on the IMF.
The IMF is, in this way, almost christlike. They sacrifice themselves on the cross of public opinion for world good.

Of course, if we are arguing from the point that capitalism is evil and unacceptable,
we should stop right now and discuss what would be better (I have the answer, but that’s not the point here)

Georgia from 1994. Go ahead, look itup.

Of course those 20-miles-south people are entitled to the same set of rights, at least if we believe in the concept of inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, and which the Bill of Rights tries to embody.

The difference is, those people were born 20 miles south of the border, in Mexico. The US is not responsible for enforcing their rights, the Mexican government is, and all of international law and tradition says so. We just don’t have jurisdiction. If the Mexican government isn’t up to the task of securing those rights, that is a tragedy but not a reason for the US to intervene. Unless you think the US should be the world’s policeman, forcing nations to conform to the way we think they should do things. Worked real well in Iraq, didn’t it?

Of course, this doesn’t address the issue of what to do when Mexicans, or others, leave their government’s jurisdiction to come here illegally. But let’s keep clear on what the issue is, and avoid straw man distractions.

And since U.S. Federal agents have arrest powers in Mexico, I think that means at least everyone in Mexico deserves full citizenship rights within the U.S.

Offhand I’d be surprised if U.S. “interventions” weren’t typically followed by large influxes of immigrants from whatever country we’re fucking up lending a helping hand to this week.

On the other hand, I can’t bear taking sides with the nativists. It’s so obvious that they are motivated by hatred of the other and to ally myself with them would be against everything I hold dear. So it is a real conundrum.

I think we need more legal immigration. Enough to fulfill the legitimate needs of society for more workers who would then be fully protected by law. I am not sure exactly where that balance lies.

But I can’t and won’t join the haters.

Why would I assume that every person of Hispanic descent is a) Mexican or b) here illegally? That sounds pretty racist to me. (Especially since I live in Texas, where millions of people never crossed the border: the border crossed them.)

“Ah the Army, free food, free lodging, and all the brown people you can rape.” – Peter Griffin

STOP RAPING ME with your so-called “rational discussion�, you FUNK-FILLED-BRATWURST-WIELDING PIECE OF CRAP !!!
———–

That was beautiful…

(cries)

The problem is that most people who complain about illegal immigration *are* in fact thinly-veiled racists who want to keep lazy Mexicans out.

I’m against illegal immigration but I almost don’t like saying that because it lumps me in with those loonies.

I won’t expect further comment — I remember that finals were important to me back in the day… I hope this discussion comes up again here because I think it needs to be hashed out sooner than later.

I’ll say this — yeah, our government isn’t perfect — hell, even gwb instituted a parliamentary gov’t in iraq, and not a copy of our own. and yes, the two-party system sucks and health care needs higher priority — i think i agree with all that you criticized. but our form of government still provides for us to change all of these things within its structure. i think the fault here, dear brutus, is not in our government, but in ourselves, that we are complacent. that is not structural, but behavioral.

Nailed.

It’s not only necessary to enforce existing laws across the board, it’s also necessary to quit the head-cracking. That’s what’s got me all riled up….

Also an excellent question. Perhaps the answer is no, and the presence of 12 million illegals is evidence of that.