Why not Illegal Immigration? (updated)
Wizbang makes three excellent points about illegal immigration:
1) The U.S. is one of the easiest places in the world to which to immigrate legally. Those who can't be bothered to immigrate legally are line cutters, who should not be rewarded.
"These people, for whatever reason, hold themselves as above those rules. They consider their own circumstances as more important than others, and they don't need to bother with following the procedures that everyone else has to.
They're line-cutters. They're cheats. I don't like people who do that in daily life; those that do that are spitting in the faces of all those who are following the laws and coming here legally and properly, and on their behalf I am angered."
2) The argument that we need illegal immigrants to do the tasks others won't is the same bogus argument that used to be made in favor of slavery.
"...indentured servitude might be a better comparison to illegal alien labor than actual slavery. But the essence remains the same -- the notion is that a cheap source of labor is being exploited and used through fear of the power of law."
3) It's a bad idea to keep laws on the books that are not intended to be enforced, as it both teaches disrespect for the Law, and allows authorities to treat disfavored groups differently than favored groups.
"Laws that are unenforced merely cheapen respect for all other laws, and that's a nice start towards anarchy."
I'm in favor of permissive immigration laws regarding anyone who truly wants to become a real American, including learning about and adopting such American values as speaking our language and respecting the freedom of all our citizens.
Any newbie who cannot abide others also being free should not let the door hit them on the way out.
Earlier thoughts on this issue are here.
Update: Albion's Seedlings offers an excellent one-line summary of the issue:
"Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two."
Update2: The was a huge march by illegal immigrants yesterday in Chicago. The crowd was estimated at 100,000, and I can well believe it, as they filled the street where I work two miles from the march site for four straight hours. They marched to oppose an immigation bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Reflacting on the march and my earlier comments above, I now have 3 immigration goals:
1) Make it easy and cheap to enter legally for all who want to become real Americans (learn and practice American values, such as freedom for all.) Since we citizens have chosen not to have enough children to maintain our economy, we will need the assistance of immigrants, just as America so often has in the past.
2) Give everyone who is here legally, citizen or immigrant, a secure national ID card, rather than insecure substitutes like Social Security cards. Without the card, you wouldn't be able to work or obtain benefits, and employers and bureaucrats who violated that would be punished as severely as the still-illegals they hire or assist .
3) Put up fences to deter anyone from trying to bypass the process of legal immigration. Now that we have folks desirous of entering our country with weapons to do us harm, it is imperative that our borders become more secure. If this is not done, and another 9-11 results, the consequences for illegals may be extreme. Better to avoid that by bringing those who aspire to become like us legitimately into the family now, while barring all others at the gate.
Update3: Another big march by illegals in LA yesterday, full of Mexican and American flags. Liberal and conservative bloggers agree the Mexican flag-waving won't help their cause a bit. In response Wizbang has a few more relevant thoughts on the topic here.
Update4: Glenn Reynolds adds to the discussion:
"If we're going to have open immigration, let's change the law, not achieve that end through failure to enforce the laws we have."
"It's not really about security: Even if we tighten up the border with Mexico immensely, it won't stop terrorists from sneaking through if they want to. And even if we could accomplish that impossible end, they could still come in other ways. As long as we have easy visas for Saudi citizens, worrying about the Mexican border seems silly."
"It's only sort of about economics: President Bush likes to say that immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do. That's true, of course, but it's really more accurate to say that immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do at the wages businesses want to pay."
"A lot of it is anger at Washington: 'We pay taxes, they say there's a war on terror, and they can't even secure the border.'"
Update5: Thomas Sowell reminds us why he's one of my favorite thinkers:
"We could solve the problem of all illegal activity anywhere by legalizing it. Why use this approach only with immigration?"
"Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels — and those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants are willing to take those jobs."
"Politicians are afraid of losing the Hispanic vote and businesses want cheap labor."
"The old inevitability ploy is often trotted out in immigration debates: It is not possible to either keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here.
If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that may well be true. But does the fact that we cannot prevent every single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder?
Since existing immigration laws are not being enforced, how can anyone say that it would not do any good to try? People who get caught illegally crossing the border into the United States pay no penalty whatever. They are sent back home and can try again.
What if bank robbers who were caught were simply told to give the money back and not do it again? What if murderers who were caught were turned loose and warned not to kill again? Would that be proof that it is futile to take action, when no action was taken?"
Update6: Dick Morris offers a really good reason for us to wait until after July 2nd before making any final decisions about all this:
" On July 2, the Mexican people will decide whether to elect ultra-leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) as their next president.
Rumors have abounded for months that Lopez Obrador's campaign is getting major funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. ...
Between them, Venezuela and Mexico export about 4 million barrels of oil each day to the United States, more than one-third of our oil imports. ...
Lopez Obrador has attacked U.S. attempts to restrict Mexican immigration and will benefit tremendously if Congress alienates the Mexican electorate. A recent survey by John Zogby found that two-thirds of Mexicans feel Americans are racist and biased against them. A harsh shift in U.S. immigration policies could fuel a leftist victory in Mexico. "
Of course that cuts both ways. If an openly Anti-American candidate becomes Mexico's next President, support for properly fencing and defending that border would increase.
Update7:
Powerline points out that illegal immigrants to the U.S. who have no interest in becoming part of American culture threaten our future in somewhat the same way as do Muslim immigrants to Europe who have no interest in becoming part of the existing culture of Europe. Sadly, in both cases, the politically-correct response of non-immigrants is to pretend not to notice and thereby guarantee the eventual death of the existing culture. If there were nothing better about the existing culture than that of the new arrivals, perhaps it would not matter. But that is not the case. If you believe in freedom for all, including women and gays, Islamic Sharia law is a huge step backwards, never to be encouraged. I have similar concerns about justice for all in a Mexican-dominated future America.
"The similarities that really hit home for me lie in the attitudes of the host cultures: Europe and the US. Both are being irreversibly transformed by demographic changes wrought by influxes of peoples, legal and illegal, who are not going to assimilate in such a way as to perpetuate the culture as it exists--existed. But in both Europe and the US it is verboten to notice, discuss, debate, and certainly oppose this epochal--irreversible (Europe) or soon to be (US)--turning point in the history of mankind.
The fact that we are seeing a covergence on the extreme Left of Islamic jihadist and Hispanic separtist groups (would-be Reconquistadors who actually do hate the US) opposing the enforcement or strengthening of immigration law in the US suggests to me that, in making common cause, they have a similar objective--the further dissolution of 'the West.'"
Update8: Jeff Jacoby points out that while Congress dithers about illegal immigrants, not even obvious steps are being taken to help legal immigrants:
"No policy aim is advanced by separating legal immigrants from their spouses and children — especially when the only immigrants affected are those who have proclaimed their commitment to this country by becoming permanent residents. Congress didn't set out deliberately to put Sumathi and Jeevan and others like them through emotional torment. But by holding down the annual number of immigrant visas available to the spouses and kids of green-card holders, it unwittingly created a giant backlog.
Happily, the problem can be solved: Congress has only to remove the annual quota on visas for immediate relatives of legal permanent residents, thereby clearing up the backlog and eliminating the long wait. Legislation introduced by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska would make that change. An alternative solution, offered by Representative Robert Andrews of New Jersey, would allow the spouse and minor children of green-card holders to enter the United States on a special ''V visa," and to live here while waiting for their immigration petitions to be approved."
Update9: Peggy Noonan in recommending President Bush focus on the integrity of America's borders as the #3 task in his last 1,000 days as President adds a great comparison: "Congress and the White House right now are like people who live in a big house who have finally noticed the kitchen is on fire. So they all meet in the living room and debate how exactly to rebuild the kitchen, what color to repaint the walls, and how to get the best deal on a new microwave. And while they are holding their discussion they're forgetting to do the most important thing. They're forgetting to put out the fire. You can lose a house this way. Putting out the fire in this case is closing and policing the essentially open border with Mexico--now. Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)"
Update10: Yesterday's Daily Herald included a story of various folks happily hiring illegal immigrant day laborers from day labor centers, including a taxpayer-funded one in San Bernardino, California.
What caught my attention about this is that the advantages cited: cheap wages, no paperwork, and no delays are only advantages because they bypass the minimum wage, fair employment and occupational safety laws the same folks probably support fervently in every election. They are all for such laws, until they are personally affected, and then all of a sudden they are big, if unconscious supporters of libertarian and small-government Republican values.
Update11: The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins is with me on the idea of helping this situration with a secure national ID, and couples that with easy immigration to anyone who pays for the ID. In my opinion we've needed this for many years. I know the privacy advocates worry about it, but frankly, we're already being tracked by pretty much anyone interested via RFID, cookies, GPS phones, Googling our names, and many more ways. In my opinion it no longer makes any sense that drivers licenses and social security cards are much less secure than credit cards.
"Fuss in Washington notwithstanding, there's an easy way to reduce illegal immigration. It doesn't involve building fences or spending hundreds of billions to create an intrusive bureaucracy to hunt down illegals one by one and deport them. Just introduce a fraud-proof national ID card with biometric information; make it illegal, with real penalties, for employers to hire anyone, citizen or immigrant, who doesn't have one.
...
So how about just open the door to anyone willing to put down a refundable entry deposit (say, $2,000) in return for a biometric work card? At a stroke, this would take the profit out of a vast underground industry. Chinese "snakeheads" cadge upwards of $40,000 per illegal immigrant. Latin "coyotes" get $2,000 or more. Not to mention the sizeable business done by document forgers and traffickers in stolen Social Security numbers.
This deposit could be charged off against future income tax liability (note, not payroll taxes), an incentive for immigrants to stay legal and move up into the bracket-worthy classes. It could be refunded when they leave the country--an incentive to return home if jobs become scarce in the U.S."
