Immigration, Democrats, Republicans and the NY Times
Tom Cotton, the junior United States Senator from Arkansas had a piece in the NY Times:
President-elect Trump now has a clear mandate not only to stop illegal immigration, but also to finally cut the generation-long influx of low-skilled immigrants that undermines American workers.
Yet many powerful industries benefit from such immigration. They’re arguing that immigration controls are creating a low-skilled labor shortage.
“We’re pretty much begging for workers,” Tom Nassif, the chief executive of Western Growers, a trade organization that represents farmers, said on CNN. A fast-food chain founder warned, “Our industry can’t survive without Mexican workers.”
These same industries contend that stricter immigration enforcement will further shrink the pool of workers and raise their wages. They argue that closing our borders to inexpensive foreign labor will force employers to add benefits and improve workplace conditions to attract and keep workers already here.
I have an answer to these charges: Exactly.
Higher wages, better benefits and more security for American workers are features, not bugs, of sound immigration reform. For too long, our immigration policy has skewed toward the interests of the wealthy and powerful: Employers get cheaper labor, and professionals get cheaper personal services like housekeeping. We now need an immigration policy that focuses less on the most powerful and more on everyone else.
Wasn’t this the Democrat’s position not long ago? When and why did that change?
Update…
1. If it isn’t clear, Cotton is a Republican
2. The bolded section was part of Cotton’s piece, but I chose to bold it as I felt it was worth a special highlight.
It didn’t.
You have just built a straw man(well, it has been around for a long time), and delight in postings columns filled with your own thoughts for both sides of the issues.
EMichael,
You forgot to call me a racist again. You also seem to have forgotten about Hilary Clinton’s campaign which wasn’t all that long ago. I note that her campaign’s website is still up, and you could read her official position on immigration here.
About the only limit on immigration that she wanted to place was here:
. That’s pretty much it where it came to enforcement. And the platform page on immigration also included this quote from a Clinton speech about “comprehensive immigration reform” which, as I noted, does not include enforcement at all:
” it strengthens families, strengthens our economy, and strengthens our country. … We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship.”
So… the position of the Democrat’s nominee for President a mere month and a half ago was that violent people should be kept out, everyone else should be protected by executive action, and that this added supply of labor would strengthen the economy and make families better off.”
If that is in any way compatible with “enforce immigration laws to keep labor supply down and boost wages for low income Americans” I’m not smart enough to see it. And let’s be realistic – neither are you.
Once again, no.
Anywhere in there where she talks about open borders? Of course not.
“Enforce immigration laws humanely. Immigration enforcement must be humane, targeted, and effective.”
Now, wtf does that say to you?
As I said, it is your straw man, talk to it.
Seditionist Sen. Tom Cotton bleats: “President-elect Trump now has a clear mandate . . .”
Actually, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million. That doesn’t include people who voted 3rd party or who didn’t vote because they supported neither Clinton nor Trump. Ergo, Trump has no “mandate” of any kind. Anyone who asserts otherwise should either be ignored or openly ridiculed.
Mike:
So you and Tom are going to lay this at Immigration’s feet? and not look at the 2008 Recession causing under employment of Labor Intensive jobs also jobs requiring a College Education, Automation of Labor Intensive Jobs being automated and Labor Intensive resourcing to Asia? It appears you are looking for a scapegoat other than reality. Are you and Tom Cotton offering up crop picking to automotive assembly, turret lathe, and NC Labor as an alternative?
Furthermore cheap Labor came about more the result of Capital keeping the productivity gains resulting from the implementation of automation and also resourcing overseas.
Tom Cotton is tail coating on to Trump’s supposition and conjecture which people are following thinking it will happen. The Carrier job save was a lie.
Any discussion that begins with a premise based on a Tom Cotton quote is worthless. Cotton is a dishonest tool.
We’re pretty much begging for workers,” Tom Nassif, the chief executive of Western Growers, a trade organization that represents farmers, said on CNN.
Well, according to market economies, this can be solved by raising wages in an environment where an employer cannot find workers.
Course, that is not what the want. They want workers to work for nothing, and then they complain because people won’t take the job.
Joel,
I agree that the country is too divided for there to be what most of us understand as a mandate to exist. Cotton does overstate his position.
Run,
I cannot speak for Cotton, nor would I have an interest in doing so. One doesn’t need to blame immigration for the 2008 recession in order to recognize that more illegal immigrants results in lower wages and less opportunity for lower skilled workers who are in the US legally. As I noted in other posts, that used to be the position of the California Democrats in the 1990s. It was the position held labor leaders like Cesar Chavez.
Now, are there other factors that hurt those at the low end of the totem pole, such as automation? Sure, there are. But as I’ve noted in other contexts, the fact that you have inadvertently consumed arsenic is not a good reason to take a cyanide chaser. The fact that automation is and will continue to take jobs away from people here legally is not a good reason to add other factors which also take jobs away from people here legally.
It is likely that neither Trump nor Cotton know what they are doing, but the fact remains, what Cotton stated used to be the position of the Democrats. And I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t still be the position of the Democrats.
EMichael,
Please. Her version of “humanely” means don’t do anything that forces people to choose between following the law and inconveniencing themselves. Here’s a more explicit version of that, from the page I cited earlier:
“The three- and 10-year bars force families—especially those whose members have different citizenship or immigration statuses—into a heartbreaking dilemma: remain in the shadows, or pursue a green card by leaving the country and loved ones behind.”
Another example:
“The estimated 5 million people eligible for DAPA—including DREAMers and parents of Americans and lawful residents—should be protected under the executive actions.”
And this…
“Hillary will enact a simple system for those with sympathetic cases—such as parents of DREAMers, those with a history of service and contribution to their communities, or those who experience extreme labor violations—to make their case and be eligible for deferred action.”
So… the DREAMers should be protected because they were brought here without their knowledge. The parents of DREAMERs, who presumably were the ones who did knowingly break the law, well, they should be protected because they are a sympathetic case. And those who aren’t DREAMERs or parents of DREAMERs but who have worked in a community are a sympathetic case too, and therefore should also be protected. That covers pretty much everyone who has crossed our borders illegally except single people who crossed the border this morning and haven’t had a chance to get work yet. So who exactly are the people to whom immigration laws should apply, if everybody is a sympathetic special case who should be protected by executive action?
So if I get this right, Mike Kimmel is proposing or implying that Trump is taking the Democratic stance on immigration policy, huh? Since I’m a liberal and a Democrat that’s not at all what I’ve understood to be the case I never heard of a Democrat who wants to build a wall (or anything even remotely having the same effect). I’ve never heard a Democrat who proposed and campaigned on rounding up all the illegals and deporting them.
And I’ve written in response to Kimel before about his claim related Caesar Chavez being absolutely false. Chavez only wanted the illegals to join the union.. not stop them from coming into the country or stop them from working. He was opposed to growers who hired non-union workers. whether legal or illegal wasn’t his issue.
lol, the 2008 recession is long over and its effects are now coming into practically nill run. You need to try harder.
Republicans talk that way about “immigration” all the time and lie. They love illegal immigration and would do anything, including building a wall, to keep that ferry train off the radar and if a wall makes that illusion stick, so be it. Kimel doesn’t respect the lie. Democrats still have that basic policy and that part, Kimel is forgetting that.
The Rage:
To blame the impact of lost, lost jobs to immigration when clearly most of it was the cause of automation, resourcing overseas, and businesses disappearing is just plain silly. Even Martin Ford wrote about this forth coming phenomena:
https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817 also: http://www.feld.com/archives/2010/01/the-lights-in-the-tunnel.html
In my consulting over the last 30-40 years, I was faced with the same. It is about eliminating Overhead tied to Labor and for years now, everyone ignorant of the Costs of Manufacturing have insisted it is Labor. Labor intensive work goes to Labor intensive countries and Capital Intensive work goes to Capital Intensive Countries . . . Heckscher–Ohlin therom.
The 2008 crash is still impacting us and will for years to come as the jobs have no been recovered from 2001 and 2006. Those worth recovering will probably never be recovered as they are long gone to other places or worked out o the system. Your best hope is to reduce weekly work hours as Roosevelt want to do and as Sandwichman advocates.
Longtooth,
Sheesh. Less than 30 seconds. I repeat: less than 30 seconds. That’s how long as it took me to find this article which includes this blurb:
Interestingly enough, when I saw him speak circa 1990, he said roughly the same thing. I know you keep insisting what the newspapers at the time were reporting isn’t true, and that transcripts of his speeches don’t reflect what he said, but I can only point out what I read and heard directly from the horse’s mouth.
As to people running on rounding up illegal immigrants, even the Donald didn’t run on that. He said he’d make changes that would lead immigrants to self-deport, after all.
Limiting illegal immigration has, as I’ve stated before, been a typical Democrat position. From the 1994 Jordan Commission Report (headed by Barbara Jordan – not exactly a right winger), mandated by Ted Kennedy’s (also not a right winger) 1990 Immigration Act and endorsed by President Clinton (also not a right winger):
Now, Barbara Jordan, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were not exactly back-benchers at this time. And the whole “we believe that unlawful immigration is unacceptable” should be a tip-off that establishment Democrats in the mid-1990s believed unlawful immigration is unacceptable.
And as I noted before, they weren’t in favor of rounding up anyone:
The Rage,
I didn’t bring up the 2008 Recession. I responded to a comment about it. I don’t think the 2008 Recession is vital to this conversation. Your comment about the Democrats still have the basic policy means what exactly when the basic policy they have now is so different than the basic policy they had before. You can argue that something like the Jordan Commission was dead wrong if you’d like, but its one thing to make that argument and another thing to pretend that the Democrats still have the same policy.
Automation and process changes are bigger factors than immigration. The man hours required to produce a ton of steel are 1/5 what they were 30 years ago. Is it then surprising that employment in steel work is down hard (eastern OH and western PA). Other fields have similar reductions in labor required. Looking ahead what happens when in 20-30 years most truck driving jobs are replaced by self driving vehicles?
But then we have seen this happen for 120 years in ag, and the trend continues, even today driving a tractor with a heated/AC cab etc is far easier than the open tractor of the 1950s. Self driving tractors are a far easier problem in that the problem space is far smaller, as also self driving combines. Soon the tractor operator will be in an office with webcams providing a view of what is going on around the gang of tractors, so that the tractor can call for help if needed.
Actually automation/process changes in the long term first eliminated the job of the telephone operator. They also made domestic travel agents jobs go away (as with telephone operators it became a do it your self job).
Next are the order taking part of a fast food job, and other areas that will be changed to self service on a smart phone/tablet.
Lyle:
Thanks . . .
MAGIC BULLET (in “modern” economies they call it the only sensible way to do business): Labor unions + (plus) centralized bargaining (a.k.a., sector wide labor agreements = native workers get hired first.
Collective bargaining sets the price of labor by the max the (ultimate) consumer is willing to pony up — not the min the most desperate employee will suffer (race-to-the-bottom). Which would mean that (here in Chicago anyway) fast food would attract American (more educated, capable-of-detecting-irony-in-the-English-language) employees. American employees would also be attracted to stacking shelves even if they didn’t like that as much as factory work — if pretty much all normal jobs paid $20/hr.
The Wage That Meant Middle Class, by Louis Uchitelle, APRIL 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weekinreview/20uchitelle.html
My opinion: most $10/hr jobs could pay $20. My opin: if they did, then, 100,000 out of (guesstimate) 200,000 Chicago gang age, minority males would not be in drug dealing (and who knows what else) street gangs. IT JUST TAKES THE MAGIC BULLET — the essential to healthy economic and political ingredient that has disappeared from American life.
cut-and-paste on the latter assertion
You can’t get something from nothing but, believe it or not, the money is there, somewhere to make $10 jobs into $20. Bottom 45% of earners take 10% of overall income; down from 20% since 1980 (roughly — worst be from 1973 but nobody seems to use that); top 1% take 20%; double the 10% from 1980.
Top 1% share doubled — of 50% larger pie!
One of many remedies: majority run politics wont hesitate to transfer a lot of that lately added 10% from the 1% back to the 54% who now take 70% — who can transfer it on down to the 45% by paying higher retail prices — with Eisenhower level income tax. In any case per capita income grows more than 10% over one decade to cover 55%-to-45% income shifting.
Not to mention other multiple efficiencies — to get multiple-10%’s back:
squeezing out financialization;
sniffing out things like for-profit edus (unions providing the personnel quantity necessary to keep up with society’s many schemers;
snuffing out $100,000 Hep C treatments that cost $150 to make (unions supplying the necessary volume of lobbying and political financing;
less (mostly gone) poverty = mostly gone crime and its criminal justice expenses.
IOW, labor unions = a normal country that need not fear immigration.
Mike,
So you have determined that Clinton was not going to follow immigration law in terms of illegals entering the country because she said she would follow the law, but you know better cause you are Kimel.
I’ll tell you what. You seem to have as many hidden sources as Donald Trump. Now, you don’t have to name names, but can you tell me what sources told you Hillary’s plan to flood the country with illegal immigrants?
EMichael,
My hidden source is Ms. Clinton’s campaign website. As I noted… she wants group a) protected by executive action (her words, not mine) and group b) protected by executive action and group c) protected by executive action, and when you add them up, the only ones who don’t fall into those groups who are to be protected by executive action are the those who arrived today and don’t have a job yet, and possibly those who get convicted of murder or rape.
Lyle,
Again, inadvertently swallowing a bit of arsenic is not a good argument for having a cyanide chaser. And if you think the two are reversed, fine… inadvertently swallowing a bit of cyanide is not a good argument for having an arsenic chaser.
Drew,
I agree with you in principal, but in practice, as Cesar Chavez noted, it doesn’t work if there is a vast pool of labor that can be added that won’t participate in the collective bargaining.
Yeah, but you are not talking about what I am talking about.
talking about how we deal with illegals that are already in this country, and many who have been here for decades, is not the same as opening borders to illegals.
this isn’t that hard.
Mike Kimel,
You are wasting your time. It is too soon after the presidential election to have a dialog with the party faithful of the Democratic party. They are experiencing grief and only time will bring them back to a rational consideration of why they lost the election. They lost the election in the only meaningful way that they could, but, at this point they don’t even really believe that they lost. If another presidential election occurred in 6 months, they would rerun Hillary Clinton’s campaign with small, inconsequential changes. (Absolutely no changes on free trade treaties or illegal immigration.)
But eventually they will moderate their positions. The losing major party always does, that is why we don’t have viable third parties in the United States.
Automation has been with us long before the declines brought on by NAFTA and other free trade treaties. It has been the background noise which is only now beginning to increase more quickly. Automation doesn’t explain the past 25 years.
The persistent lack of American consumer demand was brought on by free trade treaties which benefited corporate America at the expense of American workers. American workers lost jobs and the ability to bargain over pay when corporations moved large amounts of production to foreign countries.
And illegal immigration exacerbated that problem. Especially for those Americans with only a high school diploma or less.
Consumers can not spend what they do not have, and producers will not produce what they can not sell. So the economic growth in the US is inadequate.
The American voting consumers in the rust belt states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have spoken. American voting consumers will speak again in 2 years.
Our economy has been evolving into something which can not be sustained in a democracy. (Nor in a Republic.)
EMichael,
She uses terms like “sympathetic,” not terms like “long-standing.”
JimH,
I am a liberal, perhaps as a result of a long-standing familiarity with national level data and an interest in economic growth. If I can do my small bit to try to derail stupid ideas that lead to worse outcomes, I will, even if I have to tilt at a lot of windmills.
Mike,
Just stop with only using the words you like and ignoring the ones that don’t fit your thoughts.
EMichael, talking about how we deal with illegals that are already in this country, and many who have been here for decades, is not the same as opening borders to illegals? Kimel doesn’t know that; he thinks they’re the same. Sure, it isn’t that hard, but there are people who simply lack the ability to distinguish between things that are that obviously different, and he’s among them. This is one of his hallmarks, like a bird tag or something.
Here’s something else he hasn’t figured out, or at least hasn’t admitted to recognizing: that if your ACTUAL concern is that illegal immigrants lower wages for others and allow Big Corporations to make out like bandits by paying them below the minimum wage because these folks must stay hidden in the shadows and have no legal recourse, there are only two ways to change that re the roughly 11 million who already are here.
One is to deport all of them, an impossibility without expending huge amounts of money and running roughshod over the civil rights of Hispanics who are here legally, by massive racial profiling and raids—a police state of sorts. Or you could allow them to stay legally and grant them work permits and a path to citizenship—i.e., remove the banditry by the employers.
Longtooth, if you think Kimel can recognize the distinction between deporting 11 million people and allowing them to remain here and work here legal thus forcing their employers to PAY THEM MINIMUM WAGE, you’ll be dearly disappointed. He can’t.
PS: Relatedly, a main part of his modus operandi is to take something that someone (a Dem, or Dems, usually) said about something that someone from the opposite side of the political spectrum (Trump or some other right-winger) also said something about, and claim that since both used a particular word or term or phrase, the Dem or Dems agreed with Trump’s or some other winger’s current position.
I mean, hey; didn’t they BOTH say SOMETHING ABOUT THAT SUBJECT? Yes! Ergo, they said the same thing!
Re my comment to Longtooth, should say, “work here legally,” not “work here legal.”
Immigrants should not work here as lawyers; they’re too smart for that.
I realize I never gave this any thought, but someone really wise wrote this at Angry Bear nine years ago and it seems right to me today:
Apply some strong sanctions to companies hiring illegal immigrants and soon self-deportation kicks in.
Of course, that wise poster wasn’t original. As I noted upthread, the Jordan Commission (as in noted right wing fascist Barbara Jordan) had recommended employer sanctions as a way to encourage self-deportations 14 years before that post. But nothing works if there is no enforcement.
Hmm. It almost sounds like your real interest is in getting them out of the country for the sake of getting them out of the country, rather than for the sake of ending employers’ ability to pay their employees less than minimum wage.
Beverly,
My reasoning is precisely what was stated by Cotton in the main post, and in the Jordan Commission report, etc., namely, to benefit Americans. The current policy that involves looking the other way screws over more Americans than it benefits, and in particular, screws over those Americans with the fewest options.
Note that I am not talking my book. As I have noted in other posts, I am a realist and figured out how to set up my affairs in such a way that I win more than I lose from the current structure. I am a landlord. The more people there are in this country, the better it is for me. Additionally, I don’t think illegal immigrants are competing with me for my day job either. And I know that the presence of illegal immigrants drives down the cost of various goods I buy.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the current structure is screwing over Americans with many fewer options than I have. So I am perfectly willing to take a hit if that is the cost of having a more rational policy that helps the Americans who are getting screwed today.
More generally, I have nothing against people from other countries. I have lived abroad about a third of my life. And if the opportunity presented itself to, say, live in Rio for a few years, I would take that opportunity in a heartbeat. I am no xenophobe. But without border enforcement, countries stop existing because the culture that makes a country what it is can get swamped if it gets diluted too much, too fast. Immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive. If they come from a culture that made a wreck of somewhere else, there is a good chance that the culture they bring will have a deleterious effect on this one as well. And I happen to feel that the world benefits from the existence of the United States.
I believe Mexicans have a right to determine how Mexico gets run and who gets into Mexico. And I believe that collectively, Mexicans would be aghast if the Mexican government decided to allow in 11 million people without any controls, particularly if those 11 million were competing for jobs with the poorest Mexicans. If those 11 million also included people who did not profess positive will toward Mexicans, and I think Mexicans would be horrified by any government official who was not in favor of reversing course.
But there is nothing special about Mexicans. I believe the same thing is true for Guatemalans, Brazilians, Germans, Japanese people, etc. I think they have the right to determine what happens in their country, to determine who gets into their country, and aren’t enthusiastic about very large amounts of unregulated immigration contrary to their country’s laws. I don’t see what is wrong with Americans having the same privileges and opinions to the US.
Scary thought about farm workers, Mike, but I am talking about legislation that will free everyone to organize or join a collective bargaining unit without fear — first in progressive states, eventually all 50. Get enough progressive progress and we can to it via Congress.
PS California has a 35 page pdf handbook for farm worker unionizing that mirrors the federal labor law.
PPS Anybody left outside federal labor law (e.g., NLRA, RLA) can be covered by such mirror state law — or at least some such law. Just strike out the word “agricultural” before the word “worker” in California law, for instance. If student instructors and research assistants are bumped from employee category by Trump loaded NLRB, their organizing efforts can immediately be covered by state laws.
Even in as progressive a state as Oregon farm workers lost by one vote in the legislature a law that would conduct elections for them — about 15 years ago; no try since. I guess it’s easy to ignore the poorest anywhere. Team them with college students and both will be a lot harder to ignore. Have complementing campaign strengths too: farm worker desperation plus upscale expectations for more full protection.
But even if states could legally mirror fed labor union law for all workers with no difficulty with preemption it wouldn’t help a single bit — unless the states included enforcement — like making union busting the felony that most-critical-of-all-markets muscling ought to be. Under current law employers don’t even catch a $100 fine.
Fedex: 650 planes, 45,000 trucks. UPS: 550 planes, 60,000 trucks. But, Fedex workers fall under RLA (railroad) and can only organize the entire country all at once for a national certification election. Try that with an employer ready to fire anyone who looks at an organizer.
Fedex employees are I think especially tough enough to organize even in the face employer (truck drivers and warehouse personnel) — if they could do it one local at a time instead of the whole country at once. Assuming that does not change, imagine if Fedex employees in protected states communicating with each other via today’s social media working on eventually organizing a national election. A never ending media story and therefore culture changer.
PPPPS. Nate Cohn of NYT says Trump won by trading places with Obama: playing the blue collar v. Wall Street Hillary — exactly like Obama the working class defender v. Wall Street Romney. Just start pushing local union enabling legislation (simple punishment of employers intimidating free association and free speech enough) and the Republican party will have no place to hide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
Immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive? What the hell are you talking about? Almost the entire history of this country, dating back to about the 1840s, was about immigrants leaving their culture behind when they arrive.
Your ancestors apparently did, mine did, everyone whose ancestors came from non-British or Scottish Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East, from the Caribbean, as well as from Mexico and Central and South America and Africa post-Civil War, did. They retained some of the traditions and other cultural aspects such as food, to some extent, for a while, but that’s not what you mean, of course.
You’ve spend months and months now railing about immigrants, stating again and again a clear falsity—that immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive—immune to the obvious, which is that that is not true.
You deviate from that singular claim here and there to present some pretext, like that all you care about is that these illegal immigrants’ less-than-minimum wages lower wages for other workers, but when cornered about removing that issue by allowing them to work legally and thus gaining them legal wages, you trot out the obviously silly immigrants-don’t-leave-their-culture-behind-when-they-arrive line, and ultimate admit, as you just did in your final paragraph, that your real concern is race.
YOUR ancestors didn’t dilute American-ness, American culture, American civilization. But THEIRS DOES. And we’re entitled to deport them if we wanna. And you wanna.
We get it. We get it.
Months and months and months and months of circular bait, switch, misdirect, rebait, switch, repeat, deny, admit, misdirect, and admit, to drive home the point that you believe that immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive, and non-white immigrants dilute American culture intolerably. Unlike your ancestors, who were not British or Scottish but who were white.
“[We’re] entitled to deport them if we wanna.”
Do you dispute that, Beverly?
Beverly,
To state it plainly, I am against any illegal immigration at all. That means that if there was only one illegal immigrant in this country, and it was a blond haired blue eyed stereotypical Swede called Sven, I’d want Sven deported. I think failure to follow laws has a pernicious effect on society. Also, the fact that nobody was following immigration laws in 1600 or 1700 or 1800 is not a reason to not have such laws and enforce them today. (And if you are wondering why I don’t mention Sven very often, ask yourself what percentage of the illegal immigrants in this country fit Sven’s description.)
I also note that I support the existence of laws in other countries. As I noted, as much as it would be nice for me personally to be able to traipse into and out of Mexico or Canada at will, I think the people of those countries should have the right to determine who goes to Mexico and under what conditions.
Now, in terms of legal immigration, I would prefer to have immigrants who will make more than the current median income, not less. I love my country and would like it to prosper. I want people coming who have skills that are in high demand, not people coming who will drive down wages for those who are already poor. It turns out that immigrants from some countries are disproportionately likely to do well, and immigrants from some countries are disproportionately likely to do poorly in the US (or in Denmark or in Japan). Such countries are also, not by coincidence at all, likely to be poor performers themselves.
Finally, I think it is fairly reasonable to ask more questions about people coming from a country which produces immigrants who generally don’t well in the US.
Now, feel free to point out how this is different from something I have stated before. But as I’ve stated before, quote me. Don’t merely state what you think I’ve been saying.
We have been deporting them forever, but they always seem to find a way back in.
Illegals are not seen, they are hidden. We have a right to deport them, but by the time we find them, they are “established”. The wetbacks/Latino stereotype is older than the hills and goes back 150 years.
Mike, your problem is, thinking it is easy and doable. The truth is, since the 2000 budget, government resources to controlling illegal immigration has been rising. While this has gone on, we have seen the Latin peak and now the latin pullout. The 90’s African wave. The current influx is Asiatic in bulk. I don’t think you have the moxie for what really needs to be done to stop business from importing people. It isn’t a magic bullet shot. It is a labor policy that needs several different solutions.
“Illegal immigration” won’t end in this country until we arrest and imprison those who hire them and fine anyone who pays for their services. Yep, if you stay at a hotel, eat at a restaurant, play at a golf course, buy food from a grocery store that uses “illegal Immigrant” labor, you should pay a steep fine. Anything less then this is unserious.
And maybe you can start calling them “undocumented workers” instead of “illegal aliens.” People aren’t “illegal,” although their actions may be.
Mike, your statement:
“But without border enforcement, countries stop existing because the culture that makes a country what it is can get swamped if it gets diluted too much, too fast. Immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive. If they come from a culture that made a wreck of somewhere else, there is a good chance that the culture they bring will have a deleterious effect on this one as well. And I happen to feel that the world benefits from the existence of the United States.”
Is what is referred as being an ultranationalist xenophobe… somebody opposed to other cultures and people who immigrate (legally or otherwise) or who propose or encourage modifications to or allowances for other cultures, or who aren’t going along with the current dominant racially based beliefs, culture, religion, etc.demographic makeup of local or national conditions .
What you consider “best for Americans” or for “Americans best benefits” necessarily must therefore be at odds with what other nations and citizens of those nations consider best for themselves as well. But ther playing field isn’t level, Mike… so the fact that the US occupies a very large proportion of the land mass on the globe and that that land-mass has a far greater abundance of natural reourcess you think is “Americans” by some act of your god or because in the late 17th century 18th century the invaders defeated the present inhabitants and took over the land mass by might makes right and use that might to dominant and take what it wanted for “Americans best interests’ from other nations.
What “Americans” think is “best” for them created the Civil War, Mexican war (and Texas and the rest of the western north American land mass) the Spanish American War, the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war…
What “Americans” considered “best for Americans” created the laws and allowed them to be created and enforced that allowed the former confederate states to hold the former but freed slaves (who were also Americans) in virtual slave servitude & subjugation for another century after the civil war.
You would apparently and preferably have opposed Nixon’s sojourn to China and the subsequent changes that the US helped and promoted to bring China into trade with the US and then world trade… and lament that fact that international trade has subsequently moved labor from wealthy nations who were and remain well ahead in standards of living to those that are still aspiring to catch up.
You apparently take the position that if Americans can do what’s best for Americans it’s perfectly alright even when and if its at the direct expense of the benefits of people from other nations.
If borders are your means of protecting American’s interests then so ar the borders of US states the means of protecting State’s citizens interests for themselves — independent of whether it’s at the direct expense of other states and their citizens or even at the direct expense of citizens within the state’s borders.
You can extend this same reasoning and justification to county borders and city borders, then make borders within cities (“this side of the tracks, and that side of the tracks”) that protect one side’s benefits at the expense of the other’s interests and even take it down to one city block’s borders relative to the others, and pretty soon what you’ve created is the ultimate system of chaos or more likely the ideal libertarian society.
As best I can tell from what you’ve written in this and your other entries in this blog you’re a libertarian whether you realize it yet or not. wirtrFrom
The Rage,
Doable yes. We don’t have the willingness you see in some other countries to be violent enough to secure our borders. Fair enough. Different countries, different strokes. My comment upthread provided another way. Put people in jail who hire individuals who are not legal citizens. If there are teeth in it, sooner or later those who aren’t here legally self-deport.
Joel,
Undocumented doesn’t mean illegal. A person may be in the US legally, and not have documents. Illegal means illegal.
Longtooth,
“Is what is referred as being an ultranationalist xenophobe”
Sure. The guy who lived a third of his life abroad is afraid of foreigners.
And if I was an ultranationalist, I would support things for the US that I don’t support for other countries. As I said, I support every country’s right to decide who comes into the nation’s borders. I also think it would be wise for every country to adopt policies that generate positive growth. There is nothing that I advocate for the US that I don’t advocate for Japan or Nigeria or Peru or Kazakhistan.
“so the fact that the US occupies a very large proportion of the land mass on the globe and that that land-mass has a far greater abundance of natural reourcess ”
I lived in Brazil which is almost as large, and arguably has more resources. Russia definitely is larger, and has more natural resources while having much lower population density. So what? I am not advocating trying to take anything away from them. I support their right to do what is good for Russia, not what is right for the US, within Russia’s borders. What is the problem? How is that making me an ultranationalist?
“You would apparently and preferably have opposed Nixon’s sojourn to China and the subsequent changes that the US helped and promoted to bring China into trade with the US and then world trade”
Trade is fine. But back in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s, it was the position of Democrats that Milton Friedman was unbalanced if he believed that there was no reason to complain if the Chinese were sending us stuff in exchange for what he called “little green pieces of paper.” I am with the Democrats at the time that only sucker accepts trade with a finger on the scale.
“You apparently take the position that if Americans can do what’s best for Americans it’s perfectly alright even when and if its at the direct expense of the benefits of people from other nations.”
Within US borders, yes. We don’t have a right to impose things within someone else’s borders. (I am also against exporting pollution across someone else’s borders.) I also advocate Mexico’s right to do what is best for Mexico within Mexico’s borders. Is that some sort of a problem? Why shouldn’t the Mexicans be allowed to make their own policy choices? Who are you to decide what they should be allowed to do?
“You can extend this same reasoning and justification to county borders and city borders,”
Sure, your silly example of a US with no federal government does imply silly consequences.
” blog you’re a libertarian whether you realize it yet or not”
So you start out by writing that I am an ultranationalist, and end up with the conclusion that I am a libertarian. What next? Am I a peace loving war monger? An ascetic hedonist? A well mannered gauche? All of the above, and neither, and more?
Ah! It’s not that immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they arrive, after all! It’s that THE LAW MUST BE FOLLOWED!!
EVERY law, Mike, or only the ones that require deportation of 11 million people most of whom aren’t named Sven, and who if they were allowed to stay and work legally—i.e., via a change in THE LAW—would, by remaining in their jobs, raise wages across the low-income board by suddenly having to be paid minimum wage? Just wonderin’.
Also wonderin’ what will be the next REAL REASON you’ll claim. You’re on your third one in this thread, I believe. But surely not your last.
Beverly,
The fact that 6 = 4 + 2 doesn’t prevent 6 = 5 + 1 from being true as well. Driving drunk is a bad idea both because it impairs your ability to avoid accidents and because it is against the law. Neither of these sentences is self-contradictory.
Stating that illegal immigration is against the law and stating that there are good reasons for it to be against the law is also not self-contradictory, nor is it in any way changing one’s story. That thing perched on your neck is called a head. Use it.
“To state it plainly, I am against any illegal immigration at all.”
We get it, Mike.
Here’s the thing. In no way, shape or form have you shown that there are any politicians who do not have that same thought.
But that does not stop you from droning with this particular straw man.
Longtooth, that isn’t Libertarianism, but more like Anarchism. There is no love for the merchant caste.
Yep, Law and Order is what we need more of, right Mike? The only question is who’s law and order? Which versions? and then there’s that problematic “enforcement” issue, huh? Since anybody in this country without the right official permissions is “illegally” here then we just need to enforce that law, right/ So 11 million or more need to be rounded up and deported.
I guess this is your bottom line because you are “against any illegal immigration at all.”.
Now then with that how do you propose immigration law be enforced beginning when it came into effect
How do you propose it be enforced starting now?
By “enforced” I mean precisely doing what the law demands — if they’re here illegally they need to be apprehended, detained, prosecuted and then sent back to where they came from or incarcerated here — I don’t know precisely what the law demands for penalties of being here illegally.
And then there’s the problem of maintaining enforcement with porous borders isn’t there? As I see it there are two options without changing the laws:
.1. keep rounding up and prosecuting any illegals by vigorously increasing policing forces and actions — perhaps by profiling even though it’s illegal. Pehaps simply by going from door to door, employment location to location, stopping all vehicles on the highways and using road-blocks at arbitrary times and locations on a frequent basis. Doing these things until there are zero illegals in the US.. which effectively means doing it forever since zero is sort of a time dependency. Or doing it until there are less than n illegals here by some accounting method of analysis.
2. Building a more effective wall. East Germany was pretty successful at it they use military forces on watch towers ever few hundred meters with a 200 meter plowed (constantly) strip on the DDR side of the border with 4 meter high fencing with barbed wire. Anybody found in the 200 meter plowed strip try trying to go over the border was shot on site and most were killed .. some survived and spent the rest of their lives in prisons… their kids were wards of the state. Their relatives were restricted from travel outside their home region (their papers were adjusted to reflect this travel restriction). .
That was a particularly effective method of border security to prevent anybody without permission from crossing it in either direction. Maybe using high tech methods now however can cut down on the costs in military personnel having to be deployed, but it would still require a means of immediate apprehension on anybody found to be trying to cross illegally so that it would still require huge numbers of enforcement agents (presumably with weapons to insure none got away).
So what’s your proposal.. to “enforce the existing law”, MIke?
The Rage – libertarianism’s ideologies lead directly to anarchism by the same reasoning and logic libertarians use to support their ideology. What libertarians say however is that at “some undefined” point ther’s a limit .. but I’ve never been able to figure out what the limit is, nor especially how it can become limited. .. other than by internal revolution or civil war overthrowing a libertarian regime take to it’s rational reasoning limits.
Ayn Rand pretty much described such a system …. with a healthy dose of fictional and fantasy human behavior thrown in to support her libertarian ideologies to make it appear that it was a preferable system.
Re Beverly Manns comments on culture change. It very much depends on where immigrants locate. I have ancestors that came in the 1850s 1860s that still spoke german in the home and went to school in german until 1917. (Some were in rural communities so they sort of self isolated)
A couple of my uncles born in 1911 and 1913 were called the little german boys in elementary school. What happen here is a great wave of political correctness sweeping the country in 1917 when anything to do with being german became extremely politically incorrect. Or take Fredricksburg in the Texas HIll country where it took WWII to really end german speaking. (it was very isolated) . The story of assimilation is a historical myth that may not even be true in manhattan, recall folks had neighborhood such as Yorkville. Assimilation is typically a 3 to 4 generation trend. If the second go to school in their native language the 3rd may barely know pieces of the language, and the 4th would not know it at all.
So once again we run into the whitewashing of history to meet our ideological goals.
Some confusion above about whether Hillary supports open borders or not. To clarify, this from the WikiLeaks Podesta emails https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927
mkii:
First comments always go through moderation. Welcome to AB.
Uh-huh. We’re back to immigrants-don’t-leave-their-culture-behind-when-they-arrive. I just used that thing perched on my neck to figure out that that is the good reason to be against illegal immigration. And also the good reason to select immigration law as THE LAW THAT MUST BE ENFORCED.
Aren’t you dizzy yet from being on a merry-go-round for so many months, Mike?
Chicago for most of its history was really a cluster of ethnic neighborhoods. German, Scandinavian, Irish, Polish, Italian, Bohemian, Jewish, etc.
Each one reflected its ethnic culture, which, suffice it to say, did not keep the immigrants and their children from assimilating. Here’s betting, Lyle, that your uncles, your parent, you, your siblings and your cousins, assimilated just fine in the sense that Mike claims immigrants and their children and grandchildren do not. Your ancestors brought their culture with them—language, food, traditions—and managed to assimilate sufficiently, as did their children.
His dilution claim—a.k.a., immigrants-don’t-leave-their-culture-behind-when-they-arrive—is utter nonsense. He’s making a racial claim, and has spent months now making it while using “culture” as a proxy for race. That’s what this is about.
Nothing more, nothing less.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html?_r=0
It Wasn’t Turnout
It strongly suggests that Mr. Trump won over large numbers of white, working-class voters who supported Mr. Obama four years earlier.
* * * * * *
The notion that Mr. Trump could win over so many people who voted for Mr. Obama and who still approved of his performance is hard to understand for people with ideologically consistent views on a traditional liberal-conservative spectrum. Mr. Trump, if anything, was Mr. Obama’s opposite.
* * * * * *
Just as Mr. Obama’s team caricatured Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall Street, bought by special interests. She, too, would leave workers vulnerable to the forces of globalization and big business, he said.
******************
Black Turnout Fades
The turnout probably increased among all major groups of voters — Hispanics, white Democrats, white Republicans — except black voters.
* * * * * *
Taken in totality, it appears that black turnout dropped somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent — with few exceptions
* * * * * *
Mr. Obama would have easily won both his elections with this level of black turnout and support. (He would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.)
*****************
The Clinton Coalition Fell Short
But the narrowness of Mrs. Clinton’s gains among well-educated voters helped to concentrate her support in the coasts and the prosperous but safely Republican Sun Belt. It left her short in middle-class, battleground-state suburbs, like those around Philadelphia, Detroit and Tampa, Fla., where far fewer workers have a postgraduate degree, make more than $100,000 per year or work in finance, science or technology.
Opps! Dropped that in the wrong place. :-[
However in the case of my ancestors a wave of political incorrectness helped the transition happen. It was the 1917 1919 anti german hysteria in the US. One of my greatgrandfathers, was born in Germany and came up the Ohio river in 1861 to In (in and of itself not a good time to do so). in 1917 a list was published in the local papers of folks who had never gotten the papers to make them citizens and his name was on the list, and his front door (in the country) was painted yellow. Another greatgrandfather in northern In had a similar history, and my grandmother on that side did not talk about such things. (As an example of this that is engraved in stone in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Darmstadt In, there is a stone he died in 1914 and his side is in German, she died in 1921 and the stone is in English).
This is a part of the unstudied history of political correctness movements in the US, being a subject of such a time, can result in extremely rapid assimilation.
I am sure you remember this post. It is awfully hard to interpret the data in a way that doesn’t match what you call utter nonsense.
Mkii,
HAte to say this on your first(and I hope last post), but when people cherry pick statements that seem to say something they do not say, they are not welcome to talk.
Wanna say something and back it up? I am all in.
Wanna say something with absolute bs as a backup?
FO
mkii,
About open borders, I don’t think Hilary herself ever said anything. But her stance – protect just about everyone who comes across our borders illegally from deportation through Executive Action – well, that’s on her campaign website as I quoted above, regardless of whether EMichael calls it a straw man or not. She wants to protect the “sympathetic cases” and just about anyone is a sympathetic case by her definitions.
Lyle,
Thanks for your perspective.
“His dilution claim—a.k.a., immigrants-don’t-leave-their-culture-behind-when-they-arrive—is utter nonsense. He’s making a racial claim, and has spent months now making it while using ‘culture’ as a proxy for race. That’s what this is about.”
What race? There is no “Latino” or “Hispanic” race. I personally know White Latinos, Black Latinos, and Asian Latinos. So what “race” are you talking about here?
Yup. Pick a year—say, 2000—and then look at nothing but which countries most of the immigrants came from after that year, and … voila! Turns out that only immigrants who immigrated here BEFORE THAT YEAR don’t leave their culture behind when they come. Convenient, since (a) most people who immigrated after that date are … Hispanic.
And (b), there was this, like, major economic collapse with deep, long-lasting effects.
And (c), the period since that year has featured other major economic transformations as well, including major technology advancements in manufacturing, with robots replacing workers, and major changes in such things as where call centers are located, and major changes in the way corporations spend (or don’t spend) their huge profits, and the way, and to whom, banks lend money. And massive decreases in state allotments to fund their public universities and community colleges, causing tuition to spiral wildly upward.
Funny, but when Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand collapsed circa. mid-1970s, their economies weren’t doing all that well, y’know, yet most immigrants from those countries, most of them during the mid- and late ‘70s, did fine, as did their kids. Ditto, all those immigrants from the former Soviet Union who immigrated here in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.
So tell us, Mike: Did those immigrants don’t leave their culture behind when they came here? No? Really? Yes? Why, yes! They did. But, ah! They immigrated here before 2000.
GOD. Keep pushing this, Mike. Round and round and round, you go. When you end this, nobody knows.
How sick. But also, how comical.
I’m listed demographically as “non-Hispanic white” or “non-Hispanic Caucasian.
I think Hispanic as a race refers to people who are descended primarily or substantially from people indigenous to the Americas–native Americans (American Indian), mainly Incas, whose ancestors mixed with Spanish and Portuguese invaders.
“I think Hispanic as a race refers to people who are descended primarily or substantially from people indigenous to the Americas–native Americans (American Indian), mainly Incas, whose ancestors mixed with Spanish and Portuguese invaders.”
That is Mestizo, not Hispanic.
Correction to my last comment to Kimel: The second-last sentence in the first paragraph SHOULD say, “Turns out that only immigrants who immigrated here BEFORE THAT YEAR leave their culture behind when they come.”
Not, “Turns out that only immigrants who immigrated here BEFORE THAT YEAR DON’T leave their culture behind when they come.”
Beverly,
There’s a reason why the correlation in the second graph in the linked to post has a correlation of “merely” 0.84 rather than 1.
Warren, I’d never heard the word Mestizo before, not surprisingly, because according to Wikipedia it’s a term not used here in the U.S. and is used elsewhere (South America, Latin America, Europe) to mean what in this country is a racial designation meaning what Mestizo means elsewhere. According to Wikipedia, the term Hispanic in Europe means people of Spanish ancestry—mostly Caucasian. In other words, the designation “Hispanic” in this country means Mestizo.
And that reason, Mike? I have no idea, but given the subject of that graph I’ll guess it’s that the longer a non-Native American family has been in this country, the likelier they are to have a higher-than-average income.
‘Course that doesn’t work in most of the South and certainly does not in Appalachia.
But keep writin’ this stuff, Mike. Keep saying the same thing, every week or so, for, oh, maybe another two, three, four years here at this blog.
The bottom line is that the extent to which immigrants leave their culture behind when they come here is irrelevant to, well, anything you claim it’s relevant to.
“According to Wikipedia, the term Hispanic in Europe means people of Spanish ancestry—mostly Caucasian. In other words, the designation ‘Hispanic’ in this country means Mestizo.”
We are not in Europe. Here is the OFFICIAL definition in the U.S.:
‘People who identify with the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” are those who classify themselves in one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the decennial census questionnaire and various Census Bureau survey questionnaires – “Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano” or ”Puerto Rican” or “Cuban” – as well as those who indicate that they are “another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.” Origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the person’s ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.’
https://www.census.gov/population/hispanic/
Please note that last line: “People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.”
HISPANIC is not a RACE. A distant in-law of mine, GM Hugo Spangenberg of Argentina, has neither Spanish nor Amerindian ancestry, and is as Caucasian as they come. He is Hispanic.
http://torre64.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/hugo-spangenberg-peq.jpg
Alberto Fujimori, the former President of Peru, is Hispanic — born in Peru to immigrants from Japan.
Wow, Warren. Are you ACTUALLY missing the point, or just pretending to? The point: that the term Hispanic has one meaning in Europe and in other parts of the world, including South and Central America, and two meanings in this country, one of which is the meaning it has elsewhere (e.g., Europe), the other which is synonymous with Mestizo.
The two sentences of mine you quote BOTH modify the long sentence that precedes them. They were intended to emphasize the distinction between Europe and this country—that Europe has one meaning for the term, the U.S. two meanings for it—not claim that this is Europe.
Wow, the utter nonsense Mike advocates for here is jaw dropping. self deportation? really?
REALLY?
We ARE in the United States, Beverly. We are talking about the immigration policies about the enforcement of the laws of the United States. So let us restrict ourselves to the official definitions from the United States government. HISPANIC is NOT a RACE.
Forget the dated relics that are the KKKlintons and the lukewarm centrists of the 1990s Democratic Party. Bill was a rabid white nationalist. Open borders is inevitable.