Constitutional Originalism and Immigration
by Bruce Webb
Something has been bugging me. Why is it that the same people that indignantly claim that a requirement for people to show proof of insurance is unconstitutional but that it is perfectly fine, nay imperative that people show proof of citizenship or legal residency? Exactly where in the Constitution does it give the Congress the right to control the border to start with?
Constitution of the United States
Neither in 1776 or 1789 were there barriers to visiting or working in the Colonies or the United States. And from what I see the power to determine who was a Citizen or not was left to the various States with the reservation in Article IV Sec 2 that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”
There is a drive afoot led by Rand Paul and others to repeal that section of the 14th Amendment that provides that everyone born on American soil is as such a Citizen
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Well okay, but that would seem to just restore the situation to the status quo ante in which time there were no controls, and certainly no federal controls on free migration into or between the United States.
My ancestors did not have papers. Some of them reached the US before there was a US while others came from Ireland and Germany in the 1820s and 1830s and as far as I can tell the only requirement for entry was the price of passage. In fact from what I can glean the first restrictions on immigration only came in the 1870s and 1880s and were initially focused on criminals and lunatics to which in the 1890s were added ‘Asiatics’ and then in the 1920s national quotas, the latter designed to keep the US from being flooded with people from Southern Europe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_immigration_legislation
Tea Partiers and allied groups claim NOTHING about their efforts is based on race, ALL is about returning to the Constitution as interpreted by the Founders. They equally claim that the ‘General Welfare’ clause in the Preamble and in Article II is not meant to be interpreted as giving Congress explicit powers and equally claim that Congress has greatly abused the Commerce Clause. Which leaves me this question. If you folks are so focused on Original Intent why NOT restore the immigration laws back to what they were in 1840? Because clearly you wouldn’t want to be accused of cherry picking the Constitution. Would you?
Consider this an open thread on immigration, originalism or anything related.
(P.S. Please keep clear the distinction between ‘naturalization’ and ‘immigration’. Clearly the States individually and the United States as a whole had powers to control who was a citizen, the question is what the Constitutional authority is to regulate residence by non-citizens whether from another country or another state.)
“Clearly the States individually and the United States as a whole had powers to control who was a citizen,”
Wasn’t so clear to the Supreme Court. In 1994 CA passed a proposition into law saying that if you are born on US soil and both of your parents are NOT citizens, then you are not automatically a citizen.
Opponents took it to the Supreme Court and it was ruled unconstitutional.
In the 1820s and 1830 there were ship lists maintained, by customs officials, as at that time tariffs were the main source of federal revenue. (Pre Income Tax). From 1820 the captian of the ship was required to furnish a list of passengers with name age nationality sex and occupation to the collector of customs at the port. This is where the ship lists that are used to see when people entered the US came. It turns out that some states had earlier versions, and it appears that the insane were typicall blocked. (See this site that covers the early period as a lead in to immigration for the Titanc. http://www.titanic-nautical.com/RMS-Titanic-Immigration.html
So there were restrictions all be in minor in place at the time.
It is ridiculous arguing this on constitutional grounds anyway. Everyone knows the 13 colonies were a dumping ground for Europe. The last thing on the founding father’s minds was immigration control, citizenship, and guarding borders from unarmed people.
But as it happened, the world changed, got more crowded, and developed countries have taxpayers paying for infrastructure, healthcare, education and social programs. There are wages levels, and just about all 200 countries in the world address these issues with modern law.
The constitution has lots of amendments already. Time for another.
I could have been more clear. The key word is ‘had’. When the United States was formed each State had the right to establish their own criteria for the franchise. Article IV Sections 1-2 put limits on that with the Full Faith and Credit and All Privileges and Immunities clauses while the 14th and 19th Amendments widened the franchise considerably to the point that States no longer had much control over who could and couldn’t vote. But really it wasn’t until the Civil Rights Acts of the 60s and some One Man One Vote rulings that states and localities lost pretty much all such control.
But none of that means that States ever had the power to nullify the Constititution by statute. Clearly that California law was in direct conflict with the 14th Amendment which starts:
“1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
You have to play some tricky verbal and legal games with that “subject to the jurisdiction” clause to make that California law even superficially Constitutional.
by Bruce Webb
I did a little ‘research’ (meaning I put a search string in Google) and that restriction on the insane seems to date only to the 1882 act that also put a 50 cent per head charge on each alien entering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1882_Immigration_Act
In any event a head count does not equate to immigration control as such
Cedric you are missing the point. I am not the one suggesting that it is mandatory to evaluate all law with regards to Original Intent, that is Antonin Scalia and the Tea Baggers. All I am asking is for some intellectual consistency and honesty, something that is just lacking here.
Yes, back then the big issue was states rights vs. federal rights. If I had to guess what they were thinking when they wrote this, it is that if you were born of legal citizen parents in one state and declared a citizen, then the rest of the states had to recognize your citizenship.
But that is not the issue today. It is illegal immigration, and more broadly, who does this country belong to…it’s citizens or the rest of the world? (don’t answer it belongs to China or the banks…that’s another issue)
Neither in 1776 or 1789 were there barriers to visiting or working in the Colonies or the United States.
The first naturalization law I see is in 1790. That’s not really a big time gap. Not being able to define what a citizen is would pretty much make the 14th Amendment on citizenship rights meaningless. So is this a real issue?
CoRev,
OK, That helps. I never wanted to be a constitutional law expert, and my thinking has been more pragmatic.
I really don’t know what the TBs are thinking. I would hate to have to figure out if they are Jeffersonian Originalists or Hamiltonian Originalists. Depending on that answer I would then know if they were for or against AZ sending it’s National Guard to Iraq, rather than deploying it on the United States border that exists between the State of Arizona and the Republic of Mexico.
See how confusing this can get?
by Bruce Webb
I don’t see why the US belongs to its current citizens, certainly no individual citizen has a private property interest in public lands (with some potential exceptions under the Homestead and the Mining Acts).
Does the United States have the right to control its borders? Well l would say yes, and it I had to find Constitutional justification would point to the Commerce Clause. But it is that same clause that anti-immigration Tea-Baggers are challenging in their constitutional based lawsuits against the mandate in the Health Care Reform Bill. Moreover they base their objection on the grounds of Original Intent. Well you can’t have it both ways, if you can’t have individual mandates because the are not specifically enumerated powers of Congress, how then do you constitutional justify a border control that is not only not enumerated in the Constitution but is explicitly at odds with practice at the time and for a hundred years latter?
As noted on Daily Kos, control of borders is inherent to sovereignty. The book that George Washington checked out of the library and famously never returned – the Law of Nations – stated way back in ye olden days:
“The sovereign may forbid the entrance of his territory either to foreigners in general or in particular cases, or to certain persons or for certain particular purposes, according as he may think it advantageous to the state. There is nothing in all this that does not flow from the rights of domain and sovereignty.”
That took me all of 5 minutes to find; given an hour I’m sure there’s no shortage of other material noting the same since it’s a fairly obvious proposition.
Scalia is a textualist. If you had integrity, you’d have looked for confirmation of your false idea that he views original intent as key to meaning, had that notion falsified, and then moved on.
But “research” doesn’t really seem to be part of your methodology.
by Bruce
In the last paragraph of the post I urged people to keep the distinction between ‘naturalization’ and ‘immigration’ clear. The Act of 1790 and its two followups of 1795 and 1798 set out explicit residency requirements of 2, 5 and then 14 years respectively. Meaning that anyone not born on American soil had to spend some extended time as an immigrant resident.
Yes it is a real issue. We have many, many non-citizen residents of the US, and a current attempt to deny even their American born children of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 gave non-citizen residents an explicit path to citizenship, but had no provisions for expelling those who didn’t apply. When was that power granted to the United States? Under what provision of the Constitution? And the only answer I see is to take an expansive view of the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause, the same view that is now the subject for 15 AGs suing the federal government over HCR and the individual mandate.
CoRev, name calling is grounds for deletion. Particularly when it is based on nothing at all.
This is an economics blog, so throwing around labels based on economic ideology, though mostly ridiculous, is at least within some bounds of civility, so go ahead and call me a Socialist or Communist if you like. But personal attacks (at least I assume you meant it is such, I have been called worse things by better men) will not be tolerated.
Delete the first sentence from your comment and try a re-post.
Just to stick my oar in, do we have a definition of “invasion?” Can one person invade? How old do invaders have to be, and do they (he) have to be armed, or can you invade barehanded?
And since I seem to have a second oar — supposing a person in Arizona has no papers proving citizenship, or any ID whatsoever? They can be imprisoned according to the law, but can’t be deported, as far as I can see. With no proof of citizenship, what nation could be forced to accept them? (Hey, maybe this could solve America’s homeless problem. Just deport the ones without “papers” to some country weak enough to not be able to resist, or cruel enough to be the bad guys — sort of like taking your old dog to the “shelter” instead of shooting him yourself) /irony
In third-world nations, the unpapered are in an awful, untenable situation. Who would put their own security in their rights of citizenship solely upon being able to preserve a few scraps of paper against all the vagaries of flood, fire, fraud and theft?
“I don’t see why the US belongs to its current citizens”
Unless you have dual citizenship somewhere, you better hope it does. If you are male, you have the right to vote and smoke cigarettes. I guess they decided to let women vote now too, but forget the part about smoking cigarettes.
You also own your portion of the national debt. That and the taxes you paid represent your investment in the country’s public land, infrastructure, institutions, etc…and for $8 you can get into most state and public parks. Other things cost more.
You now have a right to subsidize healthcare for anyone making less that 4X the poverty level. Then there always was the public school system. You may be given the right to vote on how many poor people we import into the country. Keep your fingers crossed for that opportunity.
Maybe the TBs are going this route because they don’t want to try getting a 2/3 vote in Congress for a constitutional amendment. Like I say, it’s all very confusing to me, and I like pragmatic thinking over constitutional law.
Bruce,
“If you folks are so focused on Original Intent why NOT restore the immigration laws back to what they were in 1840?”
Because that would be national suicide. The debate is not about immigration, the debate is about Illegal Immigration and Sovreignty.
by Bruce Webb
by Bruce
Maybe you would like to elaborate on the difference between a ‘textualist’ and ‘original intent’.
I really doubt that Scalia is a Deconstructionist committed to the autonomy of all texts, which in practice seems to be reading them anyway that can somehow be linked back to the grammar. Instead I expect he adheres to some sense of Intentionality, that in reading a text you try to understand what the author was trying to communicate, which to me seems pretty damn close to what Tea Baggers and Libertarians mean when they use the term ‘original intent’.
The is not a Constitutional law blog, and can’t be expected to adhere to every piece of technical jargon out there. And in any case it really is not advisable to start your stay here by making personal insults to the moderators. if you have a case that SHOWS that my methodology is faulty besides my not knowing a particular piece of technical jargon, or even better if you made your objection a little more neutral in tone along the lines of “Well in constitutional law circles we make a strict distinction between ‘original intent’ and ‘textualist’, and here is a handy guide to help you with the difference” then maybe we could get an extended dialogue going.
But as it is I don’t even remember seeing your screen name before, nor do I have any reason to grant you any authority to make these kind of judgements. Plus I have the kill button handy just in case I decide I am offended. Note the double ‘I’s in play.
In my world accusing someone of lacking integrity is the same as calling him a liar. Now ‘ignorant’ is different, almost everyone is ignorant of something even in field they think they know well, I learn stuff all the time. And ‘wrong’ is okay too. But accusing people on this blog of being a liar will get your post deleted, repeated violations will get you banned. This blog has to my knowledge banned two people permanently, one from the left and one from the right. Because they couldn’t restrain themselves from attacking motives based really on nothing at all. Food for thought, think of it as a dead mouse.
We don’t need a definition of invasion. Illegal immigration will do. We have armed drug dealers invading (and shooting cops) and current law seems to handle that case, if we can catch them.
If you were born in an American hospital, you have a US birth certificate. I know an Indian girl who grew up on a reservation that has one. The homeless just need to remember what city they were born in and their birth certificate (also referred to as “papers”) is on file with the state. We do deport people, so that seems to work without an explicit clause in the constitution. In the case that someone decides to lose any proof of whatever country he/she is a citizen of, I guess maybe you do end up in jail. That would happen too if we tried it in most other countries.
Yes, the third world sucks. That’s why we don’t want it here. Sounds mean and uncaring, but our magical powers are limited.
Bruce, stop the bullying. You used the pejorative” Tea Bagger”, and then reacted when a similar term is returned. If you are not gay, then neither are the “Tea Partiers“.
I presume you meant to use the pejorative term, as it has been defined here several times. Stop the schoolyard bullying.
by Bruce Webb
It is one of the oddest things about the Tea Partiers and Constitutionalists generally that they tend to reject the entire concept that US laws should be governed by overseas law, even at times denying that to British Common Law, and yet when the question comes to interpreting the Constitution the evoke the opinion of some Frenchman writing in 1758.
http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel.htm
Even odder is pointing out that Washington checked his book out and never returned it, for all we know he said “Bosh” and threw it in the fire.
I haven’t read de Vattel and likely won’t but just from what I see here clearly he is arguing in the context of the claims of French Kings to Absolute Monarchy, in the words of Louis XIV, ‘L’etat c’est Moi”. Near as I can see French Absolutism is seen in diametric opposition to English Constitutionism, and the 17th century English Civil Wars were explicitly seen as a rejection of the Stuart Kings attempts to bring French theory into English practice. The English went to internal war explicitly to reject this particular notion of ‘sovereign’. .
What you call ‘research’, I call linking to an advocacy web-site that pushes a particular line and is in no sense an authority in and of itself. http://www.constitution.org/cs_basic.htm
Why is what de Vattel claims here matter? The Founding Fathers probably all read Candide as well, doesn’t mean we have to accept every bit of Voltaire’s thinking as binding.
by Bruce
Noni clearly you have forgotten the third clause of Marie Antoinette’s reported outburst:
“The people cry ‘We have no bread’, well let them eat cake! and then rent a fireproof Bank Safety Deposit Box!
Bruce, stop the bullying. You used the pejorative” Tea Bagger”, and then reacted when a similar term is returned. If you are not gay, then neither are the “Tea Partiers“.
I presume you meant to use the pejorative term, as it has been defined here several times. Stop the schoolyard bullying.
Since you deleted the comment, and I no longer have access, go ahead and delete the first sentence and then resubmit.
Bruce, we are not France. Mexico is.
“…We don’t need a definition of invasion…” How so, since this is one of the services the feds owe the states, according to the Constitution? You remember, the original constitution the founders wrote in the late 1700s?
You cannot substitute “illegal immigration” for “invasion” in your argument, as you attempted just above, since “illegal immigration” was not part of the founder’s plan, but “invasion” was.
Secondly, there are plenty of Americans, old or even younger, who would have one hell of a time proving their identity. County courthouses did burn down or were destroyed one way or another. I count myself lucky to have my original birth certificate (adorable baby footprints and all) but many do not.
You are right when you say “…the third world sucks. That’s why we don’t want it here.” Yet American exceptionalism shares quite a number of features with the third world, like huge prisons, death penalties, and hugely expensive health care. And now Arizona adds to the heap.
> Scalia is a textualist
until push comes to shove, and this pose gets in the way of the result he desires
viz. Bush v Gore
I’m no historian, and most of my historical knowledge comes from reading historical novels (much more fun than real history books), along with cross checking the facts with wiki occasionally.
But I think there was little difference between Louis and the Stuart line as far as Kingly behavior and governance style. The civil wars had much more to do with English Anglicans and Puritans (Cromwell) rejecting the papists. The Stuart line were closet papists. Louis and the rest of the French (excluding huguenots) were papists. The English did not want to be French or Papist.
John Locke did his thing a few decades later, around 1700.
Cedric; Not everyone is born in a hospital, even today, even in the U.S. And not everyone has parents who are responsible enough to do the required paperwork. I know people who had to obtain a delayed birth certificate as ADULTS.
STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION NOW!
Make it Legal.
AZ was less white in 1946 when my mother was born there than it is now. Hysteria from post-war domestic white-bread economic migrants to AZ doesn’t change that.
We already know what invasion is. It’s an act of war, and if Mexico sends it’s Army Man this way, hopefully along with a Declaration of War so Congress notices, I’m sure our local Air Force base will respond successfully. So what I meant is that’s not a problem. We have that part of the old C covered to no end with our $600B/year military.
Somehow, we don’t have illegal immigration covered, and I don’t know if the old C is making it illegal illegal immigration, with the two illegals cancelling out, or if it is merely a matter of enforcement.
I think it is rather hard to disappear in today’s world, It would be a small number I think that didn’t leave their footprint somewhere.
In CA they say 75% of the prison population is illegal immigrants at a taxpayer cost of $50K/year. They shut down hospitals too because lots of someone uses the emergency room with no insurance and doesn’t pay the admittedly outrages bills. If you think a huge influx of poor, unskilled immigrants is going to improve this situation, I don’t see how, and AZ doesn’t either.
“They say” = “They don’t know what they are talking about”
by Bruce
Cedric the two sides in the English Civil War are conventionally known as the Parliamentarians and the Royalists with the latter backing the Stuart King Charles I’s attempts to maintain and expand the efforts of his father James 1st to establish a system modeled on French Absolutism.
While Charles was perhaps a closet papist, I doubt he ever considered actually turning control of the English Church over to the Pope, instead he was pushing what came to be known as High Anglicanism which was basically Catholicism minus the Pope as opposed to the careful compromise between Anglicanism and Protestantism crafted by Elizabeth I and her successor James I. So properly speaking there were Anglicans on both sides.
As important as religion was in shaping the English Civil War, the ultimate fault lines fell where they always did in Britain, on Parliamentary control over taxation against the King’s need for money to pursue foreign wars for dynastic advantage and not really for the interests of England at all, which most Kings historically treated as a piggy-bank. (There are few exceptions, maybe just one).
I think the differences here are pretty narrow, religion, the Divine Rights of Kings, and taxes are playing their own part in the mix.
Teabaggers don’t have any right to co-opt the historical associations of the Boston Tea Party. Come up with another name for the movement or live with being called teabaggers.
May I suggest the New Know-Nothing Nativist Party? I’ll cede you the historical associations.
But it can be done, in the few instances we have.
Actually, some of the (ENGLISH) Founding Fathers expressed worried about the non-English immigrants of that day. Damn Krauts were going to ruin America for free Englishmen.
Nativism is not a new phenomenon.
CoRev the timeline clearly shows that the Tea Baggers labeled themselves as such before Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox ever started giggling about it on the TRMS. Personally I had never heard the term and had to look it up in the Urban Dictionary.
Look Rick Santelli on his TV show called for a Second Tea Party and the brilliant folk that decided to organize the first Tea Party Protest in DC thought it an excellent idea to throw a million tea-bags over the fence onto the White House lawn, and when that didn’t work out to throw them in Lafayette Park accross the street, a plan they had to abandon when they found out they didn’t have the right permit (I wonder if the original Boston Tea Party stopped by the office of the Governor General for a permit?). Which didn’t stop any number of attendees from wearing tea-bags on their clothing, including one woman who had the unfortunate idea of hanging multiple ones from her hat. The labels and subsequent jokes just wrote themselves, what do you call a group of people wearing Tea Bags as signs of protest?
The Mainstream Media was using ‘teabagger’ openly days before its sexual connotation became common knowledge, and the reason the hipper part of the Left was so amused was because it was a perfect illustration of how totally out of touch this band of older white suburbanites actually was. It was never an accusation that every tea-bagger or even any tea-bagger was gay, instead it highlighted how clue free they were.
The end result was that some wingnuts got totally embarrassed which then got them angry. Well tough shit, they made this particular bed and can lay in it.
Plus my original post quite carefully says “Tea Partiers” although I did slip up in a quick comment reply to Cedric and say “Tea baggers”. To take that as license to call me gay is little over the top.
Tea-bagger for better or worse is a phrase in the social and political lexicon and I don’t think anyone except for some Tea Partiers with sore feelings even thinks of the sexual connotation, most of the Left laughed and moved on to the substance long ago. I am sure Jane’s followers at FireDogLake aren’t real happy about being called FirePups either. Well tough shit.
And I have no intention of digging through a few dozen screens of comments to find and recover that one, it is not as easy as just clicking ‘Unhide’ or something. Do your own rewrite while thinking about the wisdom of trying to get back at a Moderator for what you think is unseemly language.
Can it? You presume so, because you have a certain conception of how things work in this country. But, that conception is pretty strained by the strong trend away from liberty over the past 30 and particularly the last 9 years
Wow. I’m glad your informed….
T – Taxed
E – Enough
A – Already
Teabaggers don’t even know how much they ARE taxed, let alone whether it is enough.
Jimi it would only be ‘national suicide’ if you define ‘America’ as being ‘White America’.
I spent most of my first eight years in Hawaii, part of that in a off-base classroom where I was the only Haole. And I spent most of the years from 1974 to 1993 in Berkeley, an extraordinarily diverse campus where Asians were fast becoming a bigger percentage of the enrollment than Whites and where the campus itself was set in a minority-majority city (Berkeley) right next to one that was even more minority-majority (Oakland). And from 1977 to 1981 I was in an integrated Navy living in close quarters with all kinds of brown and black people.
Brown people don’t scare me. And as the post points out at least in passing immigration historically was never seen as a threat until it started including the Chinese and then Southern Europeans (who in the context of the time looked at least olive) and then the Mexicans, none of whom matched the standard American self-portrait as being a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
Closing down the border is not going to turn the clock back to 1880. You can just look around and see who most of the LEGAL immigrants are, these days they are all Koreans, South-Asians, Arabs, and Pacific and Caribbean Islanders. Unfortunately for you the ethnic purity boat has sailed.
If the question really is about Sovereignity why are we not looking up all the farmers and building contractors? Or make meat packing plants pay enough so that people could live on? Yeah some foods might cost more, on the other hand we have artificial barriers that block low cost food imports that are in place just to keep a relatively small group of industrial farmers fat and happy.
Maybe we could try letting poor foreigners raise and sell food to us rather than using a combination of tariffs and Monsanto seed patents to keep them down? Maybe they would make a go back in Haiti or Mexico.
Making it legal doesn’t solve the problem Brainiac..
Once you give Amnesty to twenty million without locking down the border, you have to give Amnesty to twenty more million a few years later.
I can’t imagine what could go wrong with doing that a couple of more times.
OH, so your problem ISNT with the criminality of the immigration, it’s with the VOLUME. You do realize that illegal immigration has been net negative the past two years?
That’s because they came from Europe, and Europe spent all of recorded history invading each other. But in the case of Germany, they didn’t even have Krauts yet. Germany was not unified at that time. There were Saxons and other affiliations. There was property ownership, but you were then known as a Baron, and you usually had to fight to keep the damn Frogs from taking over your land.
A person cannot work in the US unles they are a citizen. That is the only controlling measure available.
A system of work registration may be effective. A company registers their job requirements, posts the position, demonstrates an inability to fill the job, and secures immigrant labor through an INS registry. The INS maintains a database of registered immigrant laborers from other countries, and fills the jobs through a blind lottery.
Other than that, I have no idea.
Dont act like that was the “original intent” of the word TEA. It was just a fortunate coincidence for them that they found three words that began with T….E….A…. that actually expressed something they disagreed with.
Note the pre revolution states looking for convicts and idlers and putting an extra entry charge if someone was likley to become a public charge. “For example, the colonial legislature of Delaware passed an act which required a passenger list “for the better discovery of such convicts, and poor and impotent, or idle, or vagrant persons, who shall hereafter be imported into, and shall be likely to become chargeable to, the inhabitants of this government. . . .” In 1740, Delaware collected a fee of five pounds for each convict admitted.” Untile the 1882 act immigration was mostly a state issue, with the 1820 act creating concurrent juristiction. So at the time states restricted against convicts (which is why Australia was founded) and those likley to be a public charge (This does sound vaguely familiar with the talk of welfare, so the accusation of immigration for welfare purposes is now as old as the country.
It depends on the age of the person. I suspect if your under 30 you likely have a birth certificate, as you probably needed one to get in school. In the older days docs like baptisimal certificates and the like were used. Births needed to be registerd in most states by 1900 and often earlier (check geneology sites for details). If a US citizen and you can spare the $90 I would suggest to get a passport. Once you get that you have the ideal ID document that proved right of abode as well as ID.
I have a nice tan and I don’t scare myself at all.
Lots and lots of poor people scare me.
Good idea about letting small farmers be small farmers in their own country tho. The other problem Mexico has is they are losing a lot of NAFTA type manufacturing to China. The min wage law there is $4.5, but I’ve seen news the actual has dropped below $3 because companies are threatening to pull out production because they claim they can’t compete with China.
One time I was down there talking to a young senorita and she asked “Why don’t they just post job openings at the border crossing, then we can get a green card and go to the job. Isn’t this better than sneaking across the border and looking around a whole country for a job?”
I replied that it did sound better.
I have a nice tan and I don’t scare myself at all.
Lots and lots of poor people scare me.
Good idea about letting small farmers be small farmers in their own country tho. The other problem Mexico has is they are losing a lot of NAFTA type manufacturing to China. The min wage law there is $4.5, but I’ve seen news the actual has dropped below $3 because companies are threatening to pull out production because they claim they can’t compete with China.
One time I was down there talking to a young senorita and she asked “Why don’t they just post job openings at the border crossing, then we can get a green card and go to the job. Isn’t this better than sneaking across the border and looking around a whole country for a job?”
I replied that it did sound better.
Bruce, as you are the holder of the keys for the blog/article, you drive the level of discourse.
The law now is that one many only work in the US if a citizen, a permanent resident or have a work permit from the US government (various kinds of visa). Actually there is no need for a new document for citizens to prove the right to work, its called a passport, just $90 and a birth certificate gets one. (I suspect a border crossing card would work fine also). PRs have their green card and other visa holders have their visa, so the docs already exist or could exist.
Sandie
It does work like that in some countries. The idea is they want to give their citizens the first shot at jobs. The employer has to show that there is no one locally who meets the job requirement. Then they are allowed to hire a foreigner.
Not in the USofA however. Here, a company makes a phone call and next thing you know a plane flies overhead and 100 applicants parachute onto the company rooftop.
Alternately,
why is it that the same people who have no problem having the government require proof of insurance have great problems with having the government require proof of citizenship?
I think the there is an equal and opposite hypocrisy going on here, and of course one side only points out the hypocrisy of the other side.
I have no problem with the government requiring proof of citizenship, or insurance. Absolutely proof of citizenship or legal residency should be required for employment — it is required, but the business lobby has prevented this regulation from being effective.
Then you can talk about what the requirements for legal residency should be, and there should be an open debate about that, but the immigration and foreign worker policy needs to be under the control of the government, rather than being decided upon by the domestic business sector or by foreign nationals.
Cedric ‘Kraut’ just means ‘Cabbage Eater’ as in ‘Sauer Kraut’ ‘Sour cabbage’. While the actual locution may not have come into play until the 20th century, it is a little odd to claim that Germany “didn’t even have Krauts yet”, cabbage eating habit having little to do with German unification or vice versa.
And German had a somewhat bewildering set of titles of nobility of which ‘Baron’ was quite minor compared to the various gradations of ‘Herzogs’ and ‘Graf/Grave’
http://home.arcor.de/natsu_esda/extras/german_titles_of_nobility.htm
And by the time of the first German settlements in America it had been about 1000 years since anyone from what is now known as Germany had invaded England and while English armies had been active at times in the Lowlands, particularly in the early 18th century, I am not aware of any time they had actually invaded Germany. The three Georgian Kings were all equally the Electors of Hanover (basically King), with some claiming George I never learned English so I think it is a stretch to lay any hostility towards Germans in America to a history of war between England and Germany.
I haven’t studied the history of early Pennsylvania much but suspect much of what tension there was was more due to religious differences, with a lot of Germans coming from pietest sects somewhat at odds with various State Protestant Churches.
“In CA they say 75% of the prison population is illegal immigrants at a taxpayer cost of $50K/year.”
Boy that could use a citation. California prisons have a high black population and until maybe the last decade or so most of the Hispanic Gang Bangers were born right in East LA, which has been Chicano for a long time. I don’t doubt that the Central American gangs have come on strong, and those are probably mostly illegals or children of illegals but even with some Mexican gangs moving in I suspect that most Chicanos in California prisons are American born and that even combined with illegals are nowhere near 75% of the prison population.
According to the WaPo the percentage of illegals in Calif prisons was around 10% in 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601240.html
And while Gubanatorial Candidate Meg Whitman apparently claimed 30% this week, the Fresno Bee (which despite its funny name is an important paper in Calif quotes the Dept of Revenue as pegging the real number at 11% and holding.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/05/23/1943282/just-the-facts-whitman-overstates.html
At AB we try to avoid ‘argument by anecdote’, this site is data driven to the degree that verges on anality. Before putting up a number here you might think of Googling it to double check your memory or the original claim itself.
The origin of the term Tea Party is well understood, it derives from what is popularly known as the ‘Rick Santelli Tea Party Rant’ and was delivered on CNBC on Feb 19th, 2009.
Somewhat ironically it was originally a rant against Obama’s plans to help out individual holders of mortgages as against the interests of big banks. Which might put additional pressure on the bond market and so cost Santelli and the rest of the bond traders and their clients money. How this ‘fuck the homeowner, it is not our fault that they bought the con the whole industry sold them, we still want every last penny’ somehow got cast as a populist, anti-bank bailout movement is kind of a mystery.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/rick-santelli-tea-party-time/
Well actually it isn’t, it is part and parcel of the whole ‘CRA and irresponsible blacks brought down the housing market’ myth. Santelli just suggested it was all about bailing out brown and black people.
by Bruce
A citizen only program would be kind of hard on Canadian comedians, European soccer players playing in our leagues, and on various nationalities of University Professors. British and French executives have worked in the US for many decades and certainly other countries are full of American ex-pats filling similar slots overseas.
Lyle is on the right track here, reducing it to ‘Citizens Only’ is too simplistic and along the lines of ‘English only’, a rule that if enforced on Americans working in France to the effect that they couldn’t talk to each other in English on the job would probably start a riot. Americans just assume they have the right to use English everywhere and have it understood, maybe because so many countries have English ID signs on their doors knowing that Americans are unlikely to know any language but their own.
by Bruce
But it is not “equal and opposite”. Only a tiny fraction of the Left advocates a truly open border policy, instead most of the Left are calling for a process in principle the same as we saw under the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795 and 1798, of naturalization after a period of legal residency.
This position was not that long ago the mainstream one for the Republican Party with both Bush and McCain advocating it. The takeover of the Republican Party by out and out Nativists is a fairly new phenomenon.
“Well actually it isn’t, it is part and parcel of the whole ‘CRA and irresponsible blacks brought down the housing market’ myth. Santelli just suggested it was all about bailing out brown and black people.”
Sooooooooo true.
I think the term “Kraut” was invented post WWII, by Americans and/or English (probably not French since they have a different word for cabbage) which is why I postulated that Krauts couldn’t have existed in pre-unification Germany.
As the rest of Europe, Germany had a large selection of titles for various ranks of nobility and general social standing. I think Baron was at the low end of the scale, since it really wasn’t a “noble title”, but more a indication of wealth (being allowed to be a landowner, which also made you a part time tax collector for the Kingly class)
At that time, the geography tended to be an invadee, rather than invador. I think maybe because it was a loose feudal system without a powerful King like France, Spain, England or the Dutch.
But in America they routinely mixed up the Dutch and the Germans, and the Dutch and England were constant foes. William Penn (Quaker) was given the territory of Pennsylvania by the King of England (one of the Charles’s, I forget which) as compensation for loans to the King. There were the Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish and Mennonites, all from German lands I believe. The Puritans, Quakers, etc… preached religious freedom in England, but didn’t always practice what they preached once they had that choice in America.
It was a news factoid I heard recently. Sounded hard to believe to me as well. I know CA doesn’t have have illegals in East LA, they were born here or Reagan gave them amnesty long ago.
But lack of omniscience is a birth defect I have, so I have been dependant as a consequence on our crappy news reporting.
Bruce said: “…most of the Left are calling for a process in principle the same as we saw under the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795 and 1798, of naturalization after a period of legal residency.” But, that’s what we all want! Come in legally, and as always, we’ll open our arms.
The US should adopt Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s immigration law. I.e., being an illegal immigrant is a felony. It is subject to 2 years in prison. If your caught twice you get 10 years.
Note that in the map pictured above it is clear that the entire southwest portion of the US was until relatively recently part of Mexico. That being the case, and the fact that the area pictured was virtually stolen from its historical owner, it seems reasonable to assume that all residents of that area are entitled to be considered citizens of either Mexico or the US at their own choosing. How can any Mexican not be native born if having been born in any area that had been, or still is, a part of Mexico?
Well there was a map there before I hit the post button. Try the original source where there are several maps related to the issuee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War
CoRev,
Bruce, stop the bullying.
He’s got to get some benefit from doing the admin on the site. I think with the star and the Mysite name he’s saying his opinion is twice as good as anyone elses. I might become a liberall if they give me a yellow star and let me win arguments by deleting posts.
Small farming is generally inefficient. It’s a waste of human capital for a Ukrainian peasant to keep 4 dairy cows (or for a U.S. dairy farmer in the Northeast to keep 40). It’s a waste of human capital for a Mexican smallholder to farm corn on 5 acres with a yield per acre of 1/4 of the U.S. average (and about 40 times as much labor). We are much better served to use that human capital more productively.
Historically, the urbanization of the rural poor as farming efficiencies increased is a major source of economic growth. It continues to be. Mexican maize farmers are just one continuing example. Of course, the dislocation associated with such transitions creates certain social responsibilities (Trade, even in labor, is a net positive but has winners and losers, policy oft must cushion the shocks). Many of our forebears came to these shores as the direct result of similar transitions in agriculture (Highland clearances, anyone?). To the extent that NAFTA (and MFN status for China) has sped the freeing of Mexican agricultural labor from unproductive and unremitting menial toil as inefficient farmers, so similarly, the NAFTA market has largely absorbed that labor into more productive work. Our U.S. immigration policy just hasn’t kept up. Migration has cushioned some of the shock. Remittances from the U.S. to Mexico from working class migrants have cushioned it as well. Our policy cannot be to ignore the issue, or to deny reality in favor of magical solutions, reactionary rhetoric, and symbolic legislation. We need comprehensive immigration reform, and we need it YESTERDAY.
For those who are scared of the impact of a growing proportion of the native and immigrant poor in our society, there IS a simple solution. Allow them to arise from poverty. Immigration DOES have a negative impact on the wages of the poorest Americans, IN THE ABSENCE of necessary countervailing policy. It is, however, certainly not the ONLY thing which is stealing bread from the mouths of those at the bottom, and spurring wagestrivers in the broad middle to run faster just to stay even. The increasing inequality of American society is a result of intentional policies. That policy must change, as IT, not the American aspirations of a new generation of immigrants, threatens to destroy our democracy by marginalizing the majority. Let’s make it happen, let’s broaden the middle class and wrest power back from the oligarchs.
Let’s grow the pie, and take our share…Stop scrabbling for the crumbs falling from the table of the rich. Stop fencing off others from those crumbs. Stop dancing for the amusement of our corporate sponsors as they pull the levers of power with strings from Madison Avenue and “K” Street. Let’s stop the failure of the middle-class American dream, but let’s do it by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our brother, not by taking our bread from his mouth.
Cardiff the Yellow Star is feature of the comment system, and the My Site thing is some bug we haven’t been able to figure out, it is certainly a pain in the ass for me.
As to using moderation powers to shut down discussion, clearly you haven’t been around her much. There have basically been three people banned from here since Dan took over, two from the right, one from the left, and they got banned after long discussion among the Bears and after clear and repeated violations of the comment policy.
Co Revs comment was banned because went over the line. Around here you can challenge some one’s ideology, but if you atack someone on real or imagined reasons of race, gender or sexuality your comment is gone.
BTW another borderline move is to challenge a posters integrity without any evidence. You have not been around here long enough to make that judgement.
For what it is worth this is the first post I have deleted in months, generally I like to keep ignorant blowhards around long enough to expose their moronity.
Welcome aboard.
Cedric you are triple posting about everything. Most often when JS-Kit seems to freeze it actually registered the comment and just failed to refresh. Rather than just push the button again you might want to open a new browser window, and see if the comment actually posted. If so close down the first window, if not see if it allows you to repost. If none of that. works then copy the comment and try to post in th second window.
CoRev in 1790 that meant stepping off the boat.
The functional equivalent of the Naturalization Acts is “establishing a path to citizenship for residents” which is exactly what Nativists are resisting. Nor have I seen some big push to expand immigration offices South of the border to facilitate the process you claim to want.
Bruce,
I see you are posting under a user name without a yellow star or the username mysite, I appreciate this and think this is better. Some things are automatic; if you’re a man and you can influence the assignments at work and you ask a young woman out on any kind of social encounter such as a dinner or drinks after work you have engaged in sexual harassment. It’s automatic because you have power over her. Here, given that you can delete posts and accounts, when you argue a point claiming a special authority then you have engaged in harassment. Mysite and the star are symbols of authority.
I’m against strong personal attacks against individuals on the site and think CoRev comment went over the line. I think his point was you use of “teabagger” as like using the n-word. I think a point though by CoRev was missed. There is nothing positive about the n-word. However, if teabagger means to be a small government free market conservative them I’m a teabagger. If the liberals hate me the way a cracker hates black men then I wear this nickname as a badge of Honor. On the other hand liberals see the word a pejorative. CoRev (in my view) mistake was to get tangled up in this mentality.
Let’s let Mexico do that with their subsistence farmers.
BTW, you have heard we have something like 18% U6 unemployment in this counrty. A shortage of human capital does not seem to be the problem anywhere in the world right now, and probably not for a long time.
That may make growing food inefficiently sound not too bad.
I know, and I swear it’s not on purpose.
The way it’s been working here is it automatically tries 3 times to post, then says the post didn’t work and asks if I want to retry or cancel. When I hit cancel, then refresh the page, I get 3 posts.
Now I have been just filling my name into the login box above the comment textbox. It has a dropdown with a long list of options to login with. One of those is “JSKit Account”. Am I supposed to have a JSKit account to login with for this to work right?
Um … who illegally immigrates INTO Mexico? Boat people from the Sudan? Really cold people from Tierra del Fuego? Congolese (in that boat with the Sudanese)? And if they do, is it possible that 2 years in prison is actually better than wherever they came from?
ACtually people from Guatamela and south try to get into Mexico all the time. Mexico is far better off than the central american countries, so Mexico has a big problem on its south border as well.
To give a text answer its California, Nevada, Utah, 1/2 of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, a bit of OK and KS as well as TX that were Mexican. But go back to 1803 and it is everthing west of the Mississippi plus La.
No. The triple set must have something to do with the waiting line of the servers at js kit. Under which label do you sign in? Theoreticly they should work the same, but I don’t know if they do.
Also, while I do not always remember, I log out as administrator and return as a guest using Rdan (I find this quicker) when I want to comment as a regular person. A pain but I like to make the distinction that the star is official business. If it has a star but is a regular comment, that is simply my forgetting.
This is an offical comment.
Here it is
I’ve just been typing in my name each time to the login required with the comment textbox. I haven’t tried any of the other login choices listed in the dropdown list.
They also think that some of their big drug kingpins come from Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama, etc…
But it is a well known fact that the really, really good jails are in California.
Migrating thru Mexico may just be the path towards upward mobility.
There is still a problem figuring out which country we should give ourselves back to. And we already gave casinos to “our” Mexican Indians.
“Events leading to 5 de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French Occupation of Mexico. The French occupation took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury in ruin and nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years, with the promise that after this period, payments would resume.[11][12] In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo
There is still a problem figuring out which country we should give ourselves back to. And we already gave casinos to “our” Mexican Indians.
“Events leading to 5 de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French Occupation of Mexico. The French occupation took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury in ruin and nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years, with the promise that after this period, payments would resume.[11][12] In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo
There is still a problem figuring out which country we should give ourselves back to. And we already gave casinos to “our” Mexican Indians.
“Events leading to 5 de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo has its roots in the French Occupation of Mexico. The French occupation took place in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the Mexican Civil War of 1858, and the 1860 Reform Wars. These wars left the Mexican Treasury in ruin and nearly bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years, with the promise that after this period, payments would resume.[11][12] In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, at the time ruled by Napoleon III, decided to use the opportunity to establish a Latin empire in Mexico that would favor French interests, the Second Mexican Empire.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo
Most liberals act as if we have an open immigration system as we did in the 19th centruy (for whites, at least) We don’t. It is nearly impossible to immigrate to the US from Asia unless one is highly educated in a specific skill.
I don’t see liberals advocating for a return to open immigration, yet they condem conservatives for restricting immigration.
One of my tennis compatriots is a young guy from Mexico who is legally going to college here.(In the medical field. He noticed all the old farts we have here and thinks it’s gonna be big) He is pissed as hell at watching all his “countrymen” scamper past as he is following the existing very difficult path to legal immigration.
He is also wondering if he may be better off coming in illegally and waiting for the inevitable Obama Amnesty that we expect to happen sometime after the fall elections.
He’ll be really pissed if he misses amnesty and still has to do the legal track.
This reminds me of something that hardly ever gets talked about but is central. What is/ought to be the theory of citizenship informing immigration law? If THE problem is illegal immigration, and not just massive immigration per se (or mere volume as someone said), then what national interests does/should immigration & naturalisation serve so that immigration law can be crafted to serve them?
As it stands sure-fire citizenship is only available for people born at magical latitude-longitude coordinates. Citizenship is a crap shoot for anyone who’s nativity is outside the blessed set of coordinates within US borders. All of which stikes me as arbitrary in nature and inclined to make a farce of the principle of inalienable rights.
daunting barriers to legal immigration encourge illegal immigration: http://tinyurl.com/39be4y6
an illegal terrorist bomber gets to stay in the US: http://tinyurl.com/f4g2b
an immigrant scheduled for deportation is saved by politically powerful friends: http://tinyurl.com/34lerxj
undocumented hoi polloi just get rolled up: http://tinyurl.com/2delzc8
I don’t see a pattern or a purpose here, only a tangle of ad hoc special cases.
benamery21,
What’s wrong with being called a tea bagger? I think this is just a label they give to good economic conservatives with good sense. Its the left that say it as its the n-word. After you get by their contorted hate that the left wear on their faces its really a complement.
Actually there is substantial family based immigration from Asia, as well.
India, China, and the Phillipines fill their family immigration quotas every year, BTW. They share with Mexico the distinction of being affected by the per country quota, so that waiting periods are longer than the already long periods.
I’m not sure I consider Pilipino nurses (one popular skill-based immigrant category) “highly” educated, except by way of contrast with the typical education level of Mexican and Central American immigrants.
Someone from Mexico going to med school in the U.S. is likely from the top 1% of his society in social class. I doesn’t surprise me at all that his feelings about the lower social classes are that they get in his way.
Actually enforcement on Mexico’s southern border was largely stepped up as part of the U.S. encouraged and subsidized Plan Sur, designed to reduce transmigration (and drug and “terror” traffic) THRU Mexico. This was put into place about 2001 by Fox collaborating with Bush as a “with-us-or-against us” part of the WOT.
I understand all Mexican prison penalties for simple migration crimes were actually discontinued in 2009.
Hey, if you want to embrace the term I’ve no problem with that. If ‘good’ sense means being a Know-Nothing you may be right. Ignorance, after all, is bliss.
Mexico didn’ exist as an independent country at the time of the Louisiana purchase, you are talking about the boundaries of New Spain…SO
Don’t forget Florida,
which was reclaimed from the British (ceded at the Treaty of Paris in 1763 regained at Treaty of Paris 1783) by the Spanish during the American revolution and didn’t go American until 1819 (Adams-Onis Treaty). Spanish Louisiana and Florida were headquartered in Havana, after the war, so the Cubans in Florida are just returning to their prior territory!
Of course, Mexico didn’t gain independence from Spain until 1821 (after an 11 year war of independence) — and it wasn’t formally recognized by Spain until 1836, and it was reoccupied by France in the mid 1860’s.
At the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, France had regained rights to Spanish Louisiana only in 1800, and actual government only 3 weeks before the transfer, after a hiatus of 40 years …
Basically, all of the Americas was a shifting mix of colonial and post-colonial administration and where the lines are is largely historical accident. The U.S. also had substantial interests in parts of Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Central America, the Phillipines, etc. which aren’t inside the lines today, while something like 1/7th of the U.S. Hispanic population is descended from folks the border crossed, rather than folks who crossed the border.
Until 1965 there was no quota on immigration into the U.S. from the Americas. Something like 60% of Mexicans have a close relative residing inside the U.S.
We know how to fix that (unemployment), our corporate overlords and their dupes (teabaggers, etc) just don’t want to do so. Using labor inefficiently is just a way to keep idle hands busy, if we want to keep those hands busy let’s do some real work.
Cedric–let me ask. How long do you think it should take for a Mexican wife to join her husband in the U.S. if he’s a legal permanent resident? How about their 14 year old son?
Something many people don’t realize is that a substantial fraction of those in the U.S. illegally, are the same people on the legal waiting lists.
One of the guys who works for me is a naturalized American citizen who was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. illegally at 14. He is one of 9 children. He has worked his entire life. When he immigrated illegally, he had already been on a legal list for years. He fell off that list without ever reaching the top when he turned 21. He was then placed on another list as an unmarried son of a LPR. He then fell off that list when he married a Cuban-American. Meanwhile, he has been working the entire time he has been here (20 years now), held a contractor’s license, and completed a BS degree as an electrical engineer. Eventually, as the spouse of a U.S. citizen he reached the top of a list, got his green card, got a white market job as an engineer, and got naturalized citizenship. He was pleased to vote for the very first time in 2008. The majority of the time he has been in the U.S. he was here illegally. His parents and all of his siblings live here.
Something else most people don’t realize is that although technically there are no visa wait lists for immediate family members of U.S. citizens (such as a spouse). in actuality there are lengthy processing times involved which can cause considerable difficulty in immigrating. For instance, I know of an (Australian) wife of a U.S. Navy serviceman. They met and married in the U.S. while she was here on a non-immigrant visa. She applied for a green card. She was deported while he was deployed, she took along her U.S. citizen infant (so much for anchor babies) and a 3-year hold was placed on her return to the country. She was deported because she overstayed her non-renewable non-immigrant visa while waiting for processing on the green card. This isn’t supposed to happen, but the fact is that it does. USCIS is an inconceivable mess to those not familiar with its arcana. My sister is an immigration paralegal; she can tell horror stories that will literally turn your stomach.
Oh, and any version of amnesty I’ve ever heard about still requires you to go thru the process (YEARS and $$$). He’s here, what’s he bitchin about?
I’m sure there are lots of horrible stories but the big picture is that in the last 30 years the population of the US went from a little over 200 million to 300 million. CA went from 20 million to 40 million. Hardly no one can afford CA anymore, you can barely move on the freeways, and soon you won’t be able to buy gasoline for your 50 mile or more 15mph commute to work, if the job does stay there.
Then we just got healthcare reform. We will be borrowing from the Chinese to subsidize the cost of insurance for people with incomes that are up to 4X the poverty level. Even Krugman admitted this can’t be done with uncontrolled immigration of poor unskilled workers.
We just aren’t the empty immigrant starved country we used to be. And there are 6 billion + hungry mouths around the world now, and they really don’t care so much about what the average American’s opinion on immigration is.
I’m sure there are lots of horrible stories but the big picture is that in the last 30 years the population of the US went from a little over 200 million to 300 million. CA went from 20 million to 40 million. Hardly no one can afford CA anymore, you can barely move on the freeways, and soon you won’t be able to buy gasoline for your 50 mile or more 15mph commute to work, if the job does stay there.
Then we just got healthcare reform. We will be borrowing from the Chinese to subsidize the cost of insurance for people with incomes that are up to 4X the poverty level. Even Krugman admitted this can’t be done with uncontrolled immigration of poor unskilled workers.
We just aren’t the empty immigrant starved country we used to be. And there are 6 billion + hungry mouths around the world now, and they really don’t care so much about what the average American’s opinion on immigration is.
I’m sure there are lots of horrible stories but the big picture is that in the last 30 years the population of the US went from a little over 200 million to 300 million. CA went from 20 million to 40 million. Hardly no one can afford CA anymore, you can barely move on the freeways, and soon you won’t be able to buy gasoline for your 50 mile or more 15mph commute to work, if the job does stay there.
Then we just got healthcare reform. We will be borrowing from the Chinese to subsidize the cost of insurance for people with incomes that are up to 4X the poverty level. Even Krugman admitted this can’t be done with uncontrolled immigration of poor unskilled workers.
We just aren’t the empty immigrant starved country we used to be. And there are 6 billion + hungry mouths around the world now, and they really don’t care so much about what the average American’s opinion on immigration is.
Cedric can you figure out how to avoid this triple post deal!
Once is okay but you are getting close to Tourettes here.
Don’t know. I hit it once, and I get triplets. Don’t know what to do about it.
Cedric,
If you’re logged on under tha same name and identity there should be a reply and delete button under each comment. You simply delete the excess baggage if it occurs. Unfortunately we don’t each have a delete button for comments made by others.
Under mine there is the reply button, but no delete button?!?!
benamery21,
Ignorance, after all, is bliss.
So how is bliss?
Apologies for jumping in like this in the middle of the discussion. I read through the entries quickly, so I may have missed something, if so, more apologies.
Since this is an economics blog and since the Tea Party faithful, along with other Conservatives, adhere to free market principles, I have not seen any mention of these principles as a reason for allowing unrestricted movement of labor across national borders.
Most countries now allow the free movement of capital across their borders; this freedom is seen to be one of the prerequisites for building and maintaining a vibrant market system. (Does the Constitution mention restrictions on capital movement, both among States and among Countries?). If we allow that government regulation on capital movement stifles the free market, must we not go the next step and allow that government regulation of labor (the other leg of the production “stool” , so to speak) movement across borders, also works to stifle the growth of a free market?
In an ideal world, capital must be free to move to its most efficient use, in whatever country, and labor, also, should be able to move to its most efficient use. I think a previous poster argued against the inefficiencies of small scale farming in Third World Countries. A much more efficient use of that labor would be for them, for example, to work on large scale farms or food processing plants in the US. I am sure that chicken processing plants would be overwhelmed with people from Somalia or India or Guatemala who would happily work for minimum wages (or less) , allowing these businesses to lower their costs and so produce cheaper food.
I believe that we are already seeing a somewhat free movement of labor among the higher-earning classes. Bankers, scientists, sports figures, artists, move fairly freely about the world.
What is wrong with treating labor like capital, abolishing stifling government regulaion and allowing its unrestricted movement around the globe?
Dear can’t-add, I see you changed your handle again. Funny that mine hasn’t changed since the old Krugman days, eh? Some people are slow learners.
We aren’t exactly overpopulated, and we aren’t exactly densely populated. What you are talking about are government failures, and the immigrant population is only one stressor.
I have lived in SoCal for the past 12 years. I make about twice as much here as I would in the same job in AZ. I pay $425 a month in rent. My commute is 28 miles and there’s never a traffic jam. That’s because I thought about it when I picked my abode. I admit that there’s plenty of traffic because people are lemmings. Anybody who blames immigrants for housing prices here needs to think harder. People who bought houses when they were overvalued are to blame for housing prices. Bankers who lent money on houses priced at 4 times the value of the underlying housing are to blame for housing prices. Zoning authorities are to blame for housing prices and traffic. Did immigrants drive the average square footage of a SoCal house up, or the average number of residents down? Are immigrants the ones who choose congestion over carpools or riding the bus?
Oh, nothing in the previosu statement should be taken to imply that I believe most SoCal homes are now fairly valued. In outlying areas and at the low end there are some deals. Most of the market is still overvalued.
I’m arguing AGAINST the status quo and for government policy to address immigration and even out the negative consequences of something i believe is NET positive.
Under 4% of the U.S. population has undocumented status. 60% of the people in Mexico have close relatives in the U.S. There are only 110 million people in Mexico, and the birthrate is down to 2.2 and declining (2.05 is roughly replacement). I don’t understand why anyone thinks that opening the borders IN North America, means every Hindi in Uttar Pradesh will be here tomorrow. People still live in Mississippi and West Virginia, after all. Some disclosure: I have cousins in West Virginia, as well as relatives in Canada and Mexico. My sister is an immigration paralegal now living in Taiwan.
Not quite sure where you found the place for $425, but when I decided to “Escape from LA” in 2005, the average rents for a 1 bedroom in Orange County were in the $1500 to $2000 range. Agreed it wasn’t the illegals doing that, at least directly. Lots of legal immigrants helped tho.
When I moved there in 1981, I got a 2 bedroom flat a half block off the beach in Belmont Shore (the good part of Long beach) for $425. Same price I paid for the landlocked place I left in a Chicago suburb. Shared it with a roommate too.
But the thing was that I LIKED S.Cal much better then than now.
People have different opinions of what crowded is. I spent many years in engineering (tho escaped to sales) and computer programming jobs listening to H1B visa coworkers from India, Russia, Asia, you name it, tell me how it’s not that crowded here. And usually they saw a map on the wall of the US, and remarked about how much space we have while looking at the vast desert West.
And the problems we really have are resources, environment, taxes (or lack therof), now funding national healthcare, employment, figuring out why our ghettos keep getting bigger, jails keep getting fuller, etc… you can call that a failure of government, or failure of industry to magically give the entire world a productive job, but if they can’t handle it now, why would we want to grow the problem bigger?
Not quite sure where you found the place for $425, but when I decided to “Escape from LA” in 2005, the average rents for a 1 bedroom in Orange County were in the $1500 to $2000 range. Agreed it wasn’t the illegals doing that, at least directly. Lots of legal immigrants helped tho.
When I moved there in 1981, I got a 2 bedroom flat a half block off the beach in Belmont Shore (the good part of Long beach) for $425. Same price I paid for the landlocked place I left in a Chicago suburb. Shared it with a roommate too.
But the thing was that I LIKED S.Cal much better then than now.
People have different opinions of what crowded is. I spent many years in engineering (tho escaped to sales) and computer programming jobs listening to H1B visa coworkers from India, Russia, Asia, you name it, tell me how it’s not that crowded here. And usually they saw a map on the wall of the US, and remarked about how much space we have while looking at the vast desert West.
And the problems we really have are resources, environment, taxes (or lack therof), now funding national healthcare, employment, figuring out why our ghettos keep getting bigger, jails keep getting fuller, etc… you can call that a failure of government, or failure of industry to magically give the entire world a productive job, but if they can’t handle it now, why would we want to grow the problem bigger?
Not quite sure where you found the place for $425, but when I decided to “Escape from LA” in 2005, the average rents for a 1 bedroom in Orange County were in the $1500 to $2000 range. Agreed it wasn’t the illegals doing that, at least directly. Lots of legal immigrants helped tho.
When I moved there in 1981, I got a 2 bedroom flat a half block off the beach in Belmont Shore (the good part of Long beach) for $425. Same price I paid for the landlocked place I left in a Chicago suburb. Shared it with a roommate too.
But the thing was that I LIKED S.Cal much better then than now.
People have different opinions of what crowded is. I spent many years in engineering (tho escaped to sales) and computer programming jobs listening to H1B visa coworkers from India, Russia, Asia, you name it, tell me how it’s not that crowded here. And usually they saw a map on the wall of the US, and remarked about how much space we have while looking at the vast desert West.
And the problems we really have are resources, environment, taxes (or lack therof), now funding national healthcare, employment, figuring out why our ghettos keep getting bigger, jails keep getting fuller, etc… you can call that a failure of government, or failure of industry to magically give the entire world a productive job, but if they can’t handle it now, why would we want to grow the problem bigger?
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial “we.” — Mark Twain
How the Code Napoleon makes Louisiana law different
Louisiana law, a short history lesson
http://www.la-legal.com/history_louisiana_law.htm
Benamery21,
I have never changed my handle. By the way, how are benarmery 1 to 20 doing — you know you all look alike to me.
Eclair,
While your thesis has merit you miss a significant point regarding market activity and its relationship to US legislative intentions. Ours is a government for the capitalists, by the capitalists and shall not, perish the thought, subvert the intentions of the capitalists. Capital is given the right to flow across borders so that it may seek out and discover its natural (free market) best use. As such labor must be restricted from such free movement, as it would cause capital to miss the opportunity to magnify its exploitation effect.
The problems you describe seem to me to have little to do with immigration, legal or otherwise. To the extent the problems are addressed it’s because of pressure to do so, and when they are addressed it’s because of how much pressure there is. In other words, problems are addressed when they reach a certain level of criticality, which level is largely independent of the contribution of an individual forcing factor. Immigration may provide a forcing factor, but the decision to address or not address a problem is a ‘decision’ taken based on a sum of many factors. You seem to think that reduced immigration would reduce the LEVEL of the problems, while I think it would just lead to a different similarly bad equilibrium, in the absence of intelligent policy on the problem itself.
If you thought the average rents for a one bedroom in OC in 2005 were $1500-2000, you may have upper quartile tastes. Either you were eyeballing that number based on where and what you were looking at (i.e. above average location or amenities), or you were looking at the average of all rentals, not just one bedrooms. Average was more like 1200-1300 at that point (according to the stats it’s 1100-1200 now). I admit that’s ridiculous, but people willing to pay it are why it got ridiculous. I lived in OC from 1998-2001, before it got totally ridiculous (though I considered it overpriced at the time), and paid under $1k for a 1000 foot 2-bedroom. I lived in Little Saigon, so I could walk from my apartment to a $4 dinner, and my 22 mile commute to Compton on the 22/405 took about 30 minutes..(if I came home at the same time as everyone else that took 40 minutes). I considered moving to Compton, but I had an aunt and friends in Westminster, and then, as now, I spent 2-4 days a week out of the office (typically in Montebello, Rosemead, Irwindale, or Monrovia back then). In 2005 my brother’s sister-in-law and her husband were paying $1600 for a nice 2 bedroom in an upscale (by my lights) complex in Irvine. I thought that was insane, but she definitely has yuppie tendencies and I’ve been rightly accused of being cheap.
On my $425/mo rent…it’s grey market, it’s a guest house (with unpermitted modifications) and the zoning doesn’t allow rental. It wasn’t listed, I found it on a bulletin board.
Most of the problems you mention have the same root; policy formed without reference to actual consequences rather than politics, and policy left unchanged due to politics.
You may or may not have been aware that the bulk of healthcare costs were already being borne by the government (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, IHS, taxfree private health benefits, etc), prior to the current reform. I agree that healthcare costs are a long-run fiscal problem. I am not confident of the current reform bringing down costs, but I am confident that U.S. healthcare costs are out of line and could be reduced by about half while improving outcomes, given appropriate reforms.
We currently have about 15M unemployed. “Directed” employment (workfare) of those individuals at menial jobs which do not displace existing labor or require significant additional stimulus funding (not that such is unneeded) would cost on the order of $300B for a year. I would probably do only about 1/3rd of this to avoid messing up labor supply. So, $100B, to drop the unemployment rate to under 7%. I am confident that the work done could generate benefits in excess of $100B. I realize this is not the best stimulus from a general economic standpint but think the social benefit worth the slight expense.
Having the Highest incarceration rate in the world is largely a matter of sentencing/other policies which are out of line with most of the rest of the […]
You are confusing libertarians with conservatives. We both tout constitutionality and limiting government, so people often confuse one for the other. Libertarians are the ones who object to displaying proof of insurance when insurance is not applicable to the situation. We also don’t support the arizona immigration laws. Libertarians actually support limiting government Conservatives only support limiting government to conservative principles.