Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Venga - Venga (nudge-nudge, wink-wink)
I watched the DC march as it was passing in front of our building Monday. I was standing on the steps of the 'Secretary's Entrance' (VIP entrance) with the Secretary's security detail (beefy black men in dark suits with guns). The convergence of little ironies hit as I watched the enthusiastic, flag draped crowd moving past. Our 'Secretary' is a hispanic immigrant and I was standing with the segment of Americans who are most sceptical of open immigration (working-class black men) and who's ancestors were the most reluctant of immigrants.
I'm pro-immigration. The economic and social benefits of immigration out weigh the costs. The constant trickle of new members keeps our society dynamic and mitigates against the tendency of a culture to become complacent and stagnant. [Of course I think the country's been going down hill since we let the filthy Germans in.]
But it isn't a trickle any more. In last ten years we have gone over the 10% mark of foreign born residents. Not many societies could absorb that number of outsiders and I'm proud of my country that it still can do that. But that many new members causes tensions and discomforts and the fact that a third of them (10 million, give or take a few million) are illegal, changes the perception and dynamic of the large scale immigration.
So our politicians have to do something. This is a twenty year cycle. When the de facto (in fact) is making a joke of the de jure (in law) they have to take action to not look like total asses. But they don't want to. Immigration is one of those issues where if you ask two americans their views, you get five opinions. So the politicians don't know how to stand and worse, they can't predict what the political outcome will be for any position they take. Their preference would be to split the difference and continue the status quo like the '80's immigration bill (amnesty, fairly open borders, and no internal enforcement).
But the Hispanic political groups thought this would be a great moment to flex their muscle some, insuring that this round of immigration reform won't be going on below the radar. That might be a mistake on thier part. Or it might not. We'll see.
It is easy to have sympathy for the individual illegal immigrant. Jose/Maria travels thousands of miles across mountains and deserts to have the opportunity to work a couple of shitty jobs in the land of milk and honey. But as a political movement, it generates a lot less sympathy, as it looks like a bunch guests demanding rights that no one promised them. They are not "un-invited" guests (see industry's recruitment of them) but they are guests. Add in the reconquista crowd and the discomfort and xenophobia becomes legitimate self-defense of our national soveriegnty.
Whitey's post shows the strange place our immigration policy is at - It is too tough to enter legally and it is too easy to enter illegally. This sets up weird incentives and disincentives where it is easier for a camposino to enter the US at Nogales and work as a day laborer than for a professional to fill out all the forms and get interviewed by consulate officers and take months and months and thousands of dollars and then be are let into the country to find a place to live and work. It also doesn't help that the USCIS is one of the worst and most inefficent federal agencies since none their costomers can vote.
So I think we need to make it easier to immigrate legally but put up a wall/fence to make it as hard as is practible to immigrate illegally. That makes the status of the illegals already here a major sticking point. There really is no practible way to throw them out - come on, are we really ready to fill cattle cars with millions of men, women and children and dump them across the river in Juarez? We have to give them a kind of amnesty but for that to be acceptable to most american voters, it has to be backed up with a serious effort to close the door behind them.
The complaints about the societal burdens caused by illegal immigrants are called externalities. Businesses that hire illegals, mainly food processing, construction and light industry, can pay less and dump the additional costs on the rest of society.
I can't get too worked up about the money being sent back to their families - face it, you legal, over-documented americans will send more money to China in a week than all the strawberry pickers and day laborers will in a lifetime. Anyway, it's their money - they earned it, they can spend it as they wish.
On the arguement that the illegals do work the americans won't - pay me $50 a hour and I'll mow your lawn and clean your toilets and sing while I'm doing it. Give me $50 million and the possiblity of a good market and I'll hire the engineers to build you a robot that will do all that and play the banjo. The various US industries use illegals becuase they can. If they can't, they will find substitutes. No one wants to clean and bone 500 pounds of chicken per shift? Then raise the price 6 cents a pound and pay more per hour - or build a machine - or ship the job somewhere else. The US isn't the only place they grow lettuce and chickens and the reality is that it is silly to subsidize an unprofitable industry by non-enforcement of the law.
What will the politicians do? This is a big test for them. If they go for the status quo of lackluster enforcement and a amnesty they will likely create a backlash and the growth of a nativist political movement that will hurt both parties as has occured previously (see 1840's No Nothing Party and 1920's Second Klan). But if they go for the harsh enforcement and no amnesty both parties will have to give up their fantasies about roping in Latinos into their parties, like they are Blacks - but the reality is that Latinos do not have the unity of identity, both ethnically and politically, that Blacks have (for a long list of reasons), so they will never vote overwelmingly for one or the other party. My concern is that the politicians will pander (as is their way), try to split the difference, and engender a backlash that will see a far more restrictive immigration policy, such as what the US had in the 1920s - 1960s (the last time we went over the 10% mark of foriegn-born residents).
I'm pro-immigration. The economic and social benefits of immigration out weigh the costs. The constant trickle of new members keeps our society dynamic and mitigates against the tendency of a culture to become complacent and stagnant. [Of course I think the country's been going down hill since we let the filthy Germans in.]
But it isn't a trickle any more. In last ten years we have gone over the 10% mark of foreign born residents. Not many societies could absorb that number of outsiders and I'm proud of my country that it still can do that. But that many new members causes tensions and discomforts and the fact that a third of them (10 million, give or take a few million) are illegal, changes the perception and dynamic of the large scale immigration.
So our politicians have to do something. This is a twenty year cycle. When the de facto (in fact) is making a joke of the de jure (in law) they have to take action to not look like total asses. But they don't want to. Immigration is one of those issues where if you ask two americans their views, you get five opinions. So the politicians don't know how to stand and worse, they can't predict what the political outcome will be for any position they take. Their preference would be to split the difference and continue the status quo like the '80's immigration bill (amnesty, fairly open borders, and no internal enforcement).
But the Hispanic political groups thought this would be a great moment to flex their muscle some, insuring that this round of immigration reform won't be going on below the radar. That might be a mistake on thier part. Or it might not. We'll see.
It is easy to have sympathy for the individual illegal immigrant. Jose/Maria travels thousands of miles across mountains and deserts to have the opportunity to work a couple of shitty jobs in the land of milk and honey. But as a political movement, it generates a lot less sympathy, as it looks like a bunch guests demanding rights that no one promised them. They are not "un-invited" guests (see industry's recruitment of them) but they are guests. Add in the reconquista crowd and the discomfort and xenophobia becomes legitimate self-defense of our national soveriegnty.
Whitey's post shows the strange place our immigration policy is at - It is too tough to enter legally and it is too easy to enter illegally. This sets up weird incentives and disincentives where it is easier for a camposino to enter the US at Nogales and work as a day laborer than for a professional to fill out all the forms and get interviewed by consulate officers and take months and months and thousands of dollars and then be are let into the country to find a place to live and work. It also doesn't help that the USCIS is one of the worst and most inefficent federal agencies since none their costomers can vote.
So I think we need to make it easier to immigrate legally but put up a wall/fence to make it as hard as is practible to immigrate illegally. That makes the status of the illegals already here a major sticking point. There really is no practible way to throw them out - come on, are we really ready to fill cattle cars with millions of men, women and children and dump them across the river in Juarez? We have to give them a kind of amnesty but for that to be acceptable to most american voters, it has to be backed up with a serious effort to close the door behind them.
The complaints about the societal burdens caused by illegal immigrants are called externalities. Businesses that hire illegals, mainly food processing, construction and light industry, can pay less and dump the additional costs on the rest of society.
I can't get too worked up about the money being sent back to their families - face it, you legal, over-documented americans will send more money to China in a week than all the strawberry pickers and day laborers will in a lifetime. Anyway, it's their money - they earned it, they can spend it as they wish.
On the arguement that the illegals do work the americans won't - pay me $50 a hour and I'll mow your lawn and clean your toilets and sing while I'm doing it. Give me $50 million and the possiblity of a good market and I'll hire the engineers to build you a robot that will do all that and play the banjo. The various US industries use illegals becuase they can. If they can't, they will find substitutes. No one wants to clean and bone 500 pounds of chicken per shift? Then raise the price 6 cents a pound and pay more per hour - or build a machine - or ship the job somewhere else. The US isn't the only place they grow lettuce and chickens and the reality is that it is silly to subsidize an unprofitable industry by non-enforcement of the law.
What will the politicians do? This is a big test for them. If they go for the status quo of lackluster enforcement and a amnesty they will likely create a backlash and the growth of a nativist political movement that will hurt both parties as has occured previously (see 1840's No Nothing Party and 1920's Second Klan). But if they go for the harsh enforcement and no amnesty both parties will have to give up their fantasies about roping in Latinos into their parties, like they are Blacks - but the reality is that Latinos do not have the unity of identity, both ethnically and politically, that Blacks have (for a long list of reasons), so they will never vote overwelmingly for one or the other party. My concern is that the politicians will pander (as is their way), try to split the difference, and engender a backlash that will see a far more restrictive immigration policy, such as what the US had in the 1920s - 1960s (the last time we went over the 10% mark of foriegn-born residents).
// posted by Larry @ 6:31 PM 
