Posted on 06/01/2007 9:00:25 PM PDT by rmlew
A common theme in discussing the immigration issue is “I love legal immigration, it’s just the illegal kind I’m against.” And there’s no question that political elite’s refusal to enforce the law is the most immediate immigration problem we face.
But the “legal is good, illegal is bad” mantra will only get you so far. Even if we were to address the pervasive illegality of today’s immigration flow — by, say, amnestying all the illegal aliens and increasing legal immigration, as the appalling Senate bill calls for — most of the problem would remain.
To begin with, the legal and illegal immigration flows are inextricably intertwined. It’s not as though legals are from Mars and illegals are from Venus — they come from the same countries, live in the same communities and families, and are often the same exact people. Take Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, for instance. He was the Egyptian immigrant terrorist who decided to celebrate the Fourth of July in 2002 by killing Jews at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport. He had arrived legally years before as a tourist, then shortly before his permission to be here expired (which would have turned him into an illegal alien) he applied for asylum here, thus preserving legal status while his claim was adjudicated. After he was rejected and stayed here anyway, he became an illegal alien. Later, his wife won the visa lottery and he, as her spouse, also got a green card, making him legal again.
More broadly, as James Edwards of the Hudson Institute has written, legal and illegal immigration have risen in tandem, the same countries dominate the two flows, legal immigration creates the networks that enables illegal immigration to take place, and the screwy mechanics of the legal immigration system raise expectations abroad such that people see themselves as entitled to come to America, whether they have permission yet or not.
What’s more, every year large numbers of illegal aliens use the “legal” immigration system to launder their status. Edwards points to a survey of new “legal” immigrants which found that fully one-third had been illegal aliens at one point or another, a figure that rose to two-thirds for Mexicans. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that our “legal” immigration system is a permanent rolling amnesty for illegal aliens.
Not only are the flows of legal and illegal immigration related, but the impacts they have on the United States are similar. The effect that illegal immigration has in reducing wages for low-skilled American workers, for instance, is only partly caused by the illegality. The majority of illegal immigrants actually work on the books, having provided a fake or stolen Social Security number, but they command low wages regardless because most of them lack even a high-school education and thus are unequipped for advancement in a modern society. In other words, the chief problem that immigration creates for less-educated or young or minority American workers is that it floods the job market with competitors, illegal and legal.
The same is true with regard to government services. In fact, here it is, in a perverse sense, actually better that immigrants be illegal, because they cost less. Households headed by illegal aliens represent a drain of some $10 billion a year at the federal level alone — i.e., they consume $10 billion more in federal government services than they pay in federal taxes. This is because they work, they’re poor, and they have lots of children, and our welfare system is specifically designed to help the working poor with children. But if the illegals were legalized, the costs to federal taxpayers would balloon, nearly tripling to $29 billion each year. This is because when you amnesty an uneducated illegal alien with a large family, all you do is turn him into an uneducated legal alien with a large family — his earnings, and thus his tax payments, do indeed go up somewhat, but his use of government services increases much, much more because now he’s legal, but he’s still uneducated.
Likewise in other areas. For instance, children born to immigrant mothers are responsible for 100 percent of the increase in the school-aged population — the strain this puts on local communities has nothing to do with the parents’ legal status. Immigrants using emergency rooms as doctor’s offices do so not because of a lack of legal status but because a lack of skills that can command high wages in a modern economy.
As Ramesh Ponnuru has written, “America has some serious immigration problems, but they are not distinctively problems of illegal immigration.” Calls of “Enforcement First” by critics of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill are surely the place to start the immigration debate, because without a commitment to enforce the rules, it doesn’t much matter what the rules are. But in the long run, the substance of the rules themselves is the more important question.
“I feel like we’re locked in a sealed train, that’s been hijacked by madmen heading for a broken bridge”
This is still America, Travis. There are at least 50 million Americans like you and me and b4 who will not relent......we will never give up, and we will protect America with every resource we have. Two of my immediate family died defending America, and I owe it to them to go down fighting. We are “legally” packin, and we are clean!!
At what point did he suggest rejecting modern science or forming isolated communties?
Legal, under rational policy with the quantity and quality to benefit America, good.
We may not be able to ever get a rational policy, however, in which case it would be better that there was extremely limited immigration.
We are not so long as we don't buy into the bullshit and stand like men. When it looks bad fight back harder.
“But the “legal is good, illegal is bad” mantra will only get you so far. Even if we were to address the pervasive illegality of today’s immigration flow — by, say, amnestying all the illegal aliens and increasing legal immigration, as the appalling Senate bill calls for — most of the problem would remain.”
You DO NOT change criminality by EXCUSING THE DAMNED CRIMINALS and then TELLING US that the problem is fixed. Do NOT pi$$ down my back and tell me that it’s raining!
Racist.
(”sorry couldn’t help it” sarcasm)
I’ve been saying this for years. All this talk about “illegal” is just a way for people to try to avoid the talk of bigotry or racism. Now, that is NOT what most opponents of concentrated immigration from Latin America are about but they say it’s “illegal immigration” they are bothered by to thwart leftist or Open Borders-types in their ad hominem attacks.
Stop worrying. Embrace the fact that if these immigrants were from China, we’d have 50-90 percent less problem (less crime, less drunken driving, sex assaults, respect for SOME basic laws, gang and drug criminal activity.) After all, what percentage of our population in prisons is Asian? Very small. It’s a CULTURAL problem and we don’t want to import more people who are likely to bring more of these problems with them.
If we had 10 million German and Scandinavians in this country, legally or illegally, do you think there’d be this problem?
We are bringing in the peasants and hillbilly-type immigrants and some are succeeding but many are helping to significantly alter the course of our nation’s future.
Absolutely. This is not a force of nature. The immigration changes of 1965(Ted Kennedy) took us from a quota system related to current population dsitributions. To the current system of massive inflows from south of the border and in particualr Mexico. This was done to us on purpose.
All utter rot, economic illiteracy, rehashed Malthus.
I just want only people here who want to live under a rule of law, who love law abidingness, who are grateful, etc. And oh I also want the real and present justice of the honorable treated better than the dishonorable.
] Are you under the delusion that I support amnesty?
. So blow your malthusian nonsense out your ear.
this is basic economics.
llegal is bad, and legal is good, and if you try to reject that, guess what? You won't be left with the third of the country you've got now, on your side.
Illegal is bad. Legal is better. An immigration policy based on the needs of America, as opposed to a few special interests and the cries of whiny liberals is best.
I don't disagree on that point.
We are not so long as we don’t buy into the bullshit and stand like men. When it looks bad fight back harder.
Stand like men! I’m with you on that. I just wonder how many real men are left in America however? America has become filled with many weak willed pussies who are afraid of being called names much less anything more stringent. Will jump when the government says jump and cower at the least little push back. Do we still have the blood of people like Patrick Henry still running through our veins?
I believe so. If you look you will see them. A lot of them are right here on this site.
Excellent points by Krikorian. Mega-dittoes.
What if the "political fix" is in, and no matter what 75% of the voters demand, we get railroaded, and by the time we get to change leaders, we have 75 million new voters who are dirt poor, non-english speaking, and will vote socialist for life?
"When things look bad that's when you've got to get mean. I mean plumb mad dog mean. Because if you quit fighting you neither live nor win." Clint Eastwood in "The Outlaw Jose Wales"
Great movie that one. Probably one of my all time favorites. There are so many great lines in it.
L
Not to pick nits, but if there was no TB in VA, and then there was some, that would be a 100% increase no matter what the number of cases.
L
Not just illegal immigration.
End it, completely. And allow for a "period of assimilation", say, 20 years.
After that's done, we can reassess.
No more immigrants!
Call me a xenophobe.
Call me a racist.
Call me a nativist.
Call me whatever you like. I don't care.
No more immigrants!
- John
This is a very important point. When our immigrant forbears came here, there was a whole "assimilation industry" going, where immigrant kids were taught in things ranging from settlement houses to Catholic schools how wonderful the US was, how great our ideals were, and how important it was for them to be responsible citizens. And now????
As for the Latin American immigrants, another thing that you mentioned is very true: most of them do not want to stay here. They want to earn some money and go home, and I think making that easier should be one of the objectives of any reasonable immigration bill. Of course, one of the ways of doing this is (a) limiting the family members that can be brought in and (b) making sure that our welfare culture cannot convert these initially industrious people who want to go home into permanent welfare sponges who refuse to go anywhere. The latter actually is more the responsibility of the states and municipalities (who are heavily responsible for the non-enforcement of immigration policies already on the books), who seem to be permitted to freely flout US federal law, scattering welfare grants here and there to non-citizens, refusing to check immigration status or report illegal immigrants, etc.
In many ways, changes to federal policy are just the first step, because unless the changes are implemented on a local level, nothing is going to happen.
I'm assuming that you mean "Ebola Marburg." I wasn't aware of any cases in the US.
However, if you take a look at many break-outs of formerly controlled contagious diseases on a map, you'll typically see them in areas of high illegal alien population. I seem to recall seeing stories about a major outbreak of the measles in a number of cities in western Kansas, and these cities just happen to be the homes to some major meat processing plants, who often hire illegal aliens.
Mark
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