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Posted on 06/02/2007 11:15:30 AM PDT by ishmac
...Is immigration, I asked--especially illegal immigration--good for the economy, or bad?
"It's neither one nor the other," Mr. Friedman replied. "But it's good for freedom. In
principle, you ought to have completely open immigration. But with the welfare state it's
really not possible to do that. . . . She's an immigrant," he added, pointing to his
wife. "She came in just before World War I." (Rose--smiling gently: "I was two years old.")
"If there were no welfare state," he continued, "you could have open immigration,
because everybody would be responsible for himself." Was he suggesting that one can't
have immigration reform without welfare reform? "No, you can have immigration reform,
but you can't have open immigration without largely the elimination of welfare.
"At the moment I oppose unlimited immigration. I think much of the opposition to
immigration is of that kind--because it's a fundamental tenet of the American view that
immigration is good, that there would be no United States if there had not been immigration.
Of course, there are many things that are easier now for immigrants than there used to be. .
. ."
Did he mean there was much less pressure to integrate now than there used to be?
Milton: "I'm not sure that's true . . ." Rose (speaking simultaneously): "That's the
unfortunate thing . . ." Milton: "But I don't think it's true . . ." Rose: "Oh, I think it is!
That's one of the problems, when immigrants come across and want to remain Mexican."
Milton: "Oh, but they came in the past and wanted to be Italian, and be Jewish . . ." Rose:
"No they didn't. The ones that did went back."
Mrs. Friedman, I was learning, often had the last word.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
(Interview) "Did he mean there was much less pressure to integrate now than there used to be?"Rose has a better handle on it than her husband or the one doing the interview and spoke directly and understandably.
(Milton) "I'm not sure that's true . . ."
(Rose speaking simultaneously): "That's the unfortunate thing . . ."
(Milton) "But I don't think it's true . . ."
(Rose) "Oh, I think it is! That's one of the problems, when immigrants come across and want to remain Mexican."
(Milton) "Oh, but they came in the past and wanted to be Italian, and be Jewish . . ."
(Rose) "No they didn't. The ones that did went back."
Is it too much to ask our Federal Govt. for legal, documented intelligent and responsible immigration policies? Enforce the borders and the laws already passed.
These DC clowns of ours instead come up with an 800+ plus page boondoggle of an (amnesty) immigration bill. Just like the tax code the Federal Govt. full of educated imbeciles and incompetents. We need to clean house in the sewage pit of DC. A mighty task my fellow Freepers but just like biblical Joshua and Caleb we can take them down if we believe we can.
Hah!! Guess Rose is a closet racist too./sarcasm
At the time of this interview, Congressional Republicans were pressing for SSI to illegal immigrants. Later in the year, they were successful in getting President Clinton to sign off on welfare reform. Hence, the concern expressed by Milton Friedman was met. The man should be allowed to rest in peace. At least, he should be quoted correctly.
from http://www.ssa.gov/history/1990.html
August 22, 1996 President Clinton signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.” This “welfare reform” legislation terminated SSI eligibility for most non-citizens. As of the date of enactment, no new non-citizens could be added to the benefit rolls and all existing non-citizen beneficiaries would eventually be removed from the rolls (unless they met one of the exceptions in the law.) Also effective upon enactment were provisions eliminating the “comparable severity standard” and reference to “maladaptive behavior” in the determination of disability for children to receive SSI. Children receiving benefits under the old standards were to be reviewed and removed from the rolls if they could not qualify under the new standards.
Friedman had plenty of reservations about NAFTA as well. As he said it is NOT free trade, but managed trade.
BTW, for all haven't read it yet, the post IMMIGRATION AND USURPATION by Fredo Arias-King is a must read. Author is a Mexican with pro-US sympathies who seems to know the Federalist Papers better than most Americans. Certainly better than our elites. He points out what is really motivating the immigration bill. Anyway, I'm recommending it to everyone. A long post, but great reading for the weekend.
Yeah. ! You said it exactly right.
Mr. Friedman here shifted focus. "What's really killed the Republican Party isn't spending, it's Iraq. As it happens, I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression." Mrs. Friedman--listening to her husband with an ear cocked--was now muttering darkly.
Milton: "Huh? What?" Rose: "This was not aggression!" Milton (exasperatedly): "It was aggression. Of course it was!" Rose: "You count it as aggression if it's against the people, not against the monster who's ruling them. We don't agree. This is the first thing to come along in our lives, of the deep things, that we don't agree on. We have disagreed on little things, obviously--such as, I don't want to go out to dinner, he wants to go out--but big issues, this is the first one!" Milton: "But, having said that, once we went in to Iraq, it seems to me very important that we make a success of it." Rose: "And we will!"
Yes. The sort of immigrant under those policies doesn't make for an easily manipulated permanent underclass who will suck the lifeblood out of America's middle class until we are all gov't serfs.
Thanks ismac. It’s a stunning article. It somewhat confirms my suspicions that this immigration issue will lead not just to civil strife here in the US, but it may just lead to Civil War 2.
Your link references Clinton's welfare reform from the 90's, doesn't it? But the interview took place long after this. Note that Milton and Rose are talking about the Iraq war, so it's certainly later than March, 2003. Apparently Friedman still had reservations about welfare and unlimited immigration long after welfare reform had passed. (The article refers to Friedman's being 94 years old. He was born in 1912. That implies that the interview took place in 2006, the same year as the publication of the article.)
I'm not saying Friedman was opposed to immigration as such. I have pretty much the same view Friedman expresses in the article. I would be pretty much for open borders if it weren't for the welfare state and the security concerns prompted by 9/11.
My point in posting this is that many who are now being tarred with the "racism" charge by their president and some conservatives have nearly the same views as Friedman. Why are we being demonized?
bump
Oi, I hope not. To think of L.A. or Phoenix turing into Beruit is a scary prospect. If conservatives get mobilized we don't need any drastic action (other than to vote the bums out).
I believe you’re right on this point.
Let's remove our front doors and let anyone in our house whenever they feel like it, because it's good for freedom, too.
I wonder what Native Americans think about that.
Enough immigration.
Our quality of life is going downhill fast from overpopulation.
What gets me so mad is that the Democrats want to have it both ways: They want open borders, and to give away the farm. I could stomach some of this immigration, if so many Democrat-controlled cities didn’t declare themselves sanctuary cities and make it illegal to ask for proof of citizenship when getting welfare, medical care or registering to vote. We can’t even deport the criminals. The illegal immigrant has a right to privacy that trumps taxpayer rights.
Enough immigration. Our quality of life is going downhill fast from overpopulation.
Indeed, we agree completely on that point. But there is a much larger issue at stake. It's the nature of American governance itself.
The quotes below come from the article I referenced above, called IMMIGRATION AND USURPATION. The Mexican author, who seems very pro-American, argues that immigration is a subtle, sometimes conscious weapon against the built-in checks on government power in the Constitution:
Of a handful of motivations, one of the main ones (even if unconscious) of many of these legislators can be found in what the U.S. Founding Fathers called "usurpation." Madison, Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and others devised a system and embedded the Constitution with mechanisms to thwart the "natural" tendency of the political class to usurp power—to become a permanent elite lording over pauperized subjects, as was the norm in Europe at the time. However, the Founding Fathers seem to have based the logic of their entire model on the independent character of the American folk. After reviewing the different mechanisms and how they would work in theory, they wrote in the Federalist Papers that in the end, "If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America …"4 With all his emphasis on reason and civic virtue as the basis of a functioning and decentralized democratic polity, Jefferson speculated whether Latin American societies could be governed thus.5
While Democratic legislators we spoke with welcomed the Latino vote, they seemed more interested in those immigrants and their offspring as a tool to increase the role of the government in society and the economy. Several of them tended to see Latin American immigrants and even Latino constituents as both more dependent on and accepting of active government programs and the political class guaranteeing those programs, a point they emphasized more than the voting per se. Moreover, they saw Latinos as more loyal and "dependable" in supporting a patron-client system and in building reliable patronage networks to circumvent the exigencies of political life as devised by the Founding Fathers and expected daily by the average American.
Yes, that's another irritating thing about this debate. It's presented as an "all or nothing" proposition, with nothing inbetween. We hear, "You can't round up 12 million people and deport them." The argument seems to run, if can't deport ALL of them, you have to LEGALIZE all of them. Scarcely any guarantees that they will, say, go hard after felons and kick them out. They'd rather chase after our own border agents, or ramp up the charges against Dog, the Bountyhunter, etc. Although the bill seems to have teeth in it to prevent the criminals from getting citizenship, the z-visa provision vitiates this measure.
Sorry to harp on the above linked article again, but here's what Arias-King says about enforcement provisions. It comes from his private meetings with US legislators:
Some legislators had also mentioned to us (oftentimes laughing) how they had "defanged" or "gutted" anti-immigration bills and measures, by neglecting to fund this program or tabling that provision, or deleting the other measure, etc. "Yes, we passed that law, but it can’t work because we also…" was a usual comment to assuage the Mexican delegations.
So you see, they'll promise us the moon regarding enforcement provisions, but they know they'll never deliver on anything. We can't let them get away with this kind of raw Machiavellism.
Simple: The people doing the demonizing are not true conservatives.
We might differ about the fine points of what defines a conservative, but I think almost all would agree that what is NOT conservative is the reflexive accusation of racist motives on the part of opponents and appeals to identity politics, not to mention the unrelenting desire to obliterate the US nation-state that is evident in the LOST, SPP, and the immigration reform bill.
You are correct about the interview being recent, when the man was 94 years old.
He remained lucid into his 90s, but I would avoid quoting him in his old age about a matter in which he clearly favored immigration and opposed the welfare state. In his old age, he might not have been as witty as he was when a younger man, when he was able to make clear that what he opposed was the welfare state and not immigration.
The immigration matter is complicated in many ways, and one of the complications concerns the subsidy taxpayers provide, in the name of family reunification, to aged parents and others, who come here, legally, and qualify for Social Security, Medicare and so forth. To me, the welfare problem isn’t just about illegal immigrants. It’s about being fair to the U.S. taxpayer.
Privatizing of Social Security and Medicare would solve this problem, and allow us over-taxed Americans to be more generous with slots for family reunification.
Conversely, Mexicans and other Latin-Americans pose a different problem. Demographically, they actually don’t over-burden the Social Security/Medicare system. They impact the Education system and the Health system. Legalizing them should help.
But, there another problem posed by the Latin Americans. If too many of them get the vote, they would vote for bigger welfare system. Lower educated people generally do not understand why we are a rich country. They think money grows on trees, and hate doctors, pharmaceutical drug companies, automobile insurance companies, “the rich,” oil companies, foreignors, and so on. And they want to vote themselves a better living.
Plus, culturally, when you get a sub-population of maybe 20 percent, the members of that sub-population have little incentive to assimilate.
Regarding the problem our pourous borders pose for terrorism, yes, we obsolutely have to address the problems of illegal immigration and of illegal drugs. I’m not hopeful about either.
interesting that MF homes on the problem of socialism vs immigration, the former is a much greater problemm than the latter IMO...
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Yes, I would be all for it. And we do have a problem with illegal immigration. I'm all for coming up with viable, pointed solutions to the problem which I know burdens not only native-born, but those who come here as well.
But, there another problem posed by the Latin Americans. If too many of them get the vote, they would vote for bigger welfare system. Lower educated people generally do not understand why we are a rich country. They think money grows on trees, and hate doctors, pharmaceutical drug companies, automobile insurance companies, “the rich,” oil companies, foreignors, and so on. And they want to vote themselves a better living.
Again, we agree. I know I sound like a broken record, but the article referenced above makes many of the same points. For example,
Bill Richardson, who had served in Clinton’s cabinet and later became governor of New Mexico, kindly stopped to speak to our delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. He commented favorably to us: "What do Hispanics want? Fully funded government programs!" The Economist mentioned about his state:
New Mexico is a poor place, with one of the highest proportion of people living on food stamps … Its political tradition also long had a Latin American feel, based around a padrón system of clients and bosses. The bosses ran grocery stores, gave you credit, helped you if you needed a job. And all you had to do was vote for the Democrats … New Mexican politics is still about jobs, contracts and personal loyalty, not ideology. And Mr. Richardson personifies this.6
Trailer-park poverty combined with a cult of personality, where government initiatives regularly bear the governor’s name, as they would with some Latin American potentate (the governor is half Mexican himself), prevails in a state that is 40 percent Hispanic, including Hispanics already many generations in the United States.
Whole article is HERE
In terms of hating foreignors, we are the “foreignors” they hate.
They hate us because we won’t let them come here are take our money.
Open border w/ democracy=self-destruction
Not only that, but the more crowded people become the more they start to think like liberals, eventually becoming liberals.
Compare that Red and Blue election map to that “Map of the Earth at Night” to see what I mean.
You can shipwreck a few dozen conservatives and put them into a crowded lifeboat, and they will find share and share alike a perfectly reasonable way to live.
Same when you stick them into cities, they gradually liberlize.
Anyone who didn't think of Animal Farm after reading that analysis, hasn't read Orwell.
Dr. Friedman was one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
It's too bad that only Estonia has attempted to implement his principles.
I hope to move there before we ruin that.
...Unless of course they flee to the suburbs (heh, heh).
You make a good point though. Sullivan's Law applies to individuals as well as to institutions. The law goes roughly, "Whatever institution or organization does not self-consciously maintain its conservative principles gradually becomes liberal over time." The general drift of the culture and society we live in is to the left. If you don't consciously swim against the tide, it sweeps you along, insensibly as it were.
I wish that were true, but they use those 2 systems more than natives.
Good chart at the link.
Mexican Use of Means-Tested Programs Remains High Even After Welfare Reform. Figure 12 reports use of means-tested programs for households headed by natives, all immigrants, and Mexican immigrants. Despite welfare reform and a strong economy in the latter half of the 1990s, the figure shows that immigrants in general and Mexican households in particular use every major means-tested program at higher rates than natives. While use of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) by Mexican households is only slightly higher than that of natives, their use of TANF/general assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, and the subsidized school lunch program is dramatically higher than households headed by natives. All of these programs are very large in size. In 1999, more than $300 billion was spent on the means-tested programs listed in Figure 12. Even the school lunch program, the smallest of the programs listed in the figure, costs more than $5 billion annually. Not only do immigrants use welfare programs at higher rates than natives, their use of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is also substantially higher than that of natives. With an annual cost of $32 billion, the EITC is the nation’s largest means-tested cash assistance program for workers with low incomes. Persons receiving the EITC pay no federal income tax and instead receive cash assistance from the government based on their earnings and family size. http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/mexico/means.html
It helps if you read the entire article, rather than just the sentences you put in bold. Friedman was against the welfare state, not open immigration.
Equine skatology.
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