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Posted on 05/09/2013 1:54:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Handy guide to the Larger Issue: Justin Green, responding to the arguments over the Heritage Foundation’s estimate of the cost of immigration amnesty, says that what this debate is “really about” is whether we’re heading towards
a society where anything less than a college diploma is no longer sufficient to achieve the American Dream.
In other words: Unchecked, or vastly expanded, immigration opens the remaining unskilled jobs that can’t be outsourced to global low-wage competition. Even if the result would be a larger American economy overall, it would also be an economy where those diligently performing basic labor, who don’t have much in the way of skills or smarts, would be pushed out of the bottom of the middle class–while wealth continues to accumulate at the higher levels. There are basically three reactions to this (here I am echoing David Frum)
1. “Cato, the Club for Growth, the Wall Street Journal editorial page,” Grover Norquist, etc, value markets and dynamism. If society overall gets richer, they don’t much care how it is distributed or whether it creates nasty social divisions (not just rich vs. poor, but skilled vs. unskilled, smart vs. not-smart, lucky vs. unlucky). Those divisions may even create a powerful incentive to acquire valuable skills ( if you can).
2. Obama and the Democrats don’t like the distributional and social effects of open borders, but plan to handle them with a bigger web of government income transfers, social provision of benefits, training, and counseling (the cost of which is what Heritage is estimating), and by spreading unionism in the private sector. Also they need Latino votes.
3. Amnesty opponents (NumbersUSA, Frum, National Review)–the “bitter enders” : Would like to avoid the problem, perhaps at some cost to GDP, through the simple, traditional expedient of enforcing a border. That would tighten up the labor market at the bottom and give basic workers now in this country a shot at a middling income without relying on a more elaborate web of government transfers and services.
I’m a 3.
imteresting distinctions
I disagree with the idea that NOT allowing 30 million or more to take and take while adding minially could hurt our GDP
3
and their families...another 40-60 million
Enforce the damned law! The illegal alien crowd will deport itself just fine.
4. Round ‘em up and ship ‘em out.
NO amnesty!
I believe first and foremost that we are a nation of laws, not men. We must incorporate justice in any discussion of how to move forward. Rewarding 30 million criminals with amnesty is not justice.
That being said, I believe in more open borders. I believe in more immigration. They are the right policies. However, before these policies are enacted we need to abolish the welfare state and restore Federalism.
It is never right to promote bad policy in order to cover up the failures of other bad policies.
Make no changes in law and fully enforce existing law that will drive every illegal alien out of the country!!!
Go after anyone employing them and fine them to the maximum.
Mandatory prison time for a second offense!!!!
3
I will never understand why so many on the right want to grant amnesty. I guess certain members of the GOP could care less what happens to the country as long as they are bribed (in the form of campaign donations) from the business community who want the cheap labor.
I keep hearing about how bad the business environment is in California now that the Democrats have a firm lock on that state. I would be curious to know the number of businesses in California that bribed (donated) to GOP politicians back in the 70s and 80s, have now either closed up shop or moved out of state due to things being so bad.
Reap what you sow.
Put a $500 bounty on them. You’d have every illegal alien out of this country in about a month for a cost of about $10 billion dollars.
I’m a three ...
No Reward for illegal entry! Identify illegals by giving them legal residency. But NO citizenship! NO vote! No awarding the reward of citizenship to illegals to stampede over the rights of those who are legally here through naturalization or birth right.
I’ll put myself in a fourth group. This is a group not of the here and now, but how to position America in the future, a future where we cannot so gleefully spend money without being aware of the consequences.
Here are some possibilities.
1) Mexico is the 11th most populous nation in the world, just behind Japan. So how about outsourcing to them for things that are problematic for the US? In particular, low level international military missions with minimal conflict, and some aspects of healthcare.
America has by far the best military in the world, but when they are misused for “guard duty” peacekeeping missions and other such exercises, it costs us tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and dulls the “sword blade” of our military. And there are lots of places we just to refuse to send out people. Namely Africa.
However, if we built a military base in the Caribbean, and populated it with Mexicans, with US officers, it would cost just a fraction of what our military costs, and would not squander our “blood and treasure”. At no time would they enter the US, ever. We could save our military for “real” conflicts.
They would be Mexicans then, and they would remain Mexicans, so then end result would be our saving LOTS of money and American lives.
The other thing we should outsource to Mexico are some elements of healthcare that we just cannot do right, such as nursing homes and extended care, as well as hyper expensive medical procedures that are a lot cheaper in Mexico.
Already, Mexico has a surplus of medical care people who are both competent and speak English. So the medical support to patient ratio is much lower. The US could design and build high quality medical “cities” just across the border, and it would take a lot of pressure off the US health care system.
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