More thinking on immigration

Last updated on: January 31, 2014 at 11:32 pm by Jane the Actuary

More thinking on immigration 2014-01-31T23:32:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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New laptop + Windows 8 = I have very little understanding of how to use the computer I’m writing on. No menu, no tabs — I feel very blind and, among other things, unable to bop around and link to other articles on the blogosphere. Heck, I’m even writing this without having fully read and digested the comments from earlier today. But here are my thoughts:

1) the Republican leadership is focused on gaining Hispanic voters (and/or in the thrall of cheap-labor-seeking tech companies and the Chamber of Commerce), on the premise that, if only they support a legalization measure, they’ll be able to compete on an even playing field with the Democrats — all based on the theory that Mexicans are “natural conservatives” due to their “family values” and work ethic. Of course, this is a bit fanciful, since, if they’re “naturally” anything, they’re natural welfare-state supporters.

What seems a bit crazy is that this same leadership has no interest in “outreach” to the party mainstream, who want no part of a legalization endeavor. We are filling up comment sections or blog posts or (those who have the more elevated status of “pundit” or columnist) online or print publication columns about our mistrust of the leadership, our worries that they’ll cave and agree to meaningless rather than meaningful enforcement triggers, or no triggers at all, that they’ll effectively agree to the sort of open immigration that’ll drive down wages, that they’ll lose more conservative voters than any number of new voters they could ever hope to draw due to a legalization program.

Why isn’t Boehner, or Ryan, or Cantor, or why aren’t the others making efforts to reassure their base that they won’t sell them out? At any rate, I haven’t read about any such outreach, just reports of mysterious meetings and plans and principles and agendas.

2) Open immigration — whether with full open borders or in the more de facto manner of guest worker programs, large numbers of visas, family reunification programs including adult siblings and other relations, and, most significantly, disinterest in enforcement of immigration law — is not dissimilar from globalization/free trade/offshoring. If tech jobs are offshored, or if they’re given to low-paid H1-B holders in the United States, it’s the same impact, right? Or if poultry is processed by illegal workers with fake IDs in the U.S., vs. by workers at a plant in Mexico, there’s no difference, right? One might make the argument that if you support free trade, you should support open immigration, because the same principle is at stake — the work goes to the worker willing to do the work for the lowest wage, to the overall benefit of the world economy.

And there are various reasons and rationales on way or the other but ultimately I tend to think that, while globalization benefits the globe as a whole, and it’s a good thing for millions upon millions of people the world over, there are significant numbers of people who have been left behind in the United States — people who, like it or not, will be unable to lift themselves up from their minimum wage jobs by going to trade school, for instance. So if we import millions of unskilled immigrants to do all the low-wage jobs, especially immigrants who are willing to accept low wages, and crowd together in apartments to send money back home, we will displace Americans. And we are simply not a wealthy enough country to become a Saudi Arabia or U.A.E. where the native citizenry lives off welfare while imported workers, well, work.

Restricting immigration, then, is a way to mitigate the worst of the impacts of globalization on the poor.

3) How much immigration is the right amount of immigration, then, anyway?

Actually, it’s kind of ironic that progressives tend to support large-scale immigration and simultaneously worry about population growth — when, of course, it is exactly large-scale immigration that drives population growth.

In a perfect world, people would be able to migrate from one country to another, to experience a new culture, perhaps one that they enjoy more than their home country. Certainly, I’m not one to oppose someone moving from one developed country to another.

In the real world, open immigration becomes a foreign aid program, offering a safety valve to Mexico by serving as an outlet for a significant percentage of their poor, and injecting money into their economy via remittances.

Emma Lazarus’s poem is not law, is not written into our constitution, is nothing more than the expression of a particular time. Immigration is a part of our heritage – but so are pioneers, and covered wagons, and children working in the factories. How much should our population grow? Can we talk about this openly? Not that I’m prescribing a “right” answer, but surely the right answer isn’t to jump on anyone who raises the issue and call them prejudiced.

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So what *should* the Republicans do on immigration?

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