Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Legitimate reasons for immigration control

All too often, I've been seeing conservative pundits and thinkers treat immigration reform as if all we needed to do was put a division of Marines with shoot to kill orders on the Rio Grande, and all would be well with our country. One writer even compared the expulsion of illegal immigrants to the Holocaust. No, I am not making this up. It's really embarassing.

That said, however, there are legitimate reasons to want borders enforced that have everything to do with not only our own security and prosperity, but also that of those who wish to come here.

Specifically, illegal immigration (or even "guest worker" status) creates an inherently unequal playing field between employers and employees. Illegals are told to "do it or face the INS." Citizens are told "do it or be replaced by an illegal." And we wonder why there is a lot of resentment in the lower middle class and the poor! We need to control our borders if only to preserve the rights of lower income workers.

Moreover, when we depress the wages of the poor through uncontrolled immigration, we end up paying their living expenses through welfare programs. In other words, the middle class ends up subsidizing the labor pool for the upper classes--just like stadium bills force the middle class to fund entertainment for the rich. One doesn't need to be a populist to see the problems with this!

Then there is family life; when a man breaks the law to find a job, he often leaves his wife and children at home. That's generally not good for family life, to put it mildly, and according to some, it leads to the destruction of the economies and families the men leave behind.

Finally, there are the issues of immigrants dying in the desert, "other than Mexican" immigrants (e.g. terrorists) coming in, tropical diseases, and a general contempt for the law. The long and short of it is that illegal immigration hurts a lot of people on both sides of the border, and it's time for our government (and Mexico's) to admit that good fences make good neighbors.

5 comments:

Mercy Now said...

I was thinking that even if we have good fences and I'm all for it, we are only slowing the problem and not solving it. By that I mean there's no consequences b/c as soon as they are caught we take them back to Mexico, Mexican police don't do anything about it and the same people cross again the next week b/c there's no reason for them not to cross. I would if I were them b/c I'll try a hundred times until I succeed.

I do not know what the best solution is but maybe we should tell Fox that if he doesn't control his border, there are trade and tax consequences with us.

I'm all for immigration as long as it's done legally.

Bike Bubba said...

Well said--my thought is that as crossing illegally becomes more difficult (not dangerous, just difficult) and legal immigration becomes better managed, the "demand" to immigrate illegally will be drastically reduced.

Chief RZ said...

bike-- You must have taken at least one economics course. I'll add a bit of operant conditioning. No rewards for entering illegally. No jobs. No welfare, no free trips to the hospital, no free education. A little bit of punishment in the form of a "time out" in a local jail facility would be a good idea also.

Bike Bubba said...

Two actually--one useful micro-econ, one less useful macro that I've been trying to put out of my mind. Too Keynesian.

I'd agree but disagree with your point. Certainly it's bad that illegals cost us a lot of money.

On the other hand, talking about high taxes is going to get liberals supporting more of it. One must phrase the issue in terms of how badly people are treated to get the attention of liberals, IMO.

And sadly, there is more than enough evidence to make this case.

Anonymous said...

"We need to control our borders if only to preserve the rights of lower income workers."

Eh, what rights are those? I can't find any in the constitution...

If you want to enforce the borders, I'm all for it - but for national security reasons, not for the poor. They have no economic rights. Neither do the rich.

This is a free market and I'm all for cheap labor. I'd like to think that cheap labor comes from legal immigrants, but I know that's not the case.

What I don't want is border control to inflate wages artificially. Let the market work - if we need more workers, then let more immigrants in.