A very short play (or maybe a future comic strip, if I think of a punchline):
SHERMY: Now, what William here proposes we increase widget production.
BILLY: Actually, it’s “Billy,” if you don’t mind.
SHERMY: I think I like “William” better. It seems more accurate to me.
BILLY: “Billy” is accurate – the two words mean the same thing.
SHERMY: You’re wrong, because “Billy” might also refer to a goat. Or a policeman’s club. Or maybe the 1969 musical, or the short-lived Steve Guttenberg situation comedy on CBS. Oh, my god, what about Billy Beer? What if I say “go get Billy!” and my assistant gets me a beer? The word “Billy” is just too confusing to be understood.
BILLY: Look, we’re talking about what I’m called. My preference should be deferred to.
SHERMY: Yeah, but I’m the one who has to call you something.
Although Billy is right on the merits, the merits are secondary. This is a conversation about power and respect. Billy would like to have enough power and respect to be seen as an equal, and one way he can test that is by asking others to call him “Billy” instead of “William.” As Billy moves up in the organization and has more power and respect, fewer and fewer people will call him “William.” (His mom still will, though, because you never have so much power and respect that your mom can’t call you whatever she wants to.)
Shermy, in contrast, wants to demonstrate that he still has more power and respect than “William,” and one way of doing that is by refusing to defer to Billy’s sensibilities on what Billy should be called.
This is a debate that has happened over and over. Remember when right-wingers bitterly objected to the terms “people of color” and “African-American”? Years before that, the same people were clinging to the word “negro.” In 1995, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, during an interview, called Barney Frank “Barney Fag,” and then – crucially – had to apologize. In the 1970s, for adults to expect to be called “women” instead of “girls” seemed like a big deal. I myself am still struggling to purge the word “lame” from my vocabulary.
Every marginalized group faces this fight – do they have this most basic level of power and respect, the ability to decide how they will be referred to in civilized discussion?
And the steps forward are often small and marginal. The AP has revised its style guide, and will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant”:
illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.
Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.
It’s a step.
Ampersand says:
April 9, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Sure they are; pro-illegal-immigration folks just don’t like to acknowledge it.
Not legally, right?
If her parents leave, she’ll leave. If she’s three years old, I expect her to go where her parents go.
Aaaaaaaand…. cue the “zero sum” part that you denied was relevant.
Sure, we could. Just like we could simply increase the #of legal immigrants by 200,000 over the next 7 years. So what? That’s an argument in favor of increased immigration; it’s not an argument in favor of Mary specifically.
Again: if we’re going to allow 1.4 million new citizens, why should it be Mary and not Bob? You can’t keep pretending that the question doesn’t exist.
Semantics.
“Charged more” is the same, in this context, as “ineligible for extremely valuable government subsidies.” Since I don’t think that illegal immigrants deserve any government subsidies, I’m perfectly OK with them being denied such subsidies. Frankly I’d be perfectly OK with them being denied admissino to government schools in general.
Yup. That’s a feature, not a bug.
There are more kids in the U.S. who *want* to go to college than there are college slots and/or funds to educate them. We should reserve those slots/funds for citizens or, in some cases, legal aliens.
You seem to be willfully ignoring the zero-sum issue. Why is that?
Surely you can see that there are limited slots in class. There are limited dollars for subsidies. There are limited funds for tuition. If we give those funds to illegal immigrants, then we don’t have them to give to citizens. OTOH if we don’t give those funds to illegal immigrants, then we retain them to give to citizens or legal immigrants.
Are we talking about IMMIGRANTS or ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS? Not the same thing…
So, G&W, are births by US citizens also in a zero-sum game? Because the only way immigration is a zero-sum game is if America’s population is a zero-sum game.
Obviously not.
That’s only true if the limiting factor is “American population” and not “how many immigrants we want to accept this year.” Do you deny that there are limits on the # of immigrants which we will accept? Do you deny that the # of interested immigrants is greater than the # we should let in?
As soon as you have two classes, you have to sort people into “legally admit” or “not legally admit.” And since you’ll reach the limit in the “legally admit” class then it becomes a zero sum equation, pretty much.
It’s not necessarily a strict 1:1 criteria per individual, but it is on average: if you let in 10,000 more Mexicans of a given class then you have about 10,000 fewer slots open to Sudanese, and vice versa. If you give more government subsidies to illegal immigrants who are in the country, you have fewer subsidies available for poor citizens.
It is notable to me how few illegal immigration advocates are willing to engage with that issue. It makes them difficult to converse with. The “why Mexicans and not Sudanese?” or “why illegal immigrants and not those who followed the law, and who stayed in their country of origin pending admission?” questions are relevant, both morally and practically. We do not live in a Utopia of unlimited resources and free manna for everyone.
I feel sorry for four-year-old Mary, whose parents might have move back to Ecuador (taking Mary along) if they get deported. But I also feel sorry for four-year-old Alice, whose parents have stayed in Ecuador living on pennies. Alice isn’t any better off than Mary, and in fact her parents may be poorer, and more needful of citizenship; and Alice didn’t get the benefits of living in the U.S. for four years.
Mary is no more worthy than Alice in my view, and I don’t feel sorrier for Mary than for Alice. It doesn’t seem any more “fair” to choose Mary over Alice. (Actually, from an incentive viewpoint the reverse is true, and it would make more sense to choose Alice over Mary. Illegal immigration is an ongoing problem. To the extent that “help my kids have a better life” is a big incentive to immigrate illegally, penalizing Mary for the actions of her parents would reduce that incentive in the future. I’m not in favor of that, but I don’t think Mary should get an advantage over Alice, just because Mary’s parents broke the law.)
But how many immigrants you want to admit is, by definition, a subjective number – it depends on your desires. It makes no sense to say that it’s a zero sum game because the target number can move. If Amp could prove to you that letting both Mary and Alice become citizens then *you* (and every other current American citizen) will be better off than if only one of them does, would you still insist that you can only let one in?
Note that I’m not arguing for legitimizing undocumented immigrants – for one, as a non American I don’t think my opinion on that topic is particularly pertinent. I definitely think that there are plenty of serious considerations against it as well as for it. I just am boggling at the bizzare nature of your arguments: You say that the “pro-illegal immigration” people are ignoring the fact that it is a zero-sum situation, but you provide no argument for it being a zero-sum situation other than “the US will only ever want to let in + allow to stay a fixed number of immigrants”. I agree that if that premise were true, then immigration would be zero-sum game. I just don’t see how you could rationally defend that as a true position, regardless of your position on whether it’s a good idea to legitimize the stay of people who are in the US illegally.
Yes. But it’s a broad limitation which doesn’t get affected by specific individuals.
No. But the question just changes: why should we let in Mary and Alice instead of John and Zippy? And if you say that we should admit John and Zippy as well, then why those four and not someone else?
Eventually we will reach a point at which there are more people who want to get in than there are slots. Oh sure, in THEORY this could be avoided, but in practice it won’t.
The alternative would be for Amp to prove that we should have higher limits on immigration (which I support, BTW) or that we should have no limits on immigration (which I don’t support; I can’t speak for Amp.) Higher limits would increase the chances of Alice or Mary getting in but would still involve selection.
The other alternative would be to provide a criteria analysis which doesn’t depend in any way on numbers, i.e. “anyone who is under 18 and who lives in the U.S. gets in.” But as discussed below, that usually involves a numerical analysis anyway.
Well, yes. they won’t engage on that topic. Ask me to start telling you how I would design a vastly-expanded immigration system (whether or not i agree with the expansion) and I’m happy to do it. Ask illegal immigration advocates to explain how they would LIMIT immigration, and how we should properly deport illegal immigrants, and it’s like talking to a stone.
First, the U.S. DOES only let in a generally determined # of immigrants. When we talk about expanding legal immigration, for example, we talk about the increased numbers of people who will come in. Sure, there’s a bit of wiggle room. But if we’re aiming for 500,000/year we’re not going to let in 1,500,000. Even if we talk about criteria (“let’s let in all the college professors!”) we still do so in the context of how many there are.
Because it’s true?
In recent history the number of wannabe immigrants has VASTLY VASTLY exceeded the number of legal immigrants, by a huge amount. (I believe, though I’m not sure, that we are the primary wannabe immigration destination worldwide.) That history shows no signs of changing.
In recent history the number of immigrants has been determined by what we think we want, not by what the potential immigrants are asking for. There are rough mathematical limits, which are the practical result of policy estimates. That, too, shows no signs of changing.
Finally, our general limits on immigration are, as a practical matter, decided independently from the specific in-person aspects of any particular immigrant. As a result they tend to act as a cap.
“In recent history the number of wannabe immigrants has VASTLY VASTLY exceeded the number of legal immigrants, by a huge amount. (I believe, though I’m not sure, that we are the primary wannabe immigration destination worldwide.) That history shows no signs of changing.”
But what changed was that we dramatically decreased the number of immigrants we were willing to take in. I don’t object to wrangling over the number, but I do object to using bad arguments in wrangling over the number. Objectively we have assimilated much large percentages of foreign born people in the past than we do now. So the argument that we can’t take in lots of people now would have to rest on something fundamentally different about the people coming in (ie why hard working low skill Mexicans are worse than historically hard working low skilled Italians and Irish) or in us (we for some reason can handle much less immigration).
So you accept that it’s not inherently a zero-sum game; it’s a zero-sum game if you create a system which forces it to be a zero-sum game. It’s true that the US has historically preferred such as a system, but as you said, there are alternatives.
I can’t speak for them, but it seems to me that the reason they won’t engage on that topic is because the way you frame the question does not give them the room to do so. If Amp is trying to tell you that he thinks numbers should not be a limiting factor in deciding which immigrants get to stay, then telling him “ok, as long as you understand that numbers are a limiting factor” is just refusing to listen to them.
Personally, I think that using absolute numbers for immigration policy is poor planning – abstracting away from the human element (which is not something everyone else in this thread would be willing to do), countries should let in (or allow to remain) those people whose benefit outweighs their cost (regardless of how many there are), and keep out those that will cost more than their benefit (regardless of how many there are). The debate should be on how benefit and cost should be decided, not on how to limit or expand immigration.
Amp @ 92, answering Robert
We’re not talking about immigrants in general and we’re certainly not talking about resident aliens (which is the legal term for a non-citizen who resides in the U.S. legally), we’re talking about illegal aliens. See how the confusion comes in when we use “immigrant” as a general term covering both people here legally and illegally instead of using precise terms?
Why do you put the word “legitimate” in quotes there? Are you of the opinion that describing them as not being legitimate residents is not … legitimate?
What civil rights did those laws abrogate? Or do abrogate, since they weren’t all struck down?
Amp, @ 93 responding to me:
Oh, no. You’re the one making the assertion. It’s up to you to support it, not for me to prove it wrong. Show me the statistics on labor, social services, etc., do the math, and show me what the effect is and why you consider it negligible.
Then the DREAM act should be changed.
I mention H-2A and H-2B visas to illustrate the fact that some people legitimately in the U.S. are not immigrants. But they DO affect the labor pool, so when you calculate the effect of the DREAM act on the total number of people to be admitted into the U.S., the number of H-2A and H-2B visas you will plan to issue will be affected.
Verification of that should be part of the DREAM act.
I’d rather see that as “achieve”, not “seek”, and “to serve” change to “achieve or be eligible for an honorable discharge after” whatever the minimum enlistment term is these days, which I think is 3 years, which I also think is one year more than the time period for military service listed in the DREAM act as currently proposed – but I’d have to check that to be sure. And this is a matter of principle and ensuring that this will give the least encouragement to other people who would seek to enter the U.S. illegally, so the effect on the economy is of secondary importance here. To answer your later question, yes – upon completing these requirements I’d go along with them being in the regular line for naturalization.
Robert, @ 95:
We already are.
Amp, @ 98:
This falsely presumes that those are the only choices. There are others, such as “stay home and change your country’s systems so that people are not forced to live in poverty.”
Eytan, @ 103 & 104:
American’s population growth is statistically calcluable and goes into the calculations used to set the number of immigrants the U.S. wishes to admit.
It is a zero-sum game once you DO set the number. And if you DON’T set the number, your immigration policy makes no sense because then it’s based on what non-citizens want instead of what citizens want.
I am not sure I understand this statement. Are you saying that the U.S. either cannot or should not base it’s immigration policies on a calculation of admitting a fixed number of immigrants of various classes based on qualifications, skills, ability to support themselves, etc.? Because to me that is the ONLY rational basis for an immigration policy under present economic conditions.
Amp:
I greatly doubt that Latin voters will start voting Republican in any significant quantity if the GOP changes it’s attitudes towards immigration policy. And it will hurt them in their base, which will be more tempted to just stay home. So I don’t see this as being any benefit to the GOP.
“But what changed was that we dramatically decreased the number of immigrants we were willing to take in.”
This is categorically wrong. Legal immigration is at record levels. We’re finishing the third decade of immigration being at record levels. In 1970 immigrants were about 4% of the population; today it’s 12.5%.
No. What I was saying was that “we must have a system with fixed limits” is a position one can take, not a fact. It may or may not be the best type of system, and it may or may not be the only sensible one, but G&W kept arguing as if it was the only possible one.
Sebastian H:
No, it would not. Here are a few things to consider:
1. One should not forget that there was no great love for the Irish or the Italians (or Chinese or Poles, for that matter). Antipathy toward immigrant groups did not originate with recent immigrants. So, saying it is about the people coming is a little simplistic.
2. Space is an issue. Think about it. We have not added a state to the Union in over 50 years. And, the last two states (Alaska and Hawaii) are not big draws (the former because of climate and the latter because of size. The Union had NEVER gone 50 years without expanding, so, psychologically, there may be some aversion because our mindset is not about expansion in the way it was during the “frontier” days.
3. The rise of the bureaucratic state. This affects immigration in two ways. When the Irish came in the 1840s-1860s, there was little regulation around immigration (or MOST other things). As the federal government expanded regulations (pick your bureaucracy of choice: OSHA, SEC, IRS, EPA), it should come as no big surprise that immigration regulations followed suit. On the flip-side of that, when the Irish came, there was no such thing as the welfare state. We told immigrants: “you can come, but you are on your own.” Now, with the “welfare state,” a large burden of benefits could be attached to every single immigrant coming in. To give an example, if you come in as a “refugee” from Somalia, for example, I believe your refugee status automatically qualifies you for any benefit program out there (Section 8, food stamps, SSDI (not sure about that one)); however, if you come in through a sponsor (an adult child who is a citizen, for example), you are required to have an affidavit of support so that you will NOT be a burden on the system. And, given the various types of immigration statuses out there, there could be a great variety of differences about what benefits one may or may not be entitled to. In any event, that was not an issue in 1840.
-Jut
Jutgory:
From the Center for Immigration Studies:
The study does not distinguish between resident and illegal aliens when counting immigrants. However, in reading the executive summary of the study, we see:
I would propose that since the legal immigration system selects for educated or otherwise skilled immigrants, the group of immigrants with low education are going to have a higher proportion of illegal aliens.
Robert, you cherry picked the very lowest immigrant period in all of US history as your baseline. From 1850-1920, every year had higher immigration than we have now. That is a seventy year period. However I am cheered to see that recently we are getting back to our immigrant allowing roots. I thought it was still super low like in the seventies, so thanks for making me look it up.
http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/charts/final.fb.shtml
“What I was saying was that “we must have a system with fixed limits” is a position one can take, not a fact. It may or may not be the best type of system, and it may or may not be the only sensible one, but G&W kept arguing as if it was the only possible one.”
Unless you have invented replicator technology, it is the only possible position. We live on a fixed landmass with a fixed ecosphere. It is possible to argue for a position that refuses to STATE a fixed limit or to acknowledge that there is some numerical bound, but there is a fixed limit for a given level of technology and physical resources. People who believe otherwise, believe in unicorns.
Sebastian, % of base population and number of immigrants are two different things. Of course we had a higher % of base population each year a century and a half ago; our population was a third the size of today. Similarly, Japan had 50% per year economic growth in the 1950s, because their baseline was shit. That doesn’t mean their policy was great. Look at your own graph, at the purple line: actual number of immigrants.
We had a post-Depression lull, during which we only admitted millions and millions and millions; since a “low” point where we were only the #1 destination for immigration in the world 40+ years ago, it’s been a steadily rocketing upward trend since. You characterized the issue with our immigration system as being our decision to hugely reduce the level; we never had such a decision. We went from “fuck tons of immigrants” to “tons of immigrants” for a historically brief period, and our current immigrants-as-percentage-of-total-population is at the same level as it was during the founding years of the Republic. It’s like being Microsoft 30+ years into the corporate history, and suddenly having 100% equity gain every year again.
It isn’t possible to assess our immigration history with any degree of cognitive competence and come to your conclusion; it would be like saying Microsoft was a main contributor to US poverty in the 2000s because it had a couple decades where it only grew 10% equity each year instead of 100%. You’re not an idiot, so I assume you’ve been gulled or indoctrinated by ideologues.
Sure. There’s also a limited pool of immigrants, given that after the first 7 billion or so you’ll just run out of humans.
But if you are going to talk about the maximum limits of the US’s resources, then A – you have to also think about limiting population growth by other means such as childbirth, which (according to a google search) outpaces immigration by a factor of at least 3. And B – you’re presumably not going to make a policy that allows the USA to fill to capacity, and therefore you don’t need to deal with fixed numbers, but rather will want to consider other factors.
Sebastian:
Have a look at this study:
The first graph in that study is telling. It shows both the total number of immigrants in the U.S. (bars) and the % of immigrants in relation to the total population. While the latter is slightly lower than the 20th Century peak of 1910 – 1919, the total number is 3x what it was then.
Eytan:
Hm. Have a look here:
If you want to calculate the impact of immigration on the U.S., you also have to factor in the children they will have. We also need to calculate the load they will put on social services:
that they are educated,
And what that does to the labor pool and availability of work for existing citizens.
Amp:
I used the wrong link in @ 113. It should be http://www.cis.org/2012-profile-of-americas-foreign-born-population . If you can fix that for me I’d appreciate it.
[Fixed! –Amp]
I don’t think it makes any sense to emphasize the change in the total number, any more than it makes sense to talk about how expensive things have become by focusing on non-inflation-adjusted numbers.
If a society has 1000 members, then 1000 immigrants moving in is enormous. If a society has a billion members, then the same thousand moving in is a blip.
To call this “garbage” would be an insult to garbage, Ron.
1) The correlation you cite doesn’t mean anything. There are no controls for other factors, and no attempt to distinguish the impact of immigration from the impact of the thousand other factors that effect the US economy.
2) Actual economic studies based on “natural experiments” – comparing similar regions with different rates of immigration, and controlling for confounding factors – show that higher immigration is a net economic benefit.
3) Even the few peer-reviewed economic studies that do find any harm to native workers, find that the effect is small and temporary. And those studies are theoretical, and are rightly seen as less compelling than the more empirical studies.
4) The US economy is not a zero-sum game. Adding new workers to our economy doesn’t mean there’s less pie left for the rest of us; it means the pie gets larger.
I had thought the 2003 Washington State legislation was about in-state tuition for all immigrants, not just for undocumented students, which is why I used the term “immigrants” rather than “undocumented immigrants.”
Looking it up now, I see I was mistaken about that; the 2003 bill was about in-state tuition for UIs, not for immigrants generally. My bad.
Since I was discussing the DREAM Act, 4-year-old Mary isn’t the subject (it is literally impossible for a 4 year old to qualify for citizenship under the DREAM Act); the Mary we’re discussing is much more likely to be around 15 years old and beginning to plan for college.
I’m perfectly happy to discuss limits, and agree with you that limits do exist for all practical purposes, when discussing immigration generally.
However, when discussing the DREAM Act, we’re not dealing with a zero-sum game. There is no legal, moral or practical reason to think that recognizing 20-year-old Mary’s citizenship in 2014 requires us to reduce the number of non-DREAM-Act immigrants in 2014.
I’ve also discussed in this thread why I think 15-year-old Mary’s claim for citizenship is stronger than other claims, so your implication that I’ve refused to address this is not accurate. As I wrote earlier this thread:
It is simply cruel to deport 15-year-old Mary to a country she hasn’t seen since she was a small child or maybe an infant, where she may not have any relatives she’s ever met, where she may not speak the language, where she will be cut off from everyone she has ever known and every potential support system she has ever had contact with, and where she basically has no means of survival.
You bring up the comparison of “Alice,” a girl who is similar to Mary but who has never lived in the US. But “Alice,” as tough as her life is, speaks the language where she lives. She is more likely to have family there, definitely knows people and the culture there, and is more likely to know how to survive. (Admittedly, when you made this comparison, you assumed both girls were 4; you might not have made the Mary/Alice comparison if you realized that DREAM Act kids can’t be 4.)
Amp, a net benefit (even a large net benefit) doesn’t mean that nobody gets hurt. If I come to your house and cure one life-threatening illness, make four people immortal, and chop off your head (you weren’t one of the four) – the net benefit to your household is significant. You’re still dead, though.
My understanding is that mass immigration (legal and illegal) has had a significant contribution to the deterioration in the economic position of black Americans. From Borjas, G. J.; Grogger, J.; Hanson, G. H. (2010). “Immigration and the Economic Status of African-American Men”. Economica 77 (306): 255–282:
“The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skilled black men, fell precipitously between 1960 and 2000. At the same time, their incarceration rate rose. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in employment and incarceration. Using data from the 1960–2000 US censuses, we find that a 10% immigration-induced increase in the supply of workers in a particular skill group reduced the black wage of that group by 2.5%, lowered the employment rate by 5.9 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate by 1.3 percentage points.”
I can’t spend hours on this debate today, but I commented on Borjas’ work here. Essentially, his method looks only at the negative effects of immigration on native employment, while ignoring positive effects.
I think it’s pretty obvious that “natural experiment” methods like those used by Card, which unavoidably take both positive and negative effects into account, are inherently better reflections of what actually happens in the real world.
Ok. Let’s start with an easy question which addresses moral limits:
We just invented a magical teleportation wand that can deport people. Which illegal immigrants do you think it would be perfectly OK to deport? I.e. who should we be able to kick out without engaging in the practicalities of catching and deporting them? Note that this is not a question of economic benefit, but of the morality of deportation.
My answer: We should be able to deport all of them except for refugees and asylum seekers (and equivalent minor exceptions,) assuming they can prove their status. Any country has a right to control its borders, and kick out folks who sneak over them or overstay their welcome. We are no different.
Next question: Please explain who, in your opinion, is the proper beneficiary of U.S. government policy w/r/t foreign nations and immigration.
My answer: U.S. citizens. There are many reasons to give things to other people or countries, but they all stem from a benefit to U.S. citizens. E.g., foreign aid stems from our desire to be perceived as moral; to feel good about ourselves; and to live in a world with fewer problems; if foreign aid had no benefits to us then we wouldn’t give it.
Next question: On a similar note, please explain your relative consideration of “their wants” and “our wants.” Should we admit someone who really wants to come but who wouldn’t benefit us as much? Or do we choose on our own goals, which may mean that the only people who get in this week are Bulgarian C++ coders?
Final question (for now): How do you address the incentives involved in providing benefits to illegal immigrants? Does this match your other general moral positions of fairness, justice, and equality–i.e. helping those who cut the line; preferring those who break the law; treating people differently at the southern border; etc? If not, why not?
Regarding your other comments:
Cruel? I dunno about that. Is it cruel to allow people to immigrate to the US and bring along their 15-year-old kid? I can see the “immigration sucks for kids and we should discourage it” argument. I don’t think the “immigration is great unless it’s deportation from the U.S.” argument though.
You mean, other than her parents?
Mary wasn’t born here, of course (she’d be a citizen and couldn’t be deported.) Mary probably didn’t immigrate alone; the chances are high that she came with one or both parents (if she did, to live with other family members, then her parents remain at home and she will return to them.)
Mary’s parents probably aren’t citizens or legal aliens (if they were, then they could keep Mary in the US.) If they are deported then she will be with them.
See above. Are non-English-speaking immigrants inflicting cruelty on themselves? (Not to mention that “may not speak” is often not true. Bilingualism is much higher in the children of native non-English speakers)
Again: other than her parents, and any family members/friends in the old country, and so on. And assuming that she hasn’t had contact with anyone is a bit of a stretch.
Other than acting like pretty much anyone else in that country who is looking for a job, using appropriate government benefits. Right? Of course, Mary quite possibly has enormous benefits over many of those folks, because she might be a bilingual highly educated person.
But generally, the problems you list are just as compelling a screed to keep Mary OUT as to let Mary IN, you know. Changing countries of residence is hard. Yet you seem to be quite supportive of it in the US immigration context.
Nonetheless I would be more than happy to arrange for Mary to stay, provided that (a) Mary is in fact someone we otherwise want to have as a citizen; and (b) I could ensure that doing so doesn’t immediately incentivize a whole shitload of future Mary-parent-like people to try even harder to get THEIR kids in illegally because, you know, cutting the line really works in the U.S.; and (c) the “do it for Mary” line doesn’t rapidly turn into “…and Mary’s parents” because if you’re going to place blame on anyone regarding lawbreaking, it’s them.
If we’re going to make special exceptions for certain classes of people who are illegal immigrants, we shouldn’t also allow those people to expand our exceptions. I.e. if you get in on the DREAM act because you were an illegal immigrant named Mary and we felt bad about deporting you, then you don’t get to use the “parents of citizens” IR5 status to get your parents in as well, at least not for a long time: we’ll reserve those slots for people who did the whole thing legally. Doing otherwise provides too much of an incentive for Mary’s parents to immigrate illegally
Amp @ 119:
Robert and I think Sebastian were going back and forth about the different numbers. It appeared to me that they were talking past each other. I offered that graph as clarification so they could both see the numbers the other was talking about.
I agree that correlation is not causation, but it does point to a subject worthy of study.
I’m fine with immigration. It’s a great thing. You need to cross an ocean to visit any place that my great grandparents were born on my father’s side, 3x-great on my mother’s side. But they came here in accordance with the laws in effect at the time and they all worked (they had to, public welfare back in those days was pretty slim to non-existent).
Immigration DOES provide a benefit – if they’re the right immigrants. Open borders where immigrants get to self-select rather than be selected according to the needs of America as determined by law does NOT benefit the U.S. I find it very difficult to believe that large numbers of uneducated and low-skilled workers, proportionately more of whom are on public assistance than citizens, is of benefit to the U.S. Rewarding law-breakers with citizenship is unjust, unfair and undemocratic.
It is simply cruel to deport 15-year-old Mary to a country she hasn’t seen since she was a small child or maybe an infant, where she may not have any relatives she’s ever met, where she may not speak the language, where she will be cut off from everyone she has ever known and every potential support system she has ever had contact with, and where she basically has no means of survival.
Yes. In addition to this–and in addition to (as Ampersand pointed out) the fact that practically speaking, we have a choice between having DREAM Act kids here as citizens or as non-citizens with no legal status, rather than between having them here or deporting them–I agree with G&W that Americans’ needs should be given more weight. Certainly we shouldn’t deport Americans to make room for foreigners. Except G&W doesn’t see a kid who was born in another country but lived most of their childhood and adolescence in America as an American, and I do, even if according to our current laws such a person is not a US citizen.
I have to admire the courage of people who come to a strange land where they may not speak the language or fit in with the culture. I don’t think it’s something that I would do except as a last resort, and I don’t think it’s something we should force people to do.
(I also think that the context of unpleasant things can change how we experience them–being forced to leave your home country for what you think will be a worse life is different from voluntarily leaving your home country for what you think will be a better life, even if the hardships are similar, which they wouldn’t be if the “worse life” perception is accurate. One example of the importance of context that’s always stuck with me is from Sam Harris, saying that a woman going through childbirth with a wanted child would have a very different mental experience from a woman magically forced to experience the sensations of childbirth in order to extract information from her. That’s getting a bit tangential, though.)
I have a question about the DREAM act. The conversations above address whether and how it would be applied to children currently in the U.S. How does it apply going forward? Do minor children who are brought into the country illegally by their illegal alien parents after it’s passed become immediately eligible for a path to citizenship under it’s provisions? Do they become eligible after a period of time? Do they ever become eligible at all? Does it give incentive to people to sneak into the U.S. with their kids on the basis that if they can avoid detection and deportation for a period of time then their children will become eligible to become U.S. citizens?
My grandfather came into this country illegally in the ’30s. He had a 6th grade education and was a low skilled worker. He died a millionaire. In between he learned to be a butcher, opened his own business, sold it after a few decades, bought an apartment building in Brooklyn and became a landlord, invested money in the stock market, paid taxes, bought a horse, bought a new car every couple of years, patronized local businesses, became a citizen, collected social security, was on medicare.
The becoming a millionaire part of it is unusual, but the rest is not.
Do the kinds of benefits my grandfather gave the country balance out those receiving public assistance? Do you have any way of measuring that or is it just a gut feeling?
RonF – the latest version of the (federal) DREAM act put before the senate applied only to people who were between the ages of 12-29 at the time the bill was enacted who had been in the US before they were 16. The bill failed, but had it passed, children ages 12-15 at the time it was enacted would have been able to enter the US illegally until they turned 16; but it would no open up any new immigration possibilities to anyone who was younger than 12 (nor to anyone not yet born) at the time the bill was passed.
This tool seems like it might add some interesting perspectives to this conversation: Would your immigrant relative(s) make it in under today’s laws?
Mine would not. Including the one who signed the Declaration of Independence, and the one who came over on the Mayflower.
My paternal grandparents absolutely were illegal immigrants. To the point of forging papers and bribing judges. But since I’m white, people treat this as an adorable story about a naughty ancestor, as if I’d said my grandparents were cattle rustlers or pirates, rather than railing about “anchor babies”.
I find it very difficult to believe that large numbers of uneducated and low-skilled workers, proportionately more of whom are on public assistance than citizens
Even assuming that it is true that “proportionately more” of low-skilled immigrants than citizens rely on public assistance, I don’t find it difficult to believe at all that many Americans benefit from their labor. Particularly those Americans involved in agribusiness.
The concept of whether or not currently illegally resident aliens in the U.S. will has an effect on unemployment of American citizens (and what effect legalizing their residence status) has been debated back and forth on this thread and elsewhere. Here’s the opinion of a group whose opinions I’ve seen cited on this blog favorably before:
US Civil Rights Commmission members: Amnesty Will ‘disproportionately harm’ Black community
From a letter 3 commission members wrote to Congressional Black Caucus chairwoman Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH):
While the letter was only written by 3 members, it cites a 2008 briefing (linked in the article) that was put together by the Commission that takes the same viewpoint.
mythago:
How do you know it’s because you’re white? Have you been present and seen people’s reactions if a Hispanic or Irish person tells the same story about their grandparents?
But since I’m white, people treat this as an adorable story about a naughty ancestor, as if I’d said my grandparents were cattle rustlers or pirates, rather than railing about “anchor babies”.
What a racist thing to say. It’s not people who treat this as an adorable story, it’s white people.
I’ve seen how black people cheer each other for screwing up random honkies who never did them anything wrong (one of the reasons I have no black friends who grew up in the US and the reason I fell out with the Black community at MIT) and Hispanic workers certainly enjoy telling ‘how I beat the INS’ stories. When you work on machine floors, you can see people who wish they had a good story to tell.
And in the crowd I hang out with, everyone cheers each others immigration stories, whether involving dozens of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees, an arranged marriage that is going on strong 12 years and two kids later, inventing political reasons for the whip marks received for having porn, or changing one’s name legally to match the name of the lottery winner from whom it was bought. Apart from the first one, I cannot vouch that any are real, but I have sure heard them all first hand.
Yes, because this is exactly how 100% of all black Americans act. *rolleyes*
I have not talked to 100% of black Americans. Now that I look back, I know that Chocolate House was full of geeks, and that it was all tough posturing and big talk. But no one but me spoke against it in my hearing, and I got called names for it.
Do you know how I met the person who would become my best friend, the best man on my wedding, and the one who helped me start the business I’m in? In the company of seven more black guys, half of them MIT students, we made him jump into the snow pile next to the path, to a chorus of jeers and a barrage of slush. If he had done anything to provoke it, I did not see it. He was standing aside to let us pass, and one us tried to kick him. I do not know how many of the others were ashamed of what we had done, but it was congratulations all around.
A week later I learned that he was the guy who a few years earlier had been in trouble for disarming and knocking out a Boston off-duty cop who drew a gun in a pub brawl before identifying himself. A few months later I learned that he always carried a just barely legal knife, and knew damn well how to use it. That night my life could have gone a very different way. It did go a very different way the next week when I recognized him in the Infinite Corridor, and apologized.
Now I know for a fact that at least another one of us had felt really bad about it, because he wrote about it in the Tech. The article was anonymous, but I swear it was not by me. But the group dynamic was such that I fear what would have happened if he had not jumped away from the kick (he MUST have been expecting it) and had gone down. And the letter’s author was called names, and was accused of having made the whole thing up, etc…
The only other time that I was in all black company was in South Carolina, trying to eat at the Black tables in the lunch room… after seeing that I was not welcome at the maintenance table. Boasting of screwing the spics out of hours, finished parts, even fucking hand towels, etc… was a favoring pass time. This shithole of a state is the one place in the fucking word where I could not find a place I was comfortable.
So, Ampersand, no, I do not think that all American Blacks are out to get whitey. But I have been unfortunate enough to never meet any that would speak up against overt racism in an all Black company. But wait, I forgot. There is no such thing as racism in an all Black company. This must be why!
Have you been present and seen people’s reactions if a Hispanic or Irish person tells the same story about their grandparents?
Yes.
What a racist thing to say. It’s not people who treat this as an adorable story, it’s white people.
…and Sebastian knows this because, incoherent rant about black people sticking it to Whitey. Whuh?
All I was trying to say is that people seldom act horrified by the immigration stories of their friends, or the stories of people with whom they identify. Are you seriously saying that the people you ‘adored’ your story were horrified by the stories of Irishmen/Mexicans coming to America illegally? Then I think my guess that they were white is pretty accurate.
As for my ‘rant’, it was all in support of the same point. People cheer members of the in-group, for sticking it to the out-group. If you do not, you aren’t in, so you better find another group.
I think Mythago and her grandparents should be deported, along with the Irish AND the Mexicans. Where does that put me? (Oh, I guess Mythago can stay. Stupid birthright citizenship. How am I supposed to realize my dream of ‘America for the Amerinds’ if you damn white people have citizenship just by virtue of getting squeezed out here?)
Sebastian:
’74, VII-A, PKT. You?
All I was trying to say is that people seldom act horrified by the immigration stories of their friends, or the stories of people with whom they identify
Sure. I’m just wondering why you pulled ‘I can psychically divine that none of those people were anything but white, YOU RACIST’ out of your ass. Because, um, you did, unless some of my friends were secretly white and were cleverly disguising themselves as POC so I’d feel all diverse and shit.
I find it interesting that you mash up “Irishmen/Mexicans”. There were, and are, still Irish coming here to work illegally, but the days of treating them as nonwhites and using ethnic slurs for them are a couple of generations past. Not so with Mexicans.
RonF: ’02ish, 6-2, Senior House
Twoish, because I didn’t file my actual MEng Thesis until I had one from my own business, a couple of years later. And wow, there was a time when Roman numerals were the way to spell courses? The new crop has even dropped the dash.
Mythago: Nah, I assumed they were white because I couldn’t (still can’t) believe that PoC (I really wish there was a better term) would swoon over whites’ stories, but denounce PoCs’ actions.
As for Mexicans, things around here are different. Until I got married, I lived in Chino. I bought my electronics in a store that had Spanish as its default language (the biggest electronics store in the city), my groceries in another store (maybe not the biggest, but the best) where English was seldom heard, and where 95% of the boxed merchandize was imported from Mexico.
If you think that the Hispanics in Chino are downtrodden immigrants, you’re way off. At a light, I’ve heard someone bitch about Anglos, from horseback. Last time I had a call to make in Chino, I saw that they had a brand new horse trail down Mountain.
And Glendora, where I live now, is much too civilized/polite (same root) for overt racism. Now, if you are atheist, like my wife and I are, you BETTER keep it to yourself.
Apparently the guys at PKT (about 3 blocks from Copley Square) opened up the house. They had about 200 people there, handing out water, charging cell phones and getting messages through.
By the way, in my experience, people who are vocally opposed to illegal immigration/immigrants, usually have their (not necessarily rational) reasons, and racism is probably not the most common one.
The one I sympathize with the most is the fear that illegal immigrants will negatively affect one’s life, by taking jobs, depressing wages, and draining money from social programs. I am not sure it is a true fear. I like to think that it is not, because otherwise I’d feel a bit guilty. I did start my own business, but from a high of 5 now I’m down to one employee besides myself, and I know that if I had not been around, someone else would be solving tricky problems on CNCs, and getting a living out of it.
Another reason, unfortunately the one that drives me, is that people do not like it when the system is being cheated, especially when they feel that they have been towing the line. The law is being broken, and people are getting a slap on the wrist, and an amnesty. I do not like it that what cost me years, two useless trips back to France, $16,000+ and a lot of worries is being offered to law breakers for a small fine and a lot less effort. This is completely irrational. I know that I am an asshole for feeling that way, but I hate it… not enough to work against it, but enough to bitch and whine about it.
And then there is pure fear of the Other. Yes, many of the illegal immigrants are Others. And some people expect them to bring with themselves crime and ‘furrin’ customs and whatever. Actually, I know of a few immigrants who did come to the States explicitly to support the shady dealings of what are, even charitably, criminal organizations. Acquaintances of friends. As far as I know, they are all legally here. Your (our?) borders are very porous, for people with money.
But reducing this all to ‘Racists!’ is kind of silly. And mythago, I absolutely did not mean the ‘this is racist’ seriously. Personally, I think that both ‘racist’ and ‘bigot’ are pretty empty words. Not to say that racism does not exist, just the opposite. It’s perfectly natural, just like squatting down and taking a dump where you stand. And just like that, it’s something to be disgusted by, refrain from, and oppose at every opportunity.
What really upsets me, personally, is that while a lot of the right winks and nods at their side’s racism, a lot of the left is just as bad at calling out their side. It is racism to call whites ‘a cancer on humanity’. It is racism to involve race in topics where it does not even belong. It is racism to choose candidate over another with the same platform over the color of his skin. (Were I allowed to vote, I would have done it too, but it is racist) It is racism to explain how it is not racist at all to mistrust whites by default, and work to their disadvantage without any other reason but the color of the skin.
And when one makes excuses for Blacks who do all of the above, it tells me that the one doing it does not consider me his equal. Also, you are not doing us any favors. There must be a reason that Black immigrants to just as well as white ones when you control for wealth and education, and way better than African Americans. There must be a reason that how much I feel I’m affected by racism predicts whether I will end up in jail a lot better than the darkness of my skin.
I have been treated differently because of my African blood. By stuck-up asses in France, by well meaning people at MIT, by Neanderthals in South Carolina, by my wife’s liberal colleagues, and even by the people who call me when they needed their CNCs doing something trickier than usual (or lately, with the way they have been decimating their maintenance people, just doing anything)
But when you make it all whitey vs Black when it is mostly about class, power and misinformation, you are insulting me, and not doing much achieve the goal, which I assume is racism being driven out of sight like necrophilia, Zetetic astronomy, and cannibalism. I know that ‘Tone’ is a dirty word for some people around here, but also think that they are more interested in their own self-righteousness than in actually making things better for anyone but their ego.
Now, this is an incoherent rant. The last one was just me reminiscing about my Institutes days and the various kinds of assholes I met there.
Apparently the guys at PKT (about 3 blocks from Copley Square) opened up the house. They had about 200 people there, handing out water, charging cell phones and getting messages through.
Three blocks? I remember it as being practically next to the T station. Of course, I was often a bit confused when I was going back to campus. All the ‘philosophizing on the roof’, you know.
But I am not surprised that they were hospitable to people stuck with no transportation and communication. In times like this, you want to believe the best of people, and try to do your best.
Roman numerals are easier to carve into stone. I guess when the diplomas started coming out on parchment they switched to Arabic numerals.