[This is a guest post, reprinted with Carmen’s permission from the blog All About Race. Thanks, Carmen.]
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court ruled that people of African ancestry were not, and could never become, citizens of the United States of America. The Dred Scott decision asserted that blacks were property. And because no state or federal government could take a citizen’s property away from him, this decision meant that any slave who managed to escape to a “free state” would be hunted down and returned to bondage and his or her “owner.” This decision enraged many of the most vocal abolitionists and politicians in the North and was an important precursor of Abraham Lincoln’s election to President.
But still, even among those who philosophically opposed slavery, I imagine dinner conversations sounding something like this:
“That Dred Scott decision is appalling.”
“Yes, it’s simply awful.”
“But, you know, those Negroes who just up and run away? I mean, they are breaking the law.”
“Yes, and our country cannot tolerate law breakers.”
“Just to think, what if everybody just went about doing whatever they wanted to do?”
“The whole Union would collapse into chaos.”
“Absolutely!”
The issue of immigration in America is cause for this kind of conversation now. Many well meaning and good natured people are not critically examining what it means that the media uniformly and incessantly blares the term “illegal immigrant” as if the people who risk physical harm to get to America to work, are only that. The media would have you believe that these are not the same people America has welcomed to come to build and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children.
In the South, the American Civil War was termed “the War of Northern Aggression.” During the 1960’s, those who made the trip south to support Southern grassroots movements in their protests for an end to Jim Crow and racial terrorism, were called “agitators.” Now, it is all so clear. But, as the events of America’s Civil Rights movement unfolded, many decent people, with hearts in the “right” place, felt “Negroes are pushing too hard, for too much. These things take time.”
I support strong and secure borders, period. And with that, I believe that if we as a nation welcome people to come and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children, then I believe we must provide a path for those people to become full citizens of the United States sharing all of the rights and responsibilities that citizenship entails.
There was a time in America when it was illegal to gather and discuss independence from England. There was a time in America when it was illegal for an American of African descent to vote or own property or drink from certain water fountains. There was a time in America when it was illegal for Americans of Japanese descent to live in their homes. Instead, Japanese Americans were legally evicted from their homes and moved to internment camps.
So, I have a question for you. When you say “illegal immigrant,” other than relating a fact of American citizenship status, what are you saying? What do you want me to know about the people you describe in this way?
A tangentially related article. You know that claim that if there were no undocumented immigrants to work the fields unemployed Americans would just take over the jobs? Well…(from the linked article) “‘The bottom line,’ Mr. Levy said, ‘is that most unemployed workers are not available to replace fired, unauthorized immigrant workers,’ in part because very few of the unemployed are in farm work.” Apparently not.
Do you think that you should be able to move to, say, Mexico, or Switzerland, and just take up citizenship, or work, and ignore the border guards on the way in, and refuse to leave because you have a “right” to be there because you felt like moving to that other country?
In other words, do you think everyone has an inherent right to live anywhere on the planet they please, ignoring any laws that might keep you out of any particular country?
DBB, I think Amp covered that under the second bolded section above.
Do you think that you should be able to move to, say, Mexico, or Switzerland, and just take up citizenship, or work, and ignore the border guards on the way in, and refuse to leave because you have a “right” to be there because you felt like moving to that other country?
Why not? Why should people live in one place or another because of an accident of birth? (Actually, I do have an answer to the question “why not”, but I’m curious to see what yours is.)
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court ruled that people of African ancestry were not, and could never become, citizens of the United States of America.
…
The issue of immigration in America is cause for this kind of conversation now.
Straw man. Slavery is appalling and immoral and illegal in and of itself. Slaves were not “illegal immigrants”. Illegal aliens are not slaves. They are not brought into the United States unwillingly and with the use of force. They are not forced to labor against their will. They are not kept in the United States against their will. This is an entirely false analogy.
Many well meaning and good natured people are not critically examining what it means that the media uniformly and incessantly blares the term “illegal immigrant”
And many others have. The conclusion that they have reached is that the MSM uniformly uses the term “illegal immigrant” as a blanket term to cover all people who have snuck across our borders in order to promote a particular political agenda. That agenda being to try to influence the American public to see these people as “immigrants” instead of criminals and to favor granting U.S. citizenship as a reward to a group of people who have shown that they will put their own self interests above the law.
“Illegal immigrant” is not a term that demonizes illegal aliens. It’s a term that favors them. It’s a term that tries to protect them from facing the consequences of their actions.
as if the people who risk physical harm to get to America to work, are only that. The media would have you believe that these are not the same people America has welcomed to come to build and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children.
Welcomed them? I haven’t welcomed them. Who has welcomed them? The employers who use them to undercut the wages they’d have to pay American citizens to work an honest job welcome them. The rest of us don’t. We’d much rather see Americans harvesting crops and preparing and serving our food in restaurants. But most Americans are like me. They don’t prepare and serve my food at home. They don’t clean my house. They don’t raise my children. And it’s my guess that the number of people whose houses they clean and whose children they raise are a very small proportion of the American public; those who are wealthy enough to afford it. Favoring the interests of the wealthy class who can afford to hire servants and stay in hotels and eat out a lot over those of the average American is certainly a new position for this blog.
When you say “illegal immigrant,” other than relating a fact of American citizenship status, what are you saying? What do you want me to know about the people you describe in this way?
I’m saying that I’m ignorant of the fact that a great many of these people are not immigrants; they don’t come here to become citizens and integrate into American culture, they are only here to make money and go home when the season is over. I’m saying that I don’t realize that at least 1/3 of all illegal aliens are unemployed. I’m saying that I either have or am ignorant of the political agenda that is advanced by using a term that describes a subset of the people that this debate is all about, instead of using the term that describes all of them and the term that is actually used in the U.S. Code.
[rant]
I too favor secure borders. But I also reject rewarding criminal behavior with American citizenship. For one thing, it’s an outrage. For another thing, it will simply encourage more criminal behavior – you get what you pay for. One way to secure the borders is to use physical and technological barriers, increase the number of personnel monitoring them, and give them greater power to act. But the other way is to increase (not decrease) the penalties for breaking the laws.
New laws are not needed for this; what’s needed is the will to enforce existing laws. Ironically, the most effective way to do this is be to go after American citizens; the ones that are employing illegal aliens. This could be the CEO of the company that owns the meat packing plant in Iowa filled with illegal aliens (and that is now filled with American citizens after ICE raided the place; it turns out that Americans DO want those jobs). This could be the guy who lives next door to me. I say “could be” because I don’t know the citizenship status of the crew that mows his lawn and cleans the leaves off his yard (in part by blowing them onto mine, but that’s a separate issue …). Throw some CEO’s ass in jail and you’ll see the illegal alien problem dwindle quickly. We won’t have to deport them; they’ll leave, because they won’t be able to get jobs.
We tried solving this problem in 1986 by passing a set of laws that included amnesty and enforcement provisions. The amnesty provisions were gleefully taken advantage of. The enforcement provisions were suppressed by the wealthy interests that profited by doing so. Now we see people such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, who promised that amnesty would never be proposed again, propose amnesty. But this year the American public let their legislators know that they remember this, and that they absolutely do not trust them to do anything different if they get their hands on the laws again. The laws don’t need reforming; they need to be enforced.
[ rant ]
Myca, I don’t see how Amp addressed DBB’s comment. Could you explain?
I support strong and secure borders, period. And with that, I believe that if we as a nation welcome people to come and clean our houses, harvest, prepare and serve our food, and raise our children, then I believe we must provide a path for those people to become full citizens of the United States sharing all of the rights and responsibilities that citizenship entails.
We have such a path. It’s called “applying for a visa and coming here through the legal path like most of the other 300 million of us”.
I don’t get what you’re saying here. (I also don’t get what on earth physical risk has to do with it, or why you’d mention it in this context. I can only assume it’s a sympathy plea, but it seems like a red herring in this sentence)
Obviously an illegal immigrant isn’t “only” an illegal immigrant; they’re also a man/woman/child, each with their own individual status. But if the discussion is about illegal immigration and if we need to distinguish between illegal immigrants and other people, then their immigration status is often the most relevant descriptor.
This is perfectly normal. All prolifers are individuals, too, but I refer only to their prolife status when discussing them, as a group, in an abortion debate. Don’t you?
So you’re giving a choice: Either stop “welcoming” them to work, or start allowing them to become citizens. Either kick them out, or open all the closed doors.
That’s an interesting proposition. How would you feel if we as a country elected the “well, let’s not welcome them; let’s kick them out instead” option?
Also, it seems apparent to me that the “strength and security” of a border is a different thing from the decision process for who goes through it. We can have a very strong border but make a decision to admit everyone with a Mexican passport and nobody with a Swiss passport; the strength and security are measured by how well we meet the goals we have set for admission.
However, you seem to be using “strong and secure borders” to mean a certain type of due process, quid pro quo, or other aspect of the DECISION. Do you think your use matches common usage, especially in the immigration debate? Or are you trying to “reclaim” the phrase for the pro-illegal-immigrant camp?
I’m saying that they are someone who, for whatever reason, decided to violate the law and come into the U.S. without permission. What else would you expect someone would want you to know?
It’s really not about American citizenship status. The vast majority of the planet are citizens of somewhere other than the U.S.; only a tiny fraction of those are also illegal immigrants into the U.S. (there are other countries into which people immigrate illegally, of course.)
It’s about citizenship status combined with where they are (in the U.S.) and how they got there (illegally).
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with immigration. Immigration is a good thing. We need citizens; we (in some industries) need workers and taxpayers; etc etc.
But my guarded support for immigration is contingent on the U.S. getting to choose who immigrates. Assuming that not everyone will get in, that means there is some selection process.
It might be economic; it might be intelligence, or education, or physical health; it might be work skills, or languages; or connection to the U.S., or avowed interest in assimilation; or agreement to serve in the U.S. armed forces… But given any group of meaningful size, there will ALWAYS be the “top picks” and the “bottom picks.”
I’m all for letting the top picks in, whoever they may be. And I”m all for keeping the bottom feeders out, whoever they may be. Illegal immigration destroys our ability to choose the top picks, and substitutes luck, willingness to get caught, funds to pay a coyote, etc. That’s not a good thing. That’s not what we should be doing.
I strongly challenge the idea that the only viable alternatives are to either kick illegal aliens out or offer them citizenship. Here’s another:
If an illegal alien has a criminal record outside of immgration and employment violations that includes anything other than the equivalent of a parking ticket, deport them.
If an illegal alien has been unemployed or on welfare for ‘x’ amount of time, deport them.
If an illegal alien has a good employment record and has no criminal record outside of immigration and employment violations, grant them permanent resident status. They get to stay in the U.S., obtain a legal Social Security number and work, own property, operate a business, etc., etc. They do NOT get to vote. They do not get to serve on juries. They are NOT citizens, and can be deported if they engage in crime, etc. Their children DO become citizens if born on U.S. soil.
American citizenship must never be the reward of criminal acts.
RonF,
American citizenship must never be the reward of criminal acts.
Of course, the criminal act to which you are referring is entering or staying in the US. A horrible, horrible crime.
But why not stop making coming to or staying in the US illegal? Why not allow anybody who passes a criminal background check to legally live and work in the US? Why not allow any of those who pass the background check and don’t get a criminal record (over some defined period of time) once they’re here to become citizens?
Why are you not suggesting making it legal for all who pass a criminal background check to live and work in the US? That would allow anybody who fits your criteria to become a US citizen resulting in a net gain (hoorah!) for the US?
Why not allow anybody who passes a criminal background check to legally live and work in the US?
Because the number of people who would immigrate would be larger than the number of new citizens we wish to accept.
I’ve probably told this story before, but my grandmother was an illegal alien. She got a quota visa from France in 1939. (Like a lot of other Jews, she’d fled to France after the Nazis took over her country.) But at the time, the U.S. barred immigrants who had had T.B., which included her. She would probably have been killed unless she got out of France, so she lied and claimed never to have had T.B. She deliberately broke the law and perjured herself, and she could have been arrested, stripped of her citizenship and deported. Like other illegal European immigrants, she was amnestied sometime in the ’50s, and she was a peaceful and law-abiding citizen until she the day she died. I had a friend in high school whose father was very fond of holding up my grandmother as an example of a “good immigrant” who could be contrasted with those more-recent “bad immigrants” from Asia and Latin America. Little did he know that she was once one of those nasty “illegals.”
I think that the kind of moral absolutes that Robert and RonF deal in are luxuries of the very, very privileged. I’m pretty sure that they’d break the law, too, if their children were hungry and if they couldn’t see how breaking the law was going to hurt anyone. It’s just that they can’t imagine ever being in that kind of situation. They can condemn “looters” in New Orleans, because they have SUVs and know they’ll never be stuck in a flooded city with no food or clean water. They can laugh at Mexican women who die from back alley abortions, because they know they’ll never be poor and pregnant in a country where abortion is illegal. People who sanctify “the law” are generally people who feel confident that the law will always favor their interests.
I think that’s unlikely to happen, because too many powerful people benefit from illegal immigration. But I also think it would be really difficult to get rid of all illegal immigrants without resorting to measures that would violate the rights and civil liberties of a lot of legal immigrants and American citizens. If you prosecute landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants will just get fraudulent documents. And if landlords aren’t confident that they can detect fraudulent documents, then they’re just going to discriminate against anyone with an accent. It’s illegal, but funnily enough legal residents of the U.S. also sometimes violate the law when their interests are at stake. I don’t think it’s possible to kick out all illegal immigrants without violating fundamental American principles of justice and equality that I hope we all agree are vital to preserve.
And since there is no way to get rid of illegal immigrants, I think we’re better off giving them a path to citizenship. It’s not healthy for a society to have large numbers of permanently disenfranchised people. It violates the entire social contract theory on which the modern state is premised. People are more likely to follow laws if they have a say in making them. They’re more likely to respect a society if they feel that they’re permitted to participate in it fully. Unless there’s a realistic way to get rid of illegal immigrants, it just seems a lot more sensible, from a strictly pragmatic standpoint, to allow them to participate fully in American society, rather than to render them permanent outsiders.
I’m an American citizen. My residency permit to live in the Netherlands expired 5 days ago. Which means I’m not allowed to apply for a student visa to study in england next year (except by returning to the US, which I don’t have time before before the term starts). Which means that I’ll be entering England very shortly on a tourist visa, even though I intend to study.
Which means that of I, a music student, play a gig while studying at my British University, I’m taking away an opportunity from a British citizen and am undermining their economy.
Wow, clearly all sorts of bad things should happen to me. The Dutch or the British should deport me ASAP. Maybe after putting me in jail.
Cuz I didn’t just get caught in a snafu partly stemming from semesters in different countries starting at different times. No, I am an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT and a threat to humanity.
Y’all should try living abroad for a while.
I still can’t get exactly what some people are suggesting.
Is the goal open borders, for everyone? i.e. should we let every single person who wants to come to the U.S. and who wants to become a citizen, do so, no matter what? Because as soon as the answer is no–even just a little bit “no,” we’re going to have a class of people who we don’t want to be here, but who will do their best to get here.
I can see debating where the line should be; who should get in, and who should not. But the rhetoric from the pro-illegal-immigration folks sometimes seems to suggest that there should be completely open borders. In other words, no line at all.
Which is it? Are the pro-illegal-immigrant people debating the size of current assignments to the class of “illegal immigrants”, or are they debating the existence of the class? Those are two entirely different conversations to be having.
Oh, and Les: Certainly you’re not assuming that anyone who doesn’t share your position lacks your personal expert knowledge? That would be silly. I’ve lived abroad and worked, for example–using a legal work visa–when I worked in Europe. I’ve also lived abroad (as a tourist) a variety of places and declined work because I didn’t have a visa. It’s not that hard, really.
Should you be deported? I’ll leave that to you. You’re rich enough to go to school in Europe; I don’t feel much sympathy if you try to make a few bucks playing in London without permission.
And I don’t believe your “nobody gets hurt” claim. There is not room for an infinite number of musicians in any band, and if you assume there’s always room for you (and that you’d never, ever, exclude someone who has more of a right to be there) that’s just your self interest talking. It’s a bit like taking one of eight handicapped spaces, and assuming that no more than seven people will need them while you’re in the store.
Because the number of people who would immigrate would be larger than the number of new citizens we wish to accept.
1) Yes, but in the context of RonF’s preferred program (which is what I was addressing), the only difference is whether or not people would be citizens. RonF’s entire problem is that they broke the law (the law prohibiting them from being here) and therefore they shouldn’t be allowed to become citizens.
2) Yes, but is that really true? I hear a lot of “Americans aren’t having enough babies” from the same group that is against unlimited immigration. I don’t hear a lot of “we need to up the number of immigrants” from that group. Therefore, I suspect that there is a strong component of racism in the anti-immigration contingent.
If that’s really a concern (and the number of illegal immigrants is over that unspecified number), why aren’t we enforcing the existing laws? I suspect that there are a number of reasons. Those reasons would include the desire of businesses to be able to pay sub-minimum wages without fear of prosecution as well as the fact that we haven’t reached that vague “too many people” threshold. If that second guess, in particular, is true, then I think that your statement isn’t the real reason.
The post itself isn’t by me; it’s by Carmen, of “All About Race.” (This comment is by me.)
I don’t have time to really contribute to this discussion right now, but I can’t resist responding to bad statistics. Ron wrote:
Following the link, I don’t find any figure given for unemployment, so Ron must have calculated unemployment from the other statistics available at that link The problem is, I don’t think Ron knows the correct way to calculate unemployment.
According to the .pdf file Ron links to, “The number of unauthorized migrants living in the United States has continued to increase steadily for several years, reaching an estimated 11.1 million based on the March 2005. … About 7.2 million unauthorized migrants were employed in March 2005, accounting for about 4.9% of the civilian labor force….”
Since 7.2 is 65% of 11.1, my guess is that this (or something very much like this this) is how Ron is getting his “1/3” figure.
So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong is, the figure of 11.1 million includes 1.8 million children, as well as many other people who aren’t in the labor force (such as stay-at-home mothers who are supported by their husbands and aren’t looking for work), and so shouldn’t be included in any calculation of unemployment.
Correctly calculated, the unemployment rate among immigrants is less than 5% — currently, immigrants are actually less likely than the rest of us to be unemployed. That figure includes both unauthorized and authorized immigrants, but there’s no reason to believe that unauthorized immigrants — who generally come to the US to work — are more likely to be unemployed than other immigrants.
By the way, let’s calculate the total US employment rate the same way I’m pretty sure Ron calculated his “1/3” unemployment figure: Total US population is 303 million, while the total number of employed Americans is 146 million. So although “at least 1/3 of all illegal aliens are unemployed,” according to Ron’s definition, by the same definition 52% of all Americans are “unemployed. ”
So even if we calculate unemployment the way Ron did, unauthorized immigrants are significantly more likely to be working than the rest of the population.
Which is it? Are the pro-illegal-immigrant people debating the size of current assignments to the class of “illegal immigrants”, or are they debating the existence of the class? Those are two entirely different conversations to be having.
I really think that those two parts of the same conversation. The goal (or, perhaps, ideal) is to have completely open borders. But that’s never going to be achieved in one step, so it’s important to make clear why the current system is both illogical and unfair. Maybe we’ll never have completely open borders, but the ideal shouldn’t prohibit us from clarifying the discriminatory or illogical or unhealthy aspects of current policy. In fact, the ideal may be useful in attempts at clarifying the problems with immigration policy even if one doesn’t have open borders as their ultimate goal.
Because as soon as the answer is no–even just a little bit “no,” we’re going to have a class of people who we don’t want to be here, but who will do their best to get here.
This actually leads to a very interesting discussion of morals and ethics. For example, should we prohibit non-citizen criminals from entering the country while not deporting citizen criminals and stripping them of citizenship? Why is one less desirable than the other? What crimes should disqualify one from citizenship? Is merely breaking any law in the country of origin reason enough (as RonF seems to suggest)? Even if we in the US find the law broken to be abhorrent? Is it ethical to create an underclass of people by use of selective immigration laws and enforcement?
I’m not sure that this conversation can happen here, but I certainly think it is one worth having.
Are you sure that conversation can’t happen here? Because that is one damn interesting conversation to be having ;) and you seem like an interesting person to have it with.
That said, we’re clearly moving away from the intent (race) of the original post. So to avoid derailing, I have created a link to this post on my blog and anyone who wants to join in is invited to continue the discussion over there.
The reason that I think that conversation can’t happen here is that it would require heavy moderation. If you want a good discussion of ethics and morals, you need to moderate out those who are adamant about their opinion being absolutely correct. You need to moderate out those who are more interested in winning a debate than having an in depth discussion about moral and ethical codes and the inevitable conflicts between what is ethically good and what realistically can be achieved.
Alas, for all the things that it is, is not heavily moderated.
I’m sick of this “I didn’t invite them” crap.
“I” didn’t want to wage a stupid, wasteful, ill-considered and poorly planned war in the Middle East, but America sure is doing that.
I don’t want to prosecute sex workers. But my town, county and state do that.
I don’t want to rape women, but my culture does that.
I didn’t want to hold millions of people in chattel slavery, kidnap them from their homes, ship them in deadly conditions across an ocean, and force them on pain of death to provide uncompensated agricultural labor to support an economy of cash crops. But America sure did that.
It’s more than a little silly to stand there, like my preschooler, with arms folded and refuse to deal with the consequences of what we did because “I wasn’t for it.”
We did what we did.
We have, tacitly by our policies, allowed employers to use undocumented immigrants as a cheap and easily intimidated workforce for decades. We’ve basically waived enforcement of immigration laws, in my view. Now that people have acted in reliance, uprooting their lives for economic opportunity based on our willingness to ignore enforcement in deference to the labor needs of American companies (whether I was for it or not), we have to deal with the situation as it stands. We have a bunch of people here that crossed the border illegally to work, when it was generally understood that crossing the border illegally was FUCKING TURNSTYLE JUMPING. Now some nativist zealots with either populist/nativist delusions of rising wages or simply a racist bone to pick want to treat border crossing like it was armed robbery.
And they say, when it was turnstyle jumping, “I didn’t welcome them.”
The Dred Scott comparison is a very interesting one. In general, I follow your point, but I have to offer that there is indeed a group of people in the country who are here illegally. Now, there are two ways we can deal with them, the humane and the strict-interpretation-of-the-law way. For arguing for the humane, I support you.
Of course, the criminal act to which you are referring is entering or staying in the US. A horrible, horrible crime.
Do not presume to put words in my mouth. That’s the first crime. I don’t know if you are an American citizen or not. If so, shame on you for distorting the facts to fit your narrative. If you are not an American citizen, here’s what the crimes are.
1) Entering the United States without permission, or
1a) Entering the United States with permission and then violating the terms under which you were admitted.
This consumes extra tax money that has to be allocated to enforce the laws that are meant to prevent this. Every taxpayer is a victim of this crime. It also victimizes the people who followed the legal process to enter the United States.
Then:
If you do not obtain employment and are not being supported by someone else:
2) Obtaining public assistance that you are not entitled to via fraudulent means, cheating the taxpayer and reducing the amount of money available to people who actually are eligible for it.
2a) Committing whatever crimes are necessary to support yourself outside of either public assistance or honest employment.
If you do obtain employment
2) Obtaining a false Social Security number. When the illegal alien’s income is reported under that number, the real holder is prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines. Their credit rating is destroyed. The onus is on the victim to prove that they didn’t earn the money and store it where the IRS can’t see it, it’s not up to the IRS to prove that it was the victim and not someone else who actually had the income. The IRS is legendary for it’s lack of compassion and understanding. This causes huge problems and consumes a lot of time and money on the part of the victim of this crime that there is no way to recover.
3) Obtaining a false Drivers License (even if you don’t drive, it’s pretty much a universal ID in the United States, you have to show it to cash a check and for other reasons), and then committing fraud each and every time you use it.
4) Obtaining employment through fraudulent means (you have to be a citizen or a legal resident with the proper visa to legally hold a job), cheating the person who was legally eligible to apply for and hold that job.
Even if the illegal alien is employed, unless they have a high-enough income job that their taxes are more than the cost of the governmental programs they use (which is a lot less likely for illegal aliens than for citizens), there’s their and their dependents use of various public resources (governmental aid, health care, education) that they are not legally entitled to and that reduces the availability of those resources for citizens and legal residents.
Every day that an illegal alien wakes up, they’ve committed crimes before they go to bed.
Amp, I’ll grant your point regarding my use of the word “unemployed”. While it is technically correct, I agree that it was a poor choice as it could be confused with the word as it is used in the context of governmental unemployment figures. Consider my meaning to be “not employed” or “not working”.
As far as the proportions of people not working in the American public goes, that’s different. They are citizens. They have a right to be here. The obligations they have to the rest of the country and that the country has to them is much different than the obligations that the country has to people that snuck in here illegally.
I think this is a good idea. I’m all for open borders: anybody who wants to come can come and anybody who wants to leave can leave, but you cannot have open borders and a massive welfare state of the type that progressives are proposing. If you have open borders and a welfare state you are inviting in millions of people who will be a net drain on the system ( because many will be low-skilled and lack advanced education) and eventually bankrupt the welfare state.
As far as the idiom “illegal immigrant” goes, when I say that I mean exactly that–immigrants who come here illegally.
I think that the kind of moral absolutes that Robert and RonF deal in are luxuries of the very, very privileged.
How convenient of you to make presumptions about who I am, how I got that way and what “privilege” I have.
I’m pretty sure that they’d break the law, too, if their children were hungry and if they couldn’t see how breaking the law was going to hurt anyone.
Maybe so. But there’s way too much play in the assumptions underlying that statement to apply it to anyone or any particular situation, including the presumptions about what someone can see about how their actions affects someone else. Oh, and you might want to consider the implications of the phrase, “ignorance is no excuse”. One of the differences between adults and children is their understanding that it’s their responsibility to figure out how their actions affect other people.
They can condemn “looters” in New Orleans, because they have SUVs and know they’ll never be stuck in a flooded city with no food or clean water.
How convenient of you to put words in my mouth about the actions of desperate people in New Orleans without, of course, having a single clue about what my actual thinking is on the subject.
They can laugh at Mexican women who die from back alley abortions, because they know they’ll never be poor and pregnant in a country where abortion is illegal.
And here we have you making a monster of me, depicting me laughing at women dying of exsanguination or excruciating infections from perforated uteri.
People who sanctify “the law” are generally people who feel confident that the law will always favor their interests.
I sanctify the Lord. The laws of men and women have a worth and meaning, but not a holy one.
On the other hand, I pretty much disregard the opinions of people who participate in debates by creating lies about the other participants out of whole cloth so that they can fit them into the patterns of their own biases and stereotypes instead of trying to see their opponents as real people.
“I” didn’t want to wage a stupid, wasteful, ill-considered and poorly planned war in the Middle East, but America sure is doing that.
I don’t want to prosecute sex workers. But my town, county and state do that.
Fair enough. But both are being done according to the law. The acts of illegal aliens are not.
I don’t want to rape women, but my culture does that.
B.S. Women are raped in all cultures. Cultures don’t rape women, rapists do.
I didn’t want to hold millions of people in chattel slavery, kidnap them from their homes, ship them in deadly conditions across an ocean, and force them on pain of death to provide uncompensated agricultural labor to support an economy of cash crops. But America sure did that.
Yup. And then America stopped doing that. Neither you nor I ever approved of that nor participated in it. I really don’t see how we are responsible for having done it and what the relevance is to this debate.
We have, tacitly by our policies, allowed employers to use undocumented immigrants as a cheap and easily intimidated workforce for decades. We’ve basically waived enforcement of immigration laws, in my view. Now that people have acted in reliance, uprooting their lives for economic opportunity based on our willingness to ignore enforcement
You are welcome to your view. I don’t see that the concept that putting a lack of the necessary resources to enforce the law against a group of people determined to break it justifies the criminals and their acts. It’s illegal to break into my home. If I leave it unlocked, a thief is justified in neither breaking in nor in keeping the goods he steals.
in deference to the labor needs of American companies
Needs? Desires, I can accept. It would seem many employers would rather turn a blind eye to the law and give their employees as little pay and benefits as possible. I well imagine that there are people on this blog who know a lot more about American labor history and law than I do and can talk about how this used to be done to American labor for decades or centuries. Did that justify giving the employers a pass on new laws protecting the labor force? Did it justify enforcing existing law more stringently and for past offenses?
Was it caused by the needs of American companies, or the desires of their owners to maximize profits on the backs of the American public? I say the latter, and I say that this desire does not excuse them or the people who snuck in here to take advantage of it. By calling these acts “needs”, it seems to me that you are minimizing the illegality of the self-serving acts of the U.S.’s wealthiest class. Again, hardly the position I’d expect to see on this blog.
we have to deal with the situation as it stands. We have a bunch of people here that crossed the border illegally to work, when it was generally understood that crossing the border illegally was FUCKING TURNSTYLE JUMPING. Now some nativist zealots with either populist/nativist delusions of rising wages or simply a racist bone to pick want to treat border crossing like it was armed robbery.
Actually, from what I can tell most of the current illegal aliens in the U.S. came here through processes that had and have a huge risk of loss of life and are nowhere near “turnstile jumping”.
I don’t know what nativist zealots or racists want. Nor do I want border crossing treated like it was armed robbery. But what I want is border crossing treated according to existing law; IIRC, the punishment for immigration law violation is a lot less stringent than what you get for armed robbery.
In fact, the ideal may be useful in attempts at clarifying the problems with immigration policy even if one doesn’t have open borders as their ultimate goal.
I don’t know about that, Jake. If one does not accept “open borders” as an ideal, I’m not so sure that it’s all that useful in clarifying the problems with existing immigration policy.
P.S., all: I imagine that this is going to go on for some time, but as it happens I’m soon going to be out of town until Sunday afternoon – I’ve got a trip to Philmont, and I’ll be in the backcountry and away from computers. And cell phones. And cars. And modern technology in general.
Sorry. I didn’t have the strength to stay away from this debate, but there’s non-refundable plane tickets and the opportunity to go where there’s more bears and antelope than people for a few days involved. And a chance to see the stars at night.
Yeah, I have enough money to manage the debt of going to school in Europe (the Netherlands tuition is actually a great deal, but England is pricey as hell. Too bad that I pretty much require a PhD and there aren’t so many places that teach my obscure interests).
I really like the suggestion that composers are a totally interchangable part. (“Eh, it’s all polka to me!”) That aside, it would be legal for me to gig if I weren’t in paperwork hell. I meet all of the qualifications to get a student visa, I’m just standing in the wrong country. I’m lucky in that I’ll be able to go to NYC soonish and sort it out.
For folks that are from half way around the world, a little paperwork screwup can be a huge deal. Somebody has problems with semesters not lining up, and suddenly they’re illegal and have to go half way around the world to work it out. Not everybody that studies overseas is rich. There’s a lot of financial aid out there, but even if they’re living off of savings, few have the budget to go home on sudden notice.
I’m not really worried about getting deported. Because I’m an American and because I’m white. Nobody gives my passport a second look. By contrast, a guy I know from Mexico just had to return home (voluntarily a day before they would have deported him) because he had finished his studies. Even though he’s married to a legal resident, who is also a student. The laws are different for folks that come from the US and for folks that come from Mexico. He and I both have the same educational background and class background, just different passports.
Ron, if you would prefer that people judge you by only your own words, I’ll oblige. In the Ireland thread, another commenter wrote and you responded:
For those not reading that thread, the topic was a town outside of Dublin that blocked 90 black children from the local schools and instead created a separate, segregated school to take them. The nominal issue is that Ireland may not want to be “multicultural.” But I don’t see how those kids can assimilate the color of their skin.
Jake Squid: Of course, the criminal act to which you are referring is entering or staying in the US. A horrible, horrible crime.
RonF: Do not presume to put words in my mouth. That’s the first crime. I don’t know if you are an American citizen or not. If so, shame on you for distorting the facts to fit your narrative. If you are not an American citizen, here’s what the crimes are.
1) Entering the United States without permission, or
1a) Entering the United States with permission and then violating the terms under which you were admitted.
Bwahaha! Is there really any other response to “I didn’t say that! I said exactly what you said I said.”
2) Obtaining a false Social Security number. When the illegal alien’s income is reported under that number, the real holder is prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines. Their credit rating is destroyed. The onus is on the victim to prove that they didn’t earn the money and store it where the IRS can’t see it, it’s not up to the IRS to prove that it was the victim and not someone else who actually had the income.
I hate to have to say that you’re full of crap, but you are. This statement is so false and so flies in the face of commonly reported fact that I can only believe that you’re lying.
If there is somebody else using your SS# for employment, chances are that you will never find out about it. SS taxes are collected on that income but not accrued to you. SS doesn’t report the fact that your SS# is being used by somebody else because they are legally prohibited from doing so. Since the SS admin doesn’t report the use to anybody, it never appears on your credit report.
However, if somebody is using your SS# to obtain credit you can have some big problems. Fortunately, people using a stolen SS# for use in procuring employment rarely fuck up your credit rating because they don’t want to get caught.
Here is one article on the issue: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/02/ss_secret_stash.html
After that sack of lies, I’m done interacting with RonF.
In case anyone but Ron misunderstood, I was comparing the legal treatment of border crossing to turnstyle jumping; i.e. a lightly regarded and largely unpunished offense. I was not comparing the actual journey to turnstyle jumping.
Since he brought it up, though, once upon a time, it was an easy walk into the San Diego area, and an easy walk back. Only increased enforcement in the last few years has made the crossing an increadingly deadly journey through rugged, remote deserts or in desparate conveyances; an expensive and dangerous endeavor that, since nobody wants to repeat it, deters and undocumented from going home.
Ron, your comment on slavery makes my point. There is a population in this country that has had to deal, for their entire history here, with the consequences of slavery: the slave trade, and slave system, its Jim Crow successor that lasted until just forty years ago, and the continuing impacts of racism in American society. You seem to prefer to wash your hands of it, saying that you didn’t participate in it and didn’t approve of it. That, as I said, is like my preschooler folding his arms and pretending things were as he wished. Just because you didn’t choose the path that got us here doesn’t mean we’re not here. We are here. We have a huge population of undocumented immigrants, and that’s what the American economy and political system did. We have to deal with where we are: wishing that different decisions had been made earlier in our immigration story no more solves that problem then wishing we hadn’t had slavery solves the problem of racism.
Of course, a guy who thinks Ireland should quarantine black children to protect its culture is a tough customer to sell on the idea that those who benefit from the continuing consequences of slavery should do something to help fix the inequality.
I have to quit reading this discussion, since I’m freaking out that my own shaky immigration status will get me deported.
There’s a rally today (thursday) in Amsterdam to support the rights of undocumented immigrants. It’s at 13:00 near the city hall.
1. It’s been said before: “We as a nation” didn’t invite illegal immigrants in. We as a nation invite LEGAL immigrants in via the legal immigration process. By definition, illegal immigrants are the ones who came to the US uninvited by “we as a nation.”
To be sure, some specific individuals – including individual US citizens – benefit from illegal immigration, just as some are harmed by it. That’s true of most crimes. I guess one could say that because a lot of crime occurs in the US, “we as a nation welcome crime.” I don’t know that it helps anyone’s understanding of the issues, though.
2. Even if “we as a nation” did invite people in to do various tasks, what has that got to do with receiving citizenship? If the nation of France hired me to paint a mural on their capitol building, I’d expect to get paid. Period. I wouldn’t expect to receive French citizenship. And I sure as hell wouldn’t expect to become subject to being drafted into their armed forces. Labor and citizenship are distinct concepts to me.
I sense that the author thinks it would be NICE to offer citizenship to the people who provide services to us. That’s a fine opinion; everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But if the statement is intended to reflect more than mere opinion, I’m not seeing it.
Yup, some laws look pretty bad in retrospect, and the fact that something violates the law does not render it immoral. Otherwise, I’m not sure I get the point of this list.
Nothing; it’s merely a statement about immigration status. Again, the fact that something’s illegal does not mean it’s immoral. I don’t hate illegal immigrants. But I do prefer legal immigration. So I don’t ignore the fact that illegal immigration is, well, illegal and renders the immigrant subject to sanction.
Acted in reliance on what, exactly? An expectation of receiving citizenship? Or an expectation of working as a member of a cheap and easily-intimidated workforce for decades without citizenship?
This is an interesting argument for maintaining the status quo and NOT granting citizenship. It’s a curious argument in the context of this discussion.
According to racist nativist zealot Jorge Borgas of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard:
– By increasing the labor supply between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of U.S.-born men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4 percent.
– Among those born in the United States who did not graduate from high school — roughly the poorest one-tenth of the work force — the estimated impact was even larger, reducing wages by 7.4 percent.
– The negative effect on U.S.-born black and Hispanic workers is significantly larger than on whites, because a much larger share of minorities are in direct competition with immigrants.
Racist nativist zealots Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have made similar arguments.
I haven’t found any proposals for increasing the penalties for illegal immigration to the penalties of armed robbery. Doubtless it’s being covered up by a conspiracy of racist nativist zealots. They’re everywhere.
To be clear, I read RonF to imply that Ireland DOES quarantine black children to protect its culture. I have not understood anyone to endorse the practice.
Finally, if we want to redress the harms of slavery, I can’t see why we’d want to adopt policies that tend to depress the wages of black Americans. Otherwise, the relationship between this discussion and slavery eludes me.
nobody.really, I’ll respond at length later, but RonF was endorsing the practice, as I read it. He was clearly arguing for Ireland to guard its culture, saying that multiculturalism had produced poor examples elsewhere in Europe. That’s an endorsement, or at least an excuse.
We are also one of the few (I won’t say only because I don’t know all the different national laws of the world) countries that gives birthright citizenry. Actually, we have the most lax immigration laws of almost any country.
With that said, laws are laws, like them or not. If you break a law, you should expect to be punished for it. I don’t like that my road is set at 35MPH, that doesn’t mean that I can just do 50MPH and expect to get away with it. We can vote to change laws, and if we successfully do that, then the new rules apply.
The point is that we shouldn’t encourage or accept people breaking laws, regardless of how we feel about said law. If we don’t like the law, then we change the law. I have noticed a few people argue on the grounds of state’s rights in relation to the topic of immigration. I find it amusing considering how often state’s rights are ignored.
My point? We should secure the hell out of our border. After that, it should be up to the states to decide what to do with illegals. What is true for the local labor market in Texas most likely isn’t the same in Arizona. The fed should assist the states, whatever they decide.
I do however, see a downside to all of this. Our labor pool is extremely resistant to automation of production and adding more pople to our labor pool with only prolong this resistance. I often imagine what it would have been like if we resisted textile mills as much as we’re resistant to robotic assembly lines.
Bryan-
‘Scuse me, non-citizen immigrants can vote?
If you ask me, anyone who can prove residency should be allowed to vote, citizenship status notwithstanding. That’s what democracy is, right? Everyone affected by the laws gets a say in those laws? Hasn’t much of our history involved marginalized groups fighting to move the American system closer to that ideal? We should be very careful not to reify the concept of citizenship, as it changes with the times and with the blood of oppressed peoples, and has historically and contemporaneously served as a tool that the powerful use to perpetuate white male supremacy. Just look at nobody.really’s conception of citizenship: citizens are subject to the draft. Isn’t there a fairly large group of people that definition excludes? [Women, for those of you playing at home].
Sorry, I didn’t mean to exclude anyone; I simply was not aware of any prohibition on drafting women. I know that the US has typically elected NOT to do so, but I don’t know that the US couldn’t choose to conduct the draft differently in the future.
I’m kind of fond of the idea that anyone who is affected by a government having a vote in it. That would pretty much eliminate much of the concept of citizenship, however, because damn near everyone would get a vote in damn near everything. Everyone in the world has an interest in how the US exercises its nuclear strength. Everyone has an interest in the depletion of the Amazon Rainforest. Everyone has an interest in the operation of any anything that produces air emissions – including, say, all mammals. Everyone has an interest in energy conservation, conceptually right down to how much time I’m wasting on the internet.
Not saying it would be a bad system, necessarily. But right off the bat, you could expect a lot of environmental, labor and other regulations to go out the window, because all politicians would need to start pandering to the Chinese; they control a quarter of all votes, you know. Given that the US is only about 5% of the world’s population, politicians could pretty much abandon campaigning here altogether. Which might not be all bad, either….
“The Chinese” are not a monolith beholden forever to the interests of the current multinational corporations that have most of the power in this specific sociopolitical context. Chinese workers are still human – what makes you think they would vote against fair labor standards in a system that gave them an equal voice?
Everyone does have an interest in the depletion of the Amazon rainforest – I’m not sure how this is an argument against giving influence to anyone who is affected by a certain policy. If everyone in Iraq had had one vote on the ‘should the US blow Iraq up’ issue, surely their collective votes would have overridden the votes of the few who control the corporatized military-industrial complex.
Although frankly, it doesn’t seem like your argument is in good faith. We already have a jurisdictional system set up – my suggestion was to expand the influence of currently marginalized people living within and under this specific jurisdiction, not to expand the jurisdiction itself to include the entire planet. Those are two entirely different discussions.
If you have open borders and a welfare state you are inviting in millions of people who will be a net drain on the system ( because many will be low-skilled and lack advanced education) and eventually bankrupt the welfare state.
Because low-skilled workers who earn minimum wage don’t pay taxes.
Oh wait.
RonF n’em. (I’ll be referring to you anti-immigrant lot collectively for this): Why the fuck should you get to be a citizen just for being BORN here? That’s stupid. Why should so idiot motherfucker who just lucked into their parents being here when they got knocked up get to be American and thereby entitled to that largess?
No, EVERYONE has to pass the criminal background check. If you fail, we send you to a hellish moonscape of a land, like Australia.
In fact, let’s make citizenship contingent on actually providing something to the community: you’re only protected by the bill or rights if you’ve spent 3 years in public service (we’ll focus on serving as either an educator, a public worker, or a soldier) AND you’ve married and have a kid. Maybe tack an employment provision on there too. Why should anyone who isn’t contribuing to the perpetuation of this great nation allowed to benefit from it?
Of course, since you aren’t criminal for not having shot people for god and country or being sterile, we can go with plan B, instead of sending you to Perth (UGH.), you can just live in the Morlock Tunnels. Or we could just pass a No-Child-Left-Unconcieved law, making it illegal to not be a parent by a certain age.
This is a good plan. I like this plan. I think AMERICA likes this plan. Why do you hate America, RonF n’em?
Sailorman invited a calm discussion along these lines back at Post # 18. Inexplicably, Jake Squid immediately expressed doubts that such a topic could be addressed calmly in this forum. Go figure.
Here’s what I suggested in that discussion:
I find no inconsistency in refusing to admit immigrants with a background of antisocial behavior while not also adopting a practice of deporting people with a background of antisocial behavior for practical reasons. I understand ethics as reflecting context. In this context, to the extent that we face constraints in expelling people that we don’t face in admitting people, the two classes are not similarly situated.
In the absence of such constraints? Well, the relevant context would need to reflect the purpose of the state. If the state exists to promote the welfare of its citizens, for example, then we might well expect the state to discriminate between people who currently are citizens and people who currently aren’t. By the standards of the state’s purpose, these two classes would again not be similarly situated.
Now, to be sure, a state might well WANT to export its undesirables to the same extent that it excludes undesirables from other lands. England sent its undesirables to Australia and the New World; Castro allegedly sent his undesirables to the US in boat flotillas. I had never thought of the leaders of the countries defending these practices on the grounds of ethical even-handedness….
However, I could also imagine a state granting and retracting citizenship on the basis of “merit.” You might be expelled for antisocial behavior. Alternatively, you might be expelled simply because the Chinese now have access to the internet and you now have to compete against a billion more people who can file on-line applications for one of those coveted citizenship slots. It’d kinda be like being a member of a professional sports team or symphony: you’d never know when you might get cut from the team, replaced by a new rising star. And you’d never know if your mom or you kid might not make the cut. I might list a number of complaints to lodge against such a ruthlessly even-handed meritocracy, but unethical wouldn’t be one of them.
I concede. If we assume we can grant a fair and equal vote to everyone regarding every policy that affects them, I’d guess that China would have more rigorous labor and environmental laws than it does now. So would the US, for that matter.
It isn’t. It’s merely an exposition of the consequences of a policy stating “[e]veryone affected by the laws gets a say in those laws….” In many ways I find such a policy admirable. But we would want to understand the policy’s implications.
I merely meant to illustrate that a policy stating “anyone who can prove residency should be allowed to vote” is not the same as a policy stating “[e]veryone affected by the laws gets a say in those laws….”
I argue, and Shria appears to agree, that this latter policy would have the effect of expanding the vote to the entire planet. So I don’t see two separate discussions here. Moreover, given that Shira says we should not “reify the concept of citizenship,” I don’t see the purpose of reifying the related concept of jurisdiction.
In short, I see merit in a policy of giving everyone in the world a vote on policies that affect them. But I could anticipate a lot of devils in the details, especially the devil of implementation. I also see the practicality of treating citizenship as membership in a club, and permitting only the members of the club to vote of club policy.
I’m not yet persuaded of the merits of causing all of a person’s rights, responsibilities and allegiances to change every time the person crosses a national boundary. Consider the draft example again: We might have concern for the plight of the Peruvian illegal immigrant in the US, but how much worse would his plight have been if he had been compelled to complete a citizen’s “national service obligation” in each of the nations through which he passed during his long journey north?
Karpad: Hate to interrupt your frothing, barely coherent strawman rant, but let me bring up one point of fact: Low skilled minimum wage workers, in fact, DO NOT pay taxes, at least not income taxes. The tax code in this country is currently such that you have to be making a fairly significant yearly sum before you pay income taxes. And with the earned income tax credit most working poor get there’s a good chance that those low skilled minimum wage workers will get a check from the government that will exceed what they pay in payroll taxes as well.
But I’ve got a question for those of you who are both pro-immigration and, curiously enough, anti-American at the same time. Why? Why do you want innocent people from another country coming to this hellhole nation? If we’re such a neocon dictatorship of eroding human rights and freedoms ruled by a puppet president controlled by Haliburton, why would you want anybody from Mexico or anywhere else coming here to suffer with us? Mexico, particularly, has a socialist government and economic system right now. Isn’t that supposed to be perfect? You should be encouraging them to stay in paradise!
Strawman, much? I don’t believe you’re actually this stupid.
I do think that it’s worth noting that people come to the U.S. in search of economic opportunities, often because their local economies have been devastated by a global economic regime which insists that developing nations open up their markets for goods, while simultaneously protecting developed nations’ labor markets. If we’re going to have free trade, we should have free trade in labor as well as goods. And if powerful nations are going to protect their labor forces from competition, less-powerful nations should be allowed to protect their markets as well.
Edited, because I missed this:
And I wanted to preserve it for posterity in case you realized how ignorant it revealed you to be and edited it.
Sally,
Dodge the question much? I DO believe you’re actually this disingenuous.
And for the record, there’s a difference between labor and goods. Goods get used up and dissapear. Labor–more specifically, people doing labor–stick around, have children, place a strain on social welfare systems if they don’t actually have the means to pay for those children, etc, etc.
i’d like to add another voice to the “big grey zone between deportation and citizenship” chorus.
illegal aliens are criminals, by definition. by law, their crime is roughly felony level. we can debate how serious a crime it ought to be considered and what the proper punishment (if any) is, but short of forgetting the concept of “borders” entirely, it will continue to be a crime.
illegal aliens, by and large, aren’t bad people out to destroy the entire country. most of them only want a halfway decent job. making it possible for them to get that job legally and above-board would likely be a huge help for everybody, “them” and “us” alike.
but citizenship… that’s a whole other deal. that’s a much bigger deal, to me, as a legal immigrant. (my N-400 is in processing, currently.) i can see letting illegals adjust status to permanent resident, i can see any number of work-permit-only “amnesty” schemes. but letting somebody whose first interaction with the country was a demonstration that they don’t much care for our border control laws (which implicitly are part of the citizenship control structure) gain citizenship, would to me dramatically devalue U.S. citizenship. i’m not about to agree with that. the passport ought to be taken much more seriously than that.
… letting somebody whose first interaction with the country was a demonstration that they don’t much care for our border control laws (which implicitly are part of the citizenship control structure) gain citizenship, would to me dramatically devalue U.S. citizenship.
Look at that. It’s the same argument that is used against SSM. Citizenship (or marriage) would be devalued for me if we allow people I deem unworthy to have it. Even though I would still enjoy the exact same privileges, rights and responsibilities and citizenship (or marriage) is not a finite resource.
I have to admit that I really wasn’t expecting that.
edited to add:
Since this already happens on a regular basis (and through several large amnesties over the decades), I guess US citizenship is already greatly devalued to you. Does this mean that you won’t become a US citizen? Or does the fact that all those millions “whose first interaction with the country was a demonstration that they don’t care much for our border control laws” do not change your rights, responsibilities and privileges play a stronger role and cancel out your estimated devaluation of US citizenship?
The Chief wrote:
Warned about rudeness in the past; clearly the warning did not take; banned.
Jake, is there anybody you wouldn’t want to have U.S. citizenship? can you think of any act whatsoever that ought to preclude naturalization, and if so, what is it? i’m trying to find out if we have even the slightest common ground here, or if any sort of communication is impossible.
why are you blithely comparing homosexuality to breaking immigration laws? do you seriously claim the two are even the slightest bit alike? for that matter, why are you comparing marriage to citizenship? those aren’t cognate either.
and, since what already happens on a regular basis — illegal aliens naturalizing to citizenship? if that is indeed happening, then the USCIS is very severely failing to do their job. possible, of course, and would indeed devalue U.S. citizenship in my eyes, but i’ll need more than just your word for it, thanks.
past amnesties may or may not have been good ideas, but they largely happened before i ever arrived in country; they certainly all happened before i had any legal say in whether or not they ought to have happened (as i still do not have any such say). it’s quite possible that one or more of them harmed the value of citizenship (would you say U.S. citizenship has any value, Jake? if so, would you say there’s any way at all by which that value could be harmed or reduced? again, i’m trying to find common ground here), but i would have been unable to argue against them, and the past is the past.
the 1986 amnesty, i note, adjusted illegals to permanent resident status, and not to citizenship. i wouldn’t be averse to such an amnesty, provided that future citizenship was denied to people covered by the amnesty. the 1986 act was too lenient, in my eyes, only in that one respect; permanent residency and permission to work are not at all unreasonable things to grant someone who has violated no laws other than the immigration laws.
but breaking the immigration laws ought to have some punishment associated with it, some consequence above just a wagging finger and a tut-tut. if you can break those laws and not even be denied citizenship, then who could ever take the immigration laws the least bit seriously? what use would they be, any longer? (or are you arguing that we ought not have any restrictions on immigration whatsoever?)
why are you blithely comparing homosexuality to breaking immigration laws?
I’m not. Read what I wrote again and you may, if you pay careful attention, see that I am comparing your argument against allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens to the arguments of the anti-SSM crowd. Your argument and their argument are remarkably similar.
Jake, is there anybody you wouldn’t want to have U.S. citizenship?
That isn’t the correct question based on our interaction thus far. The correct question would be “Is there anybody who, by becoming a US citizen, would devalue your US citizenship?” I can happily answer that the same way I would answer the question, “Is there anybody who, by getting married, would devalue your marriage?” That happy and easy answer is, “No.”
… illegal aliens naturalizing to citizenship? if that is indeed happening, then the USCIS is very severely failing to do their job.
Of course that’s been happening. That’s how my grandparents became citizens.
the argument style is similar, yes. so what? the subjects being argued about are sufficiently dissimilar that an argument style that’s invalid when applied to one of them may still be valid when applied to the other.
if you’re merely making an observation about my argumentation style, without any implication that i’m somehow wrong because the same style of argument is bad when applied to a completely different subject, then what’s your point?
yes, there are people who, by becoming U.S. citizens, would devalue my (future) citizenship; people who began their road to citizenship by knowingly, deliberately, violating the law. this devalues citizenship by stating, in effect, that obeying the law is not an important part of being a citizen. and if obeying the law is not important to citizenship, then why shouldn’t i simply steal a natural-born’s identity and use that for my U.S. citizenship…?
we strip significant parts of citizenship (the franchise, the right to arms) from people who sufficiently badly break the law; we shouldn’t give citizenship to people who break the law, either. being a good citizen, being good citizenship material, just plain involves obeying the law as a necessary element.
and i’m sorry to say, if your grandparents immigrated against the immigration laws of their day, they should not in my opinion have been granted citizenship. permanent residency, quite possibly, or whatever equivalent of it the law may have had at the time; but citizenship ought to matter more than that. (if it doesn’t, what’s the point of having citizenship? if the passport is so blithely given to just anybody, why should anybody respect it or want it?)
[…yeesh, i should know better by now than to talk politics with americans. every time i do, they send me into this depressive funk that makes me seriously reconsider my decision to immigrate to this badly fucked-up country in the first place… if they don’t even care about this place, why should i give a damn for it?]
Here are some questions for you. While I was a child my parents went through a long ardouous process to become legal citizens of this country. We were “resident aliens” for years and they worked shit jobs until we were naturalized and my dad could get into a union. They were so proud the day they took their oath because they had earned it. What do you want to say to them?
As a mother I have watched my daughters public high school deteriorate and her academic choices dwindle because there are not enough resources to accommodate all the non-english speaking students who flood in every year. What do you have to say to me and other similarly situated parents whose taxes go up every year while services decline?
And lastly, I am an attorney who had the importance of respect for the law as a foundation of civilized society pounded into me for three long years. Please explain how this particular situation merits an exception to the rule?
Nomen,
Let me break it down for you. Your logic is identical to the logic of those opposed to SSM. That is to say that both you and the anti-SSMers claim that something that is not a finite resource is devalued (in some unspecified and unsubstantiated manner) if a class of people that you (subjectively) deem unworthy is allowed access to that resource. I can’t make it any clearer than that. If you can’t understand that the two arguments are the same, there’s no point in talking to you.
… this devalues citizenship by stating, in effect, that obeying the law is not an important part of being a citizen.
So do those who break the speed limit laws devalue citizenship? If so, you may want to reconsider your desire to become a US citizen as I can assure you that well over 50% of US drivers break those laws on a regular basis. If not, why is immigration law more important than driving laws?
… we strip significant parts of citizenship (the franchise, the right to arms) from people who sufficiently badly break the law…
And I believe that that is wrong. Also, as a side note, “we” don’t strip significant parts of citizenship – some states do and some states don’t. Should we then allow illegal immigrants to become US citizens in some states and not in others?
… if they don’t even care about this place, why should i give a damn for it?
I read this statement and I think to myself, “Is Nomen an idiot or an asshole?” We were having this discussion precisely because I do care. But I really don’t need to waste time with somebody who makes statements like that.
see, if you’d just have stated that up front, i would have realized that we have no common ground whatsoever and cannot hope to communicate effectively. then i could have written you off and saved the both of us the time and trouble.
(i know you understand that some laws are more important than others; every adult does. so the problem must logically be that you don’t think immigration laws matter, at least not more than barely, in some negligible nominal sense. and there’s no getting from there to where i am, nor have i any desire to find out if there’s any way to get from me to you. have a nice day.)
karpad Writes:
The taxes that they pay do not cover the cost of their living expenses.
You average low skilled worker gets assistance from the government in the form of health care ( Medicaid), cash assistance, food stamps and other pograms to help the needy, not to mention the cost of attendance by the low wage worker’s children in publicly funded schools, which also includes subsidized lunch and other necessities for their children. All of these costs add up and the amount of money that a low wage worker pays into to the system by taxes does not cover the average cost of all of the benefits he or she receives.
I won’t speak to whether easing prohibitions on illegal immigration “devalues” citizenship in some philosophical sense. Let me address the economic sense.
I can see two routes a foreigner might consider when seeking to come to the US: legal and illegal. People choose which option to pursue given the anticipated costs and benefits of each option, and each person’s own personal circumstances. If we reduce the expected costs of immigrating illegally (through lax enforcement of immigration laws and lighter penalties), I would expect a smaller percentage of immigrants would choose to bear the costs of immigrating legally. Conversely if we increase the expected cost of immigrating illegally (through stricter enforcement and harsher penalties), I would expect a larger percentage to pursue the legal option.
In that sense, lax enforcement of immigration laws could be understood as prompting a lower percentage of immigrants to pursue immigration by legal means – that is, causing them to “value” legal immigration less than if we enforced immigration laws more rigorously.
To some extent the analogy to same sex marriage seems inapt. While governments in the US do not limit the number of marriage licences they issue in any given year, I understand the US does limit (more or less) the number of immigrants it accepts for citizenship each year. Getting a marriage licence is simply a ministerial matter, entailing very little doubt, expense or delay; you already know whether or not you meet the requirements. Getting citizenship involves a lot of doubt, expense and delay; vastly more people qualify for US citizenship than will ever receive it. Being approved for citizenship is akin to winning the lottery; getting a marriage licence is akin to registering your car for licence plates.
Here’s perhaps a better analogy: Imagine gay Max lives his whole life in a loveless heterosexual marriage because he wanted to enjoy the benefits of marriage yet he firmly believes that marriage is an institution exclusively for couples of different sexes. Having experienced a lifetime of sexual and emotional frustration, “chump” would not adequately describe Max’s feelings when same-sex couples lacking any legal standing started enjoying the same benefits of marriage that he received.
Similarly, someone who incurs the cost, delay and doubt of “playing by the rules” to receive citizenship might feel like a chump if illegal immigrants start receiving the same benefits.
In short, there’s an element of envy there, a sense that somebody got something you had to work hard for, but got it without making the same sacrifices. In contrast, when the Christian Coalition crowd complains that same-sex marriage devalues marriage, I don’t think that they’re expressing envy for people who are entering same-sex relationships. Then again, who knows? That could explain a lot of things about the Christian Coalition crowd….
All of these costs add up and the amount of money that a low wage worker pays into to the system by taxes does not cover the average cost of all of the benefits he or she receives.
This is another mindset that I will never understand. The wealthiest people in this society, the ones with the most access to resources, who control most of the income in our economy (for whatever reason, including the luck of being born to rich parents) are by definition getting more out of the “the system” than they are putting in. It’s from a different part of “the system,” to be sure, but if we’re talking about “the system” in the aggregate, begrudging someone struggling to get by on minimum wage their child’s publicly-funded education while ignoring the corporate welfare that allows a CEO to send his kid to private school gets pretty far into “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread” territory.
And the people who work 80 hours a week and STILL don’t have enough to live on are clearly getting out much less than they are putting in – at least, they are getting out much less than the wealthy CEO who puts in an equivalent number of hours at the office, who is in turn getting out less than any of the Walton heirs. Given the way you are constructing this get out/put in ratio, the only people who are not a “drain on the system” are the very people who ARE draining all the resources out of the system! Which, of course, means you are just using “the system” as a euphemism for “the rich.”
The bottom line is that if you want everyone to get as much out of the system as they put in, you have to eliminate income/wealth inequality first, not demand that the poor accept their degraded station in life. But this line of reasoning seems downright outraged that the poor have children and get sick and need food as if they were human, as if they had the right, and the apparent conclusion – that if we get rid of public services for people who can’t afford it, poverty will be solved (presumably a miracle happen somewhere along the way that will cause the poor to cease to be human) – is magical thinking at best, repugnant, Neomalthusian, inhumane garbage at worst.
there’s an element of envy in my position, to be sure, and i’m not going to deny it. given the years of worry and effort i had to go through before i could even file for naturalization (and who knows if it’ll be granted… or what might happen to me if it’s not) i think i’d have to be superhuman not to feel pissed off at any suggestion that somebody else might get to “cut in line”.
but there’s also an element of respect for the laws in there. part of me knows the only reason i bothered with that effort and uncertainty was that i thought the laws of the land did matter, that they were worth obeying, even at the cost of personal inconvenience. the suggestion that those laws might get thrown out the window and violations of them ignored is, i think, even worse than any envy.
mind you, i could put up with having those laws officially repealed if that’s what U.S. society at large decided was the right thing to do. if the message being sent me was something like, “sorry you wasted all that time, effort and money; it was a wrong thing we made you do, we see that now, and we won’t put any more people through that unjust wringer. our apologies”, then yeah, i could live with the borders being completely open. i might not agree with it, i might think such a decision was stupid, but it wouldn’t seem unjust.
letting certain classes and/or groups of people wholly ignore the laws, at random intervals of several years, with no consequences for their having violated said laws in the interim — that seems unjust. that seems to me like society just begging me to disrespect the law. it’s not a good feeling when you start to suspect that obeying the law is something society at large considers stupid and naive, and it seems to me that having such a mentality become too widespread could even be dangerous in some sense.
While governments in the US do not limit the number of marriage licences they issue in any given year, I understand the US does limit (more or less) the number of immigrants it accepts for citizenship each year.
You’re missing my point in two ways. First off, I wasn’t comparing the two issues, I was comparing the logic of the two arguments. Secondly, Nomen wasn’t complaining about too many grants of citizenship, Nomen was saying that allowing someone who breaks the law (but, apparently, not any law – some laws are more equal than others?) to gain citizenship “devalues” (in some still unspecified & unsubstantiated manner) citizenship itself.
Tangentially, there really is no limit to the number of citizens (given that 100% of children of US citizens will be citizens) just as there is no limit to the number of marriages. By the same token, neither marriage nor citizenship is a resource. Rather, it is a status (for lack of a better word coming to mind). Citizenship does not exhaust a supply of anything – it confers privileges, rights and responsibilities. Given that those privileges, rights and responsibilities take nothing tangible out of circulation, how can either citizenship or marriage be “devalued”? They have the same value no matter whether you are the only person with it or everybody has it or just some percentage of the population has it. “It” is a status, not a tangible thing.
Shira Writes:
The wealthiest people, and of course the middle class, are the ones creating the most jobs and putting the most into the system. So what is wrong with them benefiting from the system that they are paying for?
I’m not begrudging anyone anything. I’m simply stating the facts. In a capitalistic economy everybody can’t be rich and the poor/working middle class will have to be subsidized to some extent. .
Jake, one big problem with your “these positions are similar” argument is that gays are denied marriage because of who they ARE, while illegal aliens are denied admission because of what they DO. Big difference.
Similarly, marriage itself doesn’t give much of a competitive benefit. Nor does it allow people the ability to access others’ resources; to have a say in others’ affairs, etc. It’s a fairly private thing, which is one of the main reasons that opposition to marriage is so ludicrous. I mean really, who gives a shit who’s married?
OTOH, citizenship is, while not a finite resource, one in which adding members effectively devalues the position of the remaining citizens. Think for instance about voting. Were there only ten of us, I’d control a full 10% of the vote. As a citizen (in my personal case) who pays more than my share or the tax burden, more citizens are not beneficial.
There is one country-sized pie. Unless a new person at the table adds enough pie, then their slice means less for me.
Citizenship also implies a shared interest in the country. you may disagree on how we should spend our taxes, and whether we should go to war, but if you’re a citizen of the country then you, too, actually get a say in it, and are affected by it. Again: vastly different from marriage. the arguments are similar to such a small degree it’s not worth making the connection.
But in any case: now, you seem to be spending more time trying to posit argument examples than talking about the actual subject. So let’s go back to the subject. I, too, am interested in your response to the question:
Should there be anyone who is denied U.S. citizenship? If so, who?
I understand Jamila Akil to make an argument about adverse selection which arises in any insurance situation. Citizens in industrialized nations create “social safety nets” wherein they insure each other against some level of coercion, fraud, poverty, etc. and pay for this insurance roughly in proportion to their wealth. Some people receive more than they pay in, some pay more than they receive, but in the long run the pay-outs match the pay-ins. That’s the way insurance works.
As a closed system, it can be stable. As an open system, it will be stable if the net pay-outs and net pay-ins remain in balance. But if you inject into the system a population that you can predict will take more than it pays, the system can go bankrupt. You will need additional revenues or reduced outlays to maintain a balance.
I don’t see anything outrageous in this assertion; it looks like mathematics to me.
I understand Jamila Akil to make the assumption that there are limits on how many resources can be dedicated to a social safety net. Having eliminated the idea of solving the problem through acquiring additional revenues, the only way to reconcile this situation is to seal the boarders (creating a closed system) or reduce the outlays, ultimately down to zero. The latter is, as I understand it, the libertarian ideal.
I understand Shira to make the assumption that there are no limits to how many resources can be dedicated to a social safety net. The solution to the problem is to eliminate the income/wealth inequality first, so that people immigrating to a country are as likely to be net payers as net recipients. But if we don’t limit immigration first, this would require eliminating inequality throughout the world; otherwise the injection of needier immigrants from some part of the world could always threaten the system’s stability. Dedication of all the world’s resources to the creation of a social safety net is, as I understand it, the Communist ideal.
I don’t expect to find reconciliation here any time soon. But, for what it’s worth, here’s an interesting Power-Point presentation on the sustainability of a liberal immigration policy.
I suspect practical remedies lie somewhere in between. Yes, we want some level of social safety net for our nation, but I doubt that we are willing (or even able?) to provide the same standard of living for the whole world. Thus we must be mindful of the consequences of immigration on our social safety nets, which necessitates limiting immigration to some extent.
From this perspective, the question is not “Who should be denied citizenship?” Denial is the default assumption. The question is “For whom should the default assumption of denial be waived?”
Should there be anyone who is denied U.S. citizenship? If so, who?
Off the top of my head… Those who seek the destruction of the US should be denied citizenship. Those who pose a danger to residents of the US should be denied citizenship.
Where one determines the threshold is up for debate.
However, a system in which immigrants are enticed with better paying jobs and more security (the economy depends on illegal labor – everyone from corporate giants such as Walmart & Big Agro down to independent contractors make big money utilizing illegal labor) while creating a law so that we can selectively prosecute is immoral.
If we were to actually enforce immigration laws as they exist, we would see the economy take a big hit and taxes go up to pay for the mechanisms of enforcement.
Given that, I have a hard time holding immigrating illegally against people.
But, if you’ve read my (semi-educated) proposals on immigration in other threads on this blog, you know that I believe in some requirements for citizenship.
The wealthiest people, and of course the middle class, are the ones creating the most jobs and putting the most into the system. So what is wrong with them benefiting from the system that they are paying for?
Clearly, they are benefiting from the system, more than the poor/working class. That was my point.
I’m not begrudging anyone anything. I’m simply stating the facts. In a capitalistic economy everybody can’t be rich and the poor/working middle class will have to be subsidized to some extent.
If an impoverished working class is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism, then surely the workers are creating wealth just as much as the wealthy are creating jobs. And it’s unfair to turn around and treat the poor as this useless subhuman (or irritatingly human, more accurately, with obnoxiously human needs) drain on what otherwise would be a happy, healthy and wealthy society.
Clearly, they are benefiting from the system, more than the poor/working class.
But is that really true?
They are certainly living a better life than the poor, for the most part. Would they be living a worse life, relative to the poor, under a different system?
Under most systems, rich people (however that is defined in the particular culture) have pervasive and genuine advantages. It seems at least plausible that this is a systemic property of wealth, rather than a systemic property of particular social systems.
If that’s the case, then rich people aren’t getting more out of the system. They’re getting more out of the universe – and fiddling with systems isn’t going to get rid of the inequality. They’re benefiting from their wealth, not from the innate social structure.
Now, under one system or another, a particular group of people might be or might not be wealthy. That might make for a real social change from a change in system. But I suspect – admittedly without evidence other than my own native reason and life experience – that whatever the new system, there will still be rich people, and they will still have big advantages over the little folk.
, then surely the workers are creating wealth just as much as the wealthy are creating jobs.
Neither is axiomatically true. There are jobs which do not create wealth (although not usually for very long), and there are forms of wealth that do not imply or cause employment.
I agree that poor people should not be thought of as human refuse; poor people, like rich people, are the Body of Christ. That doesn’t necessarily make them economically productive, though.
“New laws are not needed for this; what’s needed is the will to enforce existing laws. Ironically, the most effective way to do this is be to go after American citizens; the ones that are employing illegal aliens. This could be the CEO of the company that owns the meat packing plant in Iowa filled with illegal aliens (and that is now filled with American citizens after ICE raided the place; it turns out that Americans DO want those jobs). This could be the guy who lives next door to me. I say “could be” because I don’t know the citizenship status of the crew that mows his lawn and cleans the leaves off his yard (in part by blowing them onto mine, but that’s a separate issue …). Throw some CEO’s ass in jail and you’ll see the illegal alien problem dwindle quickly. We won’t have to deport them; they’ll leave, because they won’t be able to get jobs.”
This is, I would think, the most optimal solution. We want to see illegal immigration abate, but we also don’t want existing illegal immigrants to be treated like violent criminals along the way. (Ostensibly to “send a message” – in which case sending a message looks suspiciously similar to political pandering to racists.)
“The goal (or, perhaps, ideal) is to have completely open borders.”
Yes – when every nation adopts basically the same systems of government and domestic policies. Otherwise, this ‘openness’ is going to be incredibly one-sided.
“Mexico, particularly, has a socialist government and economic system right now.”
I’m at a loss for words. Wow.
“The taxes that they pay do not cover the cost of their living expenses.
You average low skilled worker gets assistance from the government in the form of health care ( Medicaid), cash assistance, food stamps and other pograms to help the needy, not to mention the cost of attendance by the low wage worker’s children in publicly funded schools, which also includes subsidized lunch and other necessities for their children. All of these costs add up and the amount of money that a low wage worker pays into to the system by taxes does not cover the average cost of all of the benefits he or she receives.”
Your average low skilled *illegal immigrant*, on the other hand, cannot receive most forms of government assistance. For one thing, they lack any form of legal identification.
If this is an argument for not allowing poor illegal immigrants the same benefits that poor citizens get, then I agree with you. I’m just not entirely sure where you’re going with this.
Under most systems, rich people (however that is defined in the particular culture) have pervasive and genuine advantages. It seems at least plausible that this is a systemic property of wealth, rather than a systemic property of particular social systems.
Accumulation of wealth is the pervasive and genuine advantage that this particular social system imbues on the wealthy. You can’t separate “getting wealth out of the system” from the equation only for the rich if you are going to turn around and use the income that the poor get out of the system via subsidized healthcare, welfare, etc. as a metric of what they are getting out of the system. Which brings me back to my initial argument: that the rich are getting more out of “the system” than the poor almost definitionally – they just get it out of a different part of the system (namely, the part that allows them to profit off the labor of the poor).
Now, under one system or another, a particular group of people might be or might not be wealthy. That might make for a real social change from a change in system. But I suspect – admittedly without evidence other than my own native reason and life experience – that whatever the new system, there will still be rich people, and they will still have big advantages over the little folk.
Before I respond, I want to make sure I’m reading this correctly. Are you really arguing that you cannot attribute the generation of income and wealth to a particular system – that whether someone is wealthy or poor has nothing to do with the current social structure? You seem to be arguing for something like a caste system, where there is an immutable class of “the poor” who should simply accept poverty, and not try to get out of “the system” what rightfully belongs to the upper-castes. But maybe I am misreading you.
Your average low skilled *illegal immigrant*, on the other hand, cannot receive most forms of government assistance. For one thing, they lack any form of legal identification.
True. But illegal immigrants do get Medicaid and if they have children who were born here then those children are eligible for all the same benefits as the rest of the citizens.
If this is an argument for not allowing poor illegal immigrants the same benefits that poor citizens get, then I agree with you. I’m just not entirely sure where you’re going with this.
You hit the nail on the head, that’s all I was trying to say.
You’re misreading me. Some systems have more mobility than others, but “rich” and “poor” are characteristics that are measured, not innate.
nobody.really Writes:
Nobody.really said exactly what I was trying to say but said it about 10 times clearer than I did.
You’re misreading me. Some systems have more mobility than others, but “rich” and “poor” are characteristics that are measured, not innate.
So if rich and poor are relationally defined, I don’t see what the problem is with trying to reduce the distance between these two groups via progressive taxation and a large social safety net. The whole idea that poor people are receiving more in benefits than they are putting into the system via taxes ignores the people who receive more in benefits from profit than they pay in to the system via wages to their workers and benefits for those workers. Which seems to me to be incredibly one-sided, especially since it necessarily ignores the value of the work that the poor put into the system that gets translated into the income of the wealthy that we’re not considering as being taken ‘out of the system.’
We need to acknowledge that there are more ways to contribute to a system than tax money, and more ways to drain the system than social services. Otherwise we just get the macro version of “I paid for all this stuff so why should my lazy ex (who put in 20 years of unpaid domestic and reproductive labor so that I could be single-mindedly focused on my career) get any of it!”
Shira Writes:
You discourage people who have the potential to become rich from doing so: Why would I take huge risks and work longer and harder to become successful when it will be taken away from me to support those less successful?
You discourage those who are poor from helping themselves: Why should I do anything to pull myself up from poverty when either way I will live the same quality of life as the hard-working self-sacrificing person next door?
And if poor people have no incentive to work harder and improve their lives and those with the potential to be successful have no incentive to do so either, you end up with everyone doing as little as they can. You can examine the formerly communist countries to see how all this regression to the mean leads to a stagnant economy and a population that avoids working too hard to accomplish anything.
Shira Writes:
This comparison doesn’t work. The arrangement between a stay-at-home mom ( or dad) who raises the children and the spouse is a voluntary and personal relationship; either person can leave the arrangment by divorce and they were each free to never have entered the arrangement in the first place.
The relationship between people who don’t know each other in the general economy, but are forced to take part in income redistibution, is a non-voluntary and impersonal one: Why should I have my money forcibly taken away from me to give to people I don’t know and whom I have little desire to help?
The social safety net requires some involuntary impersonal redistribution of money from the rich to the poor to maintain the net for the benefit of all people, but this is still nothing like the voluntary and personal redistribution of money that occurs within families.
“if poor people have no incentive to work harder and improve their lives and those with the potential to be successful have no incentive to do so ”
The above takes 2 things as given: 1) that working harder improves poor people’s lives and 2) that the potential to be successful can be realised merely by applying oneself. Both are demonstrably false: most poor people on the planet work a fuck of a lot harder than most of the richest people. Being poor isn’t caused by people choosing to not work. In fact, “choosing to be lazy” has never at any time in history been the primary reason for poverty, or even one of the bigger reasons. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting really bored by the constant assertions in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that it is.
The above takes 2 things as given: 1) that working harder improves poor people’s lives and 2) that the potential to be successful can be realised merely by applying oneself.
Actually what it takes as given are that 1) not working hard will never improve your life and 2) the potential to be successful cannot be realized without applying oneself.
There are no guaranteed positive outcomes; nothing will lock you into success. There are guaranteed negative outcomes; there are things you can do which will (nearly) automatically cause your failure.
Therefore, incentives matter, even if they do not guide every person who does the “right” behavior to utopia every single time.
Both are demonstrably false: most poor people on the planet work a fuck of a lot harder than most of the richest people.
That’s probably true. But for most poor people on the planet (the vast majority, in fact), the majority of their relative poverty is not caused by their own personal lack of hard work; the majority of their relative poverty is caused by their bad luck in being born in countries with systems that do not build wealth as effectively as capitalism does. You can be born into dire grinding poverty in Mogadishu or in Montreal. In one of those places, hard work and some luck can result in a transformation of your life. In the other place, hard work and some luck can result in subsistence survival.
Is it guaranteed? No. Nothing good in life is guaranteed.
In fact, “choosing to be lazy” has never at any time in history been the primary reason for poverty, or even one of the bigger reasons.
I agree. Choosing to be lazy is rarely the reason that a person falls into dire poverty. The discomforts that attend dire poverty are usually more than sufficient to prevent that; even the lazy guy would rather work and have a roof than not work and live rough.
That said, within the same population and the same country under the same economic system, hard work is significantly more likely to lead to the OPPOSITE of poverty than laziness is. J.K. Rowling was not lazy; she worked her ass off while on welfare to write her book, and got rich. J.L. Dowling, her doppelganger, identical in every way but blessed with an attitude of “tomorrow will be soon enough”, never got around to writing the book. She’s still on welfare. She didn’t go on welfare in the first place because she’s lazy, but laziness surely isn’t making it any easier for her to get off.
Luck is important. Innate talent is important. Circumstances are important. None of the significance of those things takes away from the fact that, ceteris parabus, working hard and seizing opportunities is more likely to lead to success than doing nothing is. You can be as bored with that as you like, but it will remain true.
I said:
To which Jake Squid replied:
I hate to have to say that you’re full of crap, but you are. This statement is so false and so flies in the face of commonly reported fact that I can only believe that you’re lying.
Lying, eh? Tell it to one Ms. Nancy Law
So, here we have an example of precisely the circumstance I described, the one that it seems to me you described as a “lie”. An illegal alien started using her SSN. The IRS started dunning her for unpaid taxes, it appeared in her credit report (it’s not specifically stated here, but trust me, if the IRS is on your case it doesn’t exactly help your credit rating), and she’s having to do a whole lot of legwork to clean up her records.
RonF earlier:
Obtaining a false Social Security number. When the illegal alien’s income is reported under that number, the real holder is prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines. Their credit rating is destroyed.
Strangely, this claim is not at all supported by the link provided by RonF. Rather, the article (which is not the original, but a repost of a Denver Post article – I am unable to find the original online) tells us that :
Polite but firm, the letters urged the fifth-grade teacher to pay the extra taxes she owed on those little jobs she did on the side — working at the textile plant in Missouri and the tortilla factory in Denver.
Nowhere in the link provided by RonF (as he tried to flimsily support his lies) is there a mention of, “the real holder [being] prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines.”
Here is the inconvenience and pain caused to Ms. Law:
Instead, she devoted days every year to cleaning up her credit and tax records. The first Internal Revenue Service letter about unpaid taxes arrived in 1998. As Morales changed cities and jobs, Law got similar letters each year.
The horror! The threats detailed here are unconscionable, aren’t they? And right in line with the claims of RonF., too.
And look at how angry the Laws were at the people who had used their SS#:
“These are probably very hard- working people that are trying to get by. They’ve found gaps and loops in the system and are trying to get through those gaps and loops,” Law’s husband, Rich, said of Morales and other immigrants.
Clearly, the Laws were terrorized by the situation and angry at the criminals who had stolen Ms. Law’s SS#.
Well, I’m sure I’ll resume wasting my time interacting with RonF. soon. Just after I become expert on the lute.
Right, Jake. Because if you don’t convince the IRS that it isn’t you doing it, they won’t prosecute. They’re cool about that. You just say “Jake says it’s all right”, and they close the file.
Here’s a lady who got a back tax bill for more than 15 grand, spent more than four hours in detention when another illegal committed a felony under her identity, and was out of work for a month because an employer couldn’t clarify her status owing to the more than 200 false tax documents filed under her number.
Those are probably all lies, too. After all, the woman eventually got the job, and was released after the four hours, and was able eventually to convince the IRS that she didn’t owe the 15 grand. So no harm done. It didn’t hurt her. And anyone who says it did is a filthy liar.
(Eyeroll.)
Jake,
Did you forget how to apologize?
First you accused him of being full of crap. Then you get a post (two, now) that suggest the reverse is true.
You can nitpick if you want, but in this limited instance Robert and RonF are, essentially, right. You are, essentially, wrong.
If you expect your opponents to retain some modicum of politeness when you make a compelling point, you’d do well to return the favor. Otherwise, go practice the goddamn lute.
Robert,
From your link:
Schmierer’s number became so compromised that Social Security officials finally took a rare step used only in extreme cases: They gave her a new one.
This certainly implies that the article refers to a rare case. I’ll ask again, is this common? Was (in RonF.’s lying words), ““the real holder [being] prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines?” The answer is clearly, “No.”
So, I fail to see how your link provides any factual evidence to back up RonF.’s lies about what happens when your SS# is used by somebody else (citizen or not).
Perhaps you’ve forgotten, so let me quote RonF.’s big lie for you, Robert.
2) Obtaining a false Social Security number. When the illegal alien’s income is reported under that number, the real holder is prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service for not reporting income, threatened with jail time and huge fines. Their credit rating is destroyed. The onus is on the victim to prove that they didn’t earn the money and store it where the IRS can’t see it, it’s not up to the IRS to prove that it was the victim and not someone else who actually had the income.
So, did the IRS threaten either of these people with “jail time and huge fines?” It’s not mentioned in either your link or RonF.’s link.
Was their credit rating destroyed because of problems with the IRS? I haven’t seen evidence for that in either link.
Was the onus on the victim to prove that it was not their income unreasonable? It seems, from both links, that it was not (although, as with all things with the IRS, the onus is on you to provide evidence of their mistake). That their problems with the IRS were cleared up fairly quickly and easily.
So I fail to see how your link (or your eyeroll inducing responses) actually addresses RonF’s lie or my calling out of the aforementioned lie.
Sailorman,
I’d apologize if they actually provided something to back up the lie. It seems that those 2 weren’t the only ones who forgot what the lie I called RonF. on was. (See my comment, #82, for the exact text of RonF.’s lie) Please show me people who were threatened with jail time by the IRS for having their SS# stolen. Show me how many people were threatened with huge fines for the unreported income accrued by the stolen SS#. The fact is, the IRS doesn’t work that way. They send a polite notice informing you of the discrepancy between what you paid/reported and what they think you should have paid/reported. It isn’t difficult nor particularly time-consuming to show them their error. So, please, tell me how RonF. is doing anything but lying as a scare tactic.
I readily admit that you must convince the IRS that they are mistaken. That, however, is not a difficult task. (Yes, I speak from personal experience on that.)
Now, how about the claims of oppressive prosecution by the IRS? Show me some documentation, some facts showing that this is anything but extraordinarily rare (if extant, at all) when an SS# is used by illegal immigrants & I’ll apologize for my comments.
Everyone, take it down a few notches.
About “getting more out of the system than one puts into it” – I think that’s a bit of an unfair characterization. One of the wonders of economics is that it is actually possible for EVERYONE to get “more out of the system than one puts into it” because capabilities and desires differ.
Consider the trivial case: I have a used car I that you want more than I do. I sell the car to you. I’m happy because I exchanged something (a used car) for something I wanted more (whatever I buy with the money you gave me), and you’re happy for exactly the same reason – you’ve got something you wanted more than what you had. Commerce is not a zero-sum game!
Employment under capitalism isn’t a zero sum game, either. If I represent the owners of a mine (and the equipment needed to mine that mine) and you represent miners, then if we agree on how to divide the revenues from selling the mined resources, and then those we represent follow through on that agreement, they both end up richer than if our inability to come to an agreement means that the resources sit in the ground unsold and unused. Now, this example does ignore the issue of exactly how the revenues should be distributed, whether those I represent ought to be the ones to own the mine, or, for that matter, whether those you represent ought to be miners, but it illustrates that employment is a relationship in which both employer and employee are getting out more than they put in.
My Economics 101 textbook is the most effective brainwashing tool I’ve ever seen. (It worked on me!) For changing the way people think, professors of religion, politics, and philosophy have nothing on professors of economics. ;)
“You discourage people who have the potential to become rich from doing so: Why would I take huge risks and work longer and harder to become successful when it will be taken away from me to support those less successful?
You discourage those who are poor from helping themselves: Why should I do anything to pull myself up from poverty when either way I will live the same quality of life as the hard-working self-sacrificing person next door?”
The reverse is also true.
You discourage people who have the potential to escape poverty from doing so: Why would I take huge risks and work longer and harder when it all doesn’t seem to get me out of poverty anyway?
Say a government stipend, when in conjunction with earned wages, helps our resident poor dude escape poverty when he couldn’t do so with the latter alone. The more visible upward movement he experiences helps him associate hard work with a positive, immediate payoff, instilling in him a greater appreciation for hard work in general than he had before. Conversely, say that the stipend didn’t exist, and our part time can collector didn’t escape poverty, at least within the same reference frame of time. That’s added time to become discouraged, change attitude, and pick up/revert back to bad habits. A lot of people seem to forget this, but a perfectly normal reaction to persistent and chronic poverty is not to whip out more and more cans of Can Do, but be drained of the spirit that they’d otherwise have.
Now, maybe the latter reaction really is indicative of a moral failure that deserves to be punished by hunger and homelessness. But unfortunately, we have no method of fairly testing for the very same moral failure those who hold this view, given that they are statistically most likely to be comfortably shielded from all such circumstances. (Imagine that.) So in the meantime, I don’t have a problem with recognizing that there’s such a thing as positive incentives*, and that government is an acceptable agent of last resort to provide these.
*Note that I’m not saying that the primary purpose of a broad-based government handout that has no other criterion than level of income is positive incentive building – the intent is purely one of humanitarianism and compassion, a fact that I don’t dispute and a philosophy I don’t object to. However, as an added effect, it could encourage more people to stay on their feet – at the very least counterbalancing the negative effect it would have on recipients of a different mindset, to some, all, or greater degree.
“About “getting more out of the system than one puts into it” – I think that’s a bit of an unfair characterization. One of the wonders of economics is that it is actually possible for EVERYONE to get “more out of the system than one puts into it” because capabilities and desires differ.”
I think you’re using the wrong analogy in the post. Purchase of a used car is exactly the sort of market transaction, involving high measures of consumer control and a rapid market response rate, that Economics 101 loves to focus on. It’s also exactly the sort of scenario that’s a bad, bad model to use for many situations. Including the transfer of wealth from a tax base to a recipient minority.
Rather, I think a better analogy would be an insurance company taking the money from all its customers to give to the minority of legitimate claimants within that group, or a landlord increasing rent prices to accommodate some subgroup of tenants who need it more – say, wheelchair bound tenants who need ramps and automatic doors installed.
gays are denied marriage because of who they ARE, while illegal aliens are denied admission because of what they DO
Wrong on both, actually. There is no law of which I’m aware (feel free to correct me) that says “if you are gay, you may not marry anybody.” For one thing, such laws would make being gay a ‘status offense’–for another, the laws are facially discriminatory on the basis of gender, and de facto discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation.
Unless by “what they DO” you mean “remaining in this country rather than returning to their country of citizenship”, this is not really a correct standard for illegal immigrants, either. An illegal alien who was brought to this country by her parents as an infant didn’t choose to sneak over the border. If she has been told she is a citizen by those parents, then she isn’t even willfully remaining in this country in defiance of the immigration laws.
Why would I take huge risks and work longer and harder to become successful when it will be taken away from me to support those less successful?
Because “it” will not be taken away. Nobody takes away your success. Your entire income is not confiscated. If this argument were true, the mere existence of income taxes would insure that America would never have a single millionare.
sylphhead
If you have a bad driving record, DUIs, etc you are likely to have a disproportionately large insurance payment. If you smoke, get sick a lot, or have had major health problems, etc you will pay more for your health insurance. If your company has a large number of accidents you will pay a much higher workers compensation bill. Another way of thinking about it is that the more likely you are to benefit from the insurance the larger your payment will be. Adapting that to a national social service system would have poor people paying much more since they are more likely to take social safety net benefits.
Usually all these economic and tax arguments come down to whether and what level you believe that a person’s body, and derivatively what he does with his body (labor), is owned by the state. 100% tax rate and we would all be total slaves to the state, 95% tax rate a little less so, and so on.
sylphhead Writes:
A poor person who takes risks, works longer, harder, and–dare I say it?–smarter, is very likely to escape poverty. Assuming of course that this poor person doesn’t have too many kids too soon, become addicted to drugs, or do something else to kept them chained to their present station in life. One of the best things about a free society is the level of social mobility that is possible for someone who chooses to work hard: poor people can become rich and rich people can lose everything to become poor.
There are no promises made to anyone that they will eventually become rich or middle class.
Say a government stipend, when in conjunction with earned wages, helps our resident poor dude escape poverty when he couldn’t do so with the latter alone. The more visible upward movement he experiences helps him associate hard work with a positive, immediate payoff, instilling in him a greater appreciation for hard work in general than he had before.
Or he could end up with an entitlement complex the size of Montana and become even lazier than he would have been had there been no external help from the government.
I’m all for “helping people who are trying to help themselves” but I oppose any system that goes as far as to say that no one can be allowed to be poor.
I agree with you that an overwhelming sense of hopelessness is a possibility for some people who can’t quite seem to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; a sense of entitlement and lack of initiative may also be just a likely.
I think it is far more likely that a system which refuses to allow anyone to be poor will hamper the development of initiative and risk taking than it will to encourage people to just give up.
I also believe that private organizations are more readily able to help individual people or families that are struggling with their best effort rise above their circumstances. A government organization has to use the same standards for everyone to determine whether or not the applicant seeking assistance would benefit from help or be hampered by it. A private non-profit agency is better able to look at the circumstances of the particular case and make a judgement that reflects intimate knowledge of the person’s situation, knowledge that a government organization can’t seek because it would be intrusive.
mythago Writes:
If I measure success in terms of financial status, then yes, it can be taken away from me. Part of the reason that I work hard is because I enjoy feeling successful, but another part of the reason is because I enjoy the fruits of my hard work, such as a nice home, vacations, fast cars etc.
A rich person’s entire income is not confiscated but a large portion of it is, I believe the top tax bracket in America is now something like 33% on personal income. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
And yet, people keep working hard to become rich, instead of saying “Screw this, part of my income goes to taxes.” Probably because the rich, like the poor, benefit from public spending.
A poor person who takes risks, works longer, harder, and–dare I say it?–smarter, is very likely to escape poverty.
“Very likely”? Is this on the Libertarian Fantasy Planet?
Mythago, would you be happier if it were re-written as
“A poor person who takes NO risks, does not work longer, harder, or smarter, is much less likely to escape poverty.”
I don’t think there are any guarantees to be not poor. But there seem to be things that can be done to be less poor or be less likely to be poor. Bad luck can be a killer and I want to do everything I can to help mitigate that. But I think everyone should work as hard as they can as best they can to help themselves.
It’s one of the reasons I think we should allow people from other countries to come here and work if they want to. Regarding illegal immigrants from South of the border: ? I have a lot of respect for anyone who goes to such great lengths just for a better job than they could get at home. How do you look at someone willing to do pretty much ANY work for 10-12 bucks an hour 60 hours a week and see a bad thing
What adverse consequence does taxation have for people’s productivity? Jonathan Chait addresses this question in The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Here’s an excerpt, although you can find a longer excerpt here:
“From 1947 to 1973, the U.S. economy grew at a rate of nearly 4 percent a year–a massive boom, fueling rapid growth in living standards across the board. During most of that period, from 1947 until 1964, the highest tax rate hovered around 91 percent. For the rest of the time, it was still a hefty 70 percent. Yet the economy flourished anyway. [W]hatever negative effect such high tax rates have, it’s relatively minor. Which necessarily means that whatever effects today’s tax rates have, they’re even more minor.
“This can be seen with some very simple arithmetic. As just noted, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy taxpayers in the top bracket had to pay a 91 percent rate. That meant that, if they were contemplating, say, a new investment, they would be able to keep just nine cents of every dollar they earned, a stiff disincentive. When that rate dropped down to 70 percent, our top earner could now keep 30 cents of every new dollar. That more than tripled the profitability of any new dollar–a 233 percent increase, to be exact. That’s a hefty incentive boost. In 1981, the top tax rate was cut again to 50 percent. The profit on every new dollar therefore rose from 30 to 50 cents, a 67 percent increase. In 1986, the top rate dropped again, from 50 to 28 percent. The profit on every dollar rose from 50 to 72 cents, a 44 percent increase. Note that the marginal improvement of every new tax cut is less than that of the previous one. But we’re still talking about large numbers. Increasing the profitability of a new investment even by 44 percent is nothing to sneeze at.
“But then George Bush raised the top rate to 31 percent in 1990. This meant that, instead of taking home 72 cents on every new dollar earned, those in the top bracket had to settle for 69 cents. That’s a drop of about 4 percent–peanuts, compared to the scale of previous changes. Yet supply-siders reacted hysterically….
“If such a piddling tax increase could really wreck such havoc on the economy, how is it possible that the economy grew so rapidly with top tax rates of 70 and 91 percent? The answer is, it’s not. It’s not even close to possible. All this is to say that the supply-siders have taken the germ of a decent point–that marginal tax rates matter–and stretched it, beyond all plausibility, into a monocausal explanation of the world.”
Nobody, it’s my impression that those historical very high rates were not the actual marginal rate that was in effect. IE, if you had a rate of 91% you also had a wide variety of deductions and shelters that meant your effective rate was much lower.
I suspect that the actual percentage of national income taken in taxation at all levels in the US shows a general upwards trend in most of the 20th century, with a leveling off around the Reagan years and fairly flat after that. I could be wrong – I can’t find any immediate statistics – but I’m pretty sure that’s the picture. (Contrary evidence welcome.)
That said, it really doesn’t matter so much what percentage of income is taken overall. As a motivating factor, what matters most is what the marginal rate of taxation is. If Joe puts in the overtime to create a $10,000 revenue stream, how much of it does he keep? If it’s $8000, he’s pretty likely to put in the overtime. If it’s $500, he’s pretty likely not to. This assumes that Joe is knowledgeable about his tax status and is aware of what a change to his income will do to that picture, and that he is at least somewhat motivated by money. This may not be everyone, but I imagine it is a fairly large group of people – and a particularly high proportion of those people in the class that pays a lot of taxes.
(A cynic might suggest that the somewhat opaque US tax system is designed to prevent that knowledge, thus encouraging entrepreneurs to work harder. Fortunately, I am sure there are no cynics here.)
mythago Writes:
Nope, I’m talking about here in the good ‘ol US of A.
The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility.LINK
It seems that as taxes are increased in order to decrease inequality, the result is that social mobility is may also be decreasing and those folks who start out poor end up having a harder time moving up the social ladder.
Exactly. And (to the best of my understanding) 91% was the marginal tax rate, deductions and shelters notwithstanding. (Contrary evidence welcome as well.) So I don’t find this criticism compelling.
But here things get stickier. Jamila Akil and LarryFromExile argue that increasing taxes tends to discourage people from earning more. Chait argues that mere taxes cannot explain people’s productivity. And I find merit in both perspectives.
Rather than focus on taxes exclusively, I’d focus on the relative rate of risk-adjusted, post-tax return on investment. Maybe today’s entrepreneur can take heart that the US’s tax rate is lower today than in 1947. But today if the entrepreneur can earn and keep a larger share of his money simply by incorporating in the Caymen Islands, why not? As Robert Reich notes in his new book Supercapitalism, we all have more choices now and are more apt to change purchasing/investing decisions with ever less prompting. Consequently, the fact that a 91% tax rate did not prompt much capital flight in 1947 does not lead me to conclude that a 31% rate does not prompt capital flight today.
The point is not that we need to pity today’s poor entrepreneur, burdened by a 31% tax rate or whatever. The point is we need to fear that today’s entrepreneur will simply pack up and reincorporate in the Cayman Islands, or that today’s investor will buy the foreign stocks instead of the domestic ones, simply because he can get a 30% tax rate instead.
In short, if we want a social safety net (or anything else), we must be mindful of the concerns of those who would pay for it. We need them. And maybe wealthy people from 1947 – 1973 lacked practical ways to escape US taxes, but that ain’t true of the wealthy today.
As far as I know, tax rates have been generally falling, not rising. As this table shows, the top US federal tax bracket in 1970 was 72%. In 1981 it fell to 50%. It fell below 35% from 1988 – 1992, and has bounced between 35% and 40% since then. I find little support for the idea that “taxes are increased in order to decrease inequality” over this period.
Thus the Economic Policy Institute data seems to support the conclusion that when rich people keep more money, they tend to stay rich. Whoda thunk?
When you say “illegal immigrant,” other than relating a fact of American citizenship status, what are you saying?
Hey look, there’s another sorry bastard with the God damned police on his or her back.
Jamila Akil: [quoting mythago]The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s…
It seems that as taxes are increased in order to decrease inequality, the result is that social mobility is may also be decreasing and those folks who start out poor end up having a harder time moving up the social ladder.
What are you saying? As everyone knows, tax rates, particularly for the very wealthy, have radically decreased since the 1970s, so if changes in tax rates somehow affect changes in social mobility, then lower tax rates for millionaires do not result in higher social mobility but lower social mobility – exactly as you’d expect, as they tend to make the rich even richer.
nobody.really Writes:
and W.Kiernan Writes:
You’re both correct about the marginal tax rates decreasing dramatically over time.
What I wrote was very sloppy and I incorrectly used the term “tax rate” when I should have said “tax burden”. The rich are shouldering an increasing share of the federal tax burden since the 70’s.
The rich are shouldering an increasing share of the federal tax burden since the 70’s.
Doesn’t that naturally follow from the rich possessing an increasing share of domestic wealth since the 70’s? Or are you saying that the rich are paying a higher percentage of the federal tax burden than the percentage of wealth that the same subset owns?