Shoe on the Other Foot
I can't condemn illegal aliens in the US, because, if the zappos were on el otro pie, I'd break the law in the second.
Eventually, we achnowleged that the "need to drink booze" was too powerful to prohibit. My hope is that we will come to the same conclusion for the "desire to seek a better life."
Pat Moffitt:
Given the above- perhaps we should spend some time understanding what actions, in-actions, etc caused the citizens of our southern neighbors to flee their homes.
May 17, 2010, 9:52 amGaryP:
Well, nice sentiment from TJIC but, if we follow such juvenile logic, you can excuse any criminal act if the criminal is just pitiful enough. Oh wait, we've been doing that for 30 years. That has really helped with the crime problem.
May 17, 2010, 11:30 amWe have to defend our borders to defend our way of life. Several billion people would like to come to America and would feel rich on what welfare provides. Can we afford to support billions of illegals? 100 million? 10 million (well, we are already past that number). It is all well and good to feel sorry for most of the people in the world who were not born American. You can even donate to charities to help out. However, if we let them all come here we will be living just like they do in their home countries. If you do not defend what you have you will loose it. Most of us have homes that could provide shelter to 20 people, confortably. Most of us could buy enough groceries to feed them. The 20 "guests" could use our possessions, eat our food and be very comfortable. However, it would no longer be your home, it would be theirs. The next time a burglar breaks in, don't call the police. Tell him (or her) to take whatever they want, after all they probably need it worse than you, right?
Life is not fair, some people have more than others. If you don't like that, take all that you have and give it to the poor. You will be called a "saint" but your children will have to do without. Don't tell others they can't keep what they have. The same goes for countries. If we give everything we have to other countries, we will have nothing left for our own citizens.
It really is, us or them. I vote for us.
Capt Grandpa:
I agree with TJIC as far as he went. It isn't the illegals we should condemn, it is the politicians who refuse to do their jobs and protect the border, then cynically play the race card when called on it. My biggest fear is the irony that in fleeing a corrupt system of government that results in a lack of opportunity in their own homelands, illegals are bringing that system here. I'm sure that is not their intent (in most cases), it just happens to be the unavoidable consequence of their becoming a political pawns.
May 17, 2010, 12:25 pmdave smith:
I'd favor policy that made Mexico richer. But in the meantime, maybe we should return to Europe to fix their mess.
May 17, 2010, 12:51 pmDrTorch:
GaryP is right. There is no sound logic from TJIC.
May 17, 2010, 2:24 pmastonerii:
They have the ability to seek a better life. In 1776, the founders of this nation sought a better life. They wrote the Declaration of Independence. With independence won through a long and bloody war, they started the path to a better life. In 1787 they crafted the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights to ensure this better life. Our men and women of the nation created from The Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, The enactment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, have fought in many wars since that time to guarantee our continued better life.
So, what have the people of these other countries been doing since 1776 and 1787? Have they been seeking a better life? Have they made the sacrifices to have a better life? They have very high quality farm land, very resource rich lands, 12 months of warm weather. They can get started on that better life in their own countries. No person outside American Citizens have a right to the better life that is provided by America. We could very easily prevent the illegal crossing of our borders, and we could also prevent the illegal remaining behind after the expiration of a visa. This is not alcohol, something that can be manufactured by just about anyone with a few easily accessible items, this is spending many days trekking out in the open in full view where proper use of a border fence, electronic detection to include seismic, thermal, night vision technology along with a properly sized border patrol with air support, a mix of on foot, on horse and in vehicle agents could bring the number of illegal crossings to hundreds per year instead of hundreds per day.
Your argument would go well with murder. There is no way to stop people killing each other, so we should just make it legal. Take away the guns and they can use knives, hammers, shovels, a twig off a tree, a rope made from grass, a car, a tractor, gasoline, alcohol, poison, this list is endless. You also cannot get rid of the draw for murder. Cheating spouse, just plain crazy, person snapped, and here is yet another endless list. What about fraud, should that be legal? I think the recent financial crisis proves that it is impossible to prevent fraud, so that should be legal. Theft? Well we have been fighting the war on theft for millions of years, why not just put an end to it and get rid of private property? I am sure you would be all for that, right? So, when we get rid of all the laws that cannot be stopped what laws are left Coyote? Is that the world you want to live in?
The problem you have is that you are just straight up wrong on immigration, there is not one valid reason to support your position, none at all. Every positive you attempt to portray of your ideal immigration system has 20 to 30 far more negative consequences that work towards destroying the civilized society that allows you the privilege to live in a libertarian way. Libertarians cannot survive outside the boundaries of civil society, and libertarian societies cannot be civil, particularly in world with such large discrepancies of wealth between people and nations. If you ever want to see a world where people are allowed to almost completely freely cross borders, then what you should be proposing is the plan that I state, and that plan is to force modernization and an end of corruption on those who want to cross into this country to enjoy the freedoms it offers. Until those other people transform their nations to be closer to ours, they should not be invited. Call it incentive to prosper instead of the current incentive to abandon.
May 17, 2010, 6:31 pmGaryP:
Capt Grandpa has an excellent point.
May 17, 2010, 6:44 pmMost illegal immigrants are just people trying to escape extreme poverty and very real physical danger to build a better life. What they are doing is what anyone in their situation would want to do.
However, it is our govt's duty to control immigration to prevent the US from being overwhelmed by a flood of illegal immigrants.
The US must control immigration for the benefit of our country, not for the benefit of the poor people of the world.
Canada offers citizenship to anyone who invests $1M in a business in Canada. People with needed skills and some capital should be encouraged to immigrate to the US.
Americans should realize that they won the "birth lottery" simply by being born here. They should never take that for granted and should always be grateful. However, any thing of value must be protected I wish the entire world was prosperous and safe. It is not. If we do not defend America, we will lose what we have and it will not change the overall situation of the world one bit. Defending our nation, against any type of invasion, military or immigrant, is the primary reason for the existence of our government. If it cannot, or will not, do that job, it must be replaced.
Gil:
Well put astonerii. Mind you a lot of Libertarians probably would agree with about disbanding all laws except letting everyone have guns and ammo. It's harder to murder an armed victim.
May 17, 2010, 10:31 pmDrTorch:
Well said astonerii. Thanks for the sanity check.
May 18, 2010, 7:47 amWHIPsmart:
Did you guys know that the founders weren't even from this country?! How can we trust them!
Also, this:
"If you ever want to see a world where people are allowed to almost completely freely cross borders, then what you should be proposing is the plan that I state, and that plan is to force modernization and an end of corruption on those who want to cross into this country to enjoy the freedoms it offers."
is one of the funniest things I've read. You'd do well in the Ministry of Truth.
May 18, 2010, 1:57 pmastonerii:
WHIPsmart:
What a self gratifying name you have. It certainly does not do any favors for your arguments though.
The founders were avid students of history. They absorbed all the information about as many forms of government as was available to them. They spent decades working to understand the workings of government and what made governments weak and what made government strong. What forms of government were beneficial and which were harmful. Our founders worked diligently, not for their own personal gain, but for the posterity of a future country that would be strong and prosperous. Do you think they failed in this endeavor? The founders were also not tempted by unlimited border crossings or a weak floating border. They believed strongly that our borders should be secure and that those who we welcome and invite into our nation should benefit the nation and to prove they can do it before they had the opportunity to avail themselves of its benefits. While early in our history, we allowed very many immigrants into the nation, it never approached the rates as a percentage as it is today for such a prolonged period of time.
You mock my statement, but it is as true as the statement that "water at a temperature of 72F at 1 atmosphere pressure is a liquid." We do not have any problems with Americans moving from one part of the country to another because each part of the country is roughly equally wealthy.
Europe was able to make an area of several countries a zone of free movement because again, the areas are close to the same wealth. A problem in Europe occurred when some countries began to open their borders to significant numbers of substantially poorer nations of Africa and the Middle East. These poor people at that point did not assimilate, similar to those coming to America, and began to coalesce into enclaves of similarly situated and culturally similar people. When those areas became too poor to sustain the large numbers of non-assimilated poor people, the poor people began moving from one country to another, and England is now at the receiving end of a large number of refugees from with in the borders of the European Union. You see, England was doing better financially than most other countries and the poor people moved in large numbers to take advantage of the wealth being created in England. England now is being financially harmed by these large numbers of low cost laborers. These poor people will just move from destroyed place to rich when England can no longer keep them.
When the Soviet Union collapsed back in the day, the Ukraine had a largely disparate wealth gap between the cities and the countryside. When the Soviet Union was no longer there to prevent farmers from abandoning their fields and poor lifestyles, they moved into the cities. The cities quickly collapsed from the large influx of low cost laborers, even though they were wealthy. I was on a ship that delivered grain to Odessa, Ukraine in the 90s. The people of that city described how in a matter of just a couple years once prosperous parts of the city fell to the masses of low cost laborers.
Africa does not have as large a discrepancy between rich nations and poor nations. It is pretty much poor nation and poorer nation. Yet even with this dynamic, the differential between quality of life is such that when one poor nation becomes a poorer nation, those people become refugees and invade a richer nation driving that richer nation into becoming a poorer nation. Countries that do not have a strong enough military and the required desire for survival needed are over run. Those countries who do have a strong enough military and desire for survival refuse to allow these refugees to enter their nations and are prevented from being destroyed by them. Egypt and South Africa are two such nations that are relatively wealthy compared to their neighbors, and they remain that way by not allowing the poor to just simply cross the border.
In fact, there is not a single rich nation in the world that fails to protect its borders from wandering poor and there are plenty of poor countries that do not adequately protect their borders.
May 18, 2010, 7:10 pmWHIPsmart:
I can't help my name. My sister BABIPsmart got the worst of it. Brother VORPsmart did OK. Dad had the best one. SABRsmart. But he didn't want to saddle any of us with a "junior".
Anyway, I don't think that your extremely generalized version of the ideas of "the founders" that just happens to agree with your own views is very well researched, and as the founders did not possess a single view on almost any issue, I suspect you just made that up.
I also think that your theory on the wealth of nations is a bit lacking. There's a good book on the subject I could recommend.
Last time I was in Ukraine on a trading vessel I witnessed firsthand that personal anecdotes should not be extrapolated into universal maxims absent supporting data. Good times on that trading vessel.
Give me your tired, your (censored), your huddled masses yearning to breathe free so long as they brought some savings and a nice 401K with them...
May 19, 2010, 7:19 amastonerii:
WHIPsmart:
I could name a few dozen books on the same subject, and every last one of them could all use the exact same data and come to a few dozen different conclusions. So books and their conclusions are only as good as they fit the real world. The communist manifisto lays out a good enough argument that many governments around the world fall prey to it, our current administration is made up of followers of that manifesto. Thus far exactly zero countries who have adopted it for themselves has flourished. I would guess that goes to show you how much faith I put into other people's works of art, also known as literature. So, you can save your recommendation.
May 19, 2010, 10:25 amWHIPsmart:
I was referring to The Wealth of Nations. Which I...oh never mind, it's no fun if you have to explain it.
May 19, 2010, 10:53 am