Do Republicans Really Want to Create 12 Million Refugees?
Mickey Kaus wonders why the GOP elite is still "clinging to amnesty" for illegal immigrants. I have the same thought every time I hear someone rail against "amensty": What the f*ck else are we going to do? Put 12 million people in jail for violating immigration laws? Are we really talking about deporting 12 million people? Do you have any idea how ugly this will be? I don't want to commit a Godwin's Law violation, but rousting people -- whole families -- out of their homes at gunpoint and loading them up on trucks and trains to be shipped en mass somewhere else -- does this sound like any other 20th century event to you? If you wanted to find some other precedent for this that was not the German shipping of Jews to Poland, what would even be close?
Looked at another way, the disastrous government and civil war in Syria has created, by UN estimates, 4 million refugees. At a stroke, do Republicans really want to create 12 million refugees? I get it that there is an ugly populist sentiment in a percentage of the Republican base to let Mexicans go hang, but the definition of responsible leadership in a Republic has got to include ignoring, or at least defusing, these sentiments. But the current crop of Republican Presidential candidates seem no more willing to avoid this particular evil than Democratic candidates can seem to rise above ugly sentiments in their base to put the 1% richest people up against a wall.
Returning Mexican citizens who are here illegally to Mexico does not make them refugees.
The Nazi comparison is invalid because the Jews could not safety reside in their country of origin. The Mexicans and other central Americans coming over the border can safely reside in their country.
Thus its not a trope at all. Its a poor analogy and meant to evoke unwarranted sympathy because of the Holocaust. And then come the racism accusations, So get real, its not a trope to throw the analogy out.
I don't think mass round-up and deportation is practical. But incremental deportation (as you find them for other reasons) is reasonable. Its how we track down parking ticket offenders for Gods sake. We don't do a mass round-up. If you are caught for something else you also have to address the ticket. They just don't say well OK we'll forget about it now do they.
Being here illegally is not as serious as an open warrant for murder but its more serious than a parking ticket.
"I don't think mass round-up and deportation is practical."
Right.
So, you should get the point Coyote is making about the method and attitudes behind support for mass deportation.
He is not saying the situation is EXACTLY the same.
If you read that into his comments, and in mine, you miss read them entirely.
There is a large body of support for what Coyote describes, as evidenced by Trump's support alone.
The easy trope is to invoke Godwin's Law (heck, Coyote even mentions it). The hard part is answering the problem suggested with a realistic solution.
So, now, you've come up with one way to handle it. Good, but that is just one piece.
Please explain...
There is a statute of limitations, even on murder. So, does/should that apply here?
Our current law holds that children born here receive citizenship automatically...how does it apply in this situation?
How do we handle non-cooperative governments, or actively obstructing ones (e.g. sanctuary cities, counties, and states)?
As outlined in another post here, it seems the most obvious cases are where we find individuals who live a criminal life (not talking about parking tickets, btw). So, that should be very "sellable".
And, btw, this focus on deportation (some yell "amnesty" on anything short of deportation for all) has become a red herring, and prevented a solution for border security.
Without border security, all the rest is irrelevant.
There is one other difference that Friedman doesn't mention, beyond the welfare state (though that is a big one), between pre-1914 and since on free immigration.
Up to nearly that point, there was much money to be made selling land (far off and isolated from "civilization") to newcomers, there was a need to build population and the economy for security reasons, and, thus, it eventually became a race to populate the continent ("possession is 9/10ths of the law").
This is now obsolete, as the US is occupied from coast to coast, and has the largest single economy, and military in the world.
Your original complaint was that "that they have demonstrated that they are not willing to follow our laws just by being here.". So now does that not matter for laws that don't bother you?
I'm trying to figure out when it matters if someone is willing to not follow the law. Why shouldn't the H1B Visa person be deported. They unambiguously meet the stated criteria of bring willfully law non-abiding.
You're making two different arguments.
The first is we can't have open borders with a welfare state. Okay, fine. We could deprive them of most or all welfare, which we are doing to some extent now. Interestingly, having to pay out welfare to foreigners might undermine support for the welfare state. Nobody wants to take welfare away from grandma and grandpa, but the populace is a lot more resistant to giving welfare to new arrivals and the poor. Although cynical, I admit, it's a ultimately a good thing if it leads to an overall reduction in transfer payments.
Your second argument is that in order for borders to mean anything, they must exclude people, even peaceful people (i.e. "them"). Sorry, I don't think this is a given. Do the borders between states not mean anything because people are free to pass across them? Do borders within Europe cease to mean anything because Europeans have open borders with each other? Did we not have borders when, for most of this country's history, we restricted immigration almost not at all?
Borders simply reflect the US government's territorial jurisdiction. There doesn't need to be "us" and "them" in order for borders to be respected worldwide. When people cross into this territory, the laws of this country apply. That's what borders mean. Anything else you're ascribing to them are more about your ideas of what makes a country strong or a culture cohesive. I would challenge even that notion, but I completely dismiss the borders argument.
Aside from that, I reject your terminology. Invaders are people who enter your country to do you, your countrymen, your government harm. Applying that term to primarily peaceful and impoverished people trying to make better lives for themselves is disingenuous at best. At this point, you then tell us that whatever we have to do to get "invaders" (mostly poor people looking for jobs) out is justified. Well, sure, if you think Paco the Dishwasher is an "invader," then I am sure you really do think rounding him up, taking away his job, screwing over his employer, and dumping him over the border is justified. Of course, it's premised on a false narrative that people who don't carry government papers to live some place and work some place are "invaders." Please.
If you believe the Nazi comparison is invalid, ask yourself what a citizen means in a country that bases the concept on blood and shared heritage rather than birth. You're approaching the example from your American perspective where it's enough to just be born here or to be born to American parents and be considered "one of us." The fact that Jews co-existed with "native Europeans" for an incredibly long time didn't confer any sense of belonging, which is abhorrent to us as Americans because we're a country built on immigrants. I don't even think you realize how much immigration has colored your perspective on what citizenship and "us-ness" truly mean.
So your argument is that a social division (nationality) exists, therefore it is valid? That's illogical because it implies that any division that exists has a good reason to continue existing. I also imagine you wouldn't agree if the same argument were used to explain why white people must segregate black people, or why Catholics must uncover and exterminate Lutherans.
Millions of people annually overreport deductions, overclaim credits, or underreport income. The IRS does what it can, but it would be very costly to pursue 100% compliance. They try to take down some high-profile tax abuses to scare people away, but they are not realistically pursuing all the infractions out there.
Right now, most people are violating state Use Tax laws by not diligently reporting their purchases of goods from online retailers - and state taxing authorities have given up collecting Use Tax on the stuff most people buy from Amazon.
I realize you were trying to make an analogy, but as a libertarian, I think it would be good if the IRS stopped trying to chase people who want to keep their own money. And as a libertarian, I think it would be good if DHS/ICE/DOJ stopped trying to harass foreigners who want to work here without licenses and Americans who want to hire unlicensed foreigners.
The question is not just whether someone has a moral right to be somewhere, but whether you have a moral right to stop a peaceful person from being somewhere. Trying to evict a peaceful person paying their rent is not morally justified under the normal libertarian reasoning.
If you object to welfare, then the solution is to stop paying welfare. You don't react to WIC transfer payments by saying women must get a license for childbirth.
As far as I can tell, the conservative approach to privacy is that registering guns is a violation of sacred freedom, but the government must be allowed to track your phone location, monitor your communications, electronically follow your driving habits, scan the heat signature of your house, and approve every job you apply for. At that rate, why do they even need to know who has guns? They know where everybody is.
As I've said before, the immigration debate proves the libertarians can be as god awful stupid as a lot of leftists and a good number of conservatives. (Like when you insisted that keeping people that have no right to enter a location out is EXACTLY the same as holding them in a location against their will). Simply start enforcing laws against employing illegals (and help employers screen for illegals) and deny them any welfare benefits and most (probably over 80%) will self deport in short order. This actually occurred to an extent during the recession for purely economic, rather than legal reasons. Most will return to a Mexico that is far better off economically than it was when many of them left, and many will return with skills and habits that will serve them and their native country well. Your false dilemma is complete BS. I don't believe your stupid, so I'm puzzled why you ignore a pretty obvious alternative.
"about the same level of substance as Obama"
Spot on.
Unfortunately, from personal experience in Fortune 500 world, there are personalities like Obama and Trump. Overconfident in their own myth, usually someone (several) behind them riding coattail cleaning up their mess, usually many victims with proverbial knives in their backs along their way to "success". Learned to watch the like a hawk.
People conflate boastfulness, and insulting his target of the day, with strength. By the time grade school has finished, most of us should have learned that is a sign of major weakness in the person, and certainly not the kind of person you can trust.
The reality test folks ought to use is, if your neighbor behaved and
talked like Trump, would you be willing to invest a substantial part of
your wealth with them in a business partnership? If not, then why the
heck do you trust this person for the role of President? If yes, be deeply honest with yourself, please.
The United States ended slavery to preserve our nation, even though half the country took up arms to keep it. We ended slavery because it was wrong. Illegally entering this county is wrong. We can, and should, end it to preserve our nation.
It is meaningless for you to say "we can't." That is mere opinion. "We," in a democracy, is a majority. Thus we absolutely can cause 12 million people who are here illegally to go someplace else, if the majority so decides. I would hazard a guess that the majority has already indicated that that is what it wants to do.
How?
Well, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, previously known as one of the more tolerant nations, has recently held that any person who is claiming asylum, who is then determined to be ineligible for asylum, is thereupon automatically ineligible for for food, shelter and medical care.
You're going to love it in the new Europe!
Border Security should be our first priority. Focus on the rest is takes our eye off that ball and has prevented us from fixing border security.
In that whole discussion, did it not occur to you that this was the premise being directly challenged?
Is that why, then, that we gave land away for free and why we provided cheap land to homesteaders? There was only money to be made when people moved into the area already. In other words, people create value.
Do you ever wonder how this happened?
Legally it's more serious than a parking ticket. Morally, it's less serious.
A lot of immigrants didn't fill in the empty parts. They crowded into the already populous parts of the United States. That's in part why the states in the middle are still relatively empty. So, I guess we still have room.
I'm not sure why the easiness and cheapness of travel matter, really. I get that you're stating differences between then and now, but I don't see how they matter.
If you don't feel the need to aggressively pursue them in the first place, then that would beg the question of why we should bother deporting them at all.
It's illegal. It's not immoral to move, it's not immoral to take a job from a willing employer, it's not immoral to rent an apartment from a willing landlord, it's not wrong to do any of these things without government permission. In fact, it's not only moral to do all of these things, but it's morally incumbent upon all of us to let peaceful people pass without our interference and violence.
Frankly, it's disgusting that you're comparing what is ultimately an act of liberty to what is fundamentally a violation of liberty.
If immigration in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries was justified because there was so much empty land, why did so many of the immigrants from 1850 to 1920 go to the big cities?
I really don't like the environmentalist / Malthusian idea that there are too many people relative to available land. If that were true, then the richest countries would have the sparsest populations. But the reverse is mostly true, excluding resource rich lands; Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Netherlands, etc. are very densely populated and the median income is higher in dense cities like NYC or London than it is in sparse places like Mongolia or Namibia or Montana.
When most people were farmers, land was more valuable. We mostly aren't farmers, so living densely is more remunerative.
Squatters and trespassers are people who violate your private property rights. Nobody has private property ownership of this country. In fact, these immigration laws violate the private property rights of lots of people, including business owners, who would love to employ, sell to, buy from, and associate with immigrants that government busybodies insist on keeping out.
Federal immigration law is not up for a majority vote. Your representatives have to support it, and they don't. Even the most critical of immigration in the House and Senate are much more moderate (see: reasonable) than the population at large.
We all break laws. We're most likely to break the law when the costs of breaking the law are small or the laws are needlessly complicated and draconian. If you had to wait 100+ years for a driver's license, for example, you'd probably just drive illegally, otherwise your financial prospects would be bad.
Is that why you think we have laws? For order?
No, we have laws to protect individual rights.
It truly is ugly and populist. Acknowledging it is much appreciated, but it doesn't make any less the case.
That is a legal issue and nobody was making a legal argument or proposing a legislative change; the current state of the law is not at issue or even challenged by the pro amnesty side (or there would be no need for amnesty). They were attempting to make a moral argument, and even their moral arguments were sophomoric and not very effective against the identical counter moral argument. Insisting that one can not enter my yard or house is completely different from insisting that they must stay in their house yard.
I didn't suggest this was a legal argument. What I am suggesting is that it's a false analogy to compare keeping people off private property with keeping people out of a countrym
I also challenge the premise that government interference in the lives of peaceful people is the default moral position to hold, as though people don't have a right to freely associate, economically or otherwise, unless our overlords say so. These laws not only infringe on the rights of immigrants, but the rights of Americans who want to deal with foreigners. This is just a form of big-government trade protectionism except it's directed at individuals rather than goods.
You misread the argument and conflate it with "too many people viz land available".
Two simultaneous strategic imperatives for the "young country"... 1) Grow the population / economy, 2) occupy the continent coast to coast.
Those strategic "needs" have passed. It is a different time.
Not saying it is right or wrong, just was and is, and goes a long way to explain why the comparison to an earlier time and now is not apples to apples as some make it to be.
Don't need to be d**n sarcastic. Of course the relatively free market has a lot to do with how the economy grew.
So did a critical mass of people within its borders. Not part of the strategy, but it created a marketplace large enough to take advantage of scales of economy that were difficult for other countries to replicate.
Government (British) land "grants" were a big part of the incentive for exploring and settling in the first place (e.g. Pennsylvania = Penn's Wood - Adm. Sir William Penn). Indeed, those who received title sold land to settlers, or traded grants for other value. Yes, eventually it all turned into loans and give aways by government for people to homestead.
Just saying it happened, and was a major reason why free immigration was the norm. All incentives were aligned.
Right or wrong, the relative importance of these imperatives/factors waned by 1914.
It was not all about the welfare state.
Look, Friedman is one of my fav economists, so don't take lightly to pointing an issue out in his venerable statements.
You have arbitrarily decided we've hit a critical mass. How do you know? Our immigration laws don't tell us, past or present. Politicians close borders mainly because of anxiety, not any great insight into the economics of immigration.
Your argument was that we needed filling up, but we're still quite empty. People then, like now, crowded into population centers where are all the economic activity was. Despite the land giveaways, the populations never boomed in those places like they did elsewhere. Our population distributions still reflect that.
Immigration is a large part of why we're rich. Neither you nor government bureaucrats can know the number we need with any reliability. Central planning has been an abject failure. There's good evidence that these arbitrarily decided restrictive measures limit economic growth considerably, so perhaps we should let market forces do what they do better than any central planner could.
D**n, again, you try to twist things around.
Not saying anything about me personally or the government "knowing" a number that is just right.
Not saying population had to be spread out evenly, or even that they all had to be in the new lands.
Not saying the population wasn't a factor which made the country rich...in fact just the opposite.
Not saying central planning was a main factor in the success of the country.u
Gosh, it's like you are purposefully misrepresenting things to make an issue.
Not going to respond to a strawman - go "argue" with someone else.
If I'm getting it so wrong based on your own words, then tell me what you are saying.
It's a very good analogy. Some people gain real property as an accident of their birth; some obtain it as a result of desire, ambition, and work; (as with citizenship). Once obtained, the owner of property has control over the access that others enjoy to that property and the property serves their purposes, not the purposes of other people or people who would like to have access to it/own it but don't. The legitimacy of that distinction is based upon the legal status of ownership and the emotional and hopefully moral connection that owner has with the property (as with one's country and citizenship). Ownership of a property does not allow one to prohibit another from purchasing another property (being a US citizen gives me no say in who Canada makes a citizen).
But the pro open border arguments really are stupid. There are repeated references to historic immigration waves that occurred at a time when GDP growth and job growth was much higher than it is today (before the waves started). Before there was global competition (when the British Empire and the US were virtually the only international competition in the world).
The "freedom of association" argument, oft repeated here, is intrinsically weak. There are some US citizens who would like to associate with ISIS fighters (one was just in the news several days ago). We get to insist they do that in another country if they must. It's a zero sum problem. Your freedom of association with potential immigrants in the US may infringe on some one else's freedom of association (they have a right to not have to associate with the person).
Absolutely it's a form of protectionism; it's the only form that I might be inclined to tolerate or approve of sometimes, because the welfare of a country's citizens should by far out weigh the welfare of those who are not citizens (real dollar middle class wages in the US are lower now than 20 years ago). And people who are US citizens ought to have a lot more say about who gets to come to the country than people who are not citizens, a obvious fact that open border advocates rarely openly repudiate but which is anathema to their position.
The fact that a good number of immigrants have no intention of assimilating, but actually insist that their hosts change, and some of them are inclined to use violence to attack their host country is the icing on the cake that makes your position not just wrong but actually stupid.
A country is no one's private property. There's territorial jurisdiction, there's sovereignty, which is the power to hale people into court under our laws, but we own property privately, not as a collective. That's why it's a terrible analogy.
Unless you're willing to forfeit your private property stake to the US government and then occupy a parcel of our collective land holdings as perhaps a leaseholder, then I fail to see how citizens exercise a private property right over an entire country.
Instead, I think it's wise to abandon the private property analogy and just say that the government gets to do it because of sovereignty or something like that. "Private property," though, is a misuse and even abuse of what that term means.
I don't see the applicability of your "ISIS fighters" example. If you can show that an association of people means to do others harm, then it's reasonable to interfere. How does that apply to peaceful immigrants, though?
This is like the bully's mantra of "you're breathing my air!" You don't have to associate with me even though we both live in the same country. Likewise, you don't have to associate with an immigrant, either. Getting to control who your neighbors is not your right.
You should be able to freely associate with peaceful people on your property, though - right? Or is an immigrant on my private property a horrible infringement on your right not to associate?
I might be inclined to believe this argument if you weren't using state force to harm people. It's one thing to give charity or assistance to one group over another because you're a nativist. "Hey, you're American, here's $5. An immigrant? No charity for you!" Perhaps your motives are suspect, but at least you aren't actually hurting anyone or infringing on anyone's rights by preferencing Group A over Group B.
It's another thing to interfere in a peaceful immigrant's life in a way that materially harms him. It's another to interfere between an American and a peaceful immigrant in a way that materially harms both. That's what protectionism in trade does, too. You kind of help some American industries and their workers and you hurt all American consumers. Likewise, you are propping up a small number of Americans and you are hurting lots of other Americans and the immigrants themselves. So, bravo. Like with all protectionism, this doesn't work well.
That's interesting, but prove it's because of immigration. George Borjas, the most respected anti-immigration economist, could only find a suppression of wages for native-born American high school dropouts, and the suppression was very modest at 4.8% over 20+ years. He found either no suppression of wages or an increase in real wages for every other group of native-born Americans. Other economists found much less or no wage suppression for any group, and larger gains for all native-born Americans than Borjas found.
I'd be happy to repudiate it. I'm not a majoritarian and I am not a statist. I never find it compelling when people use the argument "voters [citizens] should get a say." Why? Because this argument never asks the most fundamental question of whether anyone should get a say in how people minding their own business live their lives. (Hint: my answer is "no.")
Rights don't belong to our citizens; they belong to all people. If you are going to use the government to butt into the lives of peaceful people, any people, especially to their detriment, then moral burden rests with you to explain why that's okay.
Unfortunately, you're still assuming your conclusion, which is that the moral default is f--king with people's lives and that those people need to convince you why you shouldn't do it.
Actually, they are assimilating, probably better than in the past when immigrants arrived in much larger waves and could relegate themselves to their ethnic communities. English-language assimilation statistics seem to bear that out. For example, over 90% of second generation Mexican Americans speak English.
A very small number are inclined to use violence against this country, just like a small number of Americans are. And if you are so deeply concerned about this, why not just make immigrants pay for their own background checks? Because unless you're for closed borders, like not a single immigrant in, then the system you support could and HAS led to dangerous people getting into this country.
There's nothing in "open borders" philosophy that makes screening for terrorists immoral. Open borders simply shifts the burden of proof onto the government to demonstrate why an immigrant shouldn't be let in. Terrorist affiliation seems like a good reason to people out.
Immigration aside, are all laws in any category you care to name enforced with the same zeal? Resources are always limited and thus prioritization is a necessity.
I know we have clashed on this issue before and it might surprise you to know that I think busting illegal immigration is fairly low on the prioritization scale. That seems to be more or less the official position as well, as a lot of deportations occur in connection with another crime rather than simply due to gestapo raids on homes.
I do think you raise a good point though, and I believe that most or even all of our laws should have periodic sunsets. The laws of genuine need and moral grounding will tend to survive, while the fads and the antiquated anachronisms would tend to disappear. Important to that sort of scheme would be preventing the wholesale permanent delegation of powers by congress to the administrative state. (Oh what would be possible if it were possible...)
I'd make the same argument about taxes or drugs. If compliance is cost prohibitive, if compliance requires we extend more power to the state, if compliance means making a lot of good people criminals, and if compliance causes great harm to millions, then I can't see what the point is, especially when most of us acknowledge that the "problem" they're creating isn't even urgent enough to merit bold action. If it's not that bad, or is in fact even largely good, why bother?
It'd make so much more sense to create immigration laws that reflect the reality - they need jobs, we want their labor (whether that's politically palatable or not). This could be a win-win, just like any free exchange in a marketplace has the potential to be.
If I were convinced that a peaceful person taking a job were a great infringement on my rights, then I would be sympathetic to the resource allocation argument. After all, even good laws can't be enforced 100%. While your deportation plan makes more sense than a roundup, I fail to see the good or the utility in wasting any resources stopping free people from doing something that truly causes no harm in its own.
I guess I agree with the general gist of the statement, almost enough for the upvote. I suppose we disagree on whether or not such a thing as "public ownership" exists or whatever you want to call holding lands in the public trust. Federal and state lands my not fall under the idea of private property, but that doesn't mean there isn't a government interest in looking after those lands. (As I have understood your arguments both here and elsewhere, for instance, there could be no such thing as trespassing on a military base, because that land is not privately owned. That seems non-intuitive to me, but perhaps I am missing something.)
No argument from me there. The drug war has been incredibly stupid and I generally feel it is not my business what drugs people use or really even why as long as the seller is truthfully representing what they are selling. I also find nearly all direct forms of taxation to be immoral. As much as I like Milton Friedman in general, his help and cover in creating an income tax did great service in creating a permanent evil in service of fixing a temporary problem. I fear the only way to be rid of it now would be for people to give up the idea that spending other people's money in service of their own needs and wants.
For what it's worth, I generally agree with your sentiment. At this point I am content to officially ignore illegal immigrants that do not cause any other problems, especially given the very ugly things that have been brewing over the last couple of years in the inappropriately named "immigration debate." I have no particular ill will towards these people as much as I would prefer them to be above board legally under a more rational system. Perhaps given such ambivalence the status quo is the best we can hope for.
Border control and gun control are both examples of people control.
So you admit they were invited in by Coyote and are not squatting illegally at his campground but that they should be arrested and removed if they were. Is that correct?
I think we should just send them all to live with you. After all right you have no right to say they can't live with you. That's immoral.
So no country has a right to a border then?
No government has a moral claim to infringing on the rights of peaceful people.
How is people living in your country akin to people living in your home? A guy rents a house a block away and you go to the city council and complain that Renter Guy is violating your private property?
And if it's such an imposition for a new person to live in your country, maybe we should be preventing people here from creating new children. After all, every new human being in this country is a most egregious violation of your rights.
Simple. Founding and running a country costs an enormous amount of blood and money. The people who make that investment have the right to have some say over who, when and how a person is allowed to come and permanently live in that country. It's been that way since the beginning of time and there is no reason that the US should be any different.
We don't have jobs for the people we have here already. How can we bring in people and give them jobs without taking it away from someone else when there aren't enough jobs to go around now?
If we were in the midst of a large economic boom and we needed workers that would be one thing. And even then they should be brought in legally. But we are in the middle of the obama depression and we don't need any more workers. We need to get people off of welfare and get them back to work not force taxpayers to support both out of work Americans and illegals.
How do children make any investment? They're drains who don't invest anything. We have to invest a fortune in them without any sort of knowledge of whether they'll ever be productive. An adult immigrant invests a lot more. He works, he pays taxes. A kid doesn't.
If we have a right to restrict workers from entering the country, then we should have the right to restrict people from having babies.
Do you not know how economies work? Economies aren't zero sum. Immigrants come, they create jobs. Immigrants come, they demand goods and services just like Americans do. In turn, more jobs need to be created to meet the increased demands.
And, of course, when you talk about unemployment, it's not enough to say there is unemployment. Some job sectors are overemployed, some are underemployed. Many economists note that immigrants, especially poor ones, tend to work jobs complementary to Americans rather than "take jobs." They have fewer English-language and technological skills than Americans do. Americans then specialize because immigrants occupy the lower-paying and lower-skill jobs.
And P.S. apparently you think jobs are "owned" by the country and should be distributed accordingly. Gee, that sounds awfully socialist. Why are you complaining about Obama exactly when you think of jobs and property as exercises in collectivism?