Coyote Blog

It's a fiscal argument.

People in a country consume state goods and services.

People in a country pay taxes.

Economic migrants are optional. A country has a right to choose. [Asylum, marriage is something different, a human rights issue]

So for economic migrants, a country should accept migrants where they pay more tax than the cost of their services. If they did there wouldn't be much complaining.

When its the other way round, you get Trump, you get brexit.

My simple point is that schools are funded through property and sales taxes. The immigrants, legal or otherwise pay these taxes, thus they are increasing the tax base for the schools the same as anyone else, so we would have a net gain for their kids attending school.

Ruggerbunny, your understanding of how schools are funded vis-à-vis illegal immigrants may be somewhat limited. In my local school, taxes have gone up significantly to handle educating the children of non-citizens of our district.

I have no doubt that there were a substantial number of illegal votes in this election, as there probably are in every election. The most common complaint, although I note that you didn't make the claim, is that illegals will invariably vote democratic, eventually forming a permanent majority of democrat voters.

Apparently that isn't what's happening, as republicans won more state and national contests than ever before in history. Either illegals voted for trump in large numbers, or their effect on outcomes isn't as great as some people believe.

Considering the quality of the Presidential candidates we were offered this time around I don't think voter fraud is our biggest problem. The election was "spoiled" before anyone even voted.

Strawman! I don't care who the illegal votes for, the fact that they vote shows unlawful behavior, which is my counter-argument to Coyote's post. Illegals are breaking all kinds of laws.

So taxes, that the illegals pay, have gone up to cover paying for the illegal kids? Unless schools are funded differently in your region than elsewhere, the illegals are paying just as much to cover the education of their kids as you are.
Now, that doesn't mean your local school district is not justifying tax increases with this spurious justification.

Do we still trust polls? I thought they were all discredited because of their low predictive value.

It seems there's a strong tendency for people in those swing states to vote for a "Hope & Change" candidate no matter what.

Or perhaps David Wong has it right when he writes: " To those ignored, suffering people, [rural Americans] Donald Trump is a brick chucked
through the window of the elites. ‘Are you assholes listening now?’”

Taxes, that EVERYONE pays, have gone up. Thus my original question.

So the only two choices are no one obeys the rules, or everyone obeys the rules? Surely you can think of something in between that makes more sense in a world where people seek justice.

How about this: "An unjust law is no law at all" -- Augustine

Are there any laws, or have there ever been any laws that you would consider unjust? Would you insist on their enforcement anyway?

Everyone wants to be/thinks they are Martin Luther King, don't they? The problem is, everyone has a different subset of laws they would like to ignore because they view it as unjust.

I have a lot of legal bugaboos too that offend my morals and philosophical beliefs. I have beefs with zoning laws, environmental laws, occupational licensing laws, eminent domain, drug laws, police qualified immunity, and civil forfeiture. I think income and property taxes inherently are theft by the government of my labors and property. Should I not pay them? After all, an unjust law is no law at all.

As disgusting as it all is to my minarchist beliefs, i have no illusions that I am some crank "freeman on the land" that can just ignore it all. Instead I coexist as much as I can with it and try to change things through the system I am given. I vote. I lobby through organizations I donate to, etc.

For what its worth, when it comes to immigration, I am not a fan of open borders. Partly it is a national security issue, partly it is because it is incompatible with our stupid unsustainable welfare state. What I would support is wide expansion (perhaps even nearly unrestricted) use of worker visas and so forth and make them easier to get.

Thanks for this latest comment. We agree more than we disagree. I too favor a much expanded guest worker program so that people desperately seeking a better life could pursue it legally without risking death to get to the US and without having to live and work in the shadows in fear of deportation. The guest workers would not vote, and would not be eligible for any benefits.

But absent that, I support illegal immigration.

I too tolerate some level of abuse by Those In Charge as the cost of outright resistance is often too high.

I would prefer a legal system of natural and common law in which every crime must have a victim and most disputes would be torts.

In my view statutory law is merely one group of people making up rules for others to follow.

The legitimacy of coercive, monopoly government as we experience it is a fascinating discussion. You might enjoy reading Michael Huemer's "The Problem Of Political Authority". He examines some of the issues we have been discussing.

Sorry that "tired" but true meme doesn't interest you. Many area on the coasts vote 75% or more reliably for Democrats. One party domination is not healthy. It leads to corruption with voter fraud being just one form.

Ahh. But of course there are consequences - that was never in doubt. .Making a rule for others to follow is meaningless unless consequences can be imposed.

Natural law, as enshrined in Judeo-Christian tradition is a very small body of law that can be recited from memory, and includes prohibitions against violating the natural rights of others. These few laws are and has been almost universally understand and agreed to by people throughout history. Murder, rape, assault, theft, kidnapping and physical restraint have always been illegal, and few people disagree.

Other so-called laws which result from legislation and pronouncements by Those In Charge are a different matter. We can tell whether they are just, by asking if they apply equally to all individuals, don't limit our essential liberties, and whether they have unanimous consent.

Of course individuals are free to impose any restrictions they wish on themselves, if the limits have unanimous, voluntary, positive consent of those over which the limit or obligations will apply. But of course they may not be imposed on those who aren't parties to the compact.

Thanks for the GAO reference. As I suspected, it doesn't tell the same story you told, based on the "Highlights" page.

Between 2001 and 2004 27% of FEDERAL inmates were "criminal aliens" which includes both legal and illegal immigrant non-citizens. Of those, 65% were charged with immigration offenses.

Your statement that 27% of the *total prison population* are criminal aliens is incorrect, and you aren't even comparing apples to oranges when you then substitute "illegals" for "criminal aliens" and then try to compare a percentage of the federal prison population with the entire US population. It's just meaningless.

I will assume you were just careless and not intentionally dishonest.

Perhaps this would help you correct your erroneous perception of immigrant crime..

So taxes have gone up, which could be for any number of reasons, teacher pay, school administrator pay, teacher retirement liabilities, but it is all the illegal kids that are causing it? And the parents of these kids are contributing the same money to the schools that all other parents are, but somehow it is their kids causing the rise in taxes? The math just doesn't add up here. I am guessing something else is causing school taxes to raise and the immigrant children are just an easy scapegoat.

In Idaho, illegals have to commit three felony actions to be brought before a Federal Grand Jury. Now, if a regular spud commits even one felony, he is in the slammer with little relief. Illegals are released to Federal agencies who then release them and tell them to be nice.

Thinking with the brain requires one to put illegals in the slammer the same as spudly Idaho guys, not letting them out to commit more felony crimes.

There is more to this equation that what is brought to the table.

Are you really arguing that voter fraud on the part of illegal immigrants in Democratic strongholds is really a huge factor? I doubt it.

Democrats are sympathetic to illegal immigrants because they think they're nice and caring. Republicans are less sympathetic because they think they're tough on law and order. It's all posturing and self-identity. There might be some Democrats who wax on about the plight of illegal immigrants out of pure electoral manipulation, but I don't think it explains the general attitude among Democrats broadly that illegal immigrants deserve to be treated with more respect.

MYTH: Undocumented immigrants do not pay taxes.
FACT: Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes
each year.

Undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes, just like every other consumer in the United States. Undocumented immigrants also pay property taxes even if they rent housing. More than half of undocumented immigrants have federal and state income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes automatically deducted from their paychecks. However, undocumented immigrants working “on the books” are not eligible for any of the federal or state benefits that their tax dollars help to fund.

As a result, undocumented immigrants provide an enormous subsidy to the Social Security system in particular. Each year, Social Security taxes are withheld from billions of dollars in wages earned by workers whose names and Social Security numbers do not match the records of the Social Security Administration (SSA). According to the SSA, undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion in payroll taxes into the Social Security Trust Funds in 2010 alone.

https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/documents/files/022851_mythsfacts_2016_report_final.pdf

I'd like to see you pick any other country in the world and come in
against the law, the way it's apparently OK to do in the US.

This isn't a defense of a bad law. "They do it, too" is a cop-out.

Work to change the law. Don't just declare that people don't have to follow it.

One important way we can change the law is disobedience of the law.

People violated the Fugitive Slave Act, they nullified laws on juries, they broke segregation laws to initiate court cases to undo Jim Crow. Sometimes legislatures make bad law, sometimes legislatures won't reverse bad laws, and when large numbers of people violate those laws on a regular basis, it's an indication that the law doesn't align with the reality and that it's more or less illegitimate.

Through disobedience, we show we think the laws are unjust and eventually courts or legislatures respond. This is largely the basis for the legalization of marijuana in various states. So many people smoke weed that it's essentially a joke that it's illegal. Through mass disobedience of these drug laws, states have eventually caught up.

It's important to understand that the law does not require us to mindlessly obey, right or wrong. That doesn't uphold rule of law or, more importantly, justice. Instead, the law is an instrument to bring about justice. When it's committing mass injustice, and violating it in protest might actually serve as a catalyst for change, then it's not only moral to do, but it's an effective strategy.

Those of you who are obsessed with calling the rest of us names, can you
please give me an example of a nation somewhere on earth that is less
bigoted than the USA? (I.e., you can just walk across their border,
unpack your bags, and stay, and they are totally fine with that

You live in a bubble. Many countries have significantly higher foreign-born populations than the United States and considerably more open and less cumbersome immigration law, like intra-EU, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and Argentina, for starters.

The US has a notoriously bureaucratic and draconian immigration policy. So, yeah, Ii can think of lots of countries on earth that are much friendlier and more inviting to immigrants than the United States. Americans are vocally anti-immigrant, but their revealed preference in day-to-day interactions would suggest that most don't have any serious problems with immigrants so long as they speak English fairly well and work.

I don't really understand your argument that we can't be xenophobes because than other countries must have xenophobes. Uh, yeah, those countries have a lot of xenophobes. There are no shortage of xenophobes.

I would define a xenophobe as a person who thinks the rights of foreigners are of less importance than the rights of citizens. Immigration laws, the kind of we have on the books now, fundamentally start from that presumption - that immigrants have diminished free association rights, free market rights, property rights, employment rights, etc. based on country of birth/nationality. So many people just are utterly blind to their pervasive nationalistic bias, but that's ultimately what it is. I don't think you're a monster or that you hate immigrants or even wish them ill, but I do think you'll stomp on their rights because they shouldn't be weighed as heavily as the rights and interests of Americans.

Of course, by imposing these immigration laws, you are indeed violating all the association, market, and property rights of Americans who would like to interact with foreigners in some way, so it's not even an accurate presumption.

Census data includes illegal and legal immigrants.

Right, but an illegal immigrant voluntarily rents from a willing landlord. A better analogy would be "is it okay if a guy buys a house next door to me that I don't own? do I have any right to stop it?"

The answer would be "no," you have no ethical right to stop a consensual transaction between two people if your rights aren't somehow violated as a result.

You have a right to exclude from your property because it's your property. The country isn't your property, which is why we don't ban everything we wouldn't allow in our houses. The rule of private property does not and should not apply to a whole country.

I framed my response as pointing out a tautology that illuminated nothing about the current discussion. If we make something not a crime, it is not a crime. Steamboatlion's statement has exactly the same validity whether we are talking about jaywalking, larceny, or whatever.

As I have stated many times in the past, I believe the illegality of illegal immigration comes from other concerns which open borders advocates refuse to take seriously.

1. Open borders is incompatible with a citizenship based welfare state
2. Open borders is a national security risk. This is still true even though the vast majority of illegal border crossers have no ill intent.

They simply treat the idea of a border as if it merely marks the current bubble of oppression you happen to be residing in at the moment rather than being an emergent property of humans organizing into social groups with a reasonably well defined ethos.

With regards to (1) above, the answer usually comes around to "well, we should get rid of that too and then illegal immigration wouldn't be a problem" I eminently agree with that sentiment, but I have no illusions about the rollback of any governmental program.

With regards to (2), I pointed out many months ago that the Syrian refugee situation should be one which gives the open borders crowd pause. It is a prime example of inadequate dilution into the host culture of an immiscible guest culture. The open borders crowd has no response to this other than to say no preventative action should be taken because it infringes individual liberties. Well let the felonies roll, I guess.

The point is that I can pick any crime and his statement is still true. Reduced to a logical construct it is simply modus tollens:

If [x] is illegal, it is a crime.
[x] is not illegal.
Therefore, [x] is not a crime.

This form of argumentation is about as persuasive to me as "It's the law, and laws can be changed" is to you. Interestingly, both statements are very nearly two faces of the same coin.

1. It seems we agree, yet you framed it as disagreement. I am confused.

2. Alright, so we are getting somewhere here. I am in agreement that there should be a greatly expanded access to legal immigration through guest worker visas and so forth. The background check as part of the visa application does constitute an immigration control so to me this is not technically open borders.

It seems there is disagreement on the cultural argument, which I fully concede is likely irreconcilable. I do believe there is an upper bound where the influx of new immigrants begins to overwhelm (or drastically change) the native culture. (Edit: not always a bad thing...) We have seen the effect throughout history. The more one culture perceives a threat from another, the more border control you tend to get. Personally, I do not think that we have reached that point in our own immigration saga, but I can understand why some people feel the need for vigilance.

I don't need to defend the law, and I don't think it's bad, either. Unrestricted immigration (but only to the US) is not a tenable proposition with the world the way it is. Maybe if every other country had our standard of living.

In the current world climate, people don't have the right to live wherever they want.