Coyote Blog

Frequent readers of this site know that I hold an extreme position on immigration:  I advocate free and open immigration of anyone who wants to come.  I made the case for open immigration here.

So it is not surprising that I am opposed to recent efforts by our Arizona Governor and state legislature to crack down on undocumented immigrants, an effort by the way that feels more like populist pandering than deeply held belief.

But what really befuddles me about our Governor's efforts is the message she seems to be sending.  Take these two positions together:

1. Last November, Governor Napolitano opposed the passage of Proposition 200, which was aimed at denying state services to illegal immigrants.  And, after its passage in November 2004, she did everything she could to drag her feet on its enforcement
2. Today, Governor Napolitano is supporting a state-wide crackdown on hiring of illegal immigrants, with a proposal for substantially increased fines and penalties for businesses that hire an undocumented worker.

Taking these two positions together, our governor's position appears to be that she supports immigrants being able to freeload off of taxpayer-funded services and transfer payments, but opposes immigrants being able to work and be productive.  Maybe we can post a big sign down on the border:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning... for government handouts, but please tell your productive workers to stay home.

Update:  The Arizona Republic, though I may bash it from time to time, has been pretty fair to me in publishing my letters to the editor.  The post above was published in their print edition on January 21, and online here (though I thought my title was much better!)

Cafe Hayek has a fabulous fisking of Missouri governor Matt Blunt's letter to the editor explaining why his call for price controls on gasoline is consistent with his free market principals.  Its all good, I can't pick out any one quote.  Read it all.

But wait!  This just in!  Maybe our governor IS this dumb.

Our great benevolent leader, Janet Napolitano, has stated in press conference
the she is going to investigate these fuel prices of ours. Mostly she was
ruffling her feathers right after Hurricane Katrina shutdown a good 30% of the
domestic supply source. So of course prices increased slightly to account for
the lack of supply. This trend that followed exactly what even very simple
supply and demand theory would predict was not enough to convince miss Gov. J.No
not to call for yet another investigation. No way! She was not going to be
swayed by facts, reality or "assurances from the oil industry" that these were
fair market prices. Nope. An investigation was needed.

A little over a year ago, a pipeline broke and the only source of gasoline into Phoenix was stopped.  Due to EPA regulations, Phoenix requires a special gas blend made in only one refinery coming to us through one pipeline, so it is not surprising that if that source is interrupted, gas might be short here for a while and prices might spike up.  Which they did.  Governor Napolitano at that time blamed the whole situation on the oil industry and called for investigations.  Tellingly, she took only three policy actions:

• Temporarily waived regulations for a special blend of gas in Phoenix
• Temporarily waived regulations on truckers that were preventing them from filling in for the broken pipeline
• Considered circumventing regulations that were preventing a local refinery to serve the Phoenix market from being built.

So the rhetoric at the time was "its all the oil companies faults" but the solution was "repeal government regulations".  Hmmmmm.  By the way, the Commons Blog created a nice chart showing how those filthy rich oil companies are making, uh, ahem, lower profits than average for US industry (click to enlarge).  I wish they were more profitable- we would probably have a lot more oil.