One of the claims made by anti-immigration advocates is that the U.S. must enforce the immigration laws because we are a “nation governed by the rule of law.” Law, therefore, is sacrosanct in the opinion of those making that argument.

The individual who makes such as argument is trying to reorient the nature of the debate. Rather than discuss immigration in terms of immigration, he wishes to discuss it as a matter of law. This is a subtle form of obfuscation because the person making the argument is begging the question. Those like myself who advocate for immigration are, in reality, making the argument that the law needs to be changed. But by presuming the validity of the law and insisting on its enforcement, those who would limit immigration are presuming the very thing under question. Moreover, they do so under a premise so absurd that they themselves would be constrained to admit the premise. They can only make the argument by leaving the premise implicit. But, as the purpose of this blog is to highlight the absurdities in the anti-immigrant position, I will explicitly state that premise which usually lies implied.

The premise upon which anti-immigrant forces rally is this: All laws ought to be strictly enforced until changed. It is a premise which is self-evidently absurd because it places the law on a pedestal above all other human concerns. But our history has shown that often we pass bad laws, laws which ought not be enforced (alien and sedition act, fugitive slave act, jim crow laws, among others.)

Should a law be enforced merely because it is a law? Should we have enforced the jim crow laws until we had a chance to change them in the legislature? Most reasonable people will understand that there are laws which ought not be enforced. But once you admit that some laws ought to go unenforced, the discussion must change, addressing the specific aspects of the laws.

Challenging their premise is an effective technique to use when discussing with rabid anti-immigrant advocates, who will usually respond by saying that laws should “usually” be enforced … “unless…” with certain conditions being supplied. But once the individual has admitted that his premise admits of exceptions, you can suggest your own exceptions to the premise. This effectively allows you to reorient the discussion back to where it belongs: on the causes and effects of immigration policy and not on the merits (or lack thereof) of enforcing specific laws.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Post a comment

One of the charges made against illegal immigrants is that they are “taking our jobs.” This is an understandable concern, but ultimately is unfounded.

I say that it is understandable because there is indeed a crisis of jobs in the U.S. And, given the scarcity of jobs, a person can hardly be blamed for not desiring to see increased competition for these scarce jobs. I say that it is unfounded because the scarcity of jobs has nothing to do with immigration policy and everything to do with very bad “fair trade” policy.

In a stable market, an increase in population will not lead to scarcity in the job market. This is because immigrants are not only workers, they are also consumers. So they use products - food, clothing, personal care, electronics, and other goods and services. So, while every new immigrant may take a job, his presence also helps to create new jobs.

Unforunately, American policy has tended to create a very unstable job market by shifting much of our manufacturing base off to overseas production centers to take advantage of lower labor costs in places like China, Southeast Asia, and Central America. These products are thus manufacured, often with child labor, overseas and imported here for consumption. Increased consumption, therefore, never translates into more work, at least not within our borders.

Ultimately, an economy without a manufacturing base is not stable and will decline. The solution is a punishing tariff for imported goods, not a barrier to immigration.

Filed under: Employment, "taking our jobs", Employment, tariffs | Post a comment

Pacifica radio’s KPFK is in fundraising mode right now, (as it seems to be more or less all the time anymore,) so I was forced to listen to the John and Ken show on AM 640 during my commute home from work yesterday. They were up in arms over Homeland Security posting a warning on a national park in Arizona to the effect that the park is not safe due to drug cartels and should be avoided. John and Ken’s response? This problem is caused by illegal immigration and our failure to “secure our borders”TM.

From my perspective, this problem is quite clearly a drug problem and is not related to the plight of the economic refugees. But John and Ken, like so many of their conservative brethren, seem incapable of drawing this distinction, nor of coping with the differing policy failures which have created these seperate problems. To them, the problems are made simple by reducing them to their simplest common denominator: Mexico. The economic refugees are coming from Mexico. The drugs are coming from Mexico. The solution? Build a damn fence and send in the troops to guard it. I wonder if there is a problem that Conservatives don’t think can be solved by increased militarism.

The Mexican drug cartels are in that national park for a reason; they are transporting drugs from their origin to consumers in America. They are a link in a supply chain that feeds American demand. The supply chain begins with production in Latin America, extends through transportation channels, and ends up on American streets being sold to American consumers. This is the story of every product: it is produced to meet demand. If there is no demand, there will be no supply. The drugs are different only in that the fact that they are illegal increases costs and thus makes it more lucrative to produce them. With such incentive, violent groups emerge to protect their “turf”. Thus violence attaches at each stage of the process. The drug cartels which accompany the transportation of such drugs is a natural part of the transportation process when the commodity is illegal. It is a black market; American experience during alcohol Prohibition is instructive on the violence which naturally accompanies a black market.

In many ways, Americans are fortunate with respect to these drug cartels, inasmuch as much narcotic production is done in foreign countries. To the extent that the manufacture of these goods has been moved outside of our borders, to that same extent the violence and corruption which accompany the production of a black market commodity are borne in those countries and we thus do not experience the negative consequences of our drug war. In effect, Mexico reaps what we sow. When one considers the situation along the Mexican side of the border, a good case can be made that we are getting a good bargain in terms of social consequences by having Mexico produce our narcotics to meet our demand.

The catch is this: since the consumption is done here, the drugs must be transported here. If the United States were ever to be successful in “securing the border” from the transport of drugs, it would NOT end the drug trade. There is too much demand, and is too lucrative. The cartels would simply move the production here on our side of the border. Ultimately, we would experience the same levels of corruption and infiltration of our police squads as Mexico currently does. The real drug war would come home.

The solution to the drug problem does not lie in cracking down on our borders. Supply will meet demand. If one cracks down on the supply, it will simply move elsewhere. There is nothing inherent to Mexico that requires that it produce drugs. That drugs are produced there is simply due to convenience. If we make it inconvenient to produce drugs in Mexico (by hindering transport or in any other ways) the drug manufacture will simply move closer. It is delusional to think one can address the drug problem without addressing the cause: namely, that there is demand for such products.

Our society has decided to criminalize demand. The result has been an explosion in organized crime, the imprisonment of 2 million Americans, and dramatically increased costs of enforcement and incarceration. Meanwhile, demand has increased since we began the drug war. The drug war has failed. Increased militarism will not win it. Since sanctions have not curbed demand, the only rational solution is to allow demand to be met legally. This will not end drug use, but it will end the organized crime as violence will no longer be needed to perpetuate the manufacture and trade of the commodities. Legalization, not militarism, is the solution to the drug problem.

Filed under: Drugs, Crime, drug war, Drugs | Post a comment

In the next few days, this blog will take a new direction. I am appalled by the anti-immigrant, frothing at the mouth extremism that has gripped this country. What is truly troubling is that no one seems to be truly defending the immigrants. Even so-called allies talk about defending the borders. It is time for someone to be the voice of sanity. So the focus and look of this blog is going to change in the coming days and weeks. This blog will take on the lies and misinformation on both the left and right regarding “illegal” immigration.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Post a comment

Will all the anti-immigration fanatics please shut the fuck up? Don’t you realize that this issue is just being used to divide people so that they won’t realize just how much the corporatocracy is screwing us over?

This latest economic collapse ought to have served to unite people; it ought to have taught us just how much the game is rigged against the ordinary man on the street and in favor of those who already have power.

Instead when the man on the street starts to look over at the bankers and the corporate fatcats to ask “what the fuck?” they point over at some poverty level shmo who crossed an imaginary line looking for some scant opportunity to rise above subsistence level and want you to believe that “illegal” immigration is responsible for your suffering. You know the ones I’m talking about: the corporate criminals, who steal your pensions, take away your benefits, send your jobs to China, cancel your raises, take away your overtime, and tell you just to be glad you have a job. And when those corporate criminals see you looking at them, they tell you “oh, its the fault of that ILLEGAL” and you are stupid enough to believe them. Wake up! Stop letting them divide us!

No “illegal” ever closed a factory so he could reopen it in a third world country and pay a child a dollar a day to work in a sweatshop. No “illegal” ever voted to lay off hundreds of workers while his company raked in billions of dollars of profit. No “illegal” ever gambled away corporate pension plans, or cut benefits while simultaneously raising costs to his employees. No “illegal” ever tried to extort billions of dollars from the government by arguing he was “too big to fail.” Or threatened to close his factory unless his corporate profits received exemption from local taxation. So if you are stupid enough to fall for the lie that illegals are causing your woes you deserve what you get when you run to the villains to protect you from the victims. And what will you get: more government that has been bought and sold and that blames scapegoats and the disadvantaged rather than focus attention on the real scoundrels.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Post a comment

One of the tried and true political tactics, tried at nearly every turn in nearly every country, is the tactic of demonizing a group of people so as to electrify an intended constituency and mobilize them to “get out the vote.” In California, prop 8 reminds us of how effective this tactic can be.

But in recent US history, perhaps no group has been more demonized than the so-called “illegal immigrants”, often simply referred to as “illegals”. The right has seized upon this group and mobilized an electorate around the idea of containing the spread of illegal immigration.

What has been surprising to me is how readily the left has accommodated this tactic by legitimizing it. For some reason, the left continues to go along with this ploy, pretending that there is a gigantic immigrant “problem.” Am I alone in finding the “immigrant problem” to be roughly analogous to “the Jewish question”?

Let’s take a look at some of the orthodoxy from the left. Al Franken, candidate for Senate in Minnesota and star of the progressive icon Air America published this bit of progressive orthodoxy on his Senate site:

The best way to deal with illegal immigration is to enforce – actually enforce – the law at the worksite. No wall is high enough to keep people from coming over it – or under it – if there are jobs waiting on the other side.

• Employers who disregard the law should be actually punished – with fines and, if necessary, incarceration.
• Worker identification should be truly tamper-proof. Fortunately, we have better technology than we did in 1986, so that goal is in reach with the help of biometrics. Of course, we must safeguard our civil liberties and privacy.

Makes sense to me. I mean, c’mon, we can’t have workers without identification, can we? How would it be if people just went around hiring just anyone, maybe someone who had been born in Mexico? I mean, that would be the end of the world.

The thinking here seems to be that there is some desperate need to make sure that all workers were born in certain places, or that if they weren’t born in certain places, that they have “permission” to work. But why? I was born in Indiana. I traveled 1000 miles to New Hampshire to work, and no one said a thing. Then a couple years later I traveled 3000 miles to California to work, and again, no one said a thing. I wasn’t “local”. I came from 3000 miles away! If anyone is “not local”, it’s me! But no one said anything or tried to prevent me from working. But if a guy crosses a river, I am to believe that it is imperative that he not be allowed to work, because he’s not “from here”?

I believe that all people are the same, regardless of where they were born. We are all children of God. The same blood runs through my veins that runs through yours. Why should I wish to make rules about one group of people that don’t apply to another group of people? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why should a person not be able to cross the Rio Grande and find work just because he happens to have been born on one side of the Rio Grande? Is that our normal policy with respect to crossing rivers? I mean, should a guy who was born on one side of the Mississippi not be able to cross to the other side to live and work? On what justification?

“Well, everyone needs to respect our laws,” I am told. “I mean, you may not agree that the Mexican guy should be prevented from working, but as long as it is the law, that needs to be respected.” Why? There’s nothing about a law that makes it respectable. Any idiot can pass a law, and any idiot will obey it. All a law is is a rule that has been written down and says something to the effect of, “Don’t do this, if you do someone will come hurt you or lock you in a cage.” There’s nothing inherently respectable about that. Hitler had laws. Stalin had laws. A law isn’t respectable just because it is a law. If there’s a law that says that I have to turn Jews over to the Gestapo, I’m not going to obey it, because it is contrary to the dignity and love of my fellow man. Incidentally, so is an immigration law that would restrict his ability to seek his own happiness by finding work to support his family. It is an onerous law that attempts to tell someone that his very existence is a crime. And I spit on all such laws. Laws like that ought to be vehemently disobeyed; laws like that should be treated with the contempt to which they are due.

I believe that work is a right, a right so-called because it is necessary to survival. Any law which restricts such a right is an abomination, a death sentence, and is therefore a crime against humanity. Why do we so restrict our fellow men? Is it not this disease of nationalism once again rising to ruin lives and divide us one against the other? There is no more reason to restrict someone coming to work from Tijuana than there is to restrict someone coming from Idaho. It is only our misguided sense that the person coming from Tijuana is somehow different from me, whereas the person from Idaho is “one of us.” We need to get rid of ideas like that. For one thing, there is no “us”. The guy coming from Idaho is like me in some respects, and unlike me in other respects. In many ways he is unique, in many ways he is in solidarity with me. The same can be said of the man coming from Tijuana. But this disease of nationalism causes us to see one man as “an American” and the other man as “a Mexican” and we thus treat them differently. Nothing could be more contrary to the Christian spirit, nothing could be more contrary to the spirit of a free people, than a spirit that prejudges individuals based solely on where they were born. I defy it!

The liberal or progressive left in this case once again shows itself to be nothing more than a tool of the corporate state. Using the statist rhetoric, the left attempts to divide us against our fellow man just as much as the conservative right does. At least the conservative right can plead stupidity. What is the left’s excuse? Why is the left also bending the knee at the altar of division and nationalism? Other than chains, what does the corporate state have to offer us? Why must we be the corporate state’s lapdog? Let us chain it, rather than vice versa!

Let us immediately cease demonizing our brethren who happened to be born elsewhere! Let us welcome him as our brother! Let us spread a feast and honor the foreigner in our midst! Let us reject the language of division which teaches us to hate and instead welcome with love!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Post a comment