How serious is the problem of undocumented immigration?

[PyramidHead]

We agree. I am curious to hear from people on the other end of the spectrum about this.

Specifically, what is wrong with being an illegal immigrant other than the fact that it violates a law?

The same thing that is wrong with legal immigrants, they generally harm (rather than improve) the well-being of resident Americans. Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is not based on knowledge, skills, or natural ability. It is based on family connection, illegal entry, and arbitrary 'needs' for the business community to hire the cheapest possible labor.

1. They lower wages for the least skilled Americans, and dilute opportunity for their apprenticeship.
2. They increase the violent crime rate.
3. They use an ordinate amount of public welfare.
4. They have to be subsidized by American citizens, paying a good part of their medical, housing, and education.
5. They generally do not pay for themselves in economic surplus, and certainty do not contribute a surplus.
6. They create major externality costs in environmental degradation, increased urbanization, demand for water in drought stricken states, crowding of parks, beaches, etc.

If you think there is a shortage of freeway crowding, ghettos, Mexican restaurants, dry wallers, and house-keepers then perhaps illegal immigration is a good thing. If you are a working class American or urban American minority it is a bad thing.

The problem is an 11.

The services enjoyed by Americans who were born here are not apportioned based on knowledge, skills, or natural ability, so your opening salvo is a moot point. The remainder of your points are not specific to immigrants; they apply to the poor in general, to the extent that they are actually true and not right-wing fabrications. Thus, there doesn't seem to be an argument for curbing immigration here, so much as a disdain for less fortunate people per se. If you were consistent, you would support deportation of not only illegal immigrants, but anyone below the poverty line. That way, fewer externalities would be created, less welfare consumed, and violent crime would be someone else's problem. Tragically, I'm not sure whether what I just typed is a caricature of your position, or what you actually believe deep down.

 

[maxparrish]

The same thing that is wrong with legal immigrants, they generally harm (rather than improve) the well-being of resident Americans. Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is not based on knowledge, skills, or natural ability. It is based on family connection, illegal entry, and arbitrary 'needs' for the business community to hire the cheapest possible labor.

1. They lower wages for the least skilled Americans, and dilute opportunity for their apprenticeship.
2. They increase the violent crime rate.
3. They use an ordinate amount of public welfare.
4. They have to be subsidized by American citizens, paying a good part of their medical, housing, and education.
5. They generally do not pay for themselves in economic surplus, and certainty do not contribute a surplus.
6. They create major externality costs in environmental degradation, increased urbanization, demand for water in drought stricken states, crowding of parks, beaches, etc.

If you think there is a shortage of freeway crowding, ghettos, Mexican restaurants, dry wallers, and house-keepers then perhaps illegal immigration is a good thing. If you are a working class American or urban American minority it is a bad thing.

The problem is an 11.

The services enjoyed by Americans who were born here are not apportioned based on knowledge, skills, or natural ability, so your opening salvo is a moot point. The remainder of your points are not specific to immigrants; they apply to the poor in general, to the extent that they are actually true and not right-wing fabrications.

Actually it IS the point. Because a good part of the US population is already subsidized by the remainder of the population, importing poverty to add to a permanent underclass means either that a) existing negative contributers have less or b) more taxes on the middle and upper classes will be necessary to support millions of the newly imported poor.

The only thing "moot" is the daffy notion that just because some Americans who are net "makers" already subsidize America's net "takers", that we ought to inflate the population of net "takers." We don't need millions of more of the 3rd world's least productive anymore than a dog needs more fleas.

Thus, there doesn't seem to be an argument for curbing immigration here, so much as a disdain for less fortunate people per se. If you were consistent, you would support deportation of not only illegal immigrants, but anyone below the poverty line. That way, fewer externalities would be created, less welfare consumed, and violent crime would be someone else's problem. Tragically, I'm not sure whether what I just typed is a caricature of your position, or what you actually believe deep down.

That there are less fortunate people is not a claim upon the fruit of others labor. There are 7 billion people on the planet, the majority of whom live below the level of the "poor" in the America. They are "unfortunate", but the 50 percent of the American people who actually produce have no moral duty to add them all to our dependent burden (nor to suffer the economic harm to their own lives).

If you understood my position, you would know that the issue is not that we have poor, but that we already have a net drain on those who actually make more goods and services than they consume. Were the poor not supported by the fruit of others, there would be far less reason to be concerned about where they live.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Mitt Romney. He produces.

 

[Underseer]

I don't mean to ask how widespread the problem is, but how severe the effect is. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being California's ban on free plastic bags and 10 being corruption in all offices of political power, how big of a deal should we make about illegal immigration, and why?

It's very serious.

See, the propagandists who tell right wingers what to think have been fanning the flames on this topic for years, using "illegal immigrants" as cover for their anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hatred. Now that the demographics are changing, all of this anti-immigrant, anti-Latino rhetoric is driving Latino voters into the arms of decmocratic candidates.

The more they bring this issue up, the more they drive Latino voters away, and at this point they're so frothed up that they simply can't stop themselves.

It's really funny to watch, honestly.

 

[maxparrish]

As to your depiction of illegal immigrants and based on your previously observed comments through FRDB, they strike me as motivated by a xenophobic mentality where the foreigner and culturally different person from Anglo Saxon origins can only be a nuisance and an inferior individual.

Posh. Me? Why should I not celebrate the gift of relentless chain migration? Rest assured, in California's sprawling urban tumors, from Los Angeles to Oakland we enjoy visiting this tangle of material and spiritual putrescence, and to suffer the blasphemies of a hundred guttural dialects assailing our ears, to be surrounded by the hordes of sun-pitted faces of swarthy prowlers shouting along sidewalks, or to experience the teaming apartment blocks packed with little round headed peoples - most of them engaged in the productive occupation of drug running, car jacking, or hand out seeking.

My observation is not original, but of this I shall say no more.

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't mean to ask how widespread the problem is, but how severe the effect is. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being California's ban on free plastic bags and 10 being corruption in all offices of political power, how big of a deal should we make about illegal immigration, and why?

The main serious effect that it has is to help suppress wages in the US. If you are a supply side, neoliberal, Reaganomics true believer of the fantasy of the free market then this is a good thing. In the fantasy economy it decreases costs. In the real world It increases profits and decreases wages.

If you are a realist concerned with the economy then it is a big problem. Lower relative wages reduces demand in the economy, the problem that we have now.

The reason that the problem has become so much worse over the last thirty years is because the Reagan amnesty bill around 1986 also was written to allow employers to escape any punishment for hiring illegal immigrants by the simple artifice of hiring a "contractor" who then would hire the illegals. Previously the employer was responsible for making sure that contractors didn't employ illegals.

I was a heavy industry contractor and lived through the adoption of this Republican sponsored change. Before it I had to prove that all of my workers were legal. After the change I didn't, in fact I could freely hire illegals by making one of them a "contractor" who I paid. As a bonus I wouldn't even have had to pay payroll taxes for the workers, that was the responsibility of the "contractor." It was very effective in breaking the hold of the trade unions on construction work and lowering the wages of the workers. We had been a union contractor and had to become a non-union contractor in order to stay in business.

I never knowingly hired illegals but I can't say that I didn't have illegals on my sites working for my subcontractors. I did run a crew of Mexican millwrights, the workers who assemble, level and align the machines. The wages had dropped to the point, about $25 an hour, that I couldn't find people in the US who would do this hot, demanding work for that wage. My crew was legal, they had H1B1 visas, the other inspired addition to our immigration laws to further suppress our wages.

Before 1964 it was not illegal for workers to come to the US, at least from Mexico. And as it is this horrible crime is only a class 3 misdemeanor, less serious than a speeding ticket or putting household garbage in a federal trash can. What was illegal was hiring workers who didn't have visas.

Ironically making it illegal to come into the country without a visa or to overstay a visa coupled with increased border security and the effective amnesty for employers of illegals turned a seasonal migration of agricultural workers into a year around problem across many industries. Because of the tightening border security the workers felt that they couldn't risk leaving once they were here. And they couldn't work in agriculture year round so they had to go into other lines of work. And they brought their families into the country since they otherwise wouldn't be able to see them.

Unintended consequences. And stupidity that we are hell bent to repeat.

 

[SimpleDon]

It's probably somewhere around a -3. If someone wants to work and live here, they can't not participate in our economy, consume our services, do jobs, pay rent and taxes, buy food, etc. and as a bonus they can't get welfare. Then they have kids who do all those same things, but are American. It strengthens demand within the economy and balances the workforce. The only people I see with any complaint regarding immigration are the ultra-nationalists, and the problems they cite result from casting the immigrants out into insular and segregated communities.

I don't blame the workers, they are responding to a demand for cheap, good labor. And the people who risk coming here are generally very hard workers. It is not an easy thing to go to another country to live and work, not everyone can do it. It requires a strong, resilient, driven person. Almost half of the immigrants who came to the US in the late 19th and early 20th century returned home.

But I do oppose the practice. As I do so-called globalization. I believe that we should be running our economy for the benefit of our people. As Mexico should be running their economy. Ironically the biggest problem that we have now in the US is Mexican levels of income inequality. We are rapidly becoming a banana republic, run solely for the benefit of the wealthy few.

 

[laughing dog]

As to your depiction of illegal immigrants and based on your previously observed comments through FRDB, they strike me as motivated by a xenophobic mentality where the foreigner and culturally different person from Anglo Saxon origins can only be a nuisance and an inferior individual.

Posh. Me? Why should I not celebrate the gift of relentless chain migration? Rest assured, in California's sprawling urban tumors, from Los Angeles to Oakland we enjoy visiting this tangle of material and spiritual putrescence, and to suffer the blasphemies of a hundred guttural dialects assailing our ears, to be surrounded by the hordes of sun-pitted faces of swarthy prowlers shouting along sidewalks, or to experience the teaming apartment blocks packed with little round headed peoples - most of them engaged in the productive occupation of drug running, car jacking, or hand out seeking.

My observation is not original, but of this I shall say no more.

Not only is unoriginal, it is fact-free and bigoted as well.

 

[maxparrish]

Do you know what 'ordinate' means?

Yep, and do you know what "typo" and "superfluous red herring" means?

The same thing that is wrong with legal immigrants

Are you saying that all immigration is a bad thing? Or are some immigrants better than others? Which ones? Or was there some point in history when it was good, and then it became bad? When was this?

No, I am saying that immigration of those that do not create an economic surplus, and are a net economic loss, has been a bad thing. There is a good argument for encouraging the selective immigration of individuals of ability, education, and skills. In general, the immigration of Hindus, Chinese, Vietnamese, Europeans (and the Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth) has been a good thing. So have been Cubans and a few others.

On the other hand, Mexicans, Central Americans, many Southern Americans, Africans, and many Muslims have been a bad thing. These groups in part, or as a whole, are afflicted with lower IQs, poor skills, primitive beliefs, criminal tendencies, etc. In particular, the 45 million Hispanics that have been created in the last 45 years has lowered the well being of many Americans, and created a costly underclass.

I'm an american with a masters degree, so I guess I am less worried about competing with illegal immigrants. However, I'm concerned about your expression of dislike for legal immigrants. I have a colleague who is a legal immigrant, who is,like me, a well educated and skilled professional. While technically his presence may represent some competition to me, but so do other college graduates, and you don't see me not donating money to my old college for that reason. I just don't feel my colleague is a threat to me. Also, I note that he has not increased the crime rate, used welfare, or any of the other horrible things you blame immigrants for.

I have a very hard time taking your objections seriously. I simply do not believe that they are honest. I think they are a facade.

Why people repeatedly dodge arguing about a generality by retreating to argue a specificity remains curious. I am sure you know that your personal experience with a single legal immigrant is not particularly relevant to a statement of generality, and it seems to be offered for no other reason that to announce your personal "feelings" as a form of validation, and "share" that someone you know does not use welfare or commit crimes.

Speaking of unserious objections...

It puzzles me that someone who normally advocates that the free market should be given free reign to decide things without government interference should be against the free movement of labor from places where it is plentiful to places where it is scarce and more valuable, and appeal to government to restrict it. Why should this issue be different?

Because it is not in a free market, or even close to it. It is a major subsidy paid by Americans on behalf of business (and political interests) and foreign citizens. I no more support importing subsidized labor than I support the import of subsidized capital. If business want more labor from abroad, let them pay for the cost of social services, crime externalizes, environmental externalies, etc.

Finally, as a general principle I am for a free market. However, I am not oblivious to the fact that what is best for humanity may not be what is best for a specific sub-section of humanity...especially in a world that does not have open borders. In other words, immigration does improve the well being of business owners and immigrants, but still lowers the well being for some sectors of the American workforce.

"Free market" types often focus on the overall productive effects without bothering to note the distributional benefit reality.

 

[PyramidHead]

Americans are just people who were born in America. If somebody has a kid here, that kid is American. There is no other magical element that makes Americans different qualitatively than people located on the far side of a demarcation line. The children of immigrants are Americans if they are born in America.

As such, it makes no sense to say "the 45 million Hispanics that have been created in the last 45 years has lowered the well being of many Americans," because if those Hispanics were born in this country, they ARE Americans. Their well-being is no less important than those of the upper-class who view their existence as costly.

As Max is the only person here who thinks that immigration is a problem because poor people are a problem, and his rationale rests on a foundation of ideas from history's dustbin, the specifics aren't really worth going over. Those ideas will die and be replaced by liberal values in time, so there's no need to be worried about it.

 

[EricK]

The problem of someone coming into the country without government permission seems equivalent to the problem of someone having a child without government permission. Less so, in fact, as the immigrant can immediately (or reasonably quickly) be productive.

 

[dismal]

As Max is the only person here who thinks that immigration is a problem because poor people are a problem, and his rationale rests on a foundation of ideas from history's dustbin, the specifics aren't really worth going over. Those ideas will die and be replaced by liberal values in time, so there's no need to be worried about it.

To be clear I don't think immigration is a problem. I do think open borders plus lavish welfare state is a problem. But I consider the problem there to be lavish welfare state.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman -- Unfettered Immigration or Welfare State, pick one.

Ironically illegal immigration solves the problem to a degree. The people that want to come and work hard do, the people who would be motivated to come for welfare benefits don't.

 

[PyramidHead]

As Max is the only person here who thinks that immigration is a problem because poor people are a problem, and his rationale rests on a foundation of ideas from history's dustbin, the specifics aren't really worth going over. Those ideas will die and be replaced by liberal values in time, so there's no need to be worried about it.

To be clear I don't think immigration is a problem. I do think open borders plus lavish welfare state is a problem. But I consider the problem there to be lavish welfare state.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman -- Unfettered Immigration or Welfare State, pick one.

Ironically illegal immigration solves the problem to a degree. The people that want to come and work hard do, the people who would be motivated to come for welfare benefits don't.

But if the welfare state is funded by people who work, own, and consume goods and services in the economy, there should be a way to have both. Other countries have more lax immigration policies and more lavish welfare than the US.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Lavish welfare state? If it is so lavish, why do you have a job?

 

[arkirk]

As Max is the only person here who thinks that immigration is a problem because poor people are a problem, and his rationale rests on a foundation of ideas from history's dustbin, the specifics aren't really worth going over. Those ideas will die and be replaced by liberal values in time, so there's no need to be worried about it.

To be clear I don't think immigration is a problem. I do think open borders plus lavish welfare state is a problem. But I consider the problem there to be lavish welfare state.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman -- Unfettered Immigration or Welfare State, pick one.

Ironically illegal immigration solves the problem to a degree. The people that want to come and work hard do, the people who would be motivated to come for welfare benefits don't.

So...it is not just Max. I see now Pyramid Head failed to COMPLETELY identify the problem. Dismal allows Milton Friedman to prepare the multiple choices and limit the choices to two that make no sense. The dustbin is a big place. I suppose there is room for one more.

 

[maxparrish]

Americans are just people who were born in America....

As such, it makes no sense to say "the 45 million Hispanics that have been created in the last 45 years has lowered the well being of many Americans," because if those Hispanics were born in this country, they ARE Americans. Their well-being is no less important than those of the upper-class who view their existence as costly.

Then let I shall rephrase what seems to be unclear to you:

The 45 million Hispanics, now first and second generation American citizens, legal non-citizens, and illegals have lowered the well being of Americans that foolishly let them in. AND to continue this flow will continue to harm the economic well being of many American citizens, including current citizens of Euro-white, Hispanic and Black heritage.

It is the right of a people to decide who they wish to let join the nation, a right extended to every people of every nation in the world. And it is also their right to demand that 'new members' improve the collective well-being of current members, rather than continually add to the harm of existing members. It is within their right to refuse to turn the United States into an international flop house, and world charity.

Given our looming budget crisis and debt, the massive new burden of Obamacare, seriously education inflation, explosion in food stamps, challenges to basic infrastructure unmet needs in housing, etc. its pretty stupid to increase our collective drain by legalizing 5 more million people.

As Max is the only person here who thinks that immigration is a problem because poor people are a problem, and his rationale rests on a foundation of ideas from history's dustbin, the specifics aren't really worth going over. Those ideas will die and be replaced by liberal values in time, so there's no need to be worried about it.

Poor people are only a problem because education, welfare, housing, resources, etc. are problems. And the more you add that can't pay for it, the greater the problem.

So when checking the historical dustbin, you might look at the bread and circuses for Rome's retired poor as a "solution" ?

Yep, no need to be worried about it - that's why the quality of life in California has improved so much by increasing the State population from 18 million to 38 million over the last 40 years (85 or more percent due to foreign immigration), and has now attained the highest poverty rate in the nation at 23%. Just think how much better it will be when the state gets to 80 million in another 1/2 century, and the poverty rate is 30% - wow, what a great idea.

Of course, those of us who remember a 10 percent poverty rate in 1966, and a prosperous and very affordable middle class state, will have died out and I am sure there will be a forum of denialists who insist they live in the best of all possible and prior worlds.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Mitt Romney. He produces.

Yup. Lots of night soil.

 

[dismal]

Lavish welfare state? If it is so lavish, why do you have a job?

My capacity to earn is far higher than the welfare state pays. Currently.

Note this is not true of a substantial portion of the world's population.

 

[arkirk]

Lavish welfare state? If it is so lavish, why do you have a job?

My capacity to earn is far higher than the welfare state pays. Currently.

Note this is not true of a substantial portion of the world's population.

How important this idea is to you is interesting. Why should that matter? That substantial portion of the world's population that has less capacity to earn...has it ever crossed your mind just WHY this is so? Have you ever heard of discrimination? Do you really think your current situation is a result of your SUPERIORITY over others? In my book it is pure narcissism.

 

[maxparrish]

The problem of someone coming into the country without government permission seems equivalent to the problem of someone having a child without government permission. Less so, in fact, as the immigrant can immediately (or reasonably quickly) be productive.

Tripe.