How serious is the problem of undocumented immigration?

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, what is wrong with any variety of line-jumping? It takes a spot away from somebody willing to follow the rules and wait his turn to become a legal immigrant.

I can accept this as a legitimate problem, but that's only because I don't know what the rules are and how long a person must wait his turn. Desperation plays a huge part in what rules people are willing to break, and in those cases (which may be a few or a lot, I honestly don't know) I disagree that "The fact that he chose to line-jump and risk the wrath of the government instead of waiting his turn and going through the legal procedure is a red flag that he's probably not actually any time soon going to become productive enough to make taking him in worth the consequent costs to the locals." You prefaced that with "provided there's a rational immigration policy, the government would have given him permission." Do we have such a policy? Depends on who you ask, as this thread demonstrates.

Note that most people have no way to even get in line.

- - - Updated - - -

The last time the U.S. had open borders it resulted in a massive boom that made her the most powerful nation in the world.

Clearly it would be disastrous to let that happen again.

When we had open borders we weren't much ahead of the rest of the world. It was a land of opportunity, not a land where you got an automatic major step up in coming here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

With that sort of money available, it isn't just people willing to walk across a significant stretch of desert to get here to do the jobs, but all the ancillary jobs that pop up as a result...from fake ID to identity theft to coyotes to lobbyists from the Chamber of Commerce hitting up the Corporation Commission.

Thanks to the political pressure created from the need to keep such a large and lucrative enterprise going, we wind up spending even more time and money trying to "crack down" on the people who are earning a few dollars an hour from this industry rather than the people who are driving it.

Not so long ago in my state (the ever so slightly crazy Arizona) we passed an "employer sanctions" law. This was prior to the more famous SB1070, but while you may have heard of the latter you can be excused if you didn't hear of the former because it was never enforced. Our famous (or infamous if you like) Sheriff Joe made a show (as he often does) of raiding businesses suspected of hiring illegal immigrants.

To almost nobody's surprise, he managed to find illegal immigrants working at - for example - a well known grocery chain that caters to Hispanic Americans. And while "America's Toughest Sheriff" got his photo op with illegals in zip-ties, you know what he didn't get?

A single person who was in charge.

Nobody that actually hired the illegal immigrants was ever arrested.

Hiring someone illegally is every bit as much of a crime as crossing the border without permission, but the number of businesses and/or business owners that have been shut down, fined, arrested, and charged with the crime of hiring an illegal immigrant is for all intents and purposes almost exactly zero.


If you feel illegal immigration is a problem, then in order to solve that problem you have to first address illegal employment. In order to do that you have to take on the businesses that depend upon having 10-12 million illegal workers here and available to fill jobs. Good luck with that.

You provided the answer in your message!

Fraudulent ID. While employers very well might suspect people are illegals they have no way to actually determine this if they are given reasonable fake documentation--or for that matter real documentation obtained by identity theft.

Before we crack down on employers we need a reliable system by which they can figure out who is legal or not. And before that's acceptable we need a system to prevent identity theft. An illegal working under a stolen identity is more of a problem than an illegal working under the table--a system that changes the latter to the former is a bad thing.

(A real example of the problem: IRS: You didn't report $x you earned. My mother: What $x? IRS: The $x from company Y. My mother: Y?? I've never even heard of them, let alone worked there. IRS: If you think the W-2 is wrong get them to fix it. My mother: I can't find them, please give me an address or phone number. IRS: We can't do that. You worked for them, you know how to contact them. At that point I went off to college and never found how how they managed to resolve the mess.)

 

[Ford]

Before we crack down on employers we need a reliable system by which they can figure out who is legal or not. And before that's acceptable we need a system to prevent identity theft. An illegal working under a stolen identity is more of a problem than an illegal working under the table--a system that changes the latter to the former is a bad thing.

And if you can find an employer who is genuinely interested in a reliable system to cut the illegal chaff from the legal wheat, I'll buy you a sandwich.


10 million plus illegal immigrants don't just show up accidentally on the payrolls of otherwise well-meaning companies just desperate to find employees, Loren.


That's like saying that Israeli settlers just happened across some uninhabited land in the West Bank and started building an apartment complex while being completely unaware that other people had been living on that land...


Oh, wait...I think I see the problem here...

 

[dismal]

If there is nothing wrong with illegal immigration how can it be wrong to hire illegal immigrants?

If we want to stop the trade in illegal drugs, do we go after the users? Or do we target the dealers?

Or if you want to stop counterfeiters, do you go after the people who are passing on the bills, or the outfit producing them?


If you are opposed to illegal immigration, then wouldn't it be prudent to do something about the industries that are paying the immigrants to come here?

I think equating illegal immigrants to illegal drugs contains a presumption that illegal immigrants are bad.

If you think they are good your analogy would be something more like "I really love flowers but we need to punish the shit out of people that plant flowers.". Somewhat nonsensical.

Why do you think illegal immigrants are so bad?

 

[Ford]

Why do you think illegal immigrants are so bad?

I don't. I said that:

If you feel illegal immigration is a problem, then in order to solve that problem you have to first address illegal employment.

If you don't think illegal immigrants are so bad, then no harm, no foul.

However most if not all of the focus in the immigration debate is on the immigrants themselves, and not the employers who are paying them to come here.

If a bus got into an accident after running a red light, would you ticket the bus driver, or the passengers? Because right now we're giving the folks driving the illegal immigration bus a pass.

 

[dismal]

Why do you think illegal immigrants are so bad?

I don't. I said that:

If you feel illegal immigration is a problem, then in order to solve that problem you have to first address illegal employment.

If you don't think illegal immigrants are so bad, then no harm, no foul.

However most if not all of the focus in the immigration debate is on the immigrants themselves, and not the employers who are paying them to come here.

If a bus got into an accident after running a red light, would you ticket the bus driver, or the passengers? Because right now we're giving the folks driving the illegal immigration bus a pass.

This punishing of employers seems to be an area of great passion for you, so you must think there is something wrong with illegal immigration.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Before we crack down on employers we need a reliable system by which they can figure out who is legal or not. And before that's acceptable we need a system to prevent identity theft. An illegal working under a stolen identity is more of a problem than an illegal working under the table--a system that changes the latter to the former is a bad thing.

And if you can find an employer who is genuinely interested in a reliable system to cut the illegal chaff from the legal wheat, I'll buy you a sandwich.


10 million plus illegal immigrants don't just show up accidentally on the payrolls of otherwise well-meaning companies just desperate to find employees, Loren.


That's like saying that Israeli settlers just happened across some uninhabited land in the West Bank and started building an apartment complex while being completely unaware that other people had been living on that land...


Oh, wait...I think I see the problem here...

I do agree that employers like the lack of enforcement. That doesn't change the fact that you need a reliable means of determining before you hold them accountable.

So long as identity theft is a big problem I don't believe a reliable means can exist. Fix that problem first.

 

[PyramidHead]

I think we can accept there will be some sort of welfare state, but there are more possibilities than those of which you have dreamt of. You could for example limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state. You could take steps to ensure the benefits paid are not greater than the living standards of places where immigrants come from.

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here. Why should immigrants, legal or not, be denied the benefits of living in a first-world country? As another poster said, there's really no way for them to not be productive if they live here, work here, and spend here. What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives? Just the fact that they broke a law?

 

[Bomb#20]

The last time the U.S. had open borders it resulted in a massive boom that made her the most powerful nation in the world.

Clearly it would be disastrous to let that happen again.

The first time the Americas had open borders is was disastrous to the inhabitants.

Yep, the mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, dire wolves, ground sloths and American horses sure were kicking themselves about having allowed that land bridge over the Bering Strait to form...

 

[Bomb#20]

...
2. If you see value in having a welfare state, do you see value in having lines and a welfare state, compared to having a welfare state but no lines?
...
4. If you have no strategy for getting rid of the welfare state, see question 2.
...

I think we can accept there will be some sort of welfare state, but there are more possibilities than those of which you have dreamt of. You could for example limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state. You could take steps to ensure the benefits paid are not greater than the living standards of places where immigrants come from.

Immigrants come from some pretty awful places; I think the same political forces you can't stop from setting up a welfare state, you also can't stop from paying greater benefits than the living standards of those places. Limiting the access of immigrants to the welfare state is something that could probably be sold to the general public. But this isn't Switzerland; we don't decide that sort of question by referendum here. Do you have a strategy for convincing the two-party system to limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state?

If you don't, do you see value in having lines and a welfare state you're unable to exclude immigrants from, compared to having a welfare state you're unable to exclude immigrants from but no lines?

 

[arkirk]

Nobody seems to want to look around the corner here. Some desperate people travel thousands of miles in pursuit of a chance to make a decent living for themselves, and perhaps their family.. They've come up to the chain link fence and are looking for a way to get past it. So why are they there? Something back where they came from. In the case of Mexico, it is not something indigenous to Mexico. It is NAFTA WRIT LARGE ACROSS THE LAND...and what it means for working class Mexicans, who often were small farmers who were priced out of their livelihoods by Americans imports, NAFTA however was just ONE FACTOR. We also righteously have a drug war going on. That starts as an attempt to control working class Americans...keeping them straight so they can work hard for their masters. It fulminates into drug cartels and cartel controlled local governments in Mexico. So not only can you not make an honest living in Mexico, your town or locale has degenerated into violence. Fleeing violence also is a reason people appear at our border.

The elephant in the room...the U.S. All the economic distortions in Mexico are merely the after effects of U.S. policy. I am sure the average American does not know how much the influence of U.S. corporate interests in Mexico has contributed to the problem. Whether the domination of a country by outside forces is economic or military, the effect is the same on the underclass...a need and a desire to escape to almost anywhere else and a longing for a fair chance to live better. So there they are at the border...hopeful and filled with illusory notions of a better life on the other side of the fence. If we deal with the root causes...NAFTA and the drug war....and the distortion and corruption of the Mexican government caused by these rotten things, we could start taking down our fences. What we are seeing going on now is an economic equivalent to osmosis, with the working class being the water and the money being the electrolyte. Think about it before you dismiss it out of hand. Even Adam smith would understand this.

 

[Bomb#20]

I think we can accept there will be some sort of welfare state, but there are more possibilities than those of which you have dreamt of. You could for example limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state. You could take steps to ensure the benefits paid are not greater than the living standards of places where immigrants come from.

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here.

The same reasoning he pretty much always applies. He's dismal. That's an allusion to economics being "the dismal science". And as some wag aptly put it, "People respond to incentives. That is the whole of economics. The rest is commentary." What dismal is applying here is reasoning about the incentive structure that will result from various hypothetical immigration policies.

Why should immigrants, legal or not, be denied the benefits of living in a first-world country?

Turn it around. Why should citizens vote to tax one another to pay for benefits for immigrants if that taxation gives ever more foreigners an incentive to come and thereby leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of taxation and increased benefit costs?

As another poster said, there's really no way for them to not be productive if they live here, work here, and spend here.

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here. If an immigrant is working here, and working enough to support himself, then he isn't accessing the welfare state so what's your issue with limiting his access to it? Contrariwise, if he is not working here enough to support himself, but merely living here and spending here, then what makes you think there's really no way for him to not be productive? Are you claiming that living and spending are productive activities in their own right?

What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives? Just the fact that they broke a law?

"What quality"? Seriously? What makes you think this is all about them and their qualities?

Suppose you give five dollars to a man on the street because he asks you to, and subsequently a hundred other men ask you to give them money. Do you feel you owe it to them to give each of them five dollars, because they're all eligible for it? If you don't keep paying and paying, what quality are the other men lacking?

(And no, welfare is not a benefit everybody else receives. It's a benefit some people receive and other people deliver.)

 

[dismal]

Do you have a strategy for convincing the two-party system to limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state?

We have it now. We call them "illegal".

 

[dismal]

I think we can accept there will be some sort of welfare state, but there are more possibilities than those of which you have dreamt of. You could for example limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state. You could take steps to ensure the benefits paid are not greater than the living standards of places where immigrants come from.

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here. Why should immigrants, legal or not, be denied the benefits of living in a first-world country? As another poster said, there's really no way for them to not be productive if they live here, work here, and spend here. What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives? Just the fact that they broke a law?

We are first world country because we have first world levels of productivity per capita, which allows first world levels of consumption per capita. If you import large enough numbers of people who don't produce anything your standard of living goes down.

If our goal is to enrich people in other countries at the cost of our own standard of living we can achieve this by sending checks to people in Bangladesh instead of forcing them to come there to get them.

 

[Ford]

This punishing of employers seems to be an area of great passion for you, so you must think there is something wrong with illegal immigration.

So you have no problem with illegal immigration or the people who give all the illegals jobs, then?

 

[maxparrish]

I think we can accept there will be some sort of welfare state, but there are more possibilities than those of which you have dreamt of. You could for example limit the access of immigrants to the welfare state. You could take steps to ensure the benefits paid are not greater than the living standards of places where immigrants come from.

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here. Why should immigrants, legal or not, be denied the benefits of living in a first-world country? As another poster said, there's really no way for them to not be productive if they live here, work here, and spend here. What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives? Just the fact that they broke a law?(emphasis added)

I suspect you already know the answer to your query. But supposing you are serious... if your purpose is to get as many of the world's billions of poor, illiterate, and untalented to move to your country then you promise new arrivals welfare, even if they are illegal. If your purpose is to turn the country into a sprawling flop house of scores of millions, and drain public resources while increasing taxes on your peers OF COURSE you provide welfare, section 8 housing, food stamps, grants, and Obama care to legals and illegals. In fact, you make everyone legal (as Obama is going to do in good part) and wait for more to coming to your open door, striving to pack in as large an underclass as possible.

BUT if you don't wish to harm the well being of the people, you don't encourage immigration of such people. If you wish to husband your public welfare, housing, and medical resources for you own pre-existing poor, or reduce the size of the underclass, lower the public debt, encourage affordable housing, lower crime rates, preserve the environment, and keep what quality of life is left you don't pay people to come to be moochers.

And, by the way, the issue is NOT if people do or do not become productive, the issue is do they create an economic surplus that offsets their tax, benefit, environmental, etc. costs AND improve the general well being of current members of the American people.

 

[dismal]

This punishing of employers seems to be an area of great passion for you, so you must think there is something wrong with illegal immigration.

So you have no problem with illegal immigration or the people who give all the illegals jobs, then?

I don't have any problem with people who want to come to this country to work or with people who want to hire them.

 

[Ford]

So you have no problem with illegal immigration or the people who give all the illegals jobs, then?

I don't have any problem with people who want to come to this country to work or with people who want to hire them.

So you're an advocate for open borders. Got it.

 

[maxparrish]

I don't have any problem with people who want to come to this country to work or with people who want to hire them.

So you're an advocate for open borders. Got it.

Ya, try tell that to any working class Californian that has resided in California for the last 50 years - tell him how much their life has improved by the mass urbanization, increase in poverty rate to the highest in the country, high cost of living, and lack of affordable housing. Tell him/her how awefull it would have been if the 85 percent of the population growth had never happened, and if most of California were native born middle-class.

Visit LA County - with 40 percent of immigrant families on welfare, medicaid, food stamps, public housing BEFORE Obama waived work requirements.

 

[PyramidHead]

I don't understand the reasoning you are applying here. Why should immigrants, legal or not, be denied the benefits of living in a first-world country? As another poster said, there's really no way for them to not be productive if they live here, work here, and spend here. What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives? Just the fact that they broke a law?

We are first world country because we have first world levels of productivity per capita, which allows first world levels of consumption per capita. If you import large enough numbers of people who don't produce anything your standard of living goes down.

How does that apply to what I asked? Are you suggesting that immigrants don't produce anything, or are unable to be educated to the point where they are productive? How much do hedge fund managers and corporate CEOs produce compared to people who work endless hours picking produce?

If our goal is to enrich people in other countries at the cost of our own standard of living we can achieve this by sending checks to people in Bangladesh instead of forcing them to come there to get them.

You are reducing the complexities of what makes living in Bangladesh different from living in the US to money. And anyway, I never said anything about actively pursuing the goal of enriching people from other countries. I'm talking about simply not denying benefits to people who live here based on how they got here.