How serious is the problem of undocumented immigration?

[Ford]

I thought 'hoodies' were a good thing.

And I thought the notion of genetically superior white Europeans died in a bunker in Berlin back in 1945.

 

[maxparrish]

I thought 'hoodies' were a good thing.

And I thought the notion of genetically superior white Europeans died in a bunker in Berlin back in 1945.

It depends on your criteria for "superior". Europeans are not morally or ethically superior because of genetics, otherwise two European/world wars of total destruction would not have started twice over 25 years.

On the other hand, historical European populations have contributed greater intellectual ability to indigenous populations.

 

[Earl IV]

The same people who cannot understand

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

... also have difficulty with

"Well regulated militia"

and

"provide for general welfare"




Is anyone surprised?

 

[fromderinside]

On the other hand, historical European populations have contributed greater intellectual ability to indigenous populations.

Gee. I guess all that literature I engorged by the likes of Ramon y Cahal and Raul Hernandez-Peon in neuroscience and by John Garcia on aversions in the sixties should be removed from my data banks while I should take as scripture the stuff published by Cyril Burt.

When it comes to self absorbed focus on intellectual ability the junk published by Burt fits the bill you seem to prescribe. After all Burt was nearly European and published lots of false data.*

Got another, more reliable, paint brush there maxparrish? I suggest you use it.

Still immigration isn't really a problem until some black dude from Hawaii born of a Kenyan father takes over in the WH and takes executive action on it.

* _{^{attempts to rehabilitate his reputation by relatives really doesn't cut it for me.}}

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"provide for general welfare"

Reality: The Republicans understand this to mean the welfare of the generals.

 

[Bomb#20]

Are you suggesting that the native Americans popularly called White, Black and Asian Americans are somehow less truly native Americans, and/or somehow have less right to a say in who is allowed to immigrate, than the native Americans popularly called Native Americans?

I'm saying that Max keeps assuming "members of the American people" is an absolute category, when as you rightly point out, the definition of American is fluid and changes throughout the generations. If we tweak the laws, the set may grow or shrink. There is nothing essential or inherent about being American.

That's not actually what I was pointing out. Everyone from a scion of the Mayflower through the Hawaiian son of a Kenyan to an anchor baby on a plane to China in her deported postpartum mother's arms is exactly as native American and will have exactly as much reason to object to unrestricted immigration as a guy who traces his ancestors to the Bering land bridge. So challenging Max on his tribal affiliation was out of line.

It's true that the definition of "members of the American people" is fluid -- Congress redefined it only ninety years ago after all -- but I'm not seeing how that's relevant to the thread. Where do you see Max's arguments relying on the assumption that it's an absolute category? Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he favors some dumb-ass policy like stripping that anchor baby off the list. (Of course he's such a rule-of-law enthusiast that surely he'd insist the stripping be by Constitutional Amendment.) Regardless of who the set of members are at any given time, why wouldn't it be up to the members to decide who else gets to become a member? We can declare all gay Iranians to be American citizens if we choose, and maybe that would be a good idea; but I don't see how that would make it unreasonable for us to limit immigration by straight Iranians or gay Dutchmen, unless the vote of the gay Iranians were all it took to tip the balance of public opinion in favor of letting them all in.

 

[Bomb#20]

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".

Well then, since it's only absent a welfare state that you see no value in having lines at all, and we do have a welfare state, which you have no strategy for getting rid of, and since you instead propose to limit immigrants' access to it, and your strategy for convincing the two-party system to limit the access of immigrants to it depends on distinguishing line-jumpers from non-line-jumpers, which means your strategy relies on the existence of lines to get into the country, does that mean then that you do see value in having lines after all?

 

[Bomb#20]

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?

Because foreigners pay taxes too. There are plenty of ways to structure an economy so that people on the bottom, including some immigrants from poverty-stricken nations, have enough economic mobility to become productive citizens. In turn, their productivity would fuel the assistance of the next generation of poor, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of prosperity. It's no less feasible than your scenario, if we're talking hypotheticals. It only necessarily creates a drag if (a) our society doesn't care enough about the working poor to help accelerate their climb up the economic ladder, or (b) there is something inherent about being a 'foreigner' that makes a person less likely to become productive, assistance or not; hence my later question.

This isn't a matter of feasible hypotheticals. Both processes are observed, operating in parallel. Which one dominates depends on the prevailing conditions; one of the chief determinants is how many immigrants are coming. It's a lot easier for the self-perpetuating cycle of prosperity to dominate when there are a million people getting onto the bottom of the ladder than when there are ten million. So we require people to wait their turn. It's the same principle behind metering lights on freeway on-ramps. If we instead just let everybody onto the freeway at once will we get a self-perpetuating cycle of faster and faster traffic?

Firstly, the welfare state is not limited to government assistance to people who cannot support themselves. Public education, health care, infrastructure, etc. are all components. Maybe dismal was literally referring to welfare checks, but I took his comment to mean that if we allow immigrants to enter our country without restriction, they should be forced to attend schools no better than those in the slums they were trying to escape, while the true Americans would have the choice of going to actual American public schools.

I can't say which dismal meant; but you and I can certainly consider each component on its own merits. Letting them in but not educating their kids is obviously self-destructive to the local citizens in a way that letting them in but not cutting them welfare checks isn't so obviously.

Secondly, living in a country and spending money here are indeed productive in the sense that anybody who does so pays taxes.

If they're living on welfare checks then the taxes "they" pay are actually being paid by the taxpayers who gave them the welfare checks! You might as well claim a mom is being partly supported by her kid because he bought her a birthday present out of the allowance she gave him!

Plenty of people live here and spend here without doing much productive work here, and we don't deport them or restrict their access to any public services.

Indeed so. What's your point? Is your point that if we deported one guy for being a drag on the rest of us, this proves that another guy must not be a drag on the rest of us because we didn't deport him? All the people who live and spend here without doing much producing are a drag on the rest of us. We don't deport most of them because we have some specific reason not to do so in their cases that outweighs the "drag on the rest of us" consideration. When we find a person X for whom we have no such specific reason, why would the fact that we had a reason not to deport some other person Y constitute a reason not to deport person X? Help me out here.

The usual reasons we don't deport people for dragging the rest of down are (1) they're U.S. citizens so there's nowhere to make them go home to, and (2) they're U.S. citizens so the other U.S. citizens give them immunity from exile in order to get the assurance that we ourselves won't be exiled in the event that our rulers decide we're dragging everyone else down.

Ideally, it would be better for everybody if they worked in a factory instead of being CEO of the company that owns it, but this is not a command economy.

Heh, nice joke. I hope. I get that a lot of people regard CEOs as unproductive drags on the rest of us, and think hedge fund managers are less productive than berry pickers, but such people's display of lack of understanding of microeconomics isn't the sort of thing that makes their arguments about immigration policy look better by comparison.

What quality are they lacking that would make them eligible for the same benefits that everybody else receives?

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

Mostly Max saying that it's all about them and their qualities.

So what makes you think this is all about Max and his arguments? It's your thread, not Max's; and Max isn't saying what's wrong specifically with illegal immigration, which is what you asked about. Illegal immigration is a problem because, unlike legal immigration, it overwhelms our attempts to manage the overall number of immigrants. It's not because individual illegal immigrants are qualitatively worse than average citizens.

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

We disagree. Welfare is a benefit that is reaped by everybody, from the bottom to the top, regardless of whether they directly receive it. The people who 'deliver' get to live in a society with fewer sick, poor, and uneducated people.

I.e., it benefits the deliverers by preventing the recipients from hurting them. And you deduce that we can therefore benefit the deliverers even further by increasing the number of recipients who will hurt them unless they receive welfare? That's just yet another guise of the "broken window fallacy".

 

[arkirk]

"provide for general welfare"

Reality: The Republicans understand this to mean the welfare of the generals.

Then, YOU are a Republican?

 

[dismal]

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

Well then, since it's only absent a welfare state that you see no value in having lines at all, and we do have a welfare state, which you have no strategy for getting rid of, and since you instead propose to limit immigrants' access to it, and your strategy for convincing the two-party system to limit the access of immigrants to it depends on distinguishing line-jumpers from non-line-jumpers, which means your strategy relies on the existence of lines to get into the country, does that mean then that you do see value in having lines after all?

If you take a welfare state as a given you probably need some sort of lines.

Again, open borders or welfare state, pick one.

 

[Sabine Grant]

What is this bit about "open borders"? Anyone who like me has been a Green Card holder (and I have been since 1983) is quite familiar with the reality that upon returning on US territory from a trip overseas, they will have to go through a check point at the port of arrival and present both their foreign passport and Green Card. Similarly foreign nationals(non legal residents in the US) will need to present their passport with a valid visa allowing for entry in the US for a determined period of time. US citizens only need to present their US passport. Usually (at least in Atlanta and Kennedy Airport), Green Card Holders and US Citizens are directed to the same lane and same check point. Others to a separate one.

Every so often, the immigration agent did far more than just looking at my Green Card but also verified via computer data that my alien registration number is not a fake.

My point is that this nation does not have "open borders".

 

[maxparrish]

On the other hand, historical European populations have contributed greater intellectual ability to indigenous populations.

Gee. I guess all that literature I engorged by the likes of Ramon y Cahal and Raul Hernandez-Peon in neuroscience and by John Garcia on aversions in the sixties should be removed from my data banks while I should take as scripture the stuff published by Cyril Burt.

When it comes to self absorbed focus on intellectual ability the junk published by Burt fits the bill you seem to prescribe. After all Burt was nearly European and published lots of false data.*

Got another, more reliable, paint brush there maxparrish? I suggest you use it.

Still immigration isn't really a problem until some black dude from Hawaii born of a Kenyan father takes over in the WH and takes executive action on it.

* _{^{attempts to rehabilitate his reputation by relatives really doesn't cut it for me.}}

Cyril Burt? He retired in 1949! I have no interest in your historical axe-grinding about a fellow who was born in 1883, nor in your ginning the accomplishments of two ethnic fellows, as somehow relevant to the generality of a group of 10s of millions.

"What fits" is the recognition that some immigrant groups are wanting in skills, education, and/or cognitive ability. And the economic success rates, the society's economic benefits/cost, as well as social costs, are affected. Here is a taste of the literature that recent and more relevant, and that touches on a variety of relevant issues:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations.pdf
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files....nn-and-thompson-2011-cognitive-capitalism.pdf

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=econfacpub

"Most third generation Hispanics in the U.S. still find themselves with income and education levels below the U.S. averages."

 

[maxparrish]

What is this bit about "open borders"? Anyone who like me has been a Green Card holder (and I have been since 1983) is quite familiar with the reality that upon returning on US territory from a trip overseas, they will have to go through a check point at the port of arrival and present both their foreign passport and Green Card. Similarly foreign nationals(non legal residents in the US) will need to present their passport with a valid visa allowing for entry in the US for a determined period of time. US citizens only need to present their US passport. Usually (at least in Atlanta and Kennedy Airport), Green Card Holders and US Citizens are directed to the same lane and same check point. Others to a separate one.

Every so often, the immigration agent did far more than just looking at my Green Card but also verified via computer data that my alien registration number is not a fake.

My point is that this nation does not have "open borders".

Gasp, if they let the French in the borders are not "open", they must not EXIST!

 

[arkirk]

What is this bit about "open borders"? Anyone who like me has been a Green Card holder (and I have been since 1983) is quite familiar with the reality that upon returning on US territory from a trip overseas, they will have to go through a check point at the port of arrival and present both their foreign passport and Green Card. Similarly foreign nationals(non legal residents in the US) will need to present their passport with a valid visa allowing for entry in the US for a determined period of time. US citizens only need to present their US passport. Usually (at least in Atlanta and Kennedy Airport), Green Card Holders and US Citizens are directed to the same lane and same check point. Others to a separate one.

Every so often, the immigration agent did far more than just looking at my Green Card but also verified via computer data that my alien registration number is not a fake.

My point is that this nation does not have "open borders".

Gasp, if they let the French in the borders are not "open", they must not EXIST!

When a nation closes its borders, it can only gravitate toward TOTALITARIANISM. It is nothing less than racial and ethnic discrimination writ large in pseudo legalese. I am with the idea Ronald Reagan had about tearing down walls and getting on with dealing with real problems. To bad Reagan and all of us never got on with the last part...dealing with our real human problems. Our real problems are actually apolitical and the political rhetoric never addresses them.

 

[maxparrish]

Gasp, if they let the French in the borders are not "open", they must not EXIST!

When a nation closes its borders, it can only gravitate toward TOTALITARIANISM. It is nothing less than racial and ethnic discrimination writ large in pseudo legalese. I am with the idea Ronald Reagan had about tearing down walls and getting on with dealing with real problems. To bad Reagan and all of us never got on with the last part...dealing with our real human problems. Our real problems are actually apolitical and the political rhetoric never addresses them.

Well then, one supposes most countries are gravitating towards totalitarianism, given that most have more effective borders and strictker immigration laws than the US. Perhaps you should avoid "totalitarian" leaning Canada.

 

[maxparrish]

Ethnic, Race, and National Origin Realism:

- From 1990 to 2004 the number of Hispanics in poverty rose 52 percent, accounting for 92 percent of US poor.

- The number of poor Hispanic children rose 43 percent (Robert Samuelson)...in the same time period the number of poor black children declined 17 percent.

- Half of all Hispanic children in 2002 were illegitimate - twice the rate for whites and 42 percent higher than national average.

- Academic failure. In Los Angeles Unified School District, which is 73 percent Hispanic, just 40 percent of Hispanic students graduate. (Nationwide, 53 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school, according to the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene—the lowest rate among all ethnic groups.) Only 22 percent have completed the course work necessary for admission to a four-year state college—which means that of all Hispanic students who enter in ninth grade, fewer than 15 percent will graduate ready for college.

-Native-born Hispanics collected welfare at over twice the rate as native-born whites in 2005; the foreign-born Hispanic welfare rate was nearly three times that of native-born whites.

-Between the foreign-born generation and their American children, the incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans jumps more than eightfold, resulting in an incarceration rate that is 3.45 times higher than that of whites, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by the pro-immigrant Migration Policy Institute.

- California spends $82.7 million a year on criminal-court interpreters for those 40 percent of its residents who speak a language other than English at home.

YES LETS GET MORE!

 

[Ford]

It is nothing less than racial and ethnic discrimination writ large in pseudo legalese.

Or in the case of the above post, racial and ethnic discrimination based on a selective reading of statistics. Brown people are bad, because these numbers say so.

 

[laughing dog]

As you have not bothered to quote my prior statements, which you claim I contradicted, I won't bother to argue against an unsupported characterization.

I apologize for assuming you kept track of your arguments.
You wrote

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.

which are all drags on the economy (not to mention unsupported with actual disinterested evidence from non-partisan sources).

And, by the way, is it not common sense that once a prior illegal becomes legal, he/she will compete for jobs with existing workers? You don't think, for example, when a contractor has a building project is some low skilled job categories the newly legalized will now compete with domestic workers of equal skill? You don't think the newly legalized will become contract drivers, displacing some portion of current domestic drivers?....

I see, you have no evidence, so your assumption is valid because you wish to believe it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gasp, if they let the French in the borders are not "open", they must not EXIST!

When a nation closes its borders, it can only gravitate toward TOTALITARIANISM. It is nothing less than racial and ethnic discrimination writ large in pseudo legalese. I am with the idea Ronald Reagan had about tearing down walls and getting on with dealing with real problems. To bad Reagan and all of us never got on with the last part...dealing with our real human problems. Our real problems are actually apolitical and the political rhetoric never addresses them.

No. Closing borders to emigration is a sign of totalitarianism. Closing them to immigration says nothing about how free the society is.

 

[maxparrish]

I apologize for assuming you kept track of your arguments.
You wrote

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.

which are all drags on the economy (not to mention unsupported with actual disinterested evidence from non-partisan sources).

You needn't apologize. I generally keep track of the arguments that I make, it's the ones that you imagine I made that requires your assistance.

I did not argue that they were a drag on the economy, I only presented a list of negative effects from immigration, among them that immigrants generally do not pay for themselves in economic surplus. And more recently I noted that their macro economic effect was (in the net) negligible.

I would also agree that ALL these negative impacts could imply even more, that they likely are a substantial net drag. However, when I speak of a negligible effect on the economy I was referring to the effect as measured by typical immigration economists. Their GDP economic impact studies of immigration almost always leave out major externality costs, as well as that of welfare, education, and other government costs.

So while I usually refer to net economic effects as presented in GDP analytic studies as "negligible" in economic impact, that may be far too generous.

by the way, is it not common sense that once a prior illegal becomes legal, he/she will compete for jobs with existing workers? You don't think, for example, when a contractor has a building project is some low skilled job categories the newly legalized will now compete with domestic workers of equal skill? You don't think the newly legalized will become contract drivers, displacing some portion of current domestic drivers?....

I see, you have no evidence, so your assumption is valid because you wish to believe it.

No, my assumption is valid because it is deductively self-evident, and it is the common assumption in much of immigration economics.

Perhaps you can answer my questions, or present an alternative view? Do you "wish to believe" that none of the 5,000,000 legalized immigrants will EVER compete for (and obtain) a job that would otherwise go to an American?