Immigration, Rule Of Law, And Obstruction of Justice

[SimpleDon]

The arguments from both sides are unhinged on the question of illegal immigration.

The right, fueled by racism and irrational fear of immigrants coupled with their ideologically driven inability to govern competently in the modern era, are doomed to make the wrong choice of a solution to the problem. They believe that they can stop illegal immigration by criminalizing it. The same solution that they came up for the problem of drug abuse and the same solution, criminalizing abortion again, which they believe will set the country right with the mythical super being who lives in the clouds. Completely ignoring that the criminalization of illegal immigration, the drug problem and the problem of abortion have repeatedly failed in the past.

The left is looking at the problem with their identity political blinders on seeing the problem as one of human rights and by their compassion are completely missing that these illegal immigrants cause real damage to the economy and hurt American citizens. For the left, this wasn't always the case. When the left in the US championed the workers over the owners they correctly understood that the owners wanted to encourage illegal immigration as yet another means to suppress wages and to increase profits and income inequality in the owners' favor.

As the Democratic party moved to the right, to join the "Washington Consensus," the milquetoast left of today has lost any claim to supporting the workers by taking the campaign money offered by the owners, corporations, and Wall Street. The left and the Democratic party abandoned the workers to be picked up by the Republicans, largely by responding to the Republicans' fear mongering and appeals to the worst of human nature.

Therefore, the left of today have only their identity politics to guide them which allowed the Republicans to split the working class largely along racial lines rather than to have the working class united along class lines. White male workers became the other side for today's left. The workers have no one to turn to who hasn't sold out to the owners and the owners' corporate interests to increase the owners' incomes since increasing the incomes of the already rich is the only core goal of today's Republican party that they can't abandon.

I am not suggesting that the left and the right are equally at fault for this problem. If anything, as the country has moved to the right, the left has become increasingly irrelevant in this argument. But if you have to choose, the left's position is much preferable to the right's. Especially now, considering the right's full embrace of the Trump version of know-nothing-ism and their abandonment of any pretense of compassion and consideration of human rights.

Facts;

• Generally, no one on the left supports illegal immigration.
• The Democrats don't support illegals to encourage them to vote in our elections.
• These are slanders out of the lies that conservatives tell each other to justify their beliefs to themselves.
• The traditional left of the 1970s and 1980s opposed the Republican efforts to weaken the anti-illegal immigration laws.
• As in most things you have to follow the money to see who benefited from illegal immigration and who was hurt by it.
• The Reagan amnesty bill of 1986, written ironically to solve the illegal immigration problem once and for all, included a massive loophole that allows employers to hire illegal immigrants without fear of the employers being arrested.
• The loophole in the bill relieved the employers of the responsibility of assuring that all of the people doing work for them were in this country legally.
• The employers only had to assure themselves and the government that their direct employees were legal.
• This opened up the possibility that the owners could have illegals work for their benefit by the simple expediency of subcontracting the illegals' work.
• The owners would contract the work from the illegals themselves.
• While the amnesty bill was advertised as clamping down and increasing penalties on the employers who hired illegals, these provisions mysteriously where dropped in the final bill leaving a net decrease in penalties for the employers and a huge loophole enabling any employer to hire all of the illegals that they want to hire.
• The Republicans only insisted that two provisions be included in the amnesty bill, this loophole and "hardening" the border.
• The Republicans justified the inclusion of this loophole in the Reagan amnesty bill as deregulation. Surprise.
• In 1986 there were approximately 3 to 4 million illegals in the the US, by the peak in 2007 it is estimated that there were 12 million illegals in the US.
• Predictably, hardening the borders had a disastrous impact by turning what had largely been a seasonal migration of farm workers into 12 million permanent resident illegals.
• The illegals could no longer count on easily crossing the border so many chose to try to stay in the US all year long.
• This meant that they had to find year round jobs.
• This meant that they no longer did work that native workers didn't want to do, but that they competed directly with native workers for their jobs.
• This meant that they wanted their families with them in the US.

Once again, this is not a problem of poor enforcement of laws because of cities reluctant to provide assistance. It is not a question of the rule of law or of obstruction of justice. It wasn't about human rights, at least before Trump. It is a problem of economics and the failure of both sides to recognize it as such. If you don't understand the problem it is tough to solve it. Especially in our hyper-partisan political arena today where anyone who disagrees with your side is assumed to have evil intentions.

That the illegal immigration damaged American workers can't be denied by anyone. The demand for lower wage workers is very high in the US because low wages mean higher profits and higher incomes for the shareholders. Immigration grows the economy because more people are earning and spending money. The economy is not a zero-sum game and it is driven by demand, not supply. But illegal immigration lowers wages not only for themselves but for everyone. The sweet spot for corporations and in turn for the politicians who depend on the corporations is exactly what we have right now, a large population of illegals who because they are illegal are willing to work for lower wages, who won't complain about the working conditions and will never agitate to bring in a union.

 

[Angry Floof]

And you live in a bootlicking delusion. Thanks for letting everyone know that you cannot ever be relied upon to solve any problems or do any good in the world whatsoever.

How is this supposed to be a reasonable response to what I said?

I think she was testing you to see if you'd get angry and declare how you are not a callous inhumane person, and maybe slander her as she routinely does to others, to display your passion. If you did try to defend against her slander, she would ignore it or pretend you are lying. If you responded to her with insults on the level she spews at you, she'd play victim and you'd get a "warning". As you didn't do either, I think she thinks you've made her point for her, and that you accept that you are a callous and inhumane person.

This is the "logic" of the illiberal. You don't care about anyone or anything, Loren, and you don't want to do any good for the world whatsoever, because you don't blindly march in lock step with her thought leaders, and because you instead noted there are flaws on both the right and left. Oh, and that also makes you, and not her, the authoritarian follower. How dare you??? You monster.

So, again, what do you get for having forfeited whatever humanity you may have once had before animal brain fear aggression ideology attracted you? Was it worth it? I still don't understand what the payoff is. What do you get for supporting, excusing, and ignoring cruelty and corruption? Whatever the nature of the reward, is it sustainable? Is it ongoing or something you hope to receive later, like Trump promises? Is it hormonal? Does the idea of traumatizing brown babies turn you on or something? I know there are people like that in the world. I just don't like thinking they would come to this community, but you never know.

But seriously, what do you get from forfeiting your conscience and humanity? It must be something.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

The arguments from both sides are unhinged on the question of illegal immigration.

Thanks for posting this view Don. It is often unheard. Yes, both parties abandoned the American worker and sold out to the "owners" as you call them, and that is a big reason why Trump won. He spoke to them while Hillary ignored them. He was full of lies, but he at least spoke to them.

And he wasn't wrong when he called for strong control over and transparency of immigration. A literal wall is stupid and impractical, but a figurative wall with tight control, transparency, and a big door (application process) is indeed key to "having a country" as he put it.

Immigrants, legal immigrants, are a boon to and not a drag on the economy, contrary to Republican talking points. You need to increase rather than decrease their inflow to keep your economy strong.

Undocumented (or illegal) immigrants are by definition underground, so can and frequently do come with problems, ranging from them being abused and enslaved or paid less than legal American workers would cost, to the guns, drugs and crime bogeymen Trump refered to in his infamous speech. The Republicans whip up racist sentiment to bolster this message, but while the Democrats tried to villify Trump as racist for that speech, it won votes for not just racist reasons. There was some weight behind it.

I would encourage a tightly controlled immigration system with far more resources to process applications and bring more people in. Both genuine refugees and economic migrants who pass the application process.

Confounding it all with race is wrongheaded. It should be purely about economics, and in the case of refugees, compassion. But both parties gain by pushing the race angle, so you can count on that remaining the focus.

 

[repoman]

Take a specific point in time for the example I am going to lay out. I am going to use 1980.

Take an infant child in 1980. Now run the actual scenario that played out regarding immigration and housing and traffic patterns and prices and employment and education and so on.


Next run a scenario where after 1980 there was a concerted understanding that immigration was to be strictly limited and the needs for more complex employment would be done with education of the citizens here.

Would the 1980 infant in 2005-2010 be in a position with lower costs and higher wages now be able to more easily start having the 2.1 kids to make up for the loss in immigration?

Is immigration putting financial, traffic jam, overcrowding pressure on the people who were already here to have less kids?

Some of the immigrants who come here are broke and that is actually more rich than the people born here who are in debt up to their eyeballs.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Okay, that bit of showing that mainstream parties are inconsistent and hypocritical out of the way, time to give your question a more serious answer. Pointing out mainstream hypocrisy is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel filled with nothing but fish.

It is true that the immigration law that Trump is trying to enforce is law that is already passed. His illegality is the means by which he intends to enforce currently existing law, given that the same congress that passed that law refuses to fund enforcement of that law. Congress controls the purse. It is interesting to me, because if they really did oppose the current law as written, they should actually try to come up with some other law to replace current law as written. It seems from my outside point of view that they want the current law but unenforced.

The non enforcement of immigration law is the actual law now.

Yes.

The immigration debate is a very complex and thorny issue, because over the years given the back and forth that both parties have engaged in the law is now an absolute mess. And yes, non-enforcement is the ideal among some.

It has gotten so bad that actually stating what the law currently is, without passing any moral judgement about the content of that law, can be considered partisan. Yet if you want to fix the law, doesn't it help to acknowledge what the law currently is? Now in order to fix it I would like actual rational thought-out suggestions. That's what I aspire to come up with as well. Some people give only appeals to emotion, and while I have emotion I don't rely just on emotion. That supposedly makes me heartless.

So I will say something very controversial. Fact - immigration law exists.

I can't wait to see how Floof calls me inhuman for daring to say immigration law exists.