Presented without all the insipidly catchy political buzzwords used by both sides of the spectrum, the idea that a human being living in one place on Earth needs the express, written permission of another human being to relocate - regardless of whether this means a few blocks or to another continent, - if he is able to sustain his own existance in the new location, seems like the absolute worst brand of tyranny imaginable to most people. But, interestingly enough, the issue of immigration control both in the US and in Europe tends to span party lines, and even some of the most blatantly anti-government people I have come across personally seem to believe that on this issue, the government is doing too little rather than too much. The arguments in favor of immigration control presented by every type of supporter and from every perspective, although very different in their reasoning and backing, tend to fall into two basic categories.
The first category are concerns associated with simple, ignorance-induced hysteria. Arguments that fall into this category claim uncontrolled borders leave the door open to terrorists, criminals and foreign spies, that immigrants suck up government benefits intended for tax-paying citizens, or even cultural arguments that immigrants do not "assimilate" and end up subverting the culture of their destination country. While the concerns voiced by these arguments are very serious, science has proven time and time again that neither lack of immigration control or failure of immigration control is correlated with any of these problems, nor has it ever been, anywhere.
The second category of arguments in favor of controlling immigration is made up of more scientific, usually far less hysterical concerns that really do correlate with immigration, although the legal status of it tends to have little correlation with them in either direction. The arguments in this category would include questions with no easy answers related to immigration, such as laws regarding labor law enforcement, taxation and electoral representation that are fair to both them and native-born residents, and a variety of other intricate legal details that are very difficult to apply to undocumented residents and pose potential threats to both them and the country they are coming into. It is rare to hear these arguments in the media or any type of public discourse, because as we have discussed numerous times, they fall under scientific questions rather than ideological hysteria, and the former does not have nearly the entertainment potential of the latter. However, the general trend with these seems to be that, while they are real concerns, their existance has been brought about by decades of excessive regulation, particularly the 20th century obsession of western governments with documentation. They are a clear case of what libertarians like to call the government breaking the citizens' legs, and then giving them a crutch and saying that without it, they couldn't walk.
To address the hysteria category, all that is necessary is to cite a few facts that dispel the catchy but ridiculous myths many Americans accept on faith without ever considering checking the source for themselves.
Myth 1 - "DANGEROUS ILLEGALS"
It is not difficult to instill hysteria in people by pointing out that unsecured borders allow terrorists to get into the country undetected, along with the older breed of hostile foreigners called spies or saboteurs. And of course, generic brand violent criminals - rapists, murderers, robbers, etc. - can cross the border with the same ease. However, inconvenient facts demonstrate that Americans should not lie awake at night worrying about this "potential risk" concern:
- No known act of international terrorism or war on US soil to date has been committed by an immigrant who illegally crossed a US border, EVER. A relative few Islamists who have committed acts of terrorism on US soil in the last 2 decades had overstayed their visas; 4 out of the 19 9/11 high-jackers fell into this category, the rest of them were LEGALLY in the US on a variety of visas intended for students or tourists. However, one more time, EVERY ONE of them entered the country legally.
- There are equally no documented cases of sabotage by an illegal immigrant, not even a visa overstayer. Espionage is a reality in every country, but it is a direct action of a foreign government, one that often does not want to appear hostile. It is absurd to think such governments do not have the resources to circumvent immigration laws to place their spies, and the majority of espionage worldwide is committed by those legally in the country. In any case, the issue of espionage rarely comes up in this debate anymore, and it is not qualified as either an act of terror or war.
- Non-political criminals are, of course, a problem; but if someone is going to attempt to rob or murder me, I really fail to see how their legal presence in this country will make my experience any more pleasant. Furthermore, there is no data that indicates immigrants, legal or illegal, have any greater potential to commit violent crimes. Statistically speaking, there are as many violent criminals among them as there are among legal residents of the US. We already HAVE laws that forbid violent crime, and the way law enforcement tracks a documented resident with no prior criminal history is hardly different from the undocumented - they don't have databases handy of the photographs, fingerprints, and other biometrics of every person living in the USA, and must rely on forensic investigation to find these people. If an illegal has a criminal history in the US, the prior information is avaialble just as it would be on a legal resident. If the government didn't waste its limited resources trying to establish potential criminal algorithms and actually used them to enforce laws, it might have a better success rate.
- This lack of a case for open borders being dangerous has one final irrefutable fact to support it. The first policies to introduce any sort of government-enforced immigration control occurred in this country in the late 1800s, a full 100 years after its inception. Until that point, literally anyone could cross any US border without the requirement of any sort of identification or anyone's permission, even citizens of foreign regimes the US was at war with. The greatest example of this is the open US-Mexico border during the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, during which 10,000s of Mexicans fled into the supposedly hostile and unwelcoming United States to escape the tyranny and economic incompetence of the government of Antonio de Santa Ana. The period between the final decades of the 19th century and the Cold War era saw quotas on certain ethnicities such as the Chinese and Japanese Exclusion Acts, and then the Alien and Sedition Acts which introduced the first general background and health examinations. However, these policies were still not aimed at anyone specific, and until the ethnic quotas were met, the only real barrier to admittance would be carrying an infectious disease, as is obvious from readily available statistics from Ellis and Angel Islands. Despite this, we have seen an exponential INCREASE in political crimes since the closing of our borders, and every one of them committed by someone who entered the country legally. The system is NOT working.
Myth 2 - ILLEGALS AND THE WELFARE STATE
It is amusing in a spooky way to see people widely revered as hardcore conservatives or republicans, including media pundits and politicians, attempt to make illegal immigrants the scapegoat for the failure of the welfare state. Fiscal conservatism or free market advocacy, which these people like to advertise themselves as in favor of, is by its nature fervently opposed to government participation in the economy. This means opposition to every kind of socialized service - health care, social security, public transportation, public housing, etc. - and every kind of corporate welfare and corporate bailout, like megabanks that drive themselves into bankruptcy and drag the entire country down with them. If you are not opposed to these things, you have no business calling yourself a fiscal or free market conservative, regardless of what political party you belong to. I, being a real advocate of free markets and the government staying out of the economy, agree completely that the welfare state is a colossal failure, but let's examine the facts that show blaming illegal immigration for this is the equivalent of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
- Most illegal immigrants DO PAY TAXES. Employers in the United States are only required to verify status by seeing one of a number of federal documents and copying the information - no federal law exists that requires verifying these documents as legitimate or current. The most common document that qualifies is a Social Security Card, and a huge black market for such counterfeit documents exists for this purpose. THIS - not hanging out in front of a home-improvement store looking for day labor - is the modicum by which the majority of illegals in the US are employed. Once a migrant fills out a W4 form and submits a counterfeit SS card, they have income taxes witheld like any other employee in the US. Furthermore, most of these people have many dependents and lead fairly modest lives, which would qualify them for a variety of tax credits and returns, but they do not dare file a tax return in April to claim these because that is an almost surefire way to be identified and deported. Income tax also includes the collection of social security, medicare, and a variety of other witholdings that, unless these people somehow become documented by the time they might qualify - they will never see a penny of the benefits of. And that is only income tax - there are also property taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, death taxes, estate taxes, transportation taxes, I could go on but I believe you get the point.
- Having paid more than their share in taxes by the mechanism described above, it becomes absurd that not being documented makes these people an extra cost on social services such as public education, health care, and so forth. However, some studies legitimately point out that they are more prone to the use of such services, the most common example being the higher proportion of illegals that end up in emergency rooms due to untreated routine conditions. Just as documented residents, they end up in this position because they have no health insurance and don't seek medical care until they are on the verge of dying, at which point the government picks up the hospital tab when they go to the ER. However, health insurance politics being a separate issue, it is important to point out that illegals' proneness to this situation is created by the government. Namely, employers may not care about legal presence, but health insurance and a variety of other privately rendered services can be very difficult to obtain for undocumented migrants even if they are willing to pay for them. This is due in no small part to the over-regulation of these service industries which is openly advertised as a "barrier" to illegal immigration, a "barrier" that only ensures tax payers pick up the tab for things these people could afford on their own.
- It is also worthwhile to note that one does not HAVE to be undocumented to be paid under the table, or to have no health insurance and end up in the ER for which the tax payers end up paying, or to have children in school who don't take advantage of the resources spent on them when their parents haven't worked a day in their lives to pay the taxes that support this.
I have already addressed the failure of the welfare state in my rant on collective responsibility, and the economic argument that cites it in favor of closed borders is nothing more than an excess of this failure. This is further supported by the fact that the blanket closing of US borders and requirement of entry visas and documentation began in the US only as recently as the 1960s - non-coincidentally at the same time JFK introduced the Great Society, an abysmal welfare state package that immediately required closed border policies to exclude immigrant free-loaders, at least on paper. Documented or not, welfare state policies may be intended to help the needy, but in reality end up rewarding free-loaders. That which is rewarded multiplies, and free-loaders can be long-time residents, or they can be attracted from elsewhere - not only other countries but other STATES within the US with less social welfare. At the end of the day, I don't want my taxes wasted on supporting anyone that could support themselves, their legal status in the country does not make this any cheaper for me. A true fiscal conservative has no problem with undocumented immigration, because an economic system that does not support free-loaders will attract only those that are able to support themselves, and such people are not a drain on the economy or taxes.
Myth 3 - NON-ASSIMILATION
It is clear that immigrants, legal and not, often come into this country speaking foreign languages and very little English, have a variety of cultural and religious customs that are not widely practiced in the US, and may in some cases maintain some relationship with the country from whence they came. While these are no doubt realities of immigration everywhere in the world, history proves that the fears associated with them are absurd.
- Cultural non-assimilation has been a harped-upon theme of anti-immigration lobbies for the entire 200+ years this country has existed - non-anglos in the early 1800s, non-protestant Western Europeans in the bulk of the 19th century, non-Christians in the late 19th and early 20th (Eastern European Jews, Chinese, Japanese), South Americans and other East Asians through the bulk of the 20th century, and Middle Easterners and Muslims nowadays, although the previous group is still heavily on the list. The hysteria is always the same - that soon we won't speak English, that soon we won't be able to find the traditional food and other cultural epithets that we like, that soon the religious values of these people will outweigh the ones that dominate the US and reflect in politics. Yet after 200+ years of more immigration than has probably occurred in the rest of the world in its entire history combined; we still speak English, Protestant Christianity is still the most common religion in the US and our politics reflect it far more than any other cultural value, and cultural epithets have graciously accomodated new additions without forgetting what was there previously. Moreover, with every new wave of immigration, the 2nd or 3rd generation descendents of the previous wave tend to become naturally accepted Americans - and why shouldn't they? They don't speak a word of the language of their origin country, they've never been to it, they are no more familiar with its customs than the average American, even the religious practices they may subscribe to, while sharing a name, are fundamentally different from the ones there. The bottom line is, assimilation is a 2-way street, and immigrants tend to absorb the culture they immigrate into far more than they infuse theirs into it, but to the extent that the latter happens, I fail to see any kind of threat. What is more American than a pepperoni pizza (Italy), a hamburger (Germany), FRENCH fries, Taco Bell, and Anime?
- Political non-assimilation, as in the concept of retained relationship to wherever they came from, is also nothing new, despite popular belief. The argument I hear all too often is that immigrants 100 years ago left everything behind and came to this country with nothing but the clothes on their backs - escaping tyranny and committed to learning English and working hard to earn a living, whereas modern immigrants come here to leech off the welfare state, send the money they earn back to their families in their home countries, and parade their foreign flags with pride. With the exception of welfare state leeching which was not possible 100 years ago and which has nothing to do with immigration, as we have already discussed, these supposed disparities are simply the omission of inconvenient facts that do not support the theory. Modern immigrants still come to the US to escape the conditions in their own countries, which may not necessarily amount to tyranny, but often constitute economic failure and lack of opportunity. When they immigrate in this way, they retain their cultural identity, are active in their immigrant communities, and continue to attempt to participate in the events of their countries of origin. They do this because they have loved ones and other vested interests in those countries still threatened by the criminal and inept governments they came here to escape - it hardly constitutes loyalty to said governments, particularly governments openly hostile to the US such as those of Iran and Cuba, refugees from which within the US tend to most radically support the deposition of. Even waving the flag of their country of origin - common among Mexican immigrants and cited as non-assimilation - is often a celebration of vested interest in that culture rather than a loyalty to its government. I have yet to meet a Mexican person on either side of the border who was FOND of the Mexican government. Immigrants from 100 years ago shared all of these tendencies - attempting to help their loved ones back home any way they could and actively advocating opposition to the mind-numbing ineptitude of the monarchies they ran from, and often displaying their commitment to the liberation of their origin countries from these despots with what Americans mistook for foreign patriotism. Political criminals, terrorists, and saboteurs fall under the category of dangerous illegals rather than a cultural non-assimilation threat, and with that exception, the threat has little credibility.
Even for those not convinced by my arguments that the only problems with illegal immigration are caused by excessive government intervention, the scientific fact remains that immigration control is not any kind of achievable reality. Not every country has an issue with people wanting to get in illegally, but the handful that do experience this have yet to find any effective means of keeping the migrants out. This is true in southern Europe with decades of failed attempts to curb crossings from northern Africa and the Middle East, and even in places most Americans don't often think are attractive to illegal migrants like Mexico or Russia. Russia is a political and economic disaster, but nevertheless more stable and safer than many of its former Soviet compatriots, particularly in Central Asia, making it attractive to many people fleeing from those countries. Mexico does not only have an issue with being a way point on the road to the US, but is a final destination of many illegal immigrants from its own neighbors to the south, the economic conditions in their own countries compared to Mexico's being roughly the same as Mexico's compared to the US. Despite how tiny Mexico's southern border is compared to its border with the US, and despite both these countries' governments' longstanding and blatant disregard for accountability and human rights, illegal migrants continue to pour in by the truckload.
Accepting this reality brings me to the discussion of the more serious issues concerning immigration, those not often addressed in the media, which have little to do with hysteria and more to do with the very real problems created by immigration's relationship with the status quo.
I have already addressed the problem of the welfare state attracting free-loaders rather than those willing to contribute to the economy, and I have discussed at length the impossibility of excluding anyone from the welfare state in a previous post, so with these two realities, the curbing of the welfare state simply has one more argument in favor of it. The relationship with the welfare state, however, is an extension of a greater problem with over-regulation's combustible interaction with immigration. The most prominent contributor to illegal immigration from Mexico, for example, is one hardly any American thinks of, and it is the policy of farm subsidies. The federal government heavily subsidizes large agricultural producers in the US and has done so since the 1930s, a policy introduced by FDR during the Great Depression as an incentive to grow LESS food so that it may be sold at a profit. I may address this policy in greater detail in a later post, but suffice it to say it significantly reduces the production costs of food in the United States. The 1990s saw the introduction of NAFTA, which allows imports and exports to cross the US-Mexican border without any kind of tariffs. Mexico's economy would make its domestically grown food far cheaper than food imported from the US, but the subsidies (at the expense of US taxpayers, mind you) allow US agricultural corporations to sell their products in Mexico at such low prices that the domestic industry simply cannot compete. As a result, many of Mexico's farmers abandon their farms and migrate - often illegally - into the US, where they sell their formidable skills to the same agricultural corporations on this side of the border, usually semi-documented with counterfeit papers. Furthermore, what makes these migrants so attractive to US employers, including but not limited to agriculture, is their cheap labor. Labor costs do not only amount of wages, although migrants do often perform the same work at a sub-market wage; but also benefits and most importantly indemnity for injuries, a harsh reality in many of these industries in which these migrants are employed. When a migrant is injured or killed on the job, even though legally he or his family are entitled to indemnities, legal procedings carry a very high potential risk of deportation. Similarly, illegals are far more likely to keep their heads down in terms of collective bargaining for the same reasons, making them far less likely to unionize, demand pay raises or benefits, or collectively stand up to unexpected lay-offs and unfulfilled employer promises. This is the origin of the 'job-stealing illegal' stereotype, as well as the 'abused illegal' stereotype that many liberals cite as a drawback of NAFTA and in support of amnesty. However, it is important to look at the realities of this situation rather than listen to loud and incoherent ideological banter from either side of the political spectrum.
- Illegals' cheap labor does take away jobs that documented residents could otherwise hold, but hiring documented residents to do the same jobs would exponentiate labor costs, raising the prices of whatever they may be producing.
- The availability of illegals in such great numbers, which drives down labor costs to the same extent as their illegal status, is attributable to economic policies almost a century old that no one knows about, and that only a very small special interest - agricultural corporations - benefits from.
- The cheap labor costs of illegals owe far less to their willingness to work for lower wages and far more to the ridiculousness of US labor laws, many of these put in place through the advocacy of the same elements that whine non-stop about abuse of illegal laborers. Minimum wage laws, for example, effectively do not allow documented residents to take a job at a sub-minimum wage - this presents a far greater risk for the employer than hiring an illegal - so naturally this places illegals ahead of the competition. Similarly, indemnity laws as well as unemployment, disability, and other costs employers are forced to pay, as well the tyranny of unions, makes hiring legal workers ever more costly.
What becomes evident is that the situation is a clusterfuck of big government policies colossally divorced from reality that have been heaped upon each other for 8 decades. As has always been the central theme of this blog, it is also evident that it is impossible to force anyone to part with their profits or voluntarily accept higher costs when other alternatives are available, and that the government resources required to enforce laws intended to accomplish this tend to exceed the savings the laws hoped to create. The answer, then, seems to be not to succumb to the fallacy that a colossally inept bureaucracy is more fit to determine what is fair and apropriate than the millenia-tested system of the free market. End farm subsidies so that mega-corporations have to pay their own production costs, repeal insane labor laws that make your own laborers unprofitable for your businesses to hire and let them bargain with each other for what is a fair market wage and benefits package, and eliminate the requirement of "right to work" in this country so that no matter where a laborer comes from, he is subject to the same reasonable protections as a domestic laborer - reducing both his proneness for abuse and capacity for unfair labor competition. The government thinking it can beat the principle of natural selection manifested in the free market always ends the same way in every historical example - natural selection "beating" back the country that does not hold said government accountable for its ineptitude.
The final issue to be addressed is the issue of citizenship and electoral representation. The United States Constitution says NOTHING about immigration or border control. The reason for this is simple - the idea of border patrol or closed borders would have been as alien to the Founding Fathers as ideas like socialized or even regulated health care and federal income taxes (yes, I just said that). The lack of implication is simply a result of lack of precedent - the concept did not occur to them. However, the Constitution also originally only gave the right to vote to white, land-owning males, and seeing as every adult citizen is now enfranchised, the idea of open borders and abolition of documentation raises a very real question of when migrants become eligible for citizenship or voting. It would be absurd to allow anyone present in the country at the time of an election to vote - a potential empowerment for foreign interests to flood the country with electoral saboteurs through open borders. However, it would seem the various amnesty programs introduced through the last half century have already created a logical precedent for how this could be done. Simply put, just as citizenship currently requires a mandatory time period of legal residency, it could require proof of a mandatory time period of residency and employment. As already discussed, the ideas of dangerous foreigners and cultural take-over associated with this are simply absurd, and the welfare state would need to be scaled back along with a number of other unrealistic laws before it can be implemented.
The bottom line of this argument is the irrefutable historical fact that people move toward economic opportunity in a free market system, whether that economic opportunity is created by a lack of tyranny or the availability of resources. These movements have a tendency to be accompanied by bouts of hysteria of the already present population, but no examples exist of laws that attempt to interfere with it succeeding at stopping it or even effectively curbing it. Their typical accomplishment is a colossal waste of resources that benefits a tiny special interest and a general reduction in standard of living for both the residents and the migrants. The government makes a piss-poor judge of who belongs where, and has an abysmal track record of enforcing its own decisions in this respect - do yourself a favor and fire it from this responsibility once and for all.
