the_2nd | Arizona's Immigration Mess

Arizona's Immigration Mess

...is a mess we all share. I'm pretty sure everyone on both sides of the aisle agree on this. And... that the government at all levels is getting it ass-backwards.

It's quite simple to say that if we were able to effectively control immigration and eliminate the illegal parts we'd restore jobs to people legally here. But that's not so. The jobs that illegals are filling are ones that lawful residents would never take, as a rule. When was the last time you heard of an illegal immigrant getting a white-collar job? I haven't.

This is a trap for illegals that is not only a severe breach of human rights, but bad for our economy as a whole. What happens when someone is brought into the country illegally is that all other laws suddenly no longer apply. Taxes aren't paid, working conditions are terrible, and if anyone ever gets the idea to rat ICE would be at their door, putting them in a prison system more cruel than the criminal one we have now (and giving Guantanamo Bay a run for its money), and ignominiously deporting them.

The root of the problem is the employers who do this to make a profit. They are skipping out on taxes and creating blights on our communities and give nothing in return for this - not even the benefits of a functional economy. Yes, what would happen if we eliminated illegal immigration would be the jobs would set up elsewhere. But these jobs are doing our economy no good, and if they were set up as imports we would be able to levy them appropriately, and not have the ill effects that come from having illegals in our country. These people result in burdens on our communal resources (use of roads and utilities, public health measures, etc.) without making any contribution, as well as not being able to more effectively contribute because they do not have access to things like education. They're trapped.

I believe that long prison sentences are in order for the people who intentionally harbor illegal immigrants for the purpose of cheap, inhumane labor. We also have to make a choice, and I'm neutral on this one because there's good arguments on both sides - we need to open our borders and allow people to come in legally, or we need to find a way to lock down. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Best blog entry I've read about it yet: http://odogoddess.dreamwidth.org/37539.html

Also- personally, I prefer the term "undocumented immigrants" rather than calling people illegal. A person cannot be illegal, by definition, but they can be undocumented. (Can you tell i was a philosophy major who worked her way through school in libraries?)

A person can be illegal -- they are not in this country legally. Their presence is illegal -- they're an "illegal alien".

You make a good point. Take away the incentives, and you change the game. A much more sensible, effective, and enforceable approach. Actually upholding the law as it exists. What a concept.

As for our borders... this country was built by immigrants and their descendants. Closing our borders would betray the founding spirit of the whole country. It would also hurt our international standing, quite possibly even our trade relationships. And, I think, hurt our culture, which is already too isolationist and jingoistic, a consequence of our international prominence, size (comparable to the whole of Europe), and few neighbors. We'd also be turning away good people. People who could add to the country. People who would benefit from the shelter of our borders. A closed system can only feed on itself. Besides, our borders are huge. How are we supposed to effectively close them down?

On the other hand, opening them wide would flood us. Possibly endanger us. We've already got more people than we can really take care of. Open borders would bring in not only everyone who tries to get over the wall or onto our shores, but everyone who was deterred by our defensive measures. And it would be a huge security risk.

As with most things, going to either extreme is a poor long-term choice. We need to let people in. In controlled numbers. With security in place. As ever... we won't find a perfect real-world system, but we can try to come up with something that works reasonably well. And try to improve it as we go.

ETA: Interesting bipartisan proposal from Chuck Schumer and Lindsay Graham. (At least, that was Graham's position a month ago. His position now is a little different... Politics. Gotta love it.)

Edited 2010-04-28 09:54 (UTC)

We live in a day and age where a small group of dedicated individuals, possibly not even very closely associated with any state or government, can commit acts that would destroy thousands of lives. It was one thing when nations could do this with nuclear weapons; at least this meant a government had to decide to do this, which is much harder than a bunch of nutjobs, whatever their reason.

Agreed, it seems like give us your tired, your poor, your hungry has gone by the wayside in ways that our founding fathers would find reprehensible. Even in the big immigration booms we were selective in who we took - focusing on issues of public health and ability to contribute to the economy. Nothing wrong with this, as I don't want people coming to live off our public services without being able to work.

As far as securing our borders goes, I think we're a lot more capable with the presence of technology than we ever were. The problem is really diplomatic - we've long held an open border with Canada, and we consider the trafficking of drugs and humans that comes in through it to be a comparatively small price to pay for such close relations. And even then, in my experience, it is far easier to get into Canada from the USA than vice versa. We could lock down the Mexican border if we really tried and were willing to put the resources into it. We have the survellience capabilities now, what with the vast reconnaissance means our military has. It would be a matter of being willing to get out of some of these wars that supposedly protect us but really drain our pockets, and putting people on the border (not necessarily military, but some stripe of law enforcement) that can respond quickly and decisively to border runners.

A nation that cannot control its borders is not sovereign.

Largely agree. As I said, I think the moderate course is the right one. Let people in, but in a controlled manner. And checking to make sure we don't throw the doors open to that small group of zealots.

But the difference between Mexico and Canada isn't so much diplomatic as economic. Canada can afford to take care of its own - and does so at least as well as we do. Mexico isn't so fortunate. So there are more desperate people, and more incentive for them to try to cross the border illegally.

That said, we did recently tighten our border security to the north, as well, over fears that Canada's more relaxed security could make it easier for extremists traveling through there to get to us.

But yes, I have to agree that we could be using our defense budget much more effectively. Starting, as you say, with the needless wars which have only served to stretch our military thin while simultaneously stirring up the anger that drives our enemies. Finding a way to safely withdraw would save us much, and not just economically.

But I'm still not sure that would allow us to really effectively guard nearly 2000 miles of borderland (never mind our full perimeter, which is closer to 10k).

For all of the liberal complaining (and I'm among the complainers!) about health care reform, we could have a fully state-funded health care system for less than the cost of fighting one of the major wars. Whether or not we should, and to what degree, is an entirely other debate, but the money would be there.

Believe me, I'm aware of the security that requires me to use a passport or some other form of authenticated documentation to get in and out of the US/Canadian border crossings. It's actually more of an annoyance than anything else, and I don't think it works so well. Especially because the border crossing in northern NY has a gaping hole in the form of a cross-border Indian reservation where the members of the tribe hold dual citizenship. Water always flows where it can get through, they say.

If we can stigmatize hiring illegal aliens with harsh sanctions for doing so, we've solved a lot of the problem right there. Having police be immigration authorities isn't the way to do this - especially because they have not been trained in this regard and thus assuredly will mess it up, badly, and repeatedly. If someone wants to get in, they can, but if we can make it so they really can't do much while here, their presence will reveal itself fairly quickly, and they can be dealt with accordingly.

Agreed with

zorkian. This is a case of softening language to a point where it is no longer useful. The person is not illegal (as in their right to exist), but their presence in the country is. I think it should be readily possible to make their status legal in the country, especially in cases of de facto refugees and those who did not demonstrate some sort of criminal culpability in their entry (such as actually being the traffickers).

And yet, for 7 years, the costs of those wars were paid by "emergency" appropriations, just so they wouldn't appear on the regular budget. *shakes head*

Thanks for the info about the Canadian border. I haven't been up that way in years. The reservation is a fascinating tidbit.

But yes... take away the incentive, and you've solved most of the problem. As you said in the OP, better enforcement would go a long way. The Graham/Shumer proposal also looked like it made that a priority.

And yes... it shouldn't be up to local police. Especially not in a way that basically mandates profiling (and leaves cops vulnerable to lawsuits if they don't). Also, in order to tiptoe around the Fourth Amendment, the AZ law stipulates that anyone claiming to be a US citizen can simply decline to show ID when the cop asks. So you've got this huge enforcement cost, vulnerability to lawsuits, and no effective means of enforcement. Brilliant!

I believe in the moderate approach as well, if an immigrant can contribute in some meaningful way to society, or is associated with someone who can (it would really suck if they had to leave their S.O.'s behind) I think they should be allowed to stay, and if they got here by illegal means, but that was the ONLY law they broke (besides not paying taxes, etc. which they couldn't do anyway) they should be offered a not to difficult path to citizenship or at least some form of legal permission to stay in the country.

Open the borders willy-nilly would be a disaster, our security measures are woefully bad as it is, I can only imagine worse! However, closing them would mean that there would be large number of jobs that would go unfilled, or they would move outside our borders. As for the companies that employ illegals knowingly and to exploit, they should be punished, as well as everyone in the company that had knowledge of the act and didn't report it to the proper authority.

They also need to severely clean up the act of the Immigration Service, cause from everything I have heard from people, the internet, and my friends that belong to the suspicious-group-of-the-month club its an atrocious mess. When my born in the United States to US Citizens and Navy veteran parents gets deported to Mexico for looking too "Hispanic" whatever that means (her father is from Mexico) you know it's bad.

In summary, I feel we would be best served by cleaning up the existing system and adding as little new legislation as possible to fix whatever injustice and errors remain.

Also, and to cover the AZ law in detail:

Who Thought This Atrocious Crap Was A Good Idea?

Even if I thought that randomly deporting anyone illegal was a good idea, leaving it up to beat cops and a random ID check is the height of ill-informed stupidity. I mean really!?

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Arizona's Immigration Mess

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