Comments on: Some Economic Thoughts on the Border Wars

By: cris

cris — Sat, 07 May 2005 21:42:47 +0000

Uh, we're talking about "illegal" workers, right?
There are laws in place, which simply are not enforced. Let's enforce the law, and see what things look like then.

By: Attila Girl

Attila Girl — Sat, 07 May 2005 08:40:27 +0000

I'm afraid that all the anti-illegal-immigration people start to sound alike at some point: "an' another thing; an' another thing, an' another thing." The most reasonable part of the argument (the security issue) appears buried in a mound of nonsense. They never sound like they're really trying to persuade anyone who doesn't already believe what they believe. And there is--I'm sorry--a really icky undertone to the whole thing. One always hears a certain percentage of people calling in to these radio talk shows on the subject who just hate Mexicans. And I've never heard the hosts rein the racists in, either. I like McIntyre on a lot of issues, but on immigration he just sounds insane to me.

By: Kent

Kent — Fri, 06 May 2005 17:34:21 +0000

I can see limiting border crossings for national security purposes, but the economic arguments are almost always based on sloppy reasoning.

Right. The trick is figuring out how to separate the two. So long as advocates of border control for national security are confounded in the public mind with nativists, this will be very difficult. It would help if there was a long tradition of honesty in public debate, and particularly of avoiding straw men and other dishonest restatements of the other guy's position. Maybe on some other planet.