The Self-Made Nature of the US’ Immigration Problem
Unfortunately, our immigration debate is just plain dumb.
Ezra Klein asks a question for which the answer is: quite dumb indeed. The question, if you haven’t already guessed it, is: How Dumb Is Immigration Debate?
The piece is based on work by Doug Massey, a Princeton sociologist who studies immigration, and starts with a broad brushstroke look at the eras of US immigration policy dating back over a century. The kicker, and the inspiration for the need to determine levels of dumbness, starts with the 1980s:
Border apprehensions rose to 1.7 million in 1986 from 55,000 in 1965. But even as millions of Mexicans entered the U.S. illegally, millions also returned. About 85 percent of new entries were offset by departures. Consequently, the growth of the undocumented population was slow.
After passage of a comprehensive immigration law in 1986, the U.S. began militarizing the border with Mexico even as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, later, the North American Free Trade Agreement strengthened economic ties with Mexico. From 1986 to 2000, trade with Mexico increased eightfold.
[…]
According to Massey, the rise of America’s large undocumented population is a direct result of the militarization of the border. While undocumented workers once traveled back and forth from Mexico with relative ease, after the border was garrisoned, immigrants from Mexico crossed the border and stayed.
“Migrants quite rationally responded to the increased costs and risks by minimizing the number of times they crossed the border,” Massey wrote in his 2007 paper “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis.'” “But they achieved this goal not by remaining in Mexico and abandoning their intention to migrate to the U.S., but by hunkering down and staying once they had run the gauntlet at the border and made it to their final destination.”
The data support Massey’s thesis: In 1980, 46 percent of undocumented Mexican migrants returned to Mexico within 12 months. By 2007, that was down to 7 percent. As a result, the permanent undocumented population exploded.
Emphasis mine.
One of the interesting observations one could make about this hypothesis is that the increase in undocumented persons in the US was not driven by “amnesty” in 1986 as much as it was driven by increased enforcement policy.
This is an incomplete picture, to be sure. It is also worth noting that the 1980s was a “Lost Decade” for Latin America and Mexico led the way in helping to lose it. As such, it is hardly a shock that a lot of poor Mexicans came to the US looking for work at the time. And, of course, the 1990s marked not only an economic boom time in the US, hence attracting Mexican labor for a variety of reasons, but it was also, as noted above, a time of substantial economic integration between Mexico and United States.
In terms of economic integration, Massey’s paper has a useful graph showing the significant increase in economic integration between the two country in that last decade and a half of the 20th century:
As Massey notes “Naturally, these movements of goods and services are accompanied with movements of people, as people are what make markets work” (311). He also notes in the text that in addition to the exchanges noted in the graph, tourism increased 5.7 times and the number of Mexican exchange students increased by a factor of 2.5.
Klein goes on to note:
The militarization also had another unintended consequence: It dispersed the undocumented population. Prior to 1986, about 85 percent of Mexicans who entered the U.S. settled in California, Texas or Illinois, and more than two-thirds entered through either the San Diego-Tijuana entry point or the El Paso-Juarez entry point. As the U.S. blockaded those areas, undocumented migrants found new ways in — and new places to settle. By 2002, two-thirds of undocumented migrants were entering at a non-San Diego/El Paso entry point and settling in a “nontraditional” state.
I will say that I think that dispersal of migrants is also attributable to increasing demands for labor in agriculture across the country (such as working in poultry in Alabama or in labor-intensive crop-picking jobs across the southeast). However, the hypothesis makes sense: if one cannot return home without risking trouble with la migra, then it is best to look stay put (not to mention to get away from places where border enforcement is being intensely focused).
Beyond the issue of dispersal, the point above also points to the “balloon effect” (which is usually used in discussion of drug policy, but fits here as well): when you squeeze a balloon, the air just bulges out elsewhere. So in this instance the US government applied great pressure to key points of entry, but all that did was disperse the inflow and make the issue all the more complicated.
Of course, all of this underscores the truly simplistic, if not absurd, nature of much of the immigration debate. Instead of looking at complex social and economic forces, the debate often gets reduced to almost infantile assertions about “sealing the border” or “amnesty!”
Klein gets to the heart of the matter:
In recent years, the net inflow of new undocumented immigrants arriving from Mexico has fallen to zero. Some of the decline is due to the U.S. recession and a falloff in construction, which employed a lot of migrant workers. But some is due to an improving economy in Mexico, where unemployment is 5 percent and wages have been rising. “I personally think the huge boom in Mexican immigration is over,” Massey said.
Yet the political debate over immigration is stuck in 1985. Congress is focused above all on how to further militarize an already militarized border — despite the fact that doubling the size of the border patrol since 2004 and installing hundreds of miles of barriers and surveillance equipment appears to have been counterproductive. At any rate, the flow of unauthorized immigration has slowed dramatically. “Listening to the Republicans, you’d think waves of people are crossing the border,” Massey said. “But illegal migration stopped four years ago and has been zero since.”
Two thoughts:
1. If one leaps to the conclusion that border security is what led to the net decrease in immigrants, then one needs to stop and do the math: four years ago the Great Recession was hitting, and hitting hard. Unemployment was huge and construction practically halted. Migrants workers cannot come to get jobs that do not exist. This situation underscores that the main driver of this entire discussion is economics, not security policy.
2. Even if one rejects my point in #1 and one thinks that “see, security is the sine qua non of this conversation” then one has to admit that talk of “sealing the border” or other security-linked preconditions to immigration reform simply aren’t necessary (given the data) and we should be able to move off that square to talking about the main issues that need addressing.
Klein correctly concludes:
In light of these facts, the debate is backward. Republicans in the House of Representatives are focused on further militarizing the border against the people who are no longer crossing it; at the same time, they are loath to do anything about the millions of real undocumented immigrants who are the legacy of the last buildup. At best, we can hope to waste tens of billions of dollars on further enforcement in return for a lengthy and complicated path to citizenship. At worst, we’ll do nothing — in which case this will be known as the era of wasted opportunity.
Indeed.
This is all an illustration of the poor quality of political debate over very real issues.
BTW, for those who have access to JSTOR or like databases, the citation for Massey’s article is as follows:
Massey, Douglas S. 2007. “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis’.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151,3: 309-327.
These days America is all about squandering opportunities. We are definitely not interested in honest political discussions about anything. it’s all a zero-sum game, and hybrid/compromise solutions to important problems are viewed as weakness, and are seen by many as the reason why we have a problem in the first place.
By the way, the current compromise immigration bill is, to me, a rather punitive bill – 13 years as a path to citizenship? I’m surprised that the Senate working group didn’t write in a clause mandating indentured labor or share-cropping too – maybe Senate Republicans couldn’t get enough support for that? Also, the Republican Maginot Line proposal that would squander billions on fencing and border patrol is preposterous.
Well, now that we know what the facts are I’m sure the whole debate will turn in a new direction, with both parties working together to fashion a minimalist solution that directly addresses the issue.
@michael reynolds:
Damn, it’s so obvious – why didn’t I see that?
I agree that border security as the sine qua non of immigration reform is foolishness or, at the very least, fighting the last war. However, consider Massey’s findings more closely. If our immigration laws are causing migrant workers who otherwise would be returning home to remain, it doesn’t exactly support a “pathway to citizenship” as the sine qua non of immigration reform, either.
What I think it really supports is that what we need is a clearly considered guest worker policy.
@michael reynolds: That’s just a bit less likely than Sofia Vergara showing up at my front door and offering herself to me as a sex slave while my wife nods in approval.
“Listening to the Republicans, you’d think waves of people are crossing the border, but illegal migration stopped four years ago and has been zero since.”
————————————-
But how to spin that to justify that 30 Billion to militarize the border? Can´t wait to hear it…
@Dave Schuler: I don’t disagree. By the same token, however, I am not so sure that the pro-immigration reform side is driven by citizenship in equal measures to the way that the anti-reform side is driven by security.
Heck, as noted above, it isn’t as if the reform version of the pathway to citizenship is especially generous.
And yes: some sort of work visa program is needed, but we seem to be unwilling to directly debate the economic forces in play.
@Steven L. Taylor: and by we, you mean the republicans, right. In a functional government, we would be looking at establishing a comprehensive work visa program for those individuals who don’t want to stay and a path to citizenship or those that do want to stay, especially for those children and young adults who were brought by their parents. However, that would require both sides to work together to fix the problem, and while we got some of that in the Senate, it was laden down with border security stuff that not only doesn’t work, it makes the problem worse. And the House? Good freaking luck in getting that body to do something that makes sense.
@David in KC: On one level, the “we” is all of us, as the general quality of debate on this topic for decades has been overly-simplistic.
But, yes, as noted in some of the quotes in my post, the Republicans deserve an high level of blame for the lack of quality of debate on this topic, especially in the last decade.
@Steven L. Taylor: I agree that everyone shares a certain level of responsibility regarding the level of discourse, however, when one side only advocates things that do not work and will not even entertain the idea of real solutions until the border is “secure,” it’s tough for the other side to discuss the issues rationally. Discussions require two rationale parties, we don’t have that anymore.
@David in KC: I don’t disagree, And, again, the GOP holds more of the responsibility for for the state of the current debate.
However, if I write the post to be “the GOP stinks on immigration” then we end up all agreeing and/or just piling on to the partisan point, rather than talking about immigration policy.
To be fair, the main opponents of Visas for guest workers are the unions. Not that the idea is popular among the Michelle Malkin crowd. On the other hand, I don´t like the H-1B visas. Visas should be provided without any link to employers.
The sad thing is even if the GOP leadership agrees to work with Democrats to try to find solutions the base of the party- lead by RW media such as talk-radio and FOX- would openly rebel and allow absolutely no compromises. The fear and hysteria has been preached for so long it’s now impossible to get anything done, to contemplate any type of bi-partisan effort.
It’s how a self-made problem becomes one with no solution.
It begs the question: how many illegal immigrants are actually in our United States?
http://bit.ly/18jKLsA
E-VERIFY FIRST E-VERIFY NOW http://bit.ly/15q9Axg
NOT a net zero
through May, FY2013
Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector Apprehensions (Source: DHS/CBP)
In the first quarter of FY2013, 57.4% of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector apprehensions, were OTM’s, versus a border 32% OTM apprehension average …
Oct. through May RGV apprehensions +55% 94,305 http://nyti.ms/10pktld
FY2011 59,243
FY2012 97,762 +65%
FY2013 projected 151,531 +55%
Border Patrol Apprehensions (Source: DHS/CBP)
FY2011 340,252
FY2012 364,768 +7.2%
FY2013 projected 415,678 +14.0%
adding a link to the above:
a page on some of the issues http://forumsforjustice.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4012&postcount=25
Ekra Klein would have a lot more credibility if he would just admit that the point of comprehensive immigration reform is to change the political landscape of the U.S. Klein is smart enough to know that comprehensive immigration will turn the U.S. into a one party state, will allow the size and power of the federal government to grow, will create more supporters for entitlements like single payer healthcare, guaranteed incomes, and more public sector jobs.
The question for Mr. Klein is what is the maximum percent of the population of the U.S. that can fill the patron class that will be created by the open borders and unlimited immigration that he supports.
@Dave Schuler:
Maybe a better solution is real employer enforcement that will truely eliminated the economic niche for illegal aliens. If businesses that employed illegal aliens were regulated out of existence, then the jobs for illegal aliens would dry up and there would be little need to militarize the border. Also, interior enforcement is very important because that is the only way to keep tourist from overstaying their visas and becoming illegal aliens.
@superdestroyer: Except that that isn’t the point of comprehensive immigration reform. However, I do think a great deal of opposition to such reform is the fear that it will lead to more Dems.
@Steven L. Taylor:
If most of the illegal immigrants were white mormons, people like Ezra Klein would be leading the push to deport all of them, would demand real employer enforcement, and would attack anyone who proposed amensty.
However, since most of the illegal aleins are poor Hispanics and Hispanics have been very loyal Democratic voters for decades, then it is very obvious that the reason that virtually every Democrat is pushing for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship is to create millions of additional Democratic Party voters. Ezra Klein is from California and has seen how changing the demographics in California has made the state a virtual one party state and move the state to the left. All Mr. Klein want to do is repeat the demographic changes for the entire U.S. Of course, since Mr. Klein knows he will be part of the coming patron class, he does not care about all of the current U.S. citizens who will be pushed down into the peon class of the near future.
@superdestroyer:
And your evidence for this assertion would be?
(Is Klein a known anti-Mormon bigot? What have I missed?)
@superdestroyer:
Excuse my French: the Rove Republican Party http://bit.ly/13pxZ94
@superdestroyer:
Yes, well, I am from Texas and I saw that integration of persons of Hispanic descent could lead to a great deal of political diversity in that group.
I know you are obsessed with the one party state routine (and especially its linkage to race and the ethnicity). Obsession is not evidence, however (although it is a perfume, or used to be, at least).
@Steven L. Taylor:
White Mormons are about the most Republican demographic group in the U.S. If most of the current illegal aliens were on a path to being automatic Republican voters, Mr. Klein would be against comprehensive immigration reform.
However, since Mr. Klein is very open about is support for a bigger federal government, a much more powerful federal government, single-health care, and wealth redistribution, then it makes sense that Mr. Klein would use an academic paper that supports open borders and unlimited immigration. Mr. Klein will not be happy until more than 50% of the voters are automatic Democratic Party voters and the U.S. is a single party state. Image the influence that Mr. Klein will have in a one party state where insiders in the Democratic Party are determining policy for the U.S.
@Steven L. Taylor:
If you are from Texas, then you know that the only want the Republicans stay relevant there is my winning the white vote by a huge majority. Mr. Klein knows that if you keep adding enough automatic Democratic Party voters, then it will eventually not matter what percentage of the white vote the Republican receive.
Also, it is hard to claim that politics is diverse in Texas when the vast majority of Latinos are automatic Democratic Party voters. The entire time that GW Bush was governor, there was not one Latino Republican in the TExas House of Senate. Also, the Republican in Texas know that they have zero chance of winning the Latino vote and work very hard to draw the district lines to exclude large number of Latinos from the state Senate and House districts that hare held by Republicans.
might just as well bring up drugs http://forumsforjustice.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14&postcount=1
how many birds can we kill with one stone?
@superdestroyer: You are free to believe this, of course. But belief isn’t evidence.
@Mark Ivey:
I’m pretty certain the argument would be something akin to this: “Your don’t build an army for the threats today, you build one for the threat that may come in the future. If you don’t then you won’t have time to build the army when the future threats arrive.”
@Steven L. Taylor:
Then you need to explain what you mean by diverse politics when Texas politics is quickly becoming white sector employed whites against non-whites, academics, and public sector employees. Of course, the differences in TExas versus California is that there are still enough private sector employed middle class and upper middle class whites to sustain a conservative party.
If you goggle “Turing Texas Blue” you will find many articles that blatantly state” they will all contain a state similar to “The theory of blue Texas relies heavily on the ongoing demographic transformation of the state. ” from http://thinkprogress.org/election/2013/05/28/2058031/texas-democrats-blue-republicans/
Mr. Klein, who is a Democratic Party operative, knows that the key to making the U.S. a one party state is demographic transformation and that is why he supports comprehensive immigration reform.
@superdestroyer: I’m an old white guy who can’t wait until my brown brother and sisters take over the state of Calif. The white people that have run the state wither repug or demodog haven’t done a very good job.
PJ, correct it’s about how much money the vendors of walls and drone can steal protecting Amerika from nothing to be afraid of. How Sad for us.
There’s really not much point arguing with superdestroyer because he’s just so right.
1) Vast mongrelizing hordes of
untermenschenBrown People are flooding across the border, always have, always will, the threat will never diminish and we’d all better tighten our sphincters and clutch our guns.2) Brown people have always and will always vote Democratic. Policy changes are irrelevant, efforts to woo the Brown folk away will always fail, must fail, cannot do anything but fail because skin pigmentation determines voting patterns entirely apart from matters of mere issues. Brown = Democrat. Just as Black = Democrat.
3) Also Asian = Democrat. And, okay, Women = Democrat. Plus Gay = Democrat.
4) And thus we see that the White Party, sometimes known as the Republican Party, is doomed, doomed, doomed I tells ya, doomed and there is no hope. None. Zero. Game over. Good night, ladies and gentlemen.
5) Which is why superdestroyer must warn us! A lot. Again and again and again. He’s sort of like Paul Revere, but instead of the British, it’s the Brown People. Plus, there’s no point doing anything because see #4 above. So, this isn’t so much a call to action from superdestroyer, it’s a call to helplessness, inaction, eventual total destruction. You can’t stop it.
6) No, no, you can’t!
7) Which is why superdestroyer must warn us!
8) A lot.
@michael reynolds:
Indeed. It is just so easy to forget this ironclad fact.
@forumsforjustice:
Where is the mendacity?
@michael reynolds:
MR,
I always find it odd that progressives seem to have nothing but snark these days. Maybe it comes from watching too much Comedy Channel and MSNBC for their political news.
Illegal immigration ebbs and flows due to the economy. That is why it is important to adopt real enforcement such as interior enforcement, employer enforcement, and coordinated identity theft prevention during this time of low illegal immigration so that the U.S. does not go through another massive wave of illegal immigration if and when there is another economic boom (bubble) such as occurred in the mid-1980’s and late 1990’s.
Latinos (and blacks) have been very loyal Democratic Party voters for decades. In reality, most blacks voters alive today have probably never voted for a Republican. The idea that there is any policy, position, or program that the Republicans could propose that would increase their percentage of the Latino (or black vote) without losing a much higher percentage of the white vote is laughable. Democratic operatives like Ezra Klein know this and that is why they support comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty) and want to imassively increase the amount of legal immigration. Mr. Klein want to create millions of automatic Democratic Party voters instead of going through the hassle of actually trying to appeal to middle class whites who work in the private sector.
The Republicans should be able to get a higher percentage of the Asian votes because Asians are almost culturally the exact opposites of blacks and Latinos. However, the Republicans have managed to alienated Asians. There is a theory that the overt religiousness of the Republican alienates Asians from voting for any Republicans.
The more conservative party is never going to be able to really appeal to single women (married white women vote in the majority for Republicans) when the other party proposes that the government should be the provider in fact for many single women. There is nothing that a small government, fiscal conservatives can do to appeal to single women when the other party proposes higher taxes on the rich (read men) and promises to give them the money. Also, I have pointed out many times that being a liberal is just part of homosexual culture in the U.S. and any appeal by conservatives to homosexuals is fated to always fail.
Since you live in California you have had a front row seat of how demographic changes drive political changes (along with economic and cultural changes). So any discussion of a government policy that proposes massive demographic changes in the U.S. should probably discuss those changes will affect the country. That progressives refuse to even admit that demographic changes are one of the main features of comprehensive immigration reofrm and absolutely refuse to discuss how those changes will affect the U.S. show the real motivation of those progressives.
@al-Ameda:
Facts, damnit! Mendacious facts! How dare she use facts?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Maybe my impression is influenced by living in a congressional district adjoining the one represented by Luis Guitierrez. He certainly gives the impression that immigration reform without a “path to citizenship” would be a deal-breaker. Harry Reid has certainly made it clear that immigration reform must include a broad “path to citizenship”.
Isn’t that the definition of a sine qua non?
Democrats and Republicans alike are taking positions regarded by the other as a poison pill. I’m not sure how you get any sort of immigration reform that way.
What I learned from my first wife was that no matter what someone says, what they actually do tells you their real meaning. So when I look at the ‘immigration reform bill’ that recently passed the Senate what I actually see is a welfare bill for defense and military-tech companies.
http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/lobbying/308873-tech-defense-firms-eye-billions-in-immigration-contracts-
Then you look a little deeper and find that the allocation of green cards is totally screwed up in such a way that no one single country — regardless of size, population or proximity to the US border — can get more that 7% of the green cards issued in a given year. It doesn’t matter that the citizens of Lichtenstein don’t use their oppotunities to migrate to our blessed shores, the allocation of green cards that they would have recieved cannot be re-allocated to Mexicans or Hondurans or Columbians. It’s the law, that’s why.
And you see that the ‘undocumented alien’ debate is completely about only the tip of the iceberg and has absolutely NOTHING to do with actual immigration. It’s all about nativism and — well — what our friend Mr SuperDestroyer says.
@michael reynolds:
I should have pointed out that Paul Krugman agrees with me. In the New York Times this week, Krguman basically stated that there is no real reason for the Republican Party to exist. I am just arguing that demographic changes coupled with the Republicans to form coherent policy positions means that the U.S. will soon be a one party state. Even you admit that every demographic trend is going in the Democrats favor.
That is why the future of politics will be blocks of the Democratic Party fighting over entitlements and who pays for them. Image how boring politics will be when all of the political fights will be over pensions, health care, and welfare programs.
You gotta admit, though, it’s pretty entertaining to see SD fret over how “the vast majority of Latinos are automatic Democratic Party voters.” It’s like a feedback loop of ethnic prejudice, a self-fulfilling prophecy of stupidity.
Hispanics are all “automatic Democratic Party voters” so their concerns, needs, and desires can be safely ignored or actively opposed by Republicans, the consequence of which is that……Hispanics become “automatic Democratic Party voters.”
@JohnMcC:
You could also argue that comprehensive immigration reform is about welfare for public schools, social workers, and law enforcement. Creating a larger peon class in the U.S. will create a demand for more ESL and special ed teachers, for social workers, for local law enforcement, What is amazing is that no one points out that the public sectors unions all support comprehensive immigration reform because those unions will receive a massive windfall from it.
@superdestroyer: “…Krugman basically stated there is no real reason for the Republican party to exist.” Well, there is the comedic value. And the market in popcorn futures to consider. And if not for Republicans, who would I be better than?
@James Pearce:
Virtually every progressive wonk and pundit on MSNBC has admitted that there is no electoral benefit to the Republicans if they support comprehensive immigration reform. The Reagan Administration pushed through amensty as a special benefit for the cheap labor Republicans, yet the percentage of Latino vote for the Democrats went up in 1988 even though the Democrats has a lousy candidate running for office. Latinos have been very loyal Democratic Party voters for decades and if the comprehensive immigration reform passes those Latinos will be even more loyal Democratic Party voters. If the Democrats cannot increase their percentage of the white vote from 1980 to 2012, then it should make sense that the Republicans cannot increase their percentage of the Latino vote.
Ezra Klein knows what happend to the vote in 1988 and want to repeat that in 2016 and beyond. I understand why he supports comprehensive immigration reform. I just wish progressives were more open in why they support a program that will not over screw over blue collar Americans but will screw over certain blocks inside the Democratic Party such as blacks.
@superdestroyer:
Well…that’s nice, but I guess you’d have to be the type of person who cares what the wonks and pundits on MSNBC have to say for this to really matter. I’m not that person.
Once again, you are conflating “Latinos” with “Immigrants.” You need to stop equating these two distinct populations, even if they overlap from time to time. You have to accept the fact that the majority of the Hispanic population in this country are native-born Americans.
Then once you get over that, then you can accept that the reason these people are so loyal to the Democratic Party is that the Democratic Party speaks to their concerns. Want some of that loyalty for your preferred party? Urge your party to do the same. Demand it.
@James Pearce:
I have never argued that the Democrats did not speak to the concerns of Latinos. I have pointed out for years that the David Axelrod idea of pushing high taxes on the rich is designed to appeal to Latinos. I have stated for years that a demographic group with a high out of wedlock birth rate, a high level of educational failure, and a high level of unemployment will support the more liberal party. The question is what policies will be adopted when more than 50% of the voters are automatic Democratic Party voters and the Democratic Party is unconstrained for implementing all of the policies that will benefit the average Latino voters wants. How high will taxes go? How big will the government grow? How much with race and ethnicity-based programs grow? How many more ethnicity and race=based quotas will there be? How small can the private sector be?
What is amazing is how hard progressives are working to ignore that the future of politics will be in the U.S.
@superdestroyer: Michael Reynolds was right. You’re too afflicted with ethnic prejudice to add anything to this discussion.
@superdestroyer:
Yes, and it’s horrifying! Why, once we eliminated the last few vestiges of Republican power in the last election our bond rating was upgraded, our budget came into balance, housing prices started rising, and our unemployment rate dropped about four points. It’s basically Mordor is my point. Although the weather is good.
@superdestroyer:
Well, not until they stop probing their vaginas against their will. Folks tend to object to such behavior – weird…..
Ironically, I follow Mexican Politics. In Mexico, the political left is basically a joke. Andrés Lopez Obrador only came close to winning the Presidency in 2006 because there is no runoff in Mexico, and the two other parties(PRI and PAN) divided the center right vote.
It´s hard to believe that all these Communists comes from a country where the Political left barely manages to get a third of the vote, even when the party of the incumbent president is unpopular due to the war between the drug cartels.
@superdestroyer:
I´ve pointed out several times here: the only way to really control immigration is to create a national ID card and to force EVERYONE to carry it(And to show it during to the cops during stops). And, besides that, to force any employer to register ANY contract with the Labor Department.
Ironically, it´s harder to spot illegal immigrants in most Latin American countries because everyone has to carry an ID and because any labor contract must be registered with the government.
@Andre Kenji:
Yeah, but you need to understand that the theologians of the GOP believe a national identity card is the Mark Of The Beast which will summon Satan from his lair at which point Satan will attempt to confiscate our guns and make us all gay.
Do you have an officially insane party in Brazil? If not I could see where some of this would be hard to understand.
@SuperDufus: ” I have stated for years that a demographic group with a high out of wedlock birth rate, a high level of educational failure, and a high level of unemployment will support the more liberal party.”
Well, duh…. When you consider that a liberal party is associated with change and a conservative party is synonymous with the status quo, it’s not being much of seer to predict that communities facing issues such as these will not support the status quo. What? Do you think these people are stupid? (Please don’t answer that for your own sake)
@michael reynolds:
I´ve worked with Public Services, and I can say to you that ID numbers are terrific tool to organize data. You can use an Excel spreadsheet to find duplicates, for instance. I understand why people that are wary of the government does not like that.
On the other hand, I don´t think that you can curb immigration without creating additional bureaucracy to everyone.
In Brazil there is proportional voting, so, there are a lot of bizarre people that elected to the Congress only because they have name recognition. Kinda, a Lyndon LaRouche wannabe that wanted Brazil to build a nuclear bomb or a homosexual fashion designer that would say to a congresswoman that she was”ugly”.
Proportional voting also allows the Evangelicals to have disproportional political power. There is a pastor presiding the Lower House Committee on Human Rights, and he wanted to allow psychologists to “cure” homosexuals.
Nice dude.
@Dave Schuler: The history of EU guest worker policy , with a good 50 year run rather says your conclusion is wrong. Immigrants who put down roots – in terms of family – rather certainly the ones far dispersed in USA, do not return. Multiple EU examples from different source countries – near EU and Med Basin in particular – amply show this. Your line of reasoning is fantasy – were you in 1985 it might be reasonable. Decades later, fantasy – except if it were aimed at new incoming immigrants rather than your current population.
Otherwise, you are simply setting yourselves up for the cancerous “semi citizen” problem in Europe among the “immigrant” (the telling phrase applied to 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation families of the “guest workers”).
@Andre Kenji:
There are things that employers and the government could do short of a national ID. The first one is for the social security administration and the IRS to coordinate to check against multiple uses of the same SSN.
I get an annaul letter from SSN telling me how much I have earned. I should also get a report on all the employers that have paid SSN taxes using my number.
Also, every time an employer submits taxes for a blatantly fake SSN, that business should be quickly visited by the IRS, the state tax collectors, the state OSHA, the state EPA inspector, the local fire code inspector. If an employer is willing to blatantly cheat by using illegal aliens, that business is probably willing to cheat on every other regulation. This should be something that liberals should easily be able to support. Yet, people like Ezra Klein do not want to try to control illegal immigration because more illegal immigration, chain migration, and the creation of Little “fill in the black foreign captal” help the Democratic Party by creating more automatic Democratic Party voters.
@Pharoah Narim:
I would argue that the Democratic Party is the status quo party or even a return to the past party. Look at how many Democrats talk about how great it would be return to the high tax days of the 1970’s. That the U.S. should return to a period of massive conflict between unions and employers. That the U.S. should return to a time when the janitors of the NYC public schools made more than the teachers. The Democratic Party is the party that is leading politics in the U.S. to be about entitlements and how to pay for them. Image the type of people who will go into politics when 95% of the effort will be spent on pensions, welfare, and schools.
@superdestroyer:
If you know how much you earned in a year, it should be a trivial matter to determine in your SSN has been used more than once.
@Rick Almeida:
Sometimes, it is not that easy. See http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1726397.html
Notice how little interest in federal government took in noticing that the same SSN was used in multiple locations at the same time. That is because the government has supported a program of de facto open borders for years and the lack of coordinate federal government effort to prevent identify theft is a clear example of that.
Of course, progressives like Ezra Klein do not really care how many people have their identify stolen just as long as the people who are doing the stealing will eventually be automatic Democratic Party voters.
@Andre Kenji: Senhor Kenji, your insightful comments are part of the reason I come back to this site so often. Thank you. In regards to the issue of the ‘national ID card’. You are so right. And @michael reynolds: is also right.
When I was a boy, the fundamentalist religion I was raised in told me that the Social Security number assigned by the government was going to be somehow imprinted on people’s foreheads and that would be the ‘mark of the beast’. I was actually afraid on the day I applied for my SocSec card before I could apply for my first job. Today, the same crowd tells those who will listen that the ubiquitous RFID chip is going to be implanted in them and they will be slaves to the devil.
I suppose not too many people actually believe that. But on the conservative side, they have a significant presence.
You would think that after the terrorists of 9/11 hid among us in plain sight — their phone numbers in the SanDiego phone book! — while they were “wanted” by the CIA, the need for a real national ID would be self evident. You would think that simply identifying ourselves as who we are would not be controversial. Surely, simply giving a positive, unmistakable identification should be necessary for renewing a drivers license, paying a parking ticket, buying or renting a car, leasing an apartment, buying a house, applying for a loan, opening a savings account, etc, etc, etc…..
You would not reckon with the power of the so-called-“conservatives” of the U.S.
So in deference to them, we wait for the consequences of having no real idea of who is in our country and what they are doing here. And I fear we will not have a long wait.
i’ve been in Texas for quite a while, have lots of friends/co-workers/family that are from Mexico and points south. (some legal, some not) the “issue” going on here is mainly about the violent drug trade and it’s effect on the local cops near the borders, they can’t out gun a virtual military styled force of drug smugglers. Texas, despite the rhetoric, is really cool with people from elsewhere- if you don’t live here you wouldn’t know it.
another thing to consider is that the ones who are now citizens are not all that happy about this “amnesty” crap as they had to go through years of applicant approval before they got legit. and the “automatic democrats” argument has some merit- just like it takes a while to realize you’re wrong sometimes! all in all, we aren’t all that worried about it.
@superdestroyer:
That would require a special federal bureaucracy to investigate SS numbers. Besides that, it would do nothing against people that do work for hire or without SS numbers. Part of the problem is precisely that the hiring process in the US is less complicated than in the rest of the world, and curbing illegal immigration would require complicating it at some level.
It´s true, there is several safety measures that could be implemented to the SS Card without any large additional cost. It´s also true that identity theft is an enormous problem. But that alone is not enough to curb illegal immigration.
@JohnMcC:
Thanks. The only small issue here is that I don´t like being called solely “Kenji”. Kenji is a Japanese name, and I´m a proud Brazilian.
I do agree, but I also think that many people on the left are uncomfortable with the idea – the ACLU is clearly opposed to that. Senator Jon Tester is also on the record as opposing it.
@michael reynolds:
I don’t think the “conversion to Gay” thing worries them as much as the “Gun confiscation” thing. I’m guessing that they’d accept being converted to gay if they could have all the weaponry they want.
@JohnMcC:
Don’t forget voting. That’s a big one, isn’t it?
@Andre Kenji:
This is a really good point that usually gets overlooked. Many people who support strong immigration controls on workers also support “keeping government out of the marketplace,” but there’s a trade-off between the two.
@superdestroyer: ” I have stated for years that a demographic group with a high out of wedlock birth rate, a high level of educational failure, and a high level of unemployment will support the more liberal party.”
Read Coming Apart: The State of White America, by Charles Murray. You’re describing the Republican party in Alabama. And Mississippi. And Georgia. And … . What century are you living in?
@Stan:
The question for Alabama is what is the delta (the difference) between white and blacks and its it really much different from every other state.
If you look at NAEP scores for 8th grade reading for Alabama and compare them to Mass. which is considered the best state for education:
Alabama: White: 268 Black: 243 difference of 25
Mass: White: 282 Black: 255 difference of 27
As you can see from the data, that the delta between white and blacks is almost the same for both state. And it is kind of hard to argue that the whites in Alabama are rich.
If you look at out of wedlock births in Alabama it is 69% for blacks and 25% for whites. Cite The numbers are not very different for births in Mass.
So, what do black and white voters have in common in Alabama. Why should they be in the same political party? How does it benefit blue collar whites to vote for the party of forced busing, quotas, affirmative action, and open borders? It makes sense for blacks in Alabama to be Democrats even if the Democrats support open borders because the Democrats promise more entitlements, more government jobs, and more affirmative action.
What Mr. Klein wants is to import enough Latinos to states like Alabama that the white birth rates will continue to decline and the blacks and Latinos will be big enough demographic groups to vote the Republicans out of office. That such an immigration policy will lower the standard of living for blue collar whites in Alabama is of no concern for Mr. Klein.
The entire agenda of the Republican party is a fight with phantoms. They are fighting a deficit that is quickly falling; a healthcare law that doesn’t add a penny to the deficit, but lowers it and that is not by any stretch of the imagination a takeover of the health care system by the government; tax rates that are the lowest they have been in my lifetime; massive voting fraud that doesn’t exist; sex education and contraception that actually decreases the number of abortions; and abuse of food stamps that barely exists.
@Stan:
here’s some facts that may contort your single edged sword ; (it’s from Ann Coulter if you have google)
“Examining nearly a century of U.S. census reports, Ricketts found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites. Until 1970, black women were more likely to get married than white women — and that was despite the high mortality rates among black men, leaving fewer available for marriage. In three of four decennial years between 1890 and 1920, black men out-married white men.
Whatever else may cause illegitimacy and its associated problems, it isn’t poverty, discrimination, lack of education, unemployment or slavery. Black Americans had all those handicaps — and yet they still had strong families and low crime rates from 1890 until the 1960s.
But in the ’60s, liberals decided it would be a great idea to start subsidizing illegitimacy.
Everyone knew — even FDR’s secretary of labor, Francis Perkins, knew — that granting widows’ benefits to unmarried women with illegitimate children would have disastrous consequences. An early 20th-century social welfare advocate, Homer Folks, warned back in 1914 that to grant pensions for “desertion or illegitimacy would, undoubtedly, have the effect of a premium upon these crimes against society.”
But under President Lyndon Johnson, that’s exactly what the government did. The “suitable home” requirements for welfare — such as having a husband — were jettisoned by liberal know-it-alls in the federal Bureau of Public Assistance. As a result, illegitimacy went through the roof, particularly among blacks, our most vulnerable fellow citizens.
In 1970, for the first time, the marriage rate for black women fell below 70 percent. But even then, a majority of black children were still living with both parents. By 2010, only 30.1 percent of blacks above the age of 15 were married, compared to 52.7 percent of whites.
Liberals keep using the bad consequences of their policies as an argument for more of the same policies. Government subsidies to unwed mothers increase the illegitimacy rate, which in turn leads to poverty, criminal behavior and more illegitimacy. So Democrats reverse cause and effect to claim it’s the poverty that causes illegitimacy and then demand more payments to unwed mothers.
But we know poverty does not cause illegitimacy. The black experience from 1890 to 1960 proves it. It’s the reverse, just as Bill O’Reilly said. If African-Americans started marrying again at their pre-Great Society rates, it would wipe out the entire black “culture of poverty.”
Nor is there a speck of evidence that poverty causes crime. Murder is the only crime that has been reliably tracked since 1900. From the turn of the century right up to the early 1930s, the murder rate rose steadily, with a few peaks and valleys. Then it began a noticeable decline right at the beginning of the Great Depression, remaining low until the mid-1940s, and rising again only at the end of the Depression.”
So essentially, why did blacks regress while the rest of immigrants (forced or otherwise) “move on”? as lbj said, ““I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years. [Touting his underlying intentions for the “Great Society” programs, LBJ confided with two like-minded governors on Air Force One]”
so which party is keeping the “blacks in chains” now?
@Latino_in_Boston:
If a conservatives said something as wrong as saying that the Affordable Care Act will not cost anything, all of the progressives would be screaming liar. If you look at http://www.hhs.gov/budget/fy2014/fy-2014-budget-in-brief.pdf there are a long list of spending on the affordable care act. Or are you going that the spending will save more money than it costs.
Also, to claim that a $600 billion dollar annual budget deficit is a good thing because at least it is not a trillion dollar deficit misses the point. I remember when progressives were attacking GW Bush for running a $500 billion dollar deficit.
The problem with the Republicans is that they are so interested in doing the bidding of cheap labor advocates like Sheldon Aldeson or totalitarian social conservatives that they have stopped being the conservative party.
@superdestroyer:
Spending by itself doesn’t have anything to do with the deficit. The deficit is the difference between the spending and revenues.
Whether a deficit is good or bad is dependent on the state of the economy as well as the change from the prior year. It’s impossible to evaluate the deficit without those factors.
Oh for chrissake. This bull doesn’t even pass a cursory sniff test. But then it’s by Ann Coulter. So you really want to argue that people choose to have children out of wedlock because there are subsidies on it? Aren’t those available to poor npn-single parents also? Are the subsidies actually high enough to make single motherhood attractive? Of course not. Data from the much more generous European welfare state will easily show that – while it may have taken the sting out of single parenthood at the margins – there is no direct relation between out-of-wedlock birth rate and subsidy amount.The problem is one of environment, not money.
Why then the sudden spike in illegitimacy in the 1960s. Easy. Following the black urban riots in the 1960 (perpetuated by your well-adjusted, married and subsidies-unspoiled urban poor) the U.S switched to a strict (and usually racially biased) “law and order” approach in law enforcement. As a result, incarceration rates for blacks soared from 2-1 vs. whites to 6-1 vs. whites in less than three decades. This, along with a concentration on the “war on drugs” (in itself usually a “poor man’s crime” made “single mother” more or less the default state for many black communities, eroding the previous social consensus and eliminating any social shaming for bringing up your children alone.
And boom, instant breakdown of the institution of marriage due to conservative social engineering. No progressive policies needed on that front. Conservatives managed very well to bring this forth on their own.
Of course if that really were the case, many Republicans/conservatives, including you, would be all for very liberal immigration policies for such people…
As if Republicans don’t have blocks that fight over entitlements and who pays for them? Please…
Ahh, so you are arguing that most black people are stupid? That’s certainly a great way to get them to change their political allegiance…
Such an excellent point…simply ending the “War on Drugs” alone would probably do more for the black underclass than any number of social programs, either government or private…
@superdestroyer:
I didn’t say it didn’t cost anything. I said it lowered the deficit, which is what economists expect and the CBO concluded.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/09/official-sources-agree-affordable-care-act-reduces-deficit
@Bill: Are you seriously comparing a 19th Century economy where many people could survive off what they could grow and raise and required meager amounts of money…. to today’s modern economy where money is required for almost every necessity in life? Your comparison is asinine.
The bottom line is this is a money driven economy and there is a limited amount of participation allowed in the name of “efficiency” (which happened to be the goal of communism) somebody is guaranteed to be left out which means politically non-connected minorities are the perfect “volunteers”. Black men did quite well in manufacturing before those jobs started going offshore in the 70s.
All the gobbledygook hustled by Billo and Sam Coulter, two people that have never spent a night in a black neighborhood should be taken for what it is… white conscience massages. I mean, let’s be honest, every piece of “analysis” they offer can be boiled down to: N@$$3rs could do better if they wern’t so dumb, lazy, violent, and hypersexual. And we’re more civilized….like white people.”
@Steven L. Taylor: “Heck, as noted above, it isn’t as if the reform version of the pathway to citizenship is especially generous.”
Please note that the reform version had to have a least a snowball’s chance in H-E-double hockey stick of passing. It’s like Obamacare; much of it was determined by what the 60th Senator and the House would accept
@Steven L. Taylor: “(Is Klein a known anti-Mormon bigot? What have I missed?) ”
You’ve seen how many comments from ‘superdestroyer’, and haven’t figured out yet that he’s a whackjob? 🙂
@PJ: “I’m pretty certain the argument would be something akin to this: “Your don’t build an army for the threats today, you build one for the threat that may come in the future. If you don’t then you won’t have time to build the army when the future threats arrive.” ”
Yes – remember WWIII, when the Contras invaded from the South, in coordination with the Cubans and the Soviet paratoopers?
Wolverines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Barry: In truth, he is on my list of commenters I know I should ignore, but for some weird reason I failed to heed my own advice.
@Steven L. Taylor: “In truth, he is on my list of commenters I know I should ignore, but for some weird reason I failed to heed my own advice. ”
There’s some of these guys whose posts I only read enough to check the downvote button.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius: meh, that’s weak and enabling at best. wave after wave of immigrants have come here and succeeded- why doesn’t the “black community”? you basically said they’re born criminals….nice.
@Pharoah Narim: if you read the paragraph you’d see that things went fairly well until the “60’s (20th century). your disdain for ann coulter doesn’t mean the facts are wrong. so “black men” can’t compete in “non-manufacturing” jobs? how condescending…good thing they’re great at sports…..get real.
oh, i grew up in a pretty diverse neighborhood in the northeast- have black friends and co-workers aside from my girlfriend…..who is 100% black just as her kids are. so really, why are blacks just so “damned disappointing” as a “community” to you ? the excuses are running out.
Ahh, if all else fails, fall back on the “some of my best friends are black” argument…and as far as condescending is concerned, any conservative who wants to argue why the Democratic Party is just so horrible to blacks needs to explain why blacks overwhelmingly vote for Democrats…why would they do this for a political party that is supposedly so bad for them…
@An Interested Party: i didn’t say some of my best friends are black- not necessary. you assume i’m a conservative but don’t know any better.
to answer the question-“enabling” with a dose of “white guilt abuse”!
Well of course you did…let’s role the tape…
You are obviously trying to imply that there isn’t a racist bone in your body because of these circumstances…
I assumed nothing…you could be the Phantom of the Opera, for all I care, but, how, exactly, do blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats because of “enabling” and “white guilt abuse”…
@bill: You realize you just shot down your own argument? If it was the ebil, eeebil subsidies handed out by the liberals from the 60s on, why did the immigrants succeed despite them?