Why & Whither the Immigration Debate?
If you’re interested in the economic aspects of immigration, legal and illegal alike, don’t miss The Immigration Equation in the NYT Magazine. The article focuses on the work of two prominent economists: David Card, professor at Berkeley, raised by dairy farmers in Ontario; and Harvard professor George Borjas, something of a Cuban Ayn Rand in terms of aversion to all things Soviet.
An excerpt that caught my attention:
“I honestly think the economic arguments are second order,” Card told me when we discussed immigration. “They are almost irrelevant.”
Card’s implication is that darker forces — ethnic prejudice, maybe, or fear of social disruption — is what’s really motivating a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment. Borjas, a Hispanic who has written in blunt terms about the skill deficits of Mexicans, in particular arouses resentment. “Mexicans aren’t as good as Cubans like him,” Douglas S. Massey, a demographer at Princeton, said in a pointed swipe.
Borjas lives an assimilated life. He has a wife who speaks no Spanish, three kids, two of whom study his mother tongue as a foreign language, and a home in Lexington, a tony Boston suburb. Yet his mind-set often struck me as that of an outsider — an immigrant, if you will, to his own profession.
Long article short: Economics and economists will have little to no effect on the outcome of the immigration debate.
Usually the first thing conservatives bring up is the economic drain immigrants put on the system. One thing they’ve never been able to reconcile is that, according to Bush, the economy is hustlin’ and bustlin’, so what do they have to complain about? The rhetoric surrounding the immigration debate sounds very familiar, but I’ll leave it to someone else to invoke Godwin’s law.
Comment by bvac — July 9, 2006 @ 12:50 pm
“I’m coming to this in good faith just as you’re coming to it as a bigot…In other words, I call you a racist just as you would call me a liberal;”
Ryan, seriously, this just shows how pathetic you are at defending your “radical” position (And yes your position is radical because support in the polls for open borders hovers around 7-10% with 90% opposed). You call me a racist and a bigot because I am against illegal immigration. Can you please provide 1 example of something I’ve written which would tend to indicate my “racist” thoughts or my “bigoted” beliefs?? No, you can’t, but you continue to call me those names, which is fine because it continues to show how how weak and pathetic your pro-amnesty argument is.
To quote one of your earlier blog posts:
“Tell me why you feel an anti-amnesty position is not racist, bigoted, and xenophobic.”
Because my anti-amnesty for illegal immigrants position is based on fairness & crime/security interests.
1) It is not fair to let illegal immigrants (especially those who haven’t paid taxes) become citizens with no process or rules when legal immigrants have had to go through a structured, rigorous, expensive process to become citizens. You probably were the kid in school who turned his paper in late yet ended up with the same grade as the other kids who followed the rules and turned it in on time so you don’t see a problem with this (I’m guessing you whined that the teacher was racist or bigoted in order to not get points deducted on it). But most of us who follow the rules and abide by the laws do see a problem with it.
2) The reason Open Borders is an extremely stupid idea (possibly one of the worst ideas I have ever heard) is because you can’t stop the bad (i.e criminal) people from coming in here whether they are people who want to traffic drugs, join gangs, commit rape, murder, robbery, or acts of terrorism. This is why your position is radical. Because you have no way of stopping bad people that want to do harmful, unlawful things to from coming into the country. That is the core reason why your position is stupid, radical, and most importantly, unsafe.
Comment by truthmattersfa — July 25, 2006 @ 7:14 pm