{"id":5263,"date":"2016-08-31T08:05:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=5263"},"modified":"2016-08-31T08:12:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T14:12:38","slug":"5-illegal-immigration-thoughts-in-advance-of-trumps-big-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/08\/5-illegal-immigration-thoughts-in-advance-of-trumps-big-speech.html","title":{"rendered":"5 illegal immigration thoughts in advance of Trump’s Big Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"800px-US-border-notice\"<\/p>\n

Two big events today with respect to Trump and immigration: \u00a0he\u2019s scheduled to meet the President of Mexico, and then, subsequently, give what\u2019s being touted as a Big Policy Speech on illegal immigration. \u00a0So I thought it\u2019d be a good time to pull together some of what I think on immigration.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, if the only issue were illegal immigration<\/em>, we could solve that tomorrow. \u00a0All that\u2019d be necessary is to open the borders to anyone who wants to come, and, voila, no one would be \u201cillegal.\u201d \u00a0(OK, there\u2019d still be some smugglers, who would be those with established criminal records who wouldn\u2019t pass any kind of background check.) \u00a0But it\u2019s fundamentally about how many immigrants we want to take in each year, and especially how many unskilled immigrants.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, we are long past the time when the economy was creating unskilled jobs left and right, and we thought we\u2019d be facing labor shortages that could only be remedied by stepped up numbers of immigrants, either acknowledged as such or labeled \u201cguest workers\u201d under the fiction that they and their families would return home. \u00a0Remember the \u201cblue card<\/a>\u201c? \u00a0That was one component of the failed 2006 immigration bill, a guest worker system that essentially promised there would be no more illegal immigration because prospective illegals would be welcomed legally instead \u2014 and imagined it would be a win-win by remedying labor shortages.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>, illegal immigration and globalization are two sides of the same coin. \u00a0With respect to globalization, may, on average, have seen improvements to their living standards when we can purchase good and services cheaply from overseas, but these averages hide the very real impact that globalization has had on working class Americans, who have indeed seen their real wages decline while that of higher-income Americans has increased. \u00a0Now, I believe that globalization\u2019s positives outweigh the negatives, that it is a fundamentally good thing for so many people in Third World countries to have been lifted out of extreme poverty when they have been able to sell their goods to the United States and other First World countries, but I\u2019ve always considered restrictions on immigration to the U.S. as a sort of backstop, preserving at least those unskilled jobs which cannot be automated or shipped overseas, for American citizens. \u00a0(I thought I\u2019d written a long post on this before, but I can\u2019t seem to find it.)<\/p>\n

(Pet peeve: \u00a0people who speak of the \u201cSecond World\u201d as if it\u2019s a real thing. \u00a0Folks, the terminology came about during the Cold War, when the \u201cSecond World\u201d were communist countries, and Third World or Nonaligned nations, was the terminology chosen by those countries that wished to define themselves as \u201cneither of those factions,\u201d and must have rued the fact that Third World came to mean \u201cdirt-poor.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Fourth<\/strong>, the fundamental issue is much more a matter of work authorization enforcement than it is border control, and that is likewise not a simple matter of e-verify implementation, but the bigger issue of going after individuals who work under the table and the employers who hire them \u2014 and this isn\u2019t even just a matter of illegal immigrants, but American citizens who work under the table to avoid taxes and collect welfare benefits, and employers who hire under the table to underpay workers and avoid such costs as worker\u2019s comp. \u00a0My pet approach<\/a> has been to allow citizens to sue employers who engage in such practices, following the lawsuit model of the Americans with Disabilities Act. \u00a0(Yes, like most of my brilliant solutions, it hasn\u2019t really gotten any traction.)<\/p>\n

Fifth<\/strong> \u2014 well, as I wrote the other day<\/a>, I think there is recognition among many anti-illegal immigration hawks that there should be some accommodation for long-time residents for whom our failure to enforce immigration laws, and the promises of belonging and amnesty from so many politicians and elected officials, has meant that they have settled here in a manner that means that a return back to their home countries would produce real hardship \u2014 not just the loss of the relative wealth of their lives in the U.S., but substantial difficulties re-integrating into their home countries that would make them worse off than if they had never left. \u00a0At the same time, other residents have lived in isolated immigrant communities and have not integrated into the broader American culture at all, focusing instead on working hard and living cheaply, in order to send money back home, and with the ultimate plan of returning later. \u00a0The Democratic candidates have moved towards promises of never deporting anyone, regardless of how recently they\u2019ve arrived, except for violent felons. \u00a0But we need to have a real discussion on who may\u00a0stay, who must go.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s it. \u00a0Now we wait to see what the news report bring, and how well Trump\u2019s speechwriters did in crafting a policy that makes any sense to anyone.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

image from Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two big events today with respect to Trump and immigration: \u00a0he\u2019s scheduled to meet the President of Mexico, and then, subsequently, give what\u2019s being touted as a Big Policy Speech on illegal immigration. \u00a0So I thought it\u2019d be a good time to pull together some of what I think on immigration. First, if the only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[139,325],"class_list":["post-5263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-illegal-immigrants","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\n5 illegal immigration thoughts in advance of Trump's Big Speech<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two big events today with respect to Trump and immigration: \u00a0he's scheduled to meet the President of Mexico, and then, subsequently, give what's being\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/08\/5-illegal-immigration-thoughts-in-advance-of-trumps-big-speech.html\" \/>\n<meta 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