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July 28, 2010 09:16 PM UTC
79 Comments
This makes sense:
That’s the part that struck me, also.
The legal basis, of course was elsewhere. Preemption, Preemption, Preemption.
Remember, preliminary injunctions of this sort are based on a “likely to prevail” standard, so the judge apparently thinks the U.S. government has a decent case against the Arizona law.
The two sections creating crimes for certain immigration/documentation offenses are almost certainly covered by Federal preemption issues – it is up to the Feds to determine crimes for immigration issues, documentation requirements, etc.
The other section, mandating that police check all “suspects” for immigration status, could be challenged on a number of fronts, including the simple fact that the police are given their immigration enforcement powers through an agreement (287g) with the Federal government.
if we can’t even check whether someone is illegal, let alone whether a criminal is illegal. All this is going to do is make Arizonans even more mad at Dems.
So teabagger/constitutionalists revere the U.S. Constitution, but not if it interferes with driving brown folks in Arizona.
“out of Arizona” instead of “in Arizona.”
But come to think of it, SB 1070 practically does criminalize driving while brown, as well as driving with brown people…
It criminalizes driving while illegal. What is you people’s obsession with race?
swedes, and Norwegians get a pass…
yeah it is about “illegality.”
BTW I am still waiting to see those “Headless Bodies” the AZ Gov claims there are.
Did I miss something about, say, an Irish immigration problem in Arizona?
The bigotry of anti-immigration activists is pretty obvious.
Are you ok with having to produce a birth certificate? And if not, that you’re held in custody until you do?
I’m fine with them running my name through the system (which they do anyway when they pull you over) and checking if I am an illegal immigrant.
Are you really the person your driver’s license says?
And what if you’re not driving, but only a passenger? Or just walking?
And if he can’t produce it… back to Mexico!
Can’t we send him to a place like the Faulkland Islands, where there are more sheep than people? Love is in the air….
if I were running for an office where I was required to be a natural born citizen. Since I’m not, I’m not going to risk identity theft with you guys.
That’s what you just said.
Yet the Arizona law would require you to carry one. Which would never get asked for if you don’t have brown skin. So are you going to keep a birth certificate in your glove compartment, or are you just going to figure that nobody’s going to ask because you are white?
You wingnuts like to talk about the Constitution. I would expect you to be jumping up and down against Arizona’s ignorance of it.
If they can lock up the Mexican-looking people, they can lock you up too, beej.
They demonstrably act like Fascists at town hall meetings, but call all of Obama’s policies that – without demonstrating any knowledge of the term.
They talk about liberty, while calling for plans that would reduce or restrict the sharing of information.
They seem to equate freedom with money, and the more they make, the “freer” they are.
They say they want the Constitution upheld, but as with Fascism, show nothing but ignorance when it comes to what it means.
They’re taught these simple words and phrases, like the sheep in Animal Farm, and they turn out to repeat what they were taught to say. And if their masters want them to start saying something else, it’s easy to teach them to forget their old slogans and adopt new ones.
Beej makes me laugh. With a name as common as his, you can bet there’s some illegal immigrant from Canada or the UK with the same name. And he’d be fine with having his name checked? Not when they detain him and make him prove he’s NOT this guy from Saskatoon who overstayed his visa by a year.
Oh well, as long as it’s only some guy named Jose Martinez who has to deal with this, I’m sure beej is just dandy with it.
is the real, legal Jose Martinez having his identity stolen and life ruined by the illegal Jose Martinez.
This injunction is good news
and I’d be fine with carrying it around with me.
… is a national ID card. The passport isn’t meant to be that, any more than the social security number was meant to be a government ID either.
Of course, that will mean creating a new bureaucracy – those centers will have to be everywhere. You know that there are only a handful of offices that take care of issuing passports, which would be completely inadequate to the task of issuing them for everyone if we suddenly needed to have them on hand to prove our nationality.
What other governments required the citizens to always have their papers? Hint – it wasn’t one known for it’s democratic nature. Liberty-loving, my ass.
You’re required to show it for everything else, so why not? And don’t give people a driver’s license if they are illegal immigrants.
The driver’s license bureau isn’t equipped for verifying someone’s citizenship. And there’s that thing about the Federal government being the ones to deal with issues of immigration and citizenship. They might be able to punt it to the states, per Phoenix’s quote, but if you think they’ll all do the job equally well…
But if the license looks like it isn’t faked (many fakes are bad) and the person speaks English, then it is probably OK.
Remember, there has to be probable cause to think someone is here illegally. If they calmly hand you their license and registration, speak English, have insurance, and otherwise act lie a law abiding citizen, there will not be probable cause.
By the way, is it unreasonable to require people to show a valid ID at the airport to get through security?
For that matter, what does being able to speak English have to do with it either? There are hundred of thousands, if not millions of citizens who can’t speak English; never mind all the non-Americans in the world who can.
Hey beej, LB, and other ‘pubs: Maybe you don’t think like this guy “thethinker” does, but can you see how statements like this give your side that “racist” label? (Or at least xenophobic.) This guy is relying on English as a guarantor of citizenship.
He’s not saying it’s a guarantor of citizenship though; he’s just saying it makes it more likely that they are an illegal immigrant. And while you may not like it, that is statistically accurate.
Bullshit. I won’t bother asking you to back up that statement because you’ve failed in the past.
But never mind that. The fact is, it will quickly found to be unconstitutional to detain people based on whether they can produce a driver’s license or other government issued ID or not, should they try to determine citizenship or legal residence based on it. And if you or “thethinker” believe that making such checkups the law won’t result in a thriving business in realistic fake ID’s, then I have a bridge you might be interested in buying.
And please – “illegal Dem voters?” You’re stupid enough to believe that myth, well… that’s not really a surprise. You’re extremely credulous when it comes to stuff like this.
that you can’t even think of original retorts, or retorts that actually make sense? Or is this just more projection, because you know they were spot on when I used them against you? Hell, you probably went back to my post just to get the embed code.
Statistics means someone has studied this and come up with ACTUAL STATISTICS.
And unconstitutional means that something is against the Constitution, such as placing the burden of proof on the suspect (in this case, making someone prove their citizenship to the cops rather than the burden being on the government), or violating someone’s rights by treating them differently based on race (as you know, in AZ the immigrants are almost all Mexican).
So, whichever word you meant, I know what it means and you don’t. But you’re free to try to COUNTER THIS ARGUMENT and show what those terms MEAN TO YOU.
You protest too much. I was referring to “b******t”.
Bullshit (what, can’t your virgin eyes take an adult word) means all your inaccurate and unsubstantiated posts. Tell me why your posts don’t deserve to be called that. And tell me if you’re proud of yourself for always having to imitate me when it comes to retorts.
but you’re no Steve Harvey.
and a meaningless one at that. Or is this the kind of retort you dream up when you have to rely on your own wits?
Oh well. It just indicates that you can’t answer my direct questions. No surprise there.
I would respond more. Until you can be a big boy you’re not worth my time.
Sad, especially since they’re more projections of your personal flaws. Even worse is when you keep saying “I’m not talking to you anymore” but then you keep on doing it.
Those were serious questions, however. You can answer them (which would satisfy me) or you can ignore them (and be criticized since they’re serious questions). Your choice, and your consequences to deal with.
I eagerly anticipate dissecting more of your posts later today.
The law didn’t require probable cause, it required reasonable suspicion, which is a much lower standard.
Lots of people who are here legally don’t have U.S. driver’s licenses: they don’t drive, or they’re here on a temporary visa.
Lots of people who are here legally don’t speak English, or don’t speak well enough to deal with a stressful situation like a confrontation with the police.
should have a valid passport or Visa. When I go oversees to a place where I don’t speak their language, I make darn sure I carry my passport or at least a copy, because they often keep the passport in my hotel. No big deal.
Have the drivers license bureau partner with the federal government. Whatever it takes. Right now the federal government is not doing its job with regards to immigration because of the unholy partnership between illegal Dem voters and cheap labor big business Repubs.
Free service provided by the reality server:
Investigation after investigation has shown that there are no “illegal Dem voters”, or illegal Republican voters for that matter – at least not when it comes to undocumented immigrants.
And FYI, the Federal government do partner with the driver’s license bureau – it’s called the Real ID Act of 2005, and as a result of its (initial?) implementation in Colorado, even a passport is not sufficient to obtain a driver’s license in the state.
There are these things called ‘laws’. Our country gives certain organizations called ‘governments’ the authority to make these ‘laws’. The definition of which ‘governments’ get to make which ‘laws’ and enforce them is defined in something called the ‘United States Constitution’, which also defines something called the ‘Court’ to adjudicate disputes about these ‘laws’.
In the real world, a ‘government’ defined in the ‘United States Constitution’ – called the ‘Federal government’ – is given the power to control our country’s borders, immigration, and naturalization and all of the ‘laws’ enforcing those policies. Another set of ‘governments’ – called ‘State governments’ – do not have power over immigration, but must rely on the ‘Federal government’ to enforce it’s ‘laws’.
Fortunately for us, the ‘Federal government’ has created some things called ‘rules’ and ‘agreements’ which allow ‘State governments’ to enforce to some extent ‘Federal laws’. Which means that real criminals – those convicted of crimes – can be deported if they are found to be illegal. And if someone is charged with a crime, a more complete background check can be done which will (possibly) turn up someone’s illegal immigration status.
If you don’t like it, change the Constitution. Until then, suck it up, support President Obama’s push to enforce the current immigration law (something Bush never bothered to do), and tell your Congressman and Senators to support comprehensive immigration reform that will modernize our immigration law and give law enforcement (and employers) the tools they really need to make legal immigration workable and illegal immigration unprofitable.
Close down the traffic routes. If you can’t secure the borders then there really is no hope. Stopping illegal crossings needs to be the first priority.
I mean, immigration is his only platform, right?
Because it will get his xenophobic base energized.
What Tancredo SAYS, however might be different.
In public, he’ll condemn it. But privately? He’ll think it’s the best thing that ever happened to him
Are other Colorado Congressmen and Senators speaking up on the issue?
n/t
and the others are AWOL? How about our two Dem Senators – hello? hello?
with immigration reform.
A good statement by Polis and this ruling should drive Congress to take up the matter.
Nearly 300 comments so far on the midday ruling at the Newspaper of Record site – most by people convinced that this is Armageddon and that the federal judge is a Manchurian Candidate planted by Obama and Pelosi.
Our immigration system is not broken. The problem is that the federal government, under both Obama and previous administrations, refuse to enforce our immigration laws.
We have indeed reached a dangerous point where the federal government refuses to enforce our immigration laws and now is taking action to prevent states from enforcing those very same laws.
Yes, there likely will be a backlash against Democrats because of this – and justifiably so.
And, no, you don’t have to carry your birth certificate with you. A drivers license or passport will do just fine. I don’t make a habit of driving without my license – do you?
You haven’t thought this one through.
1) Obama, if you haven’t seen the news lately, is enforcing the immigration laws as written – he’s sending out immigration agents to audit company employment records and forcing the companies to pay fines and fire those workers as they find them. In fact, he has redirected the agents from the showy raids performed under Bush into these audit teams and has vastly increased the effectiveness of undocumented worker enforcement.
2) The states have no authority to enforce these laws outside of that explicitly granted to them by the Federal government. Such enforcement must eventually return undocumented immigrants to Federal hands for processing, which means the Federal government must be able to handle the work – something it already appears overburdened with. You can’t just ignore jurisdictional issues created by the Constitution just because you think it’s right.
3) A driver’s license is not proof of citizenship, and it is not required that you carry any ID with you at all if you’re not doing something requiring an ID. A guy in his yard, or walking down the street, or riding a bike, or being a passenger, or, well, doing anything other than driving a car or flying on a plane, does not need to carry an ID. I know friends and acquaintances who either (a) don’t have an acceptable ID or (b) don’t carry it with them except when driving/flying.
Heck – my grandmother no longer has an ID (she can’t drive any more), she still walks several blocks to the store, and she might on any given day act odd enough that the police could stop her to figure out what she’s up to. Are you suggesting she’s a candidate for deportation or detention based on her lack of ability to prove her citizenship?
in the Republican Party.
Hispanics are the fastest growing minority in the country and the blatant pandering by Republicans like McInnis are going to push them to vote for Democrats. Hispanics with their strong Catholic background are normally social conservatives who would be attracted to anti-choice candidates but the pure racism and hatred for minorities displayed by Republicans flips the normal and pushes them to the party that has always fought for social justice for the vulnerable in our society.
The racists in the Republican Party were never going to vote Democratic or best candidate anyway so there is going to be no real backlash among the Tea Party faithful that Democrats should worry about. Markey won without them and their anger doesn’t translate into more votes per person. Republicans could change the dynamics by supporting sensible immigration reform but of course they would rather eat horse vomit than do the right thing.
and to have a rational immigration policy that furthers the interests of Americans, not the immigrants.
I personally would prefer that the we have strict enforcement of the laws against employers hiring illegal workers. That would help reduce the need for other enforcement mechanisms.
Secondly, it is racist for the Democrats to cater to one group (Hispanics) because they are the fastest growing demographic group.
Most of us want a rational immigration policy. One element of that is insuring that whatever laws we have are actually enforced. We don’t have that now. A second part is a allowing a reasonable number of legal immigrants. Right now, we allow about 1.2 million legal immigrants into the US every year – more then all the other countries in the world. This mass immigration (both legal and illegal) is responsible for almost all of the population growth in the US; projected to go from 310 million today to 500 millin in 2050 and 1 billion by 2100. This is not a population future I or most Americans want for our country, so I advocate for immigration of about 200,000 per year, which is about the historical average and would allow our populatin to stabilize. I call that a rational immigration policy.
What is your idea of a rational policy? Do you want 1 billion people in the US by 2100?
and one of many I know who feel the same way. I believe that mass immigration (1.8 million people per year legal and illegal) driving massive population growth is inconsistent with sustainability, a healthy environment, ensuring that we have good paying jobs with benefits for every American, having enough resources (water, energy, agricultural land, etc) for the people we have.
Futhernore, there are 4 billion people in the world poorer then most of those coming here. If we are to effectively help people from other countries, we need to help them in their own country, not by allowing them all to come here.
but it is dissimilar to all I have ever seen (and I used to teach classes on social change that included demographic projections), probably because (if it exists at all) it is a bogus bit of ideological propaganda that does not employ prevailing demographic modeling techniques.
In reality, our massive immigration is good for America in a variety of ways: 1) It counterbalances our own increasing demographic imbalance between those of working age and those retiring, providing a sufficient work force to support retirees; 2) Even illegal immigration itself provides a net economic benefit to the United States; 3) It increases global GDP (by reducing barriers to the free flow of the factors of production), and decreases the global gini coefficient (the statistical measure of inequality of the distribution of wealth), so makes the global economy both more efficient and more fair; 4) It decreases global population growth by facilitating transition into the demographic curve of decreasing fertility resulting from increasing prosperity; 5) it is the humane policy, allowing human beings to migrate toward opportunity, to their own and humanity’s aggregate benefit.
The costs are localized and short-term, and include a basic commitment to inhumanity. The benefits are global and long-term, and include a basic commitment to humanity. The “Fortress America” approach that you advocate may or may not be racist, but it involves a similar in-group/out-group emphasis that leads to lose-lose rather than win-win outcomes.
http://www.census.gov/populati…
This is a little dated (done in 2000), but at this point our estimated population is tracking the high estimate, which projects 552 million people by 2050 and 1.2 M by 2100.
It is obvious you and I have significant differences in our philosophies that have nothing to do with race. So, we should confine our discussion to those differences.
1. Always needing a larger workforce to support more retirees is an unsustainable ponzi scheme.
2. A “bigger” economy should not be our goal. What is important is is the economic situation for individuals. A bigger economy driven by importing cheap imported labor is not desirable.
3. I’m not concerned about growing the world GDP. Obviously, you believe in globalization and unlimited increases in consumption – which is not possible in a world with limited resources.
4. It will not reduce global population growth – it serves as an relief valve for countries that are not dealing with their own overpopulation issues.
5. What is “humane” is debateable. I don’t think it is humane to push down wages and take jobs from our existing poor and uneducated by importing foreign workers. I also don’t think it is humane to often take the best and brightest from other countries and bring them here when they could help their own countries.
It is obvious you have more of a one world, free movement of people, capital, philosophy then I do. It seems the needs and desires of the American people is secondary to you.
I still believe in our country, and taking care of Americans, our local environment, making the US sustainable from an economic, social, ane environmental standpoint. By taking leadership in these areas, we can then help people in other countries. This is called thinking globally and acting locally.
Point 1 gives it away. You think Social Security is broke and that it wasn’t designed to deal with population increases or payment by the next generation.
On #2 we at least partially agree – the goal shouldn’t be a bigger economy. But it should be a sustainable economy, and in today’s world market we cannot afford to pay farm workers twice or (much) more what they’re making and remain competitive in the market. Some compromise must be reached.
On point 3 I think you’re confusing SH (and GG, and me) for other people. Time to dial back the assumption and/or paranoia.
Point 4, yes and no; an educated, wealthier population is a slower growing population. Anything we do to accomplish those goals in part or whole offsets the ‘relief valve’ effect.
As far as the movement of labor, the country and world have proven several times over that isolationism doesn’t work in the long run. We can look within our borders for solutions, but so long as the rest of the world is out there, we ignore it at the peril of our own country losing its leadership position in the world. We cannot work completely outside of the world economic system without first destroying that system and sending other countries back to a relative stone age so that we can maintain our splendid isolation at the top of the mountain.
includes three series, a low one of under 300 million, a middle one of 590 million, and a high one of over one billion, does not support the claim you made, and your attempt to remedy that by including an undocmented assertion that our current rate supports the high estimate doesn’t alter that fact.
I do not believe that the long-term interests of Americans can be divorced from the long-term interests of humanity. Therefore, I do not subscribe to the false dichotomy that you do. And, you’re right, neither do I subscribe to the tribalistic impulse that so starkly considers the fate of some human beings more important than the fate of other human beings. Further, I disagree that this impulse “has nothing to do with racism.”
I absolutely believe in internalizing externalities, which means including in our economic engine the production of public goods such as environmentally sound production and consumption practices. I do not consider sustainability to be incompatable with robustness, nor do I consider uncontrolled economic contraction to serve anyone’s interests, here or elsewhere.
Your positions are inconsistent, arguing against economic growth, but for individual prosperity. I happen to agree that it is more important for a basic level of happiness-sustaining wealth to be broadly met than for aggregate wealth to be as great as possible. But that would be a function of a robust economy, not of a haphazardly contracted one.
but here’s another more recent one showing the population growing to between 399 million and 458 million by 2050 with various levels of immigration. With zero net immigration we would only have 323 million – a difference of 76 million between the zero net and the “low level”. If we approve some of the “comprehensive immigration reform” proposals currently being put forth it will mean an even larger increase as we legalize 12 – 20 million people, they utilize “family reunification” to bring in their relatives, we go with even higher levels of work visas, etc. This is all quite unsustainable and is why I oppose “CIR” as proposed.
http://www.census.gov/populati…
I think population growth in the US is a big deal, you obviously don’t. Because our birth rate is essentially replacement level, the vast majority of the population growth is due to immigration and their descendants. That is a fact.
The population of the US has nearly doubled in my short lifetime. I don’t believe we are better off now and think we will be much worse off with a hundred or two hundred million more people. And I think the world will be worse off with a hundred or two hundred million more relatively high consuming Americans. You may think we will be better off.
This is what we disagree on.
don’t tell me, or others, what I think, and what I do or don’t “obviously” care about. If it were so obvious, you wouldn’t feel such a need to publish your interpretation, a ploy which allows you to argue against the strawmen of your own creation rather than the arguments of mine. You can speak for yourself (a right I have made no attempt to usurp), and I’ll speak for myself.
As for population projections, what is obvious is that I don’t consider cherry-picking an outlier highest-case-scenario projection from a study whose next highest one was half that, and claiming it as the decisive projection. That’s sloppy and propagandistic, rather than the use of reliable data to inform reasoned arguments.
I think population is a very big deal, since it is a critical social variable which affects our lives. I look at it systemically, in the context of both local and global concerns, in terms of the short-term and long-term costs and benefits to various possible policies. Ideologues only see what shores up their ideological convictions. Analysts look at all information from all angles, and, if they see only what supports their preferred position, they are probably not very good analysts.
Other than that, I’m done. I’ve stated my views. Nothing more need be said.
If 1.2 million people are allowed in to the country every year, and millions more are pouring across our borders filling jobs Americans don’t seem to want to fill even when they’re offered, then you either have to accept one or more of the following:
1) Killing off the U.S. farm sector, because we won’t be able to compete on price for farm products.
2) Accepting drastically higher prices on farm goods, along with a closing of our borders to trade (expect lots of retaliatory tarrifs and boycotts from other countries as we restrict farm trades).
3) Revising the legal migrant worker quota (and processing capacity) up and not down to reflect actual worker need.
IMHO we don’t need to revise our permanent legal immigration quotas, but we do need to address – and quickly – the number of work visas we issue and the speed (and security, reliability) with which we process them.
No one – and I mean no one – US citizen, legal immigrant, or illegal immigrant should be asked to work 14 hours a day in intolerable work conditions for crappy pay. We did away with slaves in this country, but have replaced them with what many farmers think is better – cheap imported labor that they can use, abuse, and then get rid of.
Cutting down the supply of cheap labor would push up wages, make employers offer better working conditions, and push farmers to increase productivity instead of relying on slave/migrant labor.
1) I don’t believe in subsidizing factory farms (hogs, chickens, beef, dairies, orchards) with cheap imported labor. This type of thinking has killed the family farm not only in the US, but in other countries where we sell our agricultural goods and drive farmers off the land (Mexico and corn?). We would be better off if we went back to more locally owned and produced foods instead of mega farm, big corporate farming.
2. I am will to pay higher prices on farm goods if it means paying living wages to workers.
We might need some type of limited guest worker program for farms, but as it stands now, only a small portion of the people that are here work in agriculture. Most move on to other jobs (construction, housekeeping, food service, roofing, etc) that pay better. And, by the way, Americans will do all these jobs at decent pay with decent working conditions and some benefits. Should they expect anything else?
This is wrong on two levels.
First of all, this presumes some level of bias on behalf of the Democrats in targeting this demographic. That’s not the case. It’s just what the parties do, just as the GOP targeted working class whites 30 years ago.
Second, racism means discrimination against a race, not in favor for. Unless this was working against another race’s interests, that can’t be called racism.
Now, keep in mind that the relationship between Dems and Hispanics is a very long one. In the 19th Century, the xenophobes (not necessarily racist) found a home in the Republican party – basically, those who didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a WASP. That meant that the Democrats were able to cater to all those groups. It was a gradual process, given how racist many Dems were in the old days, but as time went by the Dems welcomed and catered to many different ethnic groups while the ‘pubs largely became whiter and whiter (especially after Civil Rights drove most Dixiecrats to join the GOP, and Reagan successfully appealed to the white working class that used to be a reliable Democratic group).
In this context, given how long Hispanics have found a home in the Democratic party, calling appeals to them “racist” is absurd.
and did not address my points.
The evidence of racism among immigration activists is compelling. I wouldn’t say all of them are racist, but it’s absurd to deny its existence. It seems you don’t really understand what racism is, though, so I’ll cut you a little bit of slack.
I would agree there are some racists in the immigration debate – on both sides. Don’t tell me it is any less racist to argue for high levels of immigration from one or two races then it is to argue against it.
Nonetheless, there are a lot of reasons for people to be against mass immigration – economic, environmental, cultural. Mine happen to be economic and environmental. I don’t want high levels of immigration from any country; whether it be Canada, Ireland Zimbabwe, or Mexico.
I think we should focus on talking about the underlying issues and quit making everything into a race issue.
I don’t know what you are talking about when you say:
I don’t think anyone is arguing FOR high levels of immigration from anywhere.
If you can find a tangible example of racism, I’m all ears. But what you said – that’s just silly, and most of your proposed fixes are impractical if not unconstitutional. I’ll respect you when you address my criticisms of those fixes directly, rather than continue to deflect the answers and change the subject.
How about La Raza, MECHA, and all the Latino immigrant advocacy organizations that complain about any law enforcement and want higher levels of family reunification and legal immigration. Many of them don’t think there should be any limits to immigration. They are lobbying for the interests of only one race.
I consider anything level of immigration over the historical average of around 200,000 per year to be relatively high. Certainly 1.5 million per year is too high.
As I said earlier, I support strictly enforcing laws against employers hiring illegal workers. I am for mandatory use of the E-verify system by all employers. I support having a national ID or other type of secure identification. I support matching finger prints of people who have been picked up for other crimes against a federal data base. I support employer audits of employers to ensure they’re following the law and strict fines/imprisonment if they aren’t. I support eliminating automatic citizenship for children born of illegal immigrants, less family reunification (immediate spouses and children only), and less overall work visas. I support tightening up our tracking of people that are here on temporary visas to ensure they don’t overstay them. I support allowing some true refugees to come here, spouses of citizens (but not sham marriages), and very limited family reunification. That would be about 200,00 to 250,000 people per year, which is approximately the US historical average and equal to the number of US citizens who leave the country. It would also allow our population to stabilize at maybe 340 million people instead of growing exponentially to 400 million, 500 million, and then 1 billion over time.
representatives of a historically discriminated-against minority working in the interests of that minority are not racist – not because of that, anyway. Try again.
I can respect most of your positions, though not all of them, but I can’t get behind any of it because, philosophically, I can’t regard the USA as being a land of liberty if we all have to carry our papers like it’s Europe in the late 1930s. And I can’t see how any of this can be fairly enforced without violating civil rights of actual citizens and documented aliens anyway – the ones who can’t speak English well, or have prominent accents even if they can.
Your economic analysis is simply false. Globally, open borders are very good for the economy, and analysis of our current immigration rates on domestic economic health show it to be a net benefit. Attention to environmental concerns grows with economic well-being, so on that dimension, it is an environmental plus. Increased wealth in the world, on the other hand, is an environmental minus, but a humanitarian plus. The question is do you want to subscribe to the morality that it is good for Americans to get richer and have an even larger negative environmental impact, but simultaneously bad for the far more destitute peoples of the world to rise out of destutition because of their prospective environmental impact? You’re welcome to that position, but hopefully it is one that will not define us as a nation.
Nowhere did I say that it is good for Americans to get richer and have an even larger negative environmental impact. I actually think that America is rich enough and that we need less overall consumption, but more equitable distribution of income; which would occur if we weren’t always importing cheap labor to meet the needs of and enrich the wealthy, at the expense of our own poor and uneducated.
And, it would be good to help the far more destitute people of the world to rise out of destitution by helping them in their own countries and addressing population, education and other issues there – not by bringing them here.
requires increasing global wealth, which, as I’ve pointed out and you haven’t refuted, reducing obstructions to the flow of human beings toward demand for their labor facilitates.