Coyote Blog

In my observation of the issue, I believe you'll find a large percentage of the objection is this. Large numbers of illegal immigrants put a financial strain on government provided services such as health, schools and emergency services. The presence of millions of illegal immigrants has right or wrong become somewhat to blame for economic troubles, particularly in state budgets.

As a California resident, I can fully understand Arizona's plight. I also agree with you that marijuana use should be legalized. Based on the data that I've seen, legalizing the sale and use of marijuana would eliminate much of the violence that results from a forced black market.

With that said, illegal immigration is a very different animal. Immigration results in negative externalities that would not be seen with marijuana legalization. You ignore the elephant in the room: the cost of social services. In today's world, our government insists that the taxpayers provide an ever increasing amount of handouts to anyone and everyone that crosses our boarders.

In the absence of a welfare state, I'm all for opening up our boarders. But unfortunately, this isn't the world we live in.

You forgot the cost of government services for these folk who are coming over the border illegally.

Libertarian views work best if you have at least a vaguely libertarian society. If you are going to force people to pay for services for these illegals, then I think they should be kept out.

Some days I think on immigration Coyote you have too much pride in your ignorance. Such as this statement "“THEY ARE ILLEGAL” ..., then why not just legalize their presence?"

You already know the answer why not. We already did this back in 1986, we already know what happens when you do this. You emboldened a significantly larger number of people to decide to break the law. We are not ever going to erase our border, to even contemplate is simply crazy talk. No border means no property rights. Africa kind of sort of works on a no borders philosophy, not by individual nation's choice of course, but when the new migrants move in, they take what they want, by force, and throw in lots of raping and murdering along with it. So, your position is simply ignorant or completely a false face you use to prove just exactly how totally libertarian you are, like a badge of honor or something. I am quite certain that if you got your wish with laws and government, your company would not be yours, and you would likely be dead in the end, and maybe you would heroically have taken out five or ten of them before you were finally overwhelmed, but I believe you really do care enough about your own personal possessions that you would stand and fight to keep them even though you care not one bit about the ownership that Americans have of a bit of land between The Pacific and The Atlantic that 234 years ago our founding fathers started a government to ensure for our prosperity and for that prosperity worked hard to protect the borders of our homeland.

Go be a freaking founding father and start your own little open borders fiefdom in some isolated part of the world, let us know how that works out for you. There are plenty of little dictators around the world that treat people far worse than we do here in America, get a million of your libertarian friends together and go overthrow that leader and then try and live there with declared open borders.

Another problem is that now that there are so many here, they seem to have a strong political voice even though they can't even legally vote. Politicians seem to feel that the key to winning races now is winning over these groups, and that the first party to legalize all of the illegals will win their votes for the long haul. Imagine 10-20 million votes gained for the party that legalizes them.

I understand the other side of the coin, where we all benefit from having more labor available. I think that there are other solutions that no politicians seem to want, such as allowing people without advanced degrees to work here on a visa and have the same opportunities for permanent resident status and even citizenship. I don't favor a one-time fine payment and then citizenship for folks that completely disregard the law, though.

There are a finite number of low skilled jobs available. Why would we allow millions of unskilled laborors to come here to compete for jobs that don't exist? Then set up unemployement and welfare programs to support people that supposedly can't find jobs becuase we allowed new immigrants to come in and take them?

Where do you want to draw the line? The first time 8? million were legalizied and now we are talking 20 million? Even after that America will still be a better place to live then South America or Africa so are you ok with 100 million more comming over the next decade? China has 800 million poor roughly, are you ok taking all of them in tomorrow as well?

When you finally do decide enough is enough what standard for admittance are you going to use then?

When we need doctors, nurses, teachers, and scientist why do we block them and allow unlimited day laborors? We already have a large enough underclass, we need to shut it off and allow skilled and educated immigrants en mass.

"There are a finite number of low skilled jobs available."

There is not a finite number, but when the ones that are available are overwhelmed by an influx of third worlders who are willing to work in very poor conditions for very low wages, then the ability of those in this nation to get these jobs in order to grow their skills and value is diminished tremendously. How many people actually can say that their neighborhoods any longer offer the ability of their children to start a lawn care business, snow shoveling business or any other small business that teenagers in high school would benefit from? Is it any wonder that the children of the 90s and 00s are the entitlement generation as opposed to the prior generations?

Why is it so difficult, for some, to see mass illegal immigration for what it is - a cynical ploy by the Mexican government to transfer the costs of providing for their poorer citizens onto the U.S. taxpayer. Once these people are in the U.S., they receive generous public services denied them in Mexico, including welfare, education and health care. Further, their employment opportunities improve dramatically and once employed, they send money back to Mexico. In effect, the government of Mexico is being paid to send their poor to the U.S.. In order to keep the gravy train flowing the Mexican government discourages assimilation, working tirelessly to convince immigrants that they owe their loyalty, not to the U.S., a country that provides support and opportunity, but to Mexico. Our own institutions, sickened by the disease of multiculturalism, actually work to reinforce this idea with predictable results. This strategy has worked so well for Mexico that other countries are starting to copy it.

Those who advocate the loudest for illegal immigrants are often their greatest exploiters. Employers who want their cheap labor. Politicians who cynically create and exploit a sense of alienation and grievance in hopes of gaining their future political support. The Mexican government which hopes for continued remittances and the ability to exploit ethno-nationalist loyalty to influence U.S. policy. If anyone needs to provide evidence that their motivations do not include racism, it is these people.

OK, why all the passion about this? There are lots of things that are unfair, and no one gets worked up over them. There is lots of lawlessness, too. "when you get in a car, you can choose to operate it legally or illegally. (I speed all the time.) But we don't want to take licenses away from people who break those laws.

When someone who will be on welfare has a baby, we don't scream that they are mooching off the system in their faces, do we? I mean, if we don't like moochers, what does citizenship matter?

This is a color coded debate, pure and simple.

dave smith:
seems to be unable to separate fact from fiction. We actually did have a falling out with the welfare state, and the result was welfare reform. We kicked many of the welfare queens off the welfare dole. There is more that should be done on this front, but it is something that we do in fact get in the faces of those on welfare, and our society does not condone welfare queens. I personally in fact do say they are mooching off the system. Octomom outrage seems to come to mind. The rage against the bailouts, which includes the irresponsible home buyers, not just the corporate welfare it included. So, if the only thing you see in the hearts of people is racism and prejudice, like many people say, if you go through life and everyone you meet is an asshole, you might want to think about that and look in the mirror. If you go though life and the only thing you see are a bunch of racists, it is much more likely that you in fact are the racist than everyone else.

Warren Meyer asks: "What drives these folks [into liking Arizona's new law]? Go back and read my posts on this issue. Here's a summary:

1. Mexican illegal immigrants flout our laws, establish themselves "under the table," and take advantage of our better economy. Yet, many of them spit on the USA and its culture and have no intention of becoming good citizens. Worse, they demand special treatment from the government and from businesses.

2. Mexican illegal immigrants in our border areas flood our hospitals and crowd our public schools. The costs of these actions are borne by taxpayers, hospital owners, and paying patients (and their health insurers).

3. In some areas, illegal immigrant communities are crime-ridden and getting more dangerous. The illegals' fear of law enforcement personnel results in the innocent illegals doing nothing to get the criminal illegals arrested and deported (or imprisoned).

I strongly favor easy immigration via a guest worker program (with guest workers being ineligible for government benefits or entitlements). I also strongly favor deporting the bad elements among our millions of illegal immigrants. Those two positions are not incompatible. Arizona cannot change federal immigration laws and policies, but it can try to get rid of illegal immigrants. I don't expect the program to make much of an impact, though it might encourage future Mexican illegal immigrants to settle in a different state.

MJ and astonerii, if you were correct why aren't these illegal aliens at home working? Africa, Latin America, and every other country with poor education and low skill workers show Julian Simon is wrong.

To say we have the capacity to absorb 100 million unskilled laborors or even half that is silly

Amnesty is not the answer. Reagan did that in 1986, resulting in an even larger horde of illegals.

Permitting a protected 'minority' group to live outside the law does not work for the good of the United States any more than treating Muslims with kid gloves in France and Britain is working. La Raza is getting bolder and nastier with the passing of time, so we can soon expect our own resident terrorists.

Big Government (read Democrats in power) is stirring this pot with their over-generous welfare giveaways in order to gain long term control. Welfare and lax border control do not mix. Matter of fact, the mix is nothing short of volatile.

Our present situation will soon encourage the same shadow economy that has brought Greece down. Did you know that 30% of the economic translations in that country are conducted in the shadow of the black market or unchecked bribes.

I have always believed that Libertarians were the first advocates of limited government with strong adherence to protecting individual rights using the rule of law. Now it seem that Warren would have us alter the laws to favor a single group, who just happen to be living outside the law.

Nate:
I think you are mistaking my argument for some other person's argument. My argument is that there is not a finite number of low skill jobs, there are as many low skills jobs available as the capitalist system can make. If it were cheaper and faster to build cars with 50 times as many low cost laborers, you could create 50 times as many jobs, it is all up to creativity, imagination and so forth. So there is not some finite set in stone number available. What prevents this kind of human devastation though is scarcity, a scarcity of human capital. If there are only a certain number of people to look for hiring what happens is that the companies that can produce the most value out of people will hire the absolute most qualified paying them huge sums of money. We see this in sports, movie production, corporate CEOs, lawyers and doctors. Because people who can make companies the most money get paid a huge amount of money to fill those positions. As skill becomes less and less important in the productivity, so too does the amount of money a person is willing to pay the person to fill the position. We find this with respect to janitorial, crop picking and other jobs that have a very limited skill requirement of their workers. Any job that can have an employee be trained to be productive in 2 days or less is going to get the lowest wages. People who have skill that have to come naturally and no amount of training or schooling will ever teach are going to be well paid for, if their skill also produces value. Basketball stars, runners, golfers and many sports require a natural ability to perform along with many years of practice. Business CEOs many times have to have some special quality that allows them to be able to pick between hiring winners and losers and see what choices today will lead to as far as sales tomorrow. Strawberry pickers on the other hand have to know which strawberry to pick and can be shown this in about 10 minutes with some additional time training to do it quickly. So, what to do with labor? How big of an increase in the number of low skill people vying for very low wages do we allow? Do we allow the limited number we currently have along with a varying introduction of work visa permits to keep the number relatively scarce enough to keep human value high enough a person can work and live off his work, that employers will have to insure a good work environment, that when possible employers will upgrade technology and practices to improve productivity and safety, or do we create an endless river of nameless inhuman bodies to be thrown at the job of getting it done regardless of whether we could do it better, safer, with more productivity that will allow either lower prices or higher wages?

The number of low wage low skill jobs is not a finite number. Some people sell fruit on a corner, kids make lemonade stands, babysitting services, lawn mowing, and if the price of human labor becomes low enough what high earning person would not want some huge staff of laborers to do all the little things for them. I think there was a time in our country when this was also the case. In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, that time frame happens to be very close to another humans rights correction in our nations history, one that severely limited the ability of these high earners to have a stable full of the lowest wage lowest level of human laborers. The first slaves that came to America came as indentured servants, I wonder if some kind of open borders would bring a time like that back to America. Maybe the laws are strong enough to prevent that, but by the same logic that open borders comes from, so too comes the logic that if a human being is willing to barter a period of his life away at some extremely low value, it is their right to do so, and what business is it of the government's if two consenting adults want to make such a business agreement? Hey, not saying that Coyote thinks this, despite his hard core never say die libertarian position, but it is well with in the logic of open borders.

Michael Miller

Who said anything about cutting off immigration?

Those of us who support the new Arizona want the border secured and the flow of illegal aliens stopped.

Then we can work on fixing and streamlining the immigration system so that we can have more LEGAL immigration from all countries including Mexico.

"My argument is that there is not a finite number of low skill jobs, there are as many low skills jobs available as the capitalist system can make."

Your contradicting your argument in the same sentance your making it. "As the capitalist system can make" That is my argument, our capitalist system can't make an infinite number of jobs for every unskilled person in the world that wants to sneak into America.

The cost of labor, its efficiency, and value has nothing to do with the jobs being available. If your argument was at all true there would be no such thing as unemployement.

If there is unlimited capacity for jobs why do we have people without jobs?

I generally agree with your opinions or can at least understand them, but why is it so hard to get that a sovereign country has a right to control it's borders? What other country in the history of the planet has not done this?

The fact that they are breaking our laws is enough of a reason to kick them out, but there are many others as well.

Would you expect people who flagrantly, and often billigerently, disobey our border laws to be model citizens otherwise. I sure wouldn't. Are they following our other laws, pay taxes, etc. Fat chance. Then there is the strain on public services, hospitals, schools, police, etc. which falls on the law abiding taxpayers to cover. You also have the fact that illegals tend not to even try to assimilate into our society, learn the language, etc. In fact, many seem to be openly hotile to our country and culture. It can be hard to understand why they are so eager to come here if they love waving the Mexican flag so much. Just how do you think an amnesty would work anyways? Do you really think millions of under-educated, barely employable people from Mexico are going to embrace libertarian ideas. And of course all these new "citizens" will be voting. Do you think they will vote more or less the same as mainstream Americans? Talk about a fast-track to socialism. The welfare state is exploding fast enough. I see legal immigrants as Mexicans who want to become Americans, and I openly welcome them. Illegals are Mexicans trespassing in our country to collect inflated under-the-table wages and exploit a bloated welfare state because their own county is so disfunctional. They don't want to be Americans, they just want to live in a different Mexico.

In a libertarian fantasy land where everybody is responsible for themselves, your position would be more defensible. But in the Obama nanny state where the wealth gets redistributed with a backhoe, it would be economic and political suicide. I hope it is a very small minority indeed that feels uneducated, low income, non-english speaking foreign nationals with no respect for our laws or culture should be able to pore across our border by the millions at will.

From a human rights standpoint, why do we want a large number of underpaid workers at nefarious businesses that take advantage of their legal status in order to place them in dangerous jobs? (E.g. Meatpacking and day labor construction).

Hooray, we get cheap meat and dry wall hanging, who cares if George Smith *wink* loses his hands in a band saw, it's not like he can file a worker's comp claim.

I'm more concerned about this illegality begets illegality angle than anything. It would be better is we had a sensible guest worker program that took the pressure off of the sneak here and stay illegal workers. Legalizing labor movement and drugs would probably do more to end illegal immigration than any strict enforcement policy.

That said, Arizona is well within its rights to write a law that encourages the enforcement of existing Federal law. It's not like Arizona can't have laws about the legality of drugs, or enforcing working conditions, or water conservation, or mining, or wages, or any other number of areas that the Federal government is involved with. To be sure, Federal law will preempt Arizona's laws if Arizona had a different standard for what is an illegal immigrant. But Arizona didn't do that, it simply requires a check of someone's current immigration status. Legal immigrants and visitors are required to have their documentation at all times anyway.

Finally, this does make me worried about abuse, profiling, and any number of horrible things police on a power trip can do. But that problem already existed, this law isn't changing anything on the front end.

in the presence our large amounts of cheap foreign labor with rapidly increasing productivity, our quotas for "cheap labor" are not going to hold up the price labor. we'll just ship jobs overseas. are no wages better than low wages? is it better to have a factory in china paying their taxes and driving their service economy with the wages of its workers, or would you rather have it here, paying US taxes and driving our economy? this choice between letting unskilled labor in and keeping wages high is a false one.

all these other problems are easily addressed by changing the immigrant status to "registered guest worker" and not providing entitlement services to them. if you have a productive employee that costs you too much eating all the food out of the free company cafeteria, isn't taking away cafeteria rights and keeping the worker producing a better answer than just firing him? it's the services to resident aliens that need to be changed, not how many we allow.

finally, i hear a lot of folks arguing to "secure the border". what on earth makes you think it's possible? have we succeeded in keeping drugs out? build a wall and they'll take boats and planes, or come through canada, or hide in crates, or get better documents forged. you simply cannot shit off the supply of something for which demand is so high while still being an open society. every crackdown in drug enforcement has made the drug barons more powerful. it will do the same for the people smugglers.

these guys are coming. get used to it. it's not going to change. people flow inexorably from low wage ares to high wage ones just like air flows from high pressure to low. nothing short of martial law is going to stop it.

we'll be better off here with a ready supply of cheap, legal labor. we could start producing clothing and footwear again. the knock on effects as the workers pay taxes and spend money will drive growth. the taxes can fund the services they need.

it is our behavior around entitlements that is turning the benefit of immigration into a social services problem. fix the bad policy, not the good one.

So far, pretty much everybody is overlooking the elephant in the closet. People of hispanic background are eligible for affirmative action, along the lines of minority set-asides, government contracts to disadvantaged small businesses, extra points on civil service exams, etc. My daughter is graduating high school this year with a 4.6 GPA and a 2250 SAT score. A hispanic classmate was admitted to the same school as her with a 3.6 GPA and an 1800 SAT score. In addition, her classmate was awarded financial aid (for which my daughter was not eligible). I find the entire concept of affirmative action constitutionally impermissible (under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment), but in the case of an ethnic group which has migrated here voluntarily, it is particularly outrageous. As long as we are going to have Supreme Court decisions like Grutter v. Bollinger which establish that we owe reparations to everybody on the planet in perpetuity if they can manage to sneak in and pop out a kid in the parking lot of San Diego General, then it is only self-preservation that we attempt to protect ourselves by limiting the influx. Hispanics like racial profiling when it results in preferential admission to the University of California, they just don't like the flip side.

Nate:
You know what, I agree with you on everything except the fact that there is not some finite number of jobs. Any number of reasons can change the number of jobs available. Increasing minimum wage, a change lowers the number of jobs available for low skill workers, because they do not produce enough to pay for their skills at the new higher wage. A new regulation requiring extra expenses on a company changes the calculation. There are hundreds if not thousands of inputs that have to add up to profit in order for there to be a job. At least, outside government employment that holds true. Unlimited unregulated border crossings most certainly will cause many additional changes to the laws of this country, and it will most certainly affect the compensation package for which workers can bargain for. Many jobs will go completely outside the law, under the table day laboring which already exists and is primarily filled with illegal alien labor today. Increasing the number of people available always reduces every worker's bargaining power, no matter how far up the food chain you are. Since each person must have a way to live, each person will find some job or position in society to accomplish this, think about road side stop light orange sellers, stop light newspaper sellers and so forth. Is there a minimum wage you can pay yourself for doing your own thing as a boss? The unlimited total open borders fantasy would drive out the concept of minimum wages, because effectively each person becomes a private consultant day laborer at the bottom of the social status group. As such if I drive up to a place where 50 of these people hang out and I need a tree cut down, I can say I need 5 people to help cut a tree down and remove it from my property, and I take the 5 lowest bidders that also appear to be physically able to do the job. I just made 5 jobs that did not exist 2 minutes ago, I could have always removed the tree myself. I also just took away the jobs of maybe two or three professional tree removers in the process. Maybe I pay the day laborers $25 each for the contract position. If it takes them two hours they get more than minimum wage, if it takes them 5 hours, they get less. Will I be prosecuted at a private citizen asking some "friends" or "amigos" I know from the 'hood to help me? Not likely.

Maybe instead of day laborers, I just have a few "friends" who live at my house who also happen to be people I imported, I mean helped pay for passage across the ocean from their oppressive native lands. For this all I ask is that they spend a few years residing at my house. I just happen to have a big acreage where they can just happen to grow all the food the household needs and they like to do all the house work.

You seem to also have a really screwed up idea of what a job is. Do you really think the people in all those countries do not have jobs? How naive and wonderfully ignorant of you. They all have jobs. Whether is stay at home mom, father, farmer, son of the farmer, village idiot, village mayor, village sheriff, beggar, blind man, war veteran. They all have jobs, and they may not get paid for their jobs in money, but in barter, but it is still a job and position in their society. Those may or may not be enviable positions to you, but there might be even worse positions, yet they seem to have made it paste the 3 month mark. I did some humanitarian work back in the 90s. I was on a grain ship that went to Eritrea Africa, one the poorest places in the world. 7 year olds had fully automatic weapons and demonstrated an ability to use them. Some people's jobs were to be guards, some to be permanent refugees. They all seemed to make a living at what they did. We unloaded some 50,000 tons of wheat for them. The reason their lives are so bad is not because of racism, being taken advantage of, lack of education or anything we really blame it on. It is because they choose to live in a society much like what Coyote is saying we should have here. Open borders, totally limited government, every man woman and child for themselves. That is the life you get with that. You got a house, an acre of land, some crops mostly grown, nothing stops 20 7 year olds from coming along and taking it from you at gun point. When this happens on a large scale, the crops go bad, the land erodes and your left with nothing to restart from. Africa, a continent perfected with libertarianism, the only ism that is actually worse than communism and socialism in creating creating a functioning society. Darwin would be proud.

Nate:
They do have unlimited work opportunities. But because of the large number of workers, the poor government they choose to live under, and the lack of property laws being enforced there is no money to pay them. It is a dysfunctional system which Coyote seems to like.

morganovich:
I'm done talking with you, you are insane or retarded. Either way it is a wasted effort to try and make you less than completely ignorant.

Coyote wrote: "If its violent or property crime, the stats are pretty clear that immigrants don’t really contribute to these crimes disproportionately."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says: "Last month alone, just in one patrol region, we had sixty-four pursuits. That means people who were driving a vehicle, failed to yield, took off like a bat out of hell, running red lights, creating traffic wrecks, numerous people were killed in these wrecks over the last several months, and who are these people? Not one of them was a U.S. citizen." (Interview with Phoenix’ KFYI, radio host Terry Gilberg, http://bigjournalism.com/sright/2010/05/10/media-take-note-in-arizona-county-of-64-highway-chases-last-month-not-one-perp-a-u-s-citizen/)

Interesting stats.

-RJP

You demolished me? Ad hominem? You got attacked not one bit. The fact that you cannot process valid information is why you feel attacked.

"in the presence our large amounts of cheap foreign labor with rapidly increasing productivity, our quotas for “cheap labor” are not going to hold up the price labor. we’ll just ship jobs overseas. are no wages better than low wages? is it better to have a factory in china paying their taxes and driving their service economy with the wages of its workers, or would you rather have it here, paying US taxes and driving our economy? this choice between letting unskilled labor in and keeping wages high is a false one."

Labor costs are not the reason jobs are going overseas. Regulation is the reason why jobs are going overseas. The factories can claim any reason they want to. But, because it is something that people can actually relate to, they use the wages as the culprit. Unionization, EPA, OSHA, tort cases, all part of the cost of doing business. When you have to jump through all the hoops, it becomes far easier to hire someone in another country to just do the job and ship the product to you to sell. While labor cost would be a portion of the reason, it is not the main reason. We do very little leather tanning int he united states, the EPA rules are impossible to follow, the actual limits on some contaminants are so low that nature provides those levels frequently. The bleaching, the coloring, the processing chemicals, the creation of artificial materials are not a labor cost problem, but an EPA problem. Unionization rules amplifies the cost of labor, so even if employers can make it on the going labor rates, the union negotiations, which are slanted towards unions through government constriction on employer avocation of non union benefits, like actually having a job at all is better than no job, is not allowed. Yes, wages play a role, but a far more damaging role is over regulation which also includes labor costs.

"all these other problems are easily addressed by changing the immigrant status to “registered guest worker” and not providing entitlement services to them. if you have a productive employee that costs you too much eating all the food out of the free company cafeteria, isn’t taking away cafeteria rights and keeping the worker producing a better answer than just firing him? it’s the services to resident aliens that need to be changed, not how many we allow."

We have a registered guest worker program, and up until the obamacare legislation they were not allowed to use the entitlements. I personally do not want to discuss entitlements on this subject anyways, because there are far better reasons to not let unlimited border crossings occur. Entitlements are a whole societal problem, and should be addressed on their own merits and should be gotten rid of period, except for state and local versions that are with in the constitutional bounds of the perspective state and local.

I will confess though that I am certain that the illegals do and have been using our entitlements, because as in many cases where government regulation gets involved, the people paying the bill are not the ones in control of making the bill. In other words, the money is paid for by some government agency and not directly out of the local funds. So they actually have a perverse incentive to grant the welfare to those not qualified. It is like that out of state/county speeding ticket tax, get the money from somewhere else. But I honestly never actually have had a problem with this, because I simply already hate the welfare state and illegal aliens are not the reason I do.

"finally, i hear a lot of folks arguing to “secure the border”. what on earth makes you think it’s possible? have we succeeded in keeping drugs out? build a wall and they’ll take boats and planes, or come through canada, or hide in crates, or get better documents forged. you simply cannot shit off the supply of something for which demand is so high while still being an open society. every crackdown in drug enforcement has made the drug barons more powerful. it will do the same for the people smugglers."

It is not just about securing the border. You seem to have some problem with things. I already made it clear that a large number of the illegals in this country actually are from the roles of previously invited guests who have overstayed their welcome. It requires a very efficient regime of enforcement. You have already made the case for the fence, that they will just find other ways around it. So that already proves that a fence works. The other steps are workplace enforcement. Frequent raids with stiff fines and prison time for repeat illegal alien hiring would cut off a very large amount of the calling for this demand. The demand is not from companies for workers, the demand is for extremely poor people to get into America where the poorest of the poor who are not deliberately worse off have two TVs, cable, A/C, cell phone, a car if not two, own their own home and eat 2500 calories a day. That is the what makes the demand. Notice we have 10% unemployment? Always have 5%. Have a permanent underclass of welfare recipients. We have enough workers in this country to get by on a diet of illegal aliens for ten years. Lock the borders, workplace raids, verification of all criminal contacts with police of legal residence, and huge fines with prison time for employers of illegal aliens, including people who hire an illegal nanny, lawn care worker, or day laborer. If you could go to jail, would you hire someone that does not have proof of residence status? Get rid of the demand creation device which is nothing more than anything better than some chinese or african living on a dollar a day in their home country.

"these guys are coming. get used to it. it’s not going to change. people flow inexorably from low wage ares to high wage ones just like air flows from high pressure to low. nothing short of martial law is going to stop it."

Um, no, I will not just get used to it. This is my country, and the country of another 270 million Americans and we get to decide as a whole who we let into the country and who we do not. Will there be some leaks, sure, but 20 million people is not a leak, that is busted dam. Amnesty as you propose, even if it is not citizenship, would bust the dam even wider and deeper and people will still try to fill that demand you say we have. Double, triple quadruple the numbers and there will still be 100 times more people who want to come through our borders and live the poor American lifestyle than put any effort into fixing their own countries. This will remain true until the only outcome of such a drive will take us, to the point that our poor are equal to the poor of the native homes of those who would come. Everyone wants a better life, not everyone is going to get it, that is just part of life and a part of the fact that these people are simply not deserving. What we should tell the world is that that if you can make it in your own country, we will invite you to ours. But if you remain a poor person in your home country, do not expect a ticket to ride the train to a better life here. That might motivate people to make changes to their home countries, changes like India is doing, and Taiwan and Japan did.

"we’ll be better off here with a ready supply of cheap, legal labor. we could start producing clothing and footwear again. the knock on effects as the workers pay taxes and spend money will drive growth. the taxes can fund the services they need."

Yeah, sure we could. What company is going to invest money into the American Economy to create these EPA and OSHA broken jobs? With the current cost of adding money to the price of a laborer for health care to be a minimum of $2000 a year. The cost of energy about to go through the roof, the coming Carbon cap will destroy any dream of those jobs ever being affordable in this country again. It is not the labor costs, it is the regulatory cost that drove them away and the only thing that would make them possible would be $3/hour labor. Until then, the $1 to $5 labor costs with no cost for regulations in other countries is a lower cost even with shipping for these products. Also, it has already been shown that migrant peoples do not have beliefs in things that are required to allow a society like ours to work. They do not believe in private property, they have the right to that which they can use and take that is within their reach. It is why Africa is such a screwed up continent.

"it is our behavior around entitlements that is turning the benefit of immigration into a social services problem. fix the bad policy, not the good one."

Yeah, which problem do you think is going to be easier to solve? The entitlements or the border? I say fix the border because it is something we can do on the cheap, will save us lots of money, will make America a stronger country and one more respected in the world. Entitlements fixes are on the horizon, something that will be forced on us in the near future when the world has run out of other people's money. I do not an unsecured border as a good policy and I never will. It is about the illegal aliens, but it is also about national respect and nation security. If the people come over by boat, ship themselves in a cargo box, board a plane to get here, one thing is sure for all of that, the number of people getting through will be magnitudes lower than current land border crossings, and we reduce the chances of nuclear weapons crossing the border.

All this has been hashed out in my prior posts. So tell me again just how you destroyed me? My argument is sound, my argument is based on empirical evidence as found in the real world. Your argument is based on some fantasy world where people act and react in liberal progressive feel good positive ways no matter how negative the real world impacts on the situation requires.

Lets ask a few questions.
Is there a limit to allowed worker visas in your plan? If so, what is it?
If there is a limit, how do we ensure that those working are in fact allowed to work in the USA? What is to prevent triple the number of people coming in?
If there is a limit, and no check to be certain those legally allowed into the country are in fact the only ones working, what is different with your policy and the status quo?
If there is no limit, what prevents the workers from overhwelming the nation and like La Raza has stated as its goal, taking America from the gringos?
If there is no limit, where do people apply for work permits; In their home country or once they arrive?
If there is no limit, then what restrictions are allowed in who we allow into the country; can we say no people from terrorist countries, people with criminal records, what if the country in question will not release criminal records, what if the country in question particularly likes to export their criminals?
What rights are granted to guest workers?
How long is a guest worker allowed to remain in the country?
Under what circumstances should a guest worker be required to go back home?
What if the guest worker did not save enough money for a plane ticket home, what happens then?
If a guest worker pays taxes, should he not also be allowed to vote? (This country was founded on the principle of no taxation without representation.)
If allowed representation how much representation should they get?
Will minimum wage laws be enforced? How? If not enforced, what jobs are exempt from the minimum wage laws?
What other labor laws can we ignore with guest workers we cannot with citizen labor?
If they cannot vote, have lower protected status with respect to labor laws does this sound like two classes of citizens?
Can guest workers bring huge sums of cash with them and buy out large portions of land?
As land owners, can they be deported? If so, what about their right to property?
What if a million Chinese come and the government of China funds the purchasing of whole states with the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt America owes them. Can they then leave the nation?
Where exactly do you find these people's right to work in this country from? Is it just a human right granted from God for just being a human? If so, then why do they even need government permission to come here? Where are the rights of a sovereign people to have a sovereign land protected by a sovereign government instituted by the people, for the people and of the people?

So tell me again, where exactly did you destroy my argument, or me? Cause I just am at a complete loss to find one single thing that you wrote that damages my argument.

This report seems cntrary to our host's opinion as to the effect on crime and danger to the citizens.

This weekend on Phoenix’ KFYI, radio host Terry Gilberg interviewed Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. The Sheriff’s message to Contessa, Katie and all the rest? "Come ride along side me in the patrol car. You’ll see the real story."

During the interview, he conveyed a remarkable statistic:

"Last month alone, just in one patrol region, we had sixty-four pursuits. That means people who were driving a vehicle, failed to yield, took off like a bat out of hell, running red lights, creating traffic wrecks, numerous people were killed in these wrecks over the last several months, and who are these people? Not one of them was a U.S. citizen."