Immigration.....National Security

[Mike L]

Illegal immigration and lax security at our borders are a threat to all American citizens. Illegal immigration also strains our public school systems and burdens social services programs. I think it's high time for our representatives to enforce immigration laws. Also, legal immigration of 600,000--1,000,000 people per year takes jobs away from Americans in these tough economic times.

You can fax your representatives you opinions for free on www.numbersusa.com .

Mike L

 

[supplanter]

But each new person in our nation is bringing another chance closer to us to get them to see God as we do. For those non-believers, or those non-christians should we not be glad for the chance to convert them. And how can you blame people for trying to go somewhere where they have a chance for a good life?

 

[Johnv]

Certainly, Mike L, let's protect the borders. Let's start with Canada. It's the most open border we've got. BTW - which jobs are you talking about? Most illegal immigrants take jobs consisting of manual labor.

Yes, I believe it's true that jobs and resources should be reserved for those who are here legally, but rather than close the borders, let's make it easier for a person who wants to come in, come in legally. An increased security budget will allow access to the country legally, while screening for security threats.

The question is, are we as tax payers willing to pay for it?

[ July 16, 2003, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: Johnv ]

 

[KenH]

I found this to be a very good article on immigration from a libertarian perspective:

Love-in at the borders

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Posted: July 9, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Ilana Mercer

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The ethics of private property ought to guide all libertarians on the matter of immigration. They don't. An essential attribute of property and ownership is the right to exclude or include. The right to discriminate is an undisputed feature of property. In the absence of a state, or in the presence of a limited government where almost all land is privately owned, migration would be a very restricted affair. It would depend on the graces of private property owners.

A newcomer may be invited over by a propertied person, who would shoulder the costs. If he wishes to venture beyond the invited sphere, the newcomer would seek consent from the private property owners with whom he wishes to interface. The more the prevalence and status of property approaches the libertarian ideal, the less free migration would be.

Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe has brought to my attention his excellent "Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem" article. It comports well with the description in "Displacing Americans" of the H-1B visa as part and parcel, not of the law of the free market, but of the law of the State.

In a free society based on absolute private-property rights, the natural tendency of men – a tendency that is most conducive to peace – is to live among their own, but to trade with any and all. In such a society, commercial property owners will tend to be far more inclusive than residential property owners. As Hoppe notes, owners of retail establishments, like hotels and restaurants, "have every economic incentive not to discriminate unfairly against strangers because this would lead to reduced profits or losses." Still they will have to consider the impact of culturally exotic behavior on "local domestic sales," and will impose codes of conduct on guests.

Seeking low-wage employees, employers would also be partial to foreigners but, absent the protectionist State, the employer would be accountable to the community, and would be wary of the strife and lowered productivity caused by a multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All the more so when a foreign workforce moves into residential areas.

In short, reasons Hoppe, in a natural order – absent government – there will be plenty of "interregional trade and travel," but little mingling in residential areas. Just as people tend to marry along cultural and racial lines, so they maintain rather homogeneous residential neighborhoods. This is how the chips fall in a highly regulated society, so much more so in a free society, based on absolute property rights. Is this contemptible? To the left-libertarian open-border purist it is – else why would he be lending ideological support to the State's efforts to upset any semblance of a natural order and to shape society in politically pleasing ways?

His tentative grasp of property leads the leftist libertarian to forget that public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes. It belongs to taxpayers. Yet at least a million additional immigrants a year, among them H-1B visa arrivals, are allowed the free use of these taxpayer-supported amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works like roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools and welfare. Every new arrival is inherently a free rider.

This is why the H-1B visa program, as I pointed out, is tantamount to a subsidy to business at the expense of the taxpayer. And Hoppe concurs: "[E]mployers under democratic Welfare State conditions are permitted by state law to externalize their employment costs on others" and will "tend to import increasingly low-skilled and low value-productive immigrants, regardless of their effect on all-around communal property values."

Here, the owners of public property do not get to vet the newcomers – the State and big business do. Yet when faced with such economic fascism (government-business collusion), open-border libertarians levitate in la-la land, exulting business' every move.

The State-administered immigration policy is based on an egalitarian, multicultural system, in which a quota is divvied among the nations of the world, irrespective of the sentiments of taxpaying Americans or their cultural affinities and origins. This should be an anathema to libertarians, but it isn't.

The State's laws, moreover, make avoiding forced integration impossible. A Middle Eastern immigrant enters the country. Despite post-Sept. 11 jitters, and a wish to protect his tenants, an apartment-complex owner cannot by law refuse to lease to the new arrival. The law prohibits property owners from exercising the right to exclude applicants from housing – civil-rights legislation and affirmative action circumscribe hiring, firing, renting, selling and even money lending.

Perpetually suspended in some kind of third dimension – on a collision course with reality, to use libertarian Roy A. Child's phrase, the best open-border libertarians can come up with is, "There should be no public property or Welfare State." Well there is. From this nether world they inhabit, the best they can propose is a kind of chaos theory. The Welfare State, they agree, must go. It is wrong. However, let the multitudes come, the Welfare State will buckle under and collapse. Out of the chaos, a free order will emerge.

The State is vested in emasculating Americans. Remove their guns, their right to defend their property, force multiculturalism and cultural relativism down their gullets, control their property so that it is not their own, then import millions of new constituents who lay claim to their property. Open-border libertarians are on board with the State for this leg of the journey.

--www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33484

 

[Gina B]

Originally posted by Johnv:
Certainly, Mike L, let's protect the borders. Let's start with Canada. It's the most open border we've got. BTW - which jobs are you talking about? Most illegal immigrants take jobs consisting of manual labor.

Yes, I believe it's true that jobs and resources should be reserved for those who are here legally, but rather than close the borders, let's make it easier for a person who wants to come in, come in legally. An increased security budget will allow access to the country legally, while screening for security threats.

The question is, are we as tax payers willing to pay for it?

Many Americans would be happy to have a manual labor job.
As far as tax payers paying for increased security, if illegal immigration was stopped as much as possible and the IRS would crack down on businesses that cheat on taxes there would be enough to pay for it without increasing taxes.
Here's an example of this problem, and it's repeated over and over and over ad nauseum throughout the United States.
Chang from wants to be in America. He gets himself a job on a ship. His buddy in America buys and airline ticket and makes copies of his license of other identification papers. Chang gets off the boat, pays his buddy for the papers, jumps on the plane, and heads to safety before anyone realizes he's missing from the boat.
Chang then works illegally in a chinese restaurant. He's not legal, so nobody reports it. He lives with the other workers for free as part of the job, and saves every penny he earns. Later he uses part of that money to pay another former immigrant now legal to marry him for 3 years then divorce. Based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen he is now able to become a legal immigrant. Now he applies for welfare and is able to save more money. He works a few more years, then uses the money to open a Chinese restaurant. He reports the cooks as only making x amount of money and pays them cash so it can't be proved. He wants to save even more money, so he asks around and pays the way to sneak some workers from Mexico over the border. They get to live for free with the other workers but are happy with a very small wage and long hours. We now have 5 illegal immigrants taking the cash you use to eat out and taking it back into Mexico for their families. We have a restaurant reporting one worker to every five they have, and they and those four workers are not paying taxes. It would be hard to explain how a business could manage making x amount of money and only have x amount of workers reported, so they then say they only made x amount of money and pay less tax. This poor restaurant owner is still getting his free insurance from the U.S. and his food stamps and possibly cash benefits.
Oh, and the vegetables they use are grown at the farm down the road where half the field hands are illegal immigrants too.
There's usually at least one restaurant in every town that does this. Usually lots more if the place has more than a handful of people. How much money is being taken out of the U.S. this way? You got the legal owner on welfare, not paying his taxes, the money he gets he sends part of to Communist China to help mom and dad, the illegal Mexicans are taking their money back into Mexico, and the unemployment lines are still filling up for American citizens and taxes are still going up.
If you want to witness to them GREAT. That's what missionaries are for. GO!
Gina

 

[Helen]

I'm from immigrants on both sides of my family! My grandad was a fourteen year old running away from a drunken father when he came to America in the late 1800's. He did OK. Was in charge of the entire western division of Sunbeam by the time he retired...

Each person in this country also has to eat, wear clothes, stay warm (or cool, as the case may be). While I am for the tighter control of the borders where illegal immigrants are rushing in (I don't blame them, but there is quite a strain on the economy in some states because of them...), I sort of resent the fact that my husband has to jump through about a hundred hoops in order to just get a green card so we can not have to say goodbye every three months when he leaves the country so he can come back legally again...

Legal immigrants bring in skills, buying power, and an appreciation for America that too many Americans lack. Besides, the accents are fun...

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by Helen:
Legal immigrants bring in skills, buying power, and an appreciation for America that too many Americans lack. Besides, the accents are fun...

I would be one of those legal immigrants. I carried the green card with me wherever I went. Alas, I've pretty much eschewed the accent. But I've been a citizen for nearly 20 years now. When I look at how much I've paid in income tax, I'd say the feds got a pretty good deal when they let me in

)

 

[Pennsylvania Jim]

Helen, JohnV, let's be fair. I don't think anyone on this thread said that there should not be immigration. The issue is the level and the procedure, both of which should be effectively regulated by the government but are not.

Your arguments would be the same as if I said that we need to crack down on drunk drivers and then you implied that I said that people shouldn't be allowed to own cars.

 

[j_barner2000]

Illegal Immigration is a serious issue.
If they will break the laws to come in or stay in, then it follows that they will probably continue to disregard our laws. However, legal immigrants tend to bring great work ethics and integrity with them. Of course, they dealt with all of the hastles and hurdles to be here.

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by Pennsylvania Jim:
Helen, JohnV, let's be fair. I don't think anyone on this thread said that there should not be immigration. The issue is the level and the procedure, both of which should be effectively regulated by the government but are not.

I disagree. The level of regulation is adequate. It's a matter of existing regulations not always being enforced.