Virginia Libertarian

TCS Daily - Immigration’s Fifteen Minutes: Why Now?

Jon Henke over at TCS asks a very good question, to which I’d like a very good answer.  Why is immigration suddenly such a big issue?  Are we reacting to the demonstrations that happend earlier?  I don’t think so, although that may have intensified feelings, they appear to have been already there, as the demonstrations were in reaction to legislation going through Congress.

So why this, why now? Why has an army of restrictionists spontaneously arisen demanding more government when the previous immigration paradigm was, perhaps flawed, but not exactly destroying the country?

Maybe it’s simply angst about threats to our “way of life”. The influx and dispersion into almost every community of people who appear somehow different, whose language is unfamiliar and whose national and ideological loyalties are in question is…unsettling. Conservative America feels threatened, has reached a boiling point, and has allowed itself to admit it.

I think this is a good part of it, the conservative base out there sees that they have both a sympathetic congress and white house, and are trying to make use of it as much as they can before they lose it.  We’ve also seen more pushing in other areas, including gay marriage, abortion, and a push back on religion in schools. I think that if we can hold out on doing something stupid like spending a billion dollars on a fence, this will all fade away after elections in November, at least I hope it will.

If our immigration policy makes it clear to potential immigrants that, with a few lucky exceptions, they’re only welcome to work, stay out of sight and then go home, why should they assimilate? The barrio-ization of the illegal immigrant community would then be (and could already be) a product of our own policies.

And perhaps we will make it easier for people to assimilate and become Americans, instead of making them feel unwelcome in their new home.

Commentary: Immigration Reform, French-Style

Dr.  Morse has some good insiges into this article, but as I’ve said before, the underlying problem is not immigration, but our welfare/warfare state.  As her last pargraph shows, she somewhat recognizes this fact when she mentions our entitlement mentality.  If you take away the entitlements, you take away the reason to deny 99% of these people entry, then what does the left have to offer?  There would be no reason to demonstrate in the streets.

My real fear about immigration is the continual importation of people who will be clients of the welfare state and the political apparatus that supports it. My parish has a lot of Mexicans. I love them. They could save the Catholic Church in America. It is a privilege to worship with them. On the other hand, I can’t stand the thought of Mexicans becoming lifelong clients of the radical left, with their identity politics, their self-righteous anti-Americanism, and their entitlement mentality. Whatever you believe about the balance between controlling the future flow of migrants and humanity to those already here, the introduction of French-style street politics is an ominous development.

IDP : The Scan

I don’t know, stuff like this just really bothers me. After reading the judgement, what I get from it is that you can’t deny someone a benefit just because they don’t tell you their SSN, but they do have to tell you their SSN if you are not denying them something. What this would boil down to is that you can get a gun permit and purchase a gun without providing your SSN (as it should be), but if a cop decides to ask you for your SSN or “papers”, you have to give it to them.

National Libertarian Party

“But pork-busting freshman Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma now scrutinizes money bills, and he caught the Northrop Grumman earmark. The company, whose revenue last year totaled $40.7 billion, has received $500 million from its insurer and is in litigation seeking another $500 million. The Defense Contract Management Agency has declared “it would be inappropriate to allow Northrop Grumman to bill for costs potentially recoverable by insurance because payment by the government may otherwise relieve the carrier from their policy obligation.” Factory Mutual Insurance Co., with 2004 revenue of $2.7 billion, then would be receiving indirect corporate welfare.

Good article on TCS on immigration, I agree with everything in it, and his analysis of the situation is excellent.
TCS Daily - Criminalizing Economic Self-Interest

[…]
It is little wonder then that so many people think the solution to the problem of immigration lies in the second method — enforcing the current laws and thereby increasing the real cost to businesses of hiring illegal immigrants through fines and the threat of costly legal action. But what those who take this approach fail to understand is that, in order to make the second method work, it is not enough to make examples of certain businesses who hire illegal immigrants — the government would have to make it clear to each and every business that it cannot risk hiring illegal immigrants because of the certainty of the fact that they would get caught. But how can the government make thousands and thousands of small businesses feel certain that they would get caught except by actually monitoring, on a virtually day by day basis, their hiring practices? And how much bigger would our already big government have to get in order to achieve that ability to micro-manage all the independent businesses that use illegal immigrants as laborers? And who would pay for this new army of bureaucrats, but the American people themselves?
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