migration

[tosei]

I'm sure these "minutemen" yahoos out in Arizona trying to stop illegal immigrants are dissapointed that the pope had to die just in time to draw media attention away from their little display. It's not that their tactics aren't sound; if I were trying to sneak into another country and saw a solid line of redneck pricks waiting at the border, I

Comments

[resolutepeasant]

I respectfully dissent. As someone who has lived in an area that was rapidly changed because of the influx of large amounts of immigrants over a short amount of time I can say out of experience that it is not something that is good. Crime rose, schools strained to accommodate, community cohesion was lost, traffic increased, and the built environment suffered, not to mention the un built environment since this influx is what is pushing the demand for suburban sprawl housing on the periphery of the city.

Since I work in construction (a job I enjoy more than pencil pushing or pursuing a degree in something as ubiquitous and impractical as "art," English, or psychology) I see its effects on wages and native unskilled workers. It's easy for someone to pontificate and peg them as incompetent. These are people's livelihoods and all that they've know and obviously jobs they like, take pride in, and enjoy. And to say well get another one and that's that, is insensitive. Massive amounts of immigration, both legal and nonlegal, depress wages not only for non skilled but also skilled workers also.

Harvard professor George Borjas has written many erudite books on the subject, not to mention other Cambridge, Mass academics Nathan Glazer, and Samuel Huntington. I'd hardly call them yahoos, rednecks, or conspiracy theory nut jobs.

Immigration is good. But there is such thing as too much of a good thing. A river, like immigration, is life giving and refreshing but once it swells and goes over it's banks it becomes destructive. The current amounts of immigration are inordinate and destructive on so many levels and to say the best way to solve it is to make it easier is as misguided and simplistic as the person who says we should stop it altogether.

I'd rather not have eastern Colorado look like Southern California with its sprawl, traffic, crime, polyglot incoherence, and white and Asian suburban enclaves called gated communities. I don't want America in 50 years to have close to half a billion people, about double the population now, reguardless of if we can or not. That means twice as much ugly crap then I see today.

[tosei]

I will admit that I was being a bit insensitive about native unskilled workers whose wages are being depressed, but I also think that there are more complicated reasons for the decline in unskilled labor in america than just immigration. Also I know first hand that immigration creates problems on the ground (I grew up in a mexican neighborhood in Albuquirque, and my fiancee grew up about 5 miles from the border). Since we have no real control over internal mexican policy and can't dissuade people from risking their lives to cross the border, I don't see any effective means of shutting down mass immigration over such a large and busy border. Anything short of a berlin wall type barrier just wouldn't be effective at keeping people out. I would prefer to see this influx of people managed through legal channels rather than pushed to the margins. The nation has seen and absorbed several huge immigrant waves in our history that rival or exceed the current one and each of those waves created the same problems (or worse) that we see now. I think that over time we will be able to absorb this wave of immigrants into the United States, but denying them social services and education for their kids and making it impossible for them to get jobs as anything but day laborers is just going to add to the problem. As poorly served as we are by large scale immigration, we would be even more poorly served by persuing policies that create an institutional underclass. I don't nessicarily think that america will have half a billion people in 50 years, since as incomes rise, the number of chlidern that people have usually declines, but I'll admit that it's a possibility. How would you go about fixing the problems of large scale immigration?

[resolutepeasant]

The middle projection is for a little over 400 million by 2050 and the high projection is 517 mill.. I think. I looked at the projections as soon as they came out after the last census (demographics nerd) and haven't checked them out since.

The government should first go after companies and businesses that use, and more often than not abuse, illegal immigrants. That can be done by enforcing the laws we already have. Once businesses realize that the risk and the cost are too high they will stop using illegal sources of labor. Which will take away the biggest lure to come here illegally.

Secondly they should put more personnel on the border, a whole lot more. And put pressure on the Mexican government to help mitigate the flow. Not only will it help reduce illegal immigration but it would take care of both the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" which are both extremely costly and have caused more harm than good. Once the border is under control, which is achievable without much of a physical barrier, They should reduce the amount of legal immigration to 350,000 a year for 5 years and after 5 years raise the quota 50,000 a year giving priority to skilled workers over that of unskilled ones.

I would also increase the number of temporary work visas allowed, based on real need and that's controlled in such a way that allows wages to rise naturally as demand increases, both for the benefit native and non native worker.

Economic conditions also need to be improved in the countries of origin, and not in a per capita industrial sense, but in a small scale holistic quality of life sense.

[tosei]

I agree with most of those ideas, especially as far as enforcing our labor laws and cracking down on people who employ illegal immigrants. I also agree with increasing the number of temporary work visas, since many migrant workers aren't interested in staying in the united states but are mostly interested in working temporarily in the US to fund large purchases in mexico or just a generally higher standard of living; that's one of the reasons that I think a blanket amnesty is a terrible idea-you would actually end up giving american citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people who have no intention of staying in america. I want to see those temporary workers coming and (perhaps more importantly) going through official channels as opposed to making the run for the border. Obviously enforcement along the border should be stepped up, but I still think it should coincide with a gradual increase in the quotas for legal immigration. I think that there is no way that we will be able to keep people from crossing the border in large numbers- there are simply too many factors pushing them out of mexico and too many factors pulling them into the US. This brings up the biggest problem, which is that the only real solution is for conditions in mexico to improve to the point where people aren't in a hurry to leave. Unfortunately, no one seems willing or able to improve conditions in mexico from this side of the border (after all, there's a lot of money to be made by keeping the status quo), and the endemic corruption in the mexican government makes it unlikely that change will come from within any time soon.