It seems like a good reason to me. The protective efforts are a failure because the ruling class is not interested in keeping illegal immigrants out of the U.S.
@ filc
I’m gonna have to do some research and find some statistics. I think I’m right, but its going to take some time before I can back it up. If I can’t find anything, I’ll concede the points.
You’re wrong about national self-determination. Ethnic conflict is enormously disruptive to economic performance.
We don’t have a market for imported labour.
Every city should be allowed to set it’s own standards for admittance.
Well, it actually probably has more to do with the cost of border surveillance, the length of our border and the amount of immigrants which cross it per year. Within any given budget, the border will remain permeable, because we simply cannot afford the capital nor the manpower to have one hundred percent efficiency.
That said, what persons have constituted a security risk? Timothy McVeigh was an American. Zacarias Moussaoui is a French citizen, and therefore could visit the United States based on traveling agreements between the United States and the European Union. All the 9/11 hijackers, except one, obtained U.S. Visas. The one who didn’t never entered the United States (Ramzi Binalshibh). It goes to show that those who want to harm the United States usually come in by legal means, not illegally.
Your argument does not hold water. The only result of closing the borders to immigration would be a capping of potential productivity: Want to Shrink the Economy? Limit the Labor Force.
If this was true, then they wouldn’t be hired.
Public utilities, welfare and civil rights laws mean that importers of labour can privatize the profits and socialize the costs. The capital-owning class has the means to insulate itself from the effects of importing millions of low-IQ individuals. How do you think the Kennedys would react to a bunch of Guatemalans coming on Martha’s Vineyard for any purpose other than hanging drywall?
I would venture to say that this is a mischaracterization. I know many immigrants who are not low-IQ at all, but merely don’t speak enough english to do more than “hang drywall”. I even know a (legal) Mexican doctor who speaks perfect english, but has to work low-income jobs because she doesn’t have the appropriate licenses to practice in the US.
If you follow the exchange back to the original post, we are assuming the lack of a welfare state. As already mentioned in the first few posts, a free immigration policy requires the dismantling of the welfare state. Also, I will reiterate the views of the above post: immigrants do not have low IQs. I think you mean low skill-sets, which is completely different (and even then, still incorrect).
Finally, I’m not sure what this even means:
How do you think the Kennedys would react to a bunch of Guatemalans coming on Martha’s Vineyard for any purpose other than hanging drywall?
Then explain why we are outsourcing and importing labor. Microsoft requests more work visa’s every year because they consistently have a difficult time filling the labor domestically. In some cases it’s not even
How about every individual should be allowed to set his/her own standards for whom they voluntary trade with?
It’s entirely off topic but an IQ exam is a superficial way of representing worthy competency or performance. IQ tests will never be able to measure work ethic and various skill sets. It may be able to identify someone’s mathamatic abilities, memorization abilities and so on and so forth. But such vague statistics tell us nothing about the individuals character and overall ability.
In short, IQ tests are a joke.
The U.S. should restrict immigration from countries where is is currently intervening or has done so recently, just to mitigate the risk of blowback. It should also avoid taking on immigrants who are at a high risk of engaging in criminal activity.
Productivity benefits can for the most part be obtained just as easily by free trade, without all of the hazards that come with mass immigration.
I should have worded this differently. It is not the case that the market is deciding entrance requirements for immigrants. Profit and loss don’t enter into it. What I was arguing was that if you have a bureaucracy deciding who gets in, it would be better if its goals were based on selecting for skill sets instead of family reunification and national quotas.
But then you end up with “Free trade and Restricted Immigration”, not “Free Immigration and Forced Integration”.
That’s fine, but you get to be the one who purchases all the easements for their passage, compensates for the burden the increased population places on the infrastructure, and negotiates with your neighbors for what’s going to happen when your imported labor force starts having babies and inviting all their extended family over to stay at your place.
That didn’t really address my points:
- People who wish to do us harm will find legal ways of getting in.
- Immigration and increasing the pool of labor increases productivity, and so it is not desirable to shut off immigration.
This is really ambiguous, since race-based violence is often fueled by U.S. government-induced poverty (economic regulations, et cetera), not by their race.
This is not true, and doesn’t address the fact that national productivity increases as the labor pool increases. In any case, free movement is just as much a part of free globalization as open borders. Indeed, free movement and open borders should be considered one in the same.
It increases the productivity of capital, not of labor (which is decreased), and it creates other social costs.
Obviously, the problem is bureaucracy. The solution is not changing the face of this bureaucracy, but removing it altogether.
I never said it increases the “productivity of labor” (and I’m not exactly sure what you mean by this; do you mean marginal productivity of labor?). What social costs? Do you mean welfare? I think I’ve already said it three times in this thread; we are assuming a lack of the welfare state.
This is what a clever commenter on Sailer’s blog hilariously characterized as the ‘Canadian stunned whore’ argument (long story). I paraphrase:
Blackjack dealer: Ten of spades
Canadian stunned whore: Hit me
Dealer: Nine of clubs
CSW: Hit me
Dealer: Ma’am, you are showing nineteen.
Card counter: Ma’am, I am counting this game and with three other players still in you are all but certain to bust on the next draw
CSW: Ya–I know this Mexican? And she’s a doctor? So you can’t generalize? Hit me!
Increased labor does increase productivity. Capital aside. This is the fundamental premise of the division of labor and of Ricardo’s law. 4 hands are better then 2.
2 men can produce more efficiently then 1.
And I will ask for the third time: how do you propose to get rid of the welfare state when it continually imports new constituents?