Rand Paul, Immigration and National Security

Miscellaneous General
1

Rand Paul writes on his website:

“Immigrants should meet the current requirements, which should be enforced and updated. I realize that subsidizing something creates more of it, and do not think the taxpayer should be forced to pay for welfare, medical care and other expenses for illegal immigrants. Once the subsidies for illegal immigration are removed, the problem will likely become far less common.”

He has a good idea here. He’s basically claiming we should just enforce laws consistently. But this leaves open a broader question of what the law should be? How many immigrants should be allowed into the united states? What kind? In my opinion, this is what the republican party needs to focus on, since the bads that come from immigration occur whether or not the immigrant is illegal.

It is routinely spouted that increased immigration will lower the amount of jobs there are for Americans and also lower wage rates. Economists easily dispell this ‘lump of labor fallacy’, showing that immigration also increases demand by the same proportion, leading to an increase in jobs.

I think this is a good idea, but immigrants are a threat to national security. Though not all immigrants are created equal. I think there’s a way for us to acknowledge the economic benefits of immigration without risking our lives and freedom.

There are some immigrants that are more likely to be bad than others. Mexico is very insecure, has bad military intelligence, and a large history of crime. It would be easy for people who wish us harm to infiltrate mexico and come across and attack us.

On the other hand, countries like Canada are very peaceful and friendly towards the United States. They have a much better military inteligence, and are less likely to allow a terrorist access to their country in the first place.

Their people are also much better trained, more affluent, and already speak english. We also share a lot more culture. I think most Americans feel more comfortable around Canadians than Mexicans or people from other third world countries.

Immigrants from Europe are also welcome, but mostly from the western side. I don’t know how much we should trust ex nazi/soviet countries. They are also very well trained, and will probably go back to their countries of origin once they have worked a while here, so they can take advantage of their nationalized health care and pension systems and not hog ours.

In short, I think immigration is a very good idea, but we need to be careful. There are a lot of people who want to hurt us and there are often too many cultural and racial differences between people to have them get along.

2

The Hash House Harriers club claims to be a drinking club with a running problem. It could also choose to be a running club with a drinking problem. Similarly, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc are Immigrant Nations with Welfare Problems. The people living there CHOOSE to view themselves as Welfare Nations with Immigrant Problems. The choice could not be more profound and is the cause of the diversion of trillions of dollars of scarce resources to hand problems that really are not problems at all when there are giant festering problems that never get addressed.

Rand, Ron, The Tea Partiers and Conservatives are looking at the USA as a welfare state with an immigrant problem. My opinion is that the welfare state problem is so giant that they adopt this fantasy that illegal/undocumented immigrants are receiving large portions of the booty at their expense. The real problem is that they are being forced at gun point to pay for the welfare state and guess what the welfare state is getting bigger all the time.

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“I realize that subsidizing something creates more of it, and do not think the taxpayer should be forced to pay for welfare, medical care and other expenses for illegal immigrants.”

But the taxpayer should still be forced to pay for all those things for legal immigrants as well as his fellow Americans, .. I see.

Look, I seriously doubt that it is the illegals who are claiming all of those welfare benefits. It doesn’t seem logical that illegals would seek on a regular basis government welfare services, for they would be risking getting caught and deported.

We don’t have an illegal immigration problem! We have a welfare problem, but that’s not what Rand is saying in that quote. Rand is a statist. He has proven this time after time. I wish him nothing but a big loss in the upcoming elections. Unlike his father, he sucks at the educational aspect also, so he might as well just disappear from the political arena and go back to practicing medicine.

4

I agree with you all that the issue is not legal vs illegal immigration. An immigrant can still pose many economic and national security problems even if they are stamped in. I think the task is to determine what kinds of immigrants we want to allow in. Canadians and Western Europeans seem to fit the ticket much better than mexican and latin american immigrants.

5

“Canadians and Western Europeans seem to fit the ticket much better than Mexican and latin american immigrants.”

Are Canadians and Europeans willing to work for sub-minimum wage rates? Then why do they seem to better fit the ticket? Why don’t you let the market decide who best fits that ticket instead of your own personal value judgement that nobody should care for.

“I agree with you all that the issue is not legal vs illegal immigration”

I didn’t say that. I said the issue is the welfare state.

" An immigrant can still pose many economic and national security problems even if they are stamped in"

There are no national security and economic problems beyond what the government itself fabricates. “National Security” is a mythical concept like “National Income”, or “National Debt”, or “National Trade Deficit”, etc…

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I agree that poorer immigrants might be willing to work for less wages, but this doesn’t mean its safe to hire them. Maybe Canadians and Europeans aren’t willing to come to the United States, but we should open up our borders to them incase conditions change.

You say there are no national security problems… are you saying there aren’t people who want to hurt americans?

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You say there are no national security problems… are you saying there aren’t people who want to hurt americans?

So isn’t there a national healthcare problem? would you deny that there aren’t Americans who at one time or another can’t afford to pay for health care?

What about national obesity problem? Are you denying that there aren’t Americans who are over weight?

Then there is is a national housing problem, national unemployment problem, national drug abuse problem, national road safety problem,

How about a “national bathtub accident problem” , or a “national bitten by a snake problem”, etc…

Do you see now the logical fallacy in the concept of “national security”? It is only a collective problem because people have made it so. They embrace socialism in the area of security from alleged threats from abroad so they attribute all such threats as national security problems? But why the inconsistency? Why is the local robbery or murder not a national problem also then?

It is private property and individuals who are always at risk and not some mythical concept such as “National sorveignty or Americans”. If you believe that the threat of one’s property is the business of all other property owners in a given territorial boundary called a State, and therefore, everybody must be forced by coercion to participate in its defense, then you must explain why you don’t support such collective participation is other aspects of human life, e.g., food, clothing, shelter, etc…

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IMO the real problem is publicly-owned land. If all land in the continental U.S. was owned privately, then the property owners could admit or deny access to whoever they wished. Since the immigrants are physically standing on public property, controlled by the government, and owned by no one, no one has enough incentive to effectively deal with the problem. Tragedy of the commons. History has shown that publicly-owned land will always be exploited without a thought to sustainability.

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DD5, I don’t think you understand that there are people and organizations out there who want to hurt us. They are targeting “Americans”. Whether or not the concept of ‘national’ or ‘aggregate’ security makes sense theoretically, it is how they are operating. It is fundamentally different from non-nationalistic problems such as local robbery and bathtub accidents.

Mises Pieces, without security background checks and national origin profiling, letting anyone into America is dangerous. Are you saying that we should let anyone come to the United States as long as they have permission from someone to be here? Its still a security risk even if the immigrants only stay on private property.

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Valkrie,

So because some hypothetical enemy may indiscriminately view people only as collective entities, it automatically follows that this group must accept this faulty categorization and respond in a collectivist manner, as one group or entity? The logic doesn’t follow. Let me elaborate by example.

If some hatred racist organization decided to view all Protestants as one group and declared all of them as enemies and legitimate targets for violent attacks, does it then somehow make it true that all Protestants are really one collective entity? So according to your logic, protestants must respond in a collective manner; by some sort of Protestant Socialist army that forced all protestants to be a member off?

It doesn’t make any sense, nor can it be established that Protestants could get better protection by such Socialism against such an enemy, rather then by responding to such aggression and threat on an individual basis by means of market provided security for example.

Also, you don’t consider the possibility that the enemy itself sees you as one entity because you have declared it as such. You view airline hijacking as national incidents, instead of just a private property threat to airliners, so they choose to attack the airline industry when they want to attack “Americans” as oppose to just Americans. The point is that it is Nationalism that fosters these alleged “national enemies” and not the other way around.

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Hey, I’m all for policing immigrants and assigning quotas but I don’t think that would be politically palatable. It seems like the only thing politicians can do is propose universal immigration rules, not selective immigration rules.

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DD5, The protestants may not really be one collective body, but their interests become alligend when someone is targeting ‘protestants’. In this way, it is useful to talk of “protestant defense” the same way as I talk about “national defense”.

All your objections seem merely semantic. Instead of saying “the collective” you want me to say “Bob, and Mike, and Jerry, and Tom, and Bill, and the other Bob, and… etc”. National is just shorthand for everyone living in the country :confused:

Bloomj31, it might be politically unfeasible… but I think in current political debate, immigrant is just a code word for mexican. I think we can gain more support from pro-immigration people if we make it about national defense by admitting that peoples from Canada and Western Europe are welcome here.

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what the law should be?

Deport anyone who hires an illegal immigrant to the country of origin of the person they hired. Then they can hire as many persons of x nationality as they want. Take no action against the immigrant themselves. They’d all be fired and go home the day after such a policy was announced anyways.

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Ah, those dirty spics are such a threat to NNational SSecurity…

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“Take no action against the immigrant themselves.”

I’d prefer to take action against both. Make it illegal to hire illegals and fine employers if they’re found to be employing illegals and deport illegals when they’re found. It’s a two pronged approach.

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Benjamin, the issue is that people from certain countries represent a higher threat risk. I agree that illegals should be deported, but the question is who do we decide is legal? I’m saying South American and African countries don’t have very good governments, so its a security risk to allow people to import from there. It makes more sense to allow immigration of the safest immigrants first, from Canada and Western Europe.

JakobM, are you acusing me of being racist? Care to prove that Mexico doesn’t represent a huge security risk to the USA?

Bloomj31, yeah but again, the issue isn’t who is legal/who isn’t. The current laws probably allow a lot of people to come in who should be denied entrance to the country based on national security. I agree we should uphold the full letter of the law by any means necessary, but this thread is trying to determine what that law ought to be in order to protect the freedom and security of Americans.

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“determine what that law ought to be in order to protect the freedom and security of Americans.”

It’s a good question. One angle I don’t see talked about enough is illegal immigration from the middle east. If there was ever a serious potential for security risk, I think it would come from there. It’s also entirely possible that those people could cross the Mexican border to get here.

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My post here has some bearing on the question.

I think debating what sort of policy democratic states ‘ought’ to abide by. ‘Policy’ is inherently irrational and blind.

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How can a set of lines on a map be a ‘security risk’? And how can the ‘security’ of a different set of lines (USA) be threatened? Maybe the spics have huge amounts of Liquid Paper?

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Bloomj31, you are right. But currently I think immigration from these countries is very heavily restricted. I too am worried that they might try to come across the border by land rather than by plane or sea.

Liberte, your link just contains a couple of baseless assertions about the impossibility of a rational border. Lack of reasoning aside, do you think it is irrational to deny killers and arsonists entrance to the country?

JakobM, you dodged my question. To answer yours, the lines on a map are a security risk because thats where Americans have a right to live. I suppose that if someone were building weapons outside those lines to harm americans, we’d have to intervene, but for simplicity it makes sense to say that if two people are on either sides of a line, they cannot physically engage.