What is with all the immigrant hate?

Miscellaneous General
201

On that I have no hard data. The stories I hear from the COs I know suggest a high degree of ‘hard’ crime.

And way more than once a year cops pull over people who are so blotto they should not be operating an outhouse, much less a car. The point, once more, is not whether cops are perfect or a private alternative is desirable.

That’s an insult to every poor person who isn’t too occupied getting drunk to pick up their own front lawn.

No, but it would be helpful if they didn’t steal, rob, party loudly until the wee hours of the morning on weekdays, harrass neighbor’s kids, and generally let their property go to seed. Yes, there are the noble poor, hell bent on accumulating wealth and improving their position in life through all ethical means necessary. There are also people who are poor because they are slovenly, unproductive, criminal pieces of crap.

202

Then don’t use them. Yes, speaking hypothetically if everything were ideal and the entire world privatized the roads would be cheaper, better maintained, less congested, yada yada yada. In the world we actually live in you need to use them to get places and you do use them to your benefit. Once more, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this distinction doesn’t go down with this crowd, there is a difference between what might have been in an ideal world of anarcho capitalism and the world we actually live in.

Edit: Also, could you please quote people so we know who you are responding to?

203

Hah. I started off as a centre-right monarchist, which is what led me to buy Hoppe’s DTGTF in the first place (when I was around 18.) His work turned me into a minarchist, and upon reading Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness I gained the necessary ethical knowledge to become a Hoppean market anarchist (even though I was always an individualist, I still thought ethics had to be of the collectivist sort), with Objectivist leanings. I’ve never really been a leftie of any sort.

204

Looks to me that what you’re experiencing is a clash of cultures. You’re gettting overwhelmed by a foreign culture being imposed on you. Then you mix that with gov’t aid, and an “illegal status” that makes the problem worse. Trying to control it is going to be like trying to control drugs..good luck. Anyway, why is it that so many Americans (Canadians too) are moving to Mexico, at least part of the year, and seem to get along just fine with the Mexicians? My brother is down there now completing his house, I don’t hear any complaints about them “partying, harrassing neigbour kids, or letting their property go to seed.” Moreover, the Mexicans don’t seem to be making a stink about it and demanding all the foreigners leave.

Maybe the a problem with Mexicans in the U.S. is because they’re illegal and not welcome? We know that if the gov’t legalized drugs, the dealers and gang violence surrounding the drug trade would deminish, maybe the same applies with the illegality of immigrants?

Here’s a plan if its a problem of assimilation. Open immigration in areas overwhelmed by illegal Mexican immigrants to Canadian immigrants. Hey, we speak English, have pretty much the same culture, and are even more uptight then Americans (in some ways). British would be even better, they’re total tight-asses. We’d balance them out. [;)]

I’m only half kidding here. If one group is becoming dominant, maybe immigration needs to be a bit more balanced. I’m trying to think of a practical way to deal with this issue that is at least not entirely anti-libertarian and authoritarian.

205

“Even if you take a pure market view then there is some discoverable optimal level of immigration that would exist in a totally privatized society.”

And that “optimal level” is not a fixed level. It changes whenever someone has a lawn to be mowed and not have any US national takers to do the job, and whenever someone has a house to rent and not having a US national willing to take the price. The “optimal level” is just like any optimal price level in a free market, to be discovered and re-discovered every minute of the day, not some bureacratic quota.

“With the rampant government violation of property rights, nationalization of land, and the offerring of incentives to illegals in the form of government services, by definition we’re going to be dealing with way more immigration than we otherwise would be in an ideal world.”

Not true at all. For the first time in a long time, in the past year, more US nationals emigrated to Canada than Canadians emigrated to the US. I went to an American (US national) enclave in Mexico on a business trip early this year, the real estate price there is already rapidly approaching US prices (as in coastal US prices, much higher than the middle parts of the US), all bid up by US nationals who are considering retirement there. Let’s face it, red tapes and taxes are not attractive to either native borns or would be immigrants.

"But then that’s the difference between theory and practice. "

Of course. I’m not sure why I should feel guilty about using public roads: if I could put the money levied from me as gasoline tax instead towards private turn-pike companies, I’d probably be driving on much better roads . . . I’m simply being coerced to use public roads. The theory of anti-immigration is that if we crack down hard enough on immigration, it will stop, and the crackdown doesn’t cost us much . . . it’s as silly a theory as one propose that if we set speed limit on highways to 40mph, nobody would be driving quicker than that; if we set up roadblocks every few blocks to check driver’s license, we’d have a much better economy because we woudn’t have unlicensed drivers. It’s patent nonsense because the draconian measures will have enormous economic cost, both in terms of new bureacrats that would have to be hired to do the enforcement and lost opportunity costs as people are stuck in non-moving traffic or slow moving traffic. In the case of immigration, the anti-immigration theory won’t work at all. People won’t stop coming (and going) just because it’s illegal. In practice, the anti-immigration policy would only lead to:

(1) higher taxes to pay enforcement, both for hiring new bureacrats and for government contracts to set up high-tech and nearly useless barriers;

(2) impairment of private capital: (a) the barriers will have eminent domain issues; (b) nominal wages will go up, imparing savings; btw, real wages will not go up, just like minimum wage laws banning a different class of workers (those with productivity below a certain threshold); (c) business owners and real estate owners will have less counter parties in their trade

(3) severe civil liberty risk to US nationals: all the tools that can be dreamed up to control population flow can be easily adapted to use against the next population group that gets declared “illegal.” Historically, walls always served the dual purpose of keeping the population inside in and keeping those outside out; usually more the former than the latter.

On top of these three practical downside, there is an even bigger one for those who are interested in advancing liberty within the current political framework:

(4) Anti-immigration cost elections. Apparently, there are enough legal immigrants who have experienced what a mess the law is in that regard, and enough friends and relatives of “those people,” and enough business and individuals that realize at least one of the three facets enumerated above, that there is at least a silent majority who are against politicians who embrace it. Just look at Tancredo, despite the shrill voice of some of his ardent supporters, his campaign went nowhere. Republicans already lost the last congressional election because of anti-immigration sabre rattling.

206

“Yes, there are the noble poor, hell bent on accumulating wealth and improving their position in life through all ethical means necessary. There are also people who are poor because they are slovenly, unproductive, criminal pieces of crap.”

Shouldn’t the corrective measures (if such expensive procedures be undertaken, as we know coercion is expensive) be directed towards slovenliness, unproductivity and bona fide criminality, instead of whether somone is in posession of certain types of papers?

“That’s an insult to every poor person who isn’t too occupied getting drunk to pick up their own front lawn.”

The poor has less resources whether drunk or not. If you don’t like the fact that the poor are able to live in your neighborhood, it’s time to pack up and move to a more upscale neighborhood. For what it’s worth, if the cost of lawn care is lower or lawn care service is more readily available, even the relative poor would be better able to have the lawn professionally taken care of. The solution to the neighbor’s bad lawn should be a freemarket one: allowing lawn care service more plentiful, allowing teenagers to do it and allowing people from the next town to do it, not a communistic zoning rule change. If you really don’t like the Mexican renters making a mess of the next door property (or just don’t like them period), the free market solution is quite simple: rent it yourself, or find enough of like-minded people to share the cost of finding a better renter. Making new laws banning renting to certain types of people would incerase law enforcement expense. On top of that, how is a boarded up house going to make the neighborhood any better? It’s ludicrous to think that property owners would prefer renters who run their property to the ground. It’s a clear case of the market having spoken: there ain’t any better takers. If you really don’t want to move, perhaps it’s time to import the rich Gulf princeling student who moves in with multiple Mercedeses. Hopefully he won’t raise a heckle about how dare you park an old used car in your drive way or that you have idols on your lawn.

207

No, you do not have to stop using the public road in order to have stopped deriving benefit from the government. Suppose, if someone robs you of $100 and gives your empty wallet back on the spot, do you have to refuse your own wallet in order to avoid being tagged as deriving benefit from the burgarlary? Not at all. The government policy of mandatory tax-and-road-building monopoly does not benefit me at all: because the monopoly is the reason why I have to drive on roads that are worse than I would have gotten if I could decide which private turnpike company I’d like to contribute my resources.

“Also, could you please quote people so we know who you are responding to?”

On the upper right corner, there is a link called “in reply to”

208

That’s part of it, but not really the rub. I work in a company that, because of the area it is located in, employs mostly latinos and blacks, and as I am working in HR I can tell you because of the technical nature of some of the work we also have a lot of foreign nationals working for us in the engineering department from the middle east and asia. I have no problem getting on with any of these people. Hell, I like it. I prefer a more cosmipolitan atmosphere. I like different languages being spoken, especially Spanish since I lost most of my ability to speak and understand it long ago when my favorite tex-mex place closed down. I’m picking it back up. And, to be blunt, the women are gorgeous.

But the truth of the matter is the people I’m working with, no matter how alien their culture of origin may be, simply aren’t the problem population. The problem population is the leeches. Like I said I want the legal process for coming to the US made easier. I’m not even hot on having English as a requirement, I really couldn’t care less. I want to know of any criminal record, any terrorist ties, any diseases they may have I want taken care of, and I want no entitlement slugs. Not much to ask, not unreasonable.

From what I understand of some people I know down there, there are expatriot enclaves and the gringos don’t mix much with the local population beyond what is necessary to earn a living, and a lot are simply down there living on a pension that goes a lot further in pesos than dollars. The Mexicans down there are presumably the ones who have stayed. As I already said, well to do or even moderately poor Mexicans who are still making do for themselves aren’t going to tunnel under the border or strap the basement door to their ass and float over here. No one is complaining about doctors or dentists or even fruit pickers. It’s the dregs that are coming across: those who for various reasons from sloth to inherent criminality can’t make it down there. Some of this is due to social dynamics down there, which when explained to me seem to be a watered down version of a caste system where some people are considered permanently ‘untouchable’, a good bit due to a strangling government as well. And the gangs. Which is why one area I do stick to principle is the drug war. Ending it now ends a lot of gang violence and involvment in the drug trade, and solves a lot of problems on the borders as well as in inner cities here.

It’s possible that would alleviate some problems, more specifically housing issues I brought up earlier. A better cure for that issue though is to kill the Fed, which is another area where I don’t compromise. But I have a hard time believing illegal status encourages other crimes like DUI, robbery, burglary, rape, murder, etc., to the extent that such a miniscule portion of the population would be such disproportionately high offenders. The latino portion of population here is only about 10-15% I believe, the illegal portion much smaller. It’s not latinos that are the problem though, it’s the illegals to a very disproportionately high level. And, in reference to another post that wasn’t directed at me, that does hold it seems, but to a lesser extent, for other illegals like Canadians, Irish, Italian, etc., according to the COs I know. Mexicans/latinos likely dominate because they are the predominant illegal immigrant group right now.

In terms of prioritization I don’t think it works. The effects of illegal immigration are derrivative of the existence of welfare. I’m not arguing otherwise, just that it’s a bit ridiculous to ignore real, practical problems illegal immigration causes to focus your attention exclusively on ending welfare handouts when you can deal with both. Ending welfare handouts, to illegals and to everyone in general, is a long term goal and one you’re not going to achieve overnight or even in a year or a decade. But changing border policy a bit is doable in the short to medium term and can alleviate some of the problems people are dealing with while you shoot for the longer term goal.

209

I never said it was. There is no fixed optimal level of credit either, but it is generally understood that the government and Fed’s actions trend to lowering it below the natural level that would otherwise be discovered.

Are you talking about legal or illegal immigration? Despite your ideals, there is a difference.

Actually if you had read my posts you’d see I wanted the legal process of immigration to be made easier. I grow tire of repeating this. Next time I’m posting a quiz to ensure you have read my posts before replying.

Actually you’ve got it wrong. Legal consequences are a cost everyone considers, and they do affect marginal behavior. Drug laws do stop some people from using drugs. The demand is inelastic however so the laws have to be draconian to get true results, and a relaxation of the laws doesn’t lead to much more use. It would lead to more use though, plain and simple. The success of many countries in stemming illegal immigration suggests that the demand in that area is not so inelastic and the behavior can be reigned in through legal consequences.

And, once more, I am not suggesting making immigration harder, I am suggesting we make legal immigration EASIER while also upping the consequences of illegal immigration. Got that? Do I have to repeat it another trillion times before you will understand I am not talking about closing the borders? Since the rest of your post proceeds from a complete lack of understanding of what I’m saying, it’s not worth responding to at this point.

210

Once more, completely misunderstanding my point. To be blunt I’m tired of responding to people who can’t even put the effort in to understand a post. Have a nice day.

211

Theft is not a crime unique to immigrants. What’s next? lock up all people making less than $50k a year because they have a higher propensity to theft?

As for different license plates, making it legal for them to apply and get real license plates would go a long way towards solving the problem.

While we are on the subject of draconian solutions, let’s nuke the entire neighborhoods where neighbors would enter your garage and help themselves to your tools, and entire neighborhoods where there are unlicensed cars . . . before such trashy neighborhoods spread into my neighborhood :slight_smile: tongue firmly in cheek of course.

From your reply I can see that these things are not happening to you. God, or your particular idol, graces you. Those of us who have no choice but to put up with people taking what they wish while we are at work to support our families and to replace what was taken applaud you for living in a place where that doesn’t happen. Seems easy though to propose that we who are losing our possessions should just suck it up and persevere.

I do not propose locking up everyone making less than $50K per year, just the ones that steal from others. Seems fairly logical, don’t you think? (Going from crime being unique to immigrants to locking up an economic class of people was quite a leap, nice work. Shows that you are quite intellectually light on your feet, or something.)

As I peruse my newspaper each day I notice that the surnames of those involved in crime and mayhem in my area are, in most cases, Latin. Because law officers are forbidden to inquire as to the arrested’s legality status we are not privy to that information. Seems a shame, though, that we, as a nation, cannot at least keep that type person from preying on our citizens without being labeled as racists and anti-immigration.

Making it legal for illegals to apply and get real license plates flies in the face of logic, now doesn’t it? If they aren’t supposed to be here why, in the name of all that is logical, would you want to allow them to have legal licenses? Pretty warped thinking. Also, considering the fact that most people identify vehicles by their tags and theives do not like to be identified, changing plates quite regularly helps the theives maintain a certain amount of anonymity.

212

Then you don’t know immigration laws as they currently stand. If you are a Canadian, you are free to be in the US for 90 days. In fact, hotels and stores love you if you patronize them, as your spending create new jobs here. Then on the 91st day, you are an illegal alien for having overstayed your visa. Now tell me, how on the 91st day, you suddenly become “dangerous to our health and welfare”?? Likewise, if you legally came in on student visa. Upon your graduation, if you take a job from IBM, you are legal. However, if you start a company called MBI and hire two people, suddenly you are an illegal alien for violating student visa restrictions on non-participation in business, never mind that you are not only not taking jobs away from US nationals, you are actually creating jobs! That’s how crazy immigration laws are today. Yes, the hypothetical founder of MBI wouldn’t be able to get a driver’s license without somehow find a way to push enough paper to make his status legal again. Big surprise? Not really, big business always find a way to twist legistlations to benefit themselves: big companies are far more likely to have a dedicated department to handle immigration paper works, so the government leg breakers serve to provide the big companies with virtually exclusive access to that pool of relatively inexpensive talented labor . . . at the expense of US nationals who might have been hired by the startup or US consumers who would have benefitted from the startups of course.

Is that the kind of arbitrary law that we really want to defend?

Until you can get a better one passed, yes.

213

Shoudn’t the issue be property right enforcement/protection instead? Making it an immigration issue reminds me of the date rape hysteria of the early 90’s: sure, some men do bad things, but that’s not a reason to lock up all men until proven innocent.

The point is, and I’ll make it as simple as I possibly can, that if the illegals were not where they should not be, meaning in this country, they wouldn’t be taking my stuff, things that I have worked hard for.

If that sounds like the date rape argument to you, well, some clearer thinking might be in order. The fact that all men were accused, having committed no offense, does not compare with those illegals, who, having found that they are and can remain anonymous in the eyes of the law, begin to believe that they can do and act as they wish and make what is yours theirs. Admittedly, not all illegals act in this manner but a growing number do. Check the statistics on who does time for crimes. If they were not here, illegally, they would not be committing these crimes.

There are other just and true reasons for trying to control immigration, as you know, but my feeling is that you can, in your own mind, equivocate those out of existence.

214

Regarding the prison population, how many of them are hard crimes, how many of them are crimes created by the legal process, such as driving without license because they are not legally allowed to have one? As for DUI, I actually got stopped once, and the rooky cop tried to insinuate that I was driving drunk because my face was flushed after getting pulled over; I hardly drink any alcoholic beverage at all, much less getting drunk ever. Guess what his first question was? What was my immigration status. I was quite dumb-founded . . . that’s what my tax money is being used for?? I was tempted to tell him that I pay more in taxes every year than he gets paid wearing those jackboots.

What you have described is symptoms of poverty. You can easily find youths, US nationals, who shack up in tiny New York apartments beyond their supposed capacity. That’s what being young and being poor means. Eventually, most of them build up enough wealth to be counted among the middle-class if not upper class; that is, unless we make laws to keep them poor, such as not allowing them to have driver’s licenses or jobs. We used to admire individuals who made themselves upper class upstandign citizens despite their Bohemian origins. What now? People have to be born with parents buying them chatels whenever they relocate?

What’s a chatel?

215

"I am suggesting we make legal immigration EASIER while also upping the consequences of illegal immigration. "

Okay, I missed reading the first half of your position. I’m sure you are aware though, anti-illegal-immigration has more or less become a code word for anti-immigration in today’s US society . . . simply because the current law makes all sorts of common behavior illegal for immigrants. In other words, the “illegal” vs. “legal” is purely definitional. For example, a Canadian tourist in the country for 90 days is legal, but on the 91st day is an illegal alien; during any of those 90 days, if the person sells an item on Ebay, he also becomes an illegal alien!

216

I’m all for cracking down on violent crimes and property crimes. However, punishing a whole identifiable group of people for victimless “crimes” that may or may not be corrrelated to any violent crimes or property crimes is inefficient and wasteful to taxpayers who have to pay for the law enforcement bills. The classic example being Prohibition . . . with war on drugs achieving the same sort of wastefulness. Prohibiition on people who smuggle themselves will be even more costly than prohibition on smuggling alcohol and drugs. Sure, some petty property crimes may be related to certain types of immigrants, especially when there are laws prohibitting their pursuit of happiness through legal means; that, however, is no different from the fact that people committing petty theft are overwhelmingly in the low income group. It makes no sense to lock people who can’t make $50k, heck even $30k, or even $10k; it makes equally little sense to lock people up for paper deficiency.

"Because law officers are forbidden to inquire as to the arrested’s legality status we are not privy to that information. "

That’s may not be a correct assumption. I was pulled over a couple months ago because one of my car’s headlights died and I was going at speed limit in the rain. Apparently going at speed limit wasn’t good enough for the officer because it was raining. I actually had a spare light bulb in the trunk (yes, I’m that fastideous when it comes to backup plans) but it was raining after the light burned out that day so I hadn’t yet got around to install the halogen bulb. Guess what was one of the first questions that the officer asked? Yup, my immigration status. Go figure.

“If they aren’t supposed to be here why, in the name of all that is logical, would you want to allow them to have legal licenses?”

Because driver’s license is a state ID, whereas “illegal immigrant” is not a state crime. On top of that, being able to drive is in most parts of the country a necessity to mitigate poverty. Unless you want a boom of petty property crimes, you don’t automaticly exclude certain groups from driver’s license eligibility. Oh, wait, perhaps the game is to make the financially poor illegal immigrants commit petty crimes, then a national ID system and all other sorts of monitoring systems can be implemented to control all US nationals.

217

If the first part is true, then why not legalize all of it? If one truly wants to make legal immigration easier, then why not simply remove all barriers to legally immigrating, which implies the removal of the very concept of illegal immigration. The very existance of illegalizing immigration makes legal immigration less easy. Why do you think those of us on the other side of the debate consider you people to be “anti-immigration”? Because the legal/illegal distinction does not make any sense. If one opposes “illegal immigration”, then one is implicitly supporting restriction on immigration itself to begin with, since the (partial) illegalization of immigration is just that. It’s to enforce barriers to legally immigrating in the first place, and is therefore simply anti-immigration. So when I see people say, “I’m all for legal immigration, I’m against illegal immigration”, I laugh.

218

"instead of spending their money in the country where it was earned it is sent out to other countries. i believe you get the point but want to turn it around and use it against me. nice try but it doesn’t make sense. they are taking more out than they are returning. if they spent earned money here it would be a wash. "

How many illegals do you employ? Are you making quite a bundle on
them?
We have no argument on the first point. If they were to spend their
money here instead of sending it out of the country…oh, what the heck,
you aren’t really listening anyway! I like the ‘common man’ comment though.
You really put me in my place with that phrase. I guess I just didn’t know
who I was talking to.

I was a at a local ER less than a year ago for a borken finger nail. The bill came to $2700, for a thumb X-RAY and having to wait for four hours to see three paper pushers who were not even nurses. There wasn’t a single Hispanic in the ER, besides the cleaning guy. There are all sorts of reasons why medical expenses have gone up: fiat money, third-party-pay clients, restriction on doctor and nurse supply, mulpractice insurance, etc.. Import labor however helps hold cost down not pushing it up. What’s next? Walmart import goods driving prices up because anecdotal recall expenses?? Get real, without the import, the prices would be a lot higher, just because of all the wasteful paper pushing and protected jobs that we have here.

I am an ER nurse and see what happens every evening I am on the job.
I work 3 twelve hour shifts per week. Sorry about your thumb nail (the ER
for a thumb nail?) but you don’t have the experience here to be lecturing to
me. If not for the fact that the majority of those seen in the ER do not pay
their bill that $2700 would have been much less. As far as personnel in the
ER, we don’t have enough nurses working the job now. And they keep leaving
due to burn out. We get people in complaining of broken finger nails and
minor things that could have been handled by a primary physician the next
day but because the law says we have to treat them the real emergent cases
sometimes have to wait until we clear a room of a broken finger nail
patient. In regards to import labor holding down cost, when 3/4 of all those
we see are there for sniffles and finger nails the cost of labor is not held
down. More nurses and doctors are required and costs go up. Being an
economics whiz I fail to see why you cannot understand that.

219

“Until you can get a better one passed, yes.”

So, are you for the rigorous enforcement of state sales tax laws too? That there should be cops in neighborhoods waiting for UPS trucks and taking evidence, then coming April 15th arrest the tax dodgers who order online but do not pay state sales tax?

220

Because driver’s license is a state ID, whereas “illegal immigrant” is not a state crime. On top of that, being able to drive is in most parts of the country a necessity to mitigate poverty. Unless you want a boom of petty property crimes, you don’t automaticly exclude certain groups from driver’s license eligibility. Oh, wait, perhaps the game is to make the financially poor illegal immigrants commit petty crimes, then a national ID system and all other sorts of monitoring systems can be implemented to control all US nationals.

Again, we are doing our best to avoid the point that these people are here illegally. That, in itself, is a crime. Notice the word, ILLEGAL? They do not belong here and to give them a drivers license would legitimize an illegal activity. Additionally, in most states having a drivers license allows one access to the ballot box. If you are not a legal citizen you have no right to vote.

I see so much equivocation and rationalization on this blog. But, I guess that is the type of person that flocks to these things. If you can’t have your way use subterfuge. I think I am getting sick. Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. So many of the people on this blog are so wrapped up in hating the government that they would be on the side of a charged child rapist and against the ‘jackboot thugs’ no matter how convincing the evidence. It would seem that there are no criminals, only laws that outlaw natural human behavior like murder, rape and theft. Why, it’s not the fault of the perpetrator, the government just made laws that made the poor guys activities illegal.