Proof of Citizenship

[Anonymous]

It's not a presumption of innocence or guilt- it's a presumption of status that can quickly be verified in most cases. My understanding is the law has already been ammended. Personally, I consider it zero infringement if all people pulled over for a violation are asked their status as part of police processing. If your stats is then foun to be irregular, it is now a question of innocent or guilty of breaking federal out. Its great that the children are getting the theory and practicelaw. We should enforce federal law, or change it.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you can't understand the difference between a single mistake by a single individual and an actual law, there is no way that I am going to be able to explain it to you.

Oh, but weren't you listening? It wasn't a single stupid decision by a school administrator who was trying to prevent an escalating conflict. It was "an actual documented constitutional violation by a state agency". In any case, hopefully the screeching wingnuts will make sure their ACLU memberships are up-to-date, because this is just the sort of case that they take on.

Of course, to most movement conservatives, the only rights worth defending are those of white Christian folks and gun owners--preferably both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is pretty clear, however, that ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely to cause some frictions going forward, and perhaps we should take that possibility into account in deciding how much immigration we want, and from where. YMMV, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots

Darn those pesky Mexicans and their friction-causing immigration! Why can't they be more like the Irish? Or the Italians? Or every other group that ever immigrated to the US? Meanwhile, those of us who were born here should take advantage of all the privileges we take for granted, and read a book on US history now and again.

Right, because there are no differences between 1844 and today that might influence the desirability of immigration as a policy. Yawn.

Right, because it's not as though every short-sighted reactionary with no sense of historical context has made the argument that *our* times are the exceptional times, whenever those times happen to be. Doesn't matter if it's the third century BC, or the year 2087, "today" will always be different.

Have a cup of coffee; no falling asleep during class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is pretty clear, however, that ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely to cause some frictions going forward, and perhaps we should take that possibility into account in deciding how much immigration we want, and from where. YMMV, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots

Darn those pesky Mexicans and their friction-causing immigration! Why can't they be more like the Irish? Or the Italians? Or every other group that ever immigrated to the US? Meanwhile, those of us who were born here should take advantage of all the privileges we take for granted, and read a book on US history now and again.

Right, because there are no differences between 1844 and today that might influence the desirability of immigration as a policy. Yawn.

You should not be so quick to attribute ignorance to someone just because they have a different view than you do; the only person you hurt when you do that is yourself.

Well you need to spell out those differences, or else you have no point. So what are they? I'm dying to hear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is pretty clear, however, that ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely to cause some frictions going forward, and perhaps we should take that possibility into account in deciding how much immigration we want, and from where. YMMV, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots

Darn those pesky Mexicans and their friction-causing immigration! Why can't they be more like the Irish? Or the Italians? Or every other group that ever immigrated to the US? Meanwhile, those of us who were born here should take advantage of all the privileges we take for granted, and read a book on US history now and again.

Right, because there are no differences between 1844 and today that might influence the desirability of immigration as a policy. Yawn.

Right, because it's not as though every short-sighted reactionary with no sense of historical context has made the argument that *our* times are the exceptional times, whenever those times happen to be. Doesn't matter if it's the third century BC, or the year 2087, "today" will always be different.

Have a cup of coffee; no falling asleep during class.

This is not nearly so clever a response as you seem to think. Are you seriously arguing that the immigration policy that fit this country in 1844 should be uncritically continued today? And that it is the mark of a "short-sighted" reactionary to think that maybe some things have changed since then? I think your ideology is getting in the way of your judgment. All I'm saying is that we have a meaningful public debate as to the actual costs and benefits of immigration based on current conditions before we decide what to do; you respond with inapplicable historical examples and, unless I miss my mark, would probably say that the anti-immigration position is outside of the bounds of acceptable views.

Or am I wrong about that? Would you agree that the current citizens of this country should get to debate whether or not they want immigration, and that the majority rules, democracy-style? Or is this an issue on which the people cannot be trusted?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Would you agree that the current citizens of this country should get to debate whether or not they want immigration, and that the majority rules, democracy-style? Or is this an issue on which the people cannot be trusted?

On that point it is fair to ask, do you agree that majority rules? Because it is the position of Senate Republicans that the majority does not rule. Rather, a super-majority of three-fifths is required, allowing a minority to stop legislation. If immigration reform could be passed with a simple majority, we would have reform this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is pretty clear, however, that ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely to cause some frictions going forward, and perhaps we should take that possibility into account in deciding how much immigration we want, and from where. YMMV, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots

Darn those pesky Mexicans and their friction-causing immigration! Why can't they be more like the Irish? Or the Italians? Or every other group that ever immigrated to the US? Meanwhile, those of us who were born here should take advantage of all the privileges we take for granted, and read a book on US history now and again.

Right, because there are no differences between 1844 and today that might influence the desirability of immigration as a policy. Yawn.

You should not be so quick to attribute ignorance to someone just because they have a different view than you do; the only person you hurt when you do that is yourself.

Well you need to spell out those differences, or else you have no point. So what are they? I'm dying to hear.

Ah, another victim of the American educational system. I would have thought that any reasonably informed citizen would have some insight into the significant changes we have seen i since the mid-19th century, but perhaps I was unduly optimistic. The ones I was particularly thinking of were as follows: first, we have a much more generous set of social benefits than we did back then, which are likely to increase going forward via the recent health bill. Someone will have to pay for those benefits for new immigrants -- maybe they will pay for themselves, maybe not; that's an empirical question, but given the current skew of immigrants toward lower skills, I'm skeptical. Second, unless I'm grievously wrong about the distribution of jobs back then, lots and lots of people were involved in agricultural labor, and there was lots and lots of land that could be made more productive by the application of that labor. Now, all those things are less true -- there are a lot more people here today, obviously, and a reasonable argument can be made that an influx of low-skill labor works to the disadvantage of people already here. Unemployment is also quite high -- it is at least arguable that inducing illegal immigrants to go home might free up those jobs for current citizens. Third, if you care about global warming, you might have some concerns about radically increasing the carbon footprint of millions of people by allowing them to come to a country with one of the highest levels of per capita carbon emissions. That is leaving aside the issue of immigration as impacting the culture more generally -- I've seen some research suggesting that increasing levels of diversity in a society significantly lower measures of social trust, which is pretty highly correlated with economic success. I'm not an expert on those issues and haven't studied the issue in detail, so that is a thought, not a conclusion. To me it is a very legitimate thing to worry about, however.

Of course, more provocatively, one might ask the Native Americans how open borders worked out for them. Hmmm.

I guess I'm just not convinced that open immigration is always and everywhere a good thing, like many commenters here seem to. I'm certainly open to being convinced that on-net, we'd be better off with more immigration, but I am not convinced, and my sense of the debate is that pro-immigration people would rather just rule the anti-immigration position out-of-bounds than do the hard work of making the case on the merits -- often, people seem offended by the act of merely asking the question of whether immigration is a good or bad policy for this country.

"Short-sighted reactionary", signing off.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would you agree that the current citizens of this country should get to debate whether or not they want immigration, and that the majority rules, democracy-style? Or is this an issue on which the people cannot be trusted?

On that point it is fair to ask, do you agree that majority rules? Because it is the position of Senate Republicans that the majority does not rule. Rather, a super-majority of three-fifths is required, allowing a minority to stop legislation. If immigration reform could be passed with a simple majority, we would have reform this year.

Don't be ignorant -- you know better than that. A majority of the Senate can vote to abolish the filibuster rule any time they feel like it.

Leaving that aside, the Senate Republicans are just playing politics, as are the Dems. If the Dems thought that immigration reform was a winning political issue, they'd be pushing it -- it is pretty clear to me that they know it is unpopular.

[Anonymous]

I guess I'm just not convinced that open immigration is always and everywhere a good thing, like many commenters here seem to. I'm certainly open to being convinced that on-net, we'd be better off with more immigration, but I am not convinced, and my sense of the debate is that pro-immigration people would rather just rule the anti-immigration position out-of-bounds than do the hard work of making the case on the merits -- often, people seem offended by the act of merely asking the question of whether immigration is a good or bad policy for this country.

Now see, had you said what you meant in the first place, we wouldn't have had all this chest-beating and posturing. My point was that *every* single one of your arguments was made one hundred and fifty years ago about the Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, etc..., etc... Is it possible the doomsday scenario might come to fruition? Sure. Is it more likely that, like every other previous ethnic group, latinos will continue to assimilate largely into the middle class? We've not really been given any reason to think not--other than the fact that "it's not 1844".

Anyway, as far as your concrete points about immigration, the debate on immigration and wages among serious analysts ranges from the conclusion that immigration raises the wages of all native-born workers (http://www.nber.org/papers/w12497) to the conclusion that immigration raises the wages of all native-born workers with high school diplomas (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/03/borjas_wages_an.html).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I guess I'm just not convinced that open immigration is always and everywhere a good thing, like many commenters here seem to. I'm certainly open to being convinced that on-net, we'd be better off with more immigration, but I am not convinced, and my sense of the debate is that pro-immigration people would rather just rule the anti-immigration position out-of-bounds than do the hard work of making the case on the merits -- often, people seem offended by the act of merely asking the question of whether immigration is a good or bad policy for this country.

Now see, had you said what you meant in the first place, we wouldn't have had all this chest-beating and posturing. My point was that *every* single one of your arguments was made one hundred and fifty years ago about the Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, etc..., etc... Is it possible the doomsday scenario might come to fruition? Sure. Is it more likely that, like every other previous ethnic group, latinos will continue to assimilate largely into the middle class? We've not really been given any reason to think not--other than the fact that "it's not 1844".

Anyway, as far as your concrete points about immigration, the debate on immigration and wages among serious analysts ranges from the conclusion that immigration raises the wages of all native-born workers (http://www.nber.org/papers/w12497) to the conclusion that immigration raises the wages of all native-born workers with high school diplomas (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/03/borjas_wages_an.html).

Well, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was getting at, if you assume good faith on the part of the people on the other side. Anyway, we're clear now. I'm curious, though, what your criteria for "serious" analysts is. Anytime someone qualifies a statement like that, I know I need to reach for my wallet, because so often they are pulling a fast one on me....

[Anonymous]

Well, let's start by defining them as someone with an actual economics background, a professional reputation worth maintaining, and who works with data rather than commonsensical musings.

[Anonymous]

The 'anti-immigration' people are JUST asking for federal law to be enforced. Not anti-immigration. PRO LEGAL IMMIGRATION. I have ZERO ISSUE with expanded quotas, guest-workers, family reunification, High-skills visas etc. I have a hard time with a country in which it is considered intolerable, racist, ignorant, xenophobic to enforce our actual laws on the books. Illegal immigration is a CRIME. Yet we turn a blind eye. We have sanctuary cities? Why are we not cutting of public funds to those cities? Why is it bad to address illegal immigration as a crime and work to prevent it? I agree that the AZ law is far-out; it is also purely to be expected from a state that has had the federal govt. turn a blind eye to their distress. This is 20 years in the making. Let the Feds offer reasonable solutions and support; THEN ask AZ to repeal their law. Anyone catch the article on Ingmar Guandique this morning? That was lovely. Poor Chandra. Why should ranchers live in fear, just because of their proximity to a chaotic, uncontrolled border? The State Department just updated a travel-warning to Mexico today, and is authorizing the departure of American dependents of consular workers from Northern Mexican State Consulates. But if you are an American living on the other side of the open border where are you supposed to depart to? It's just "Have a lovely day!" and "Good luck to ya!".

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_4755.html

[Anonymous]

The 'anti-immigration' people are JUST asking for federal law to be enforced. Not anti-immigration. PRO LEGAL IMMIGRATION. I have ZERO ISSUE with expanded quotas, guest-workers, family reunification, High-skills visas etc. I have a hard time with a country in which it is considered intolerable, racist, ignorant, xenophobic to enforce our actual laws on the books

Ok, let's start here. I can agree with pretty much all of this. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Petulance ain't gonna stop the flow of illegal workers. Nor will lachrymose stories of suffering ranchers. Nor will cutting [federal?] fund to "sanctuary cities."

If you don't want folks to come to the US, you have to eliminate the job opportunities. To do that, you need punitive federal legislation. Nothing else will make a difference.

And right now, there's no political will in Congress to do so from either party.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, that should be "punitive federal legislation aimed at employers".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it is pretty clear, however, that ongoing large-scale immigration from Mexico is likely to cause some frictions going forward, and perhaps we should take that possibility into account in deciding how much immigration we want, and from where. YMMV, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Nativist_Riots

Darn those pesky Mexicans and their friction-causing immigration! Why can't they be more like the Irish? Or the Italians? Or every other group that ever immigrated to the US? Meanwhile, those of us who were born here should take advantage of all the privileges we take for granted, and read a book on US history now and again.

Right, because there are no differences between 1844 and today that might influence the desirability of immigration as a policy. Yawn.

You should not be so quick to attribute ignorance to someone just because they have a different view than you do; the only person you hurt when you do that is yourself.

Well you need to spell out those differences, or else you have no point. So what are they? I'm dying to hear.

Ah, another victim of the American educational system. I would have thought that any reasonably informed citizen would have some insight into the significant changes we have seen i since the mid-19th century, but perhaps I was unduly optimistic. The ones I was particularly thinking of were as follows: first, we have a much more generous set of social benefits than we did back then, which are likely to increase going forward via the recent health bill. Someone will have to pay for those benefits for new immigrants -- maybe they will pay for themselves, maybe not; that's an empirical question, but given the current skew of immigrants toward lower skills, I'm skeptical. Second, unless I'm grievously wrong about the distribution of jobs back then, lots and lots of people were involved in agricultural labor, and there was lots and lots of land that could be made more productive by the application of that labor. Now, all those things are less true -- there are a lot more people here today, obviously, and a reasonable argument can be made that an influx of low-skill labor works to the disadvantage of people already here. Unemployment is also quite high -- it is at least arguable that inducing illegal immigrants to go home might free up those jobs for current citizens. Third, if you care about global warming, you might have some concerns about radically increasing the carbon footprint of millions of people by allowing them to come to a country with one of the highest levels of per capita carbon emissions. That is leaving aside the issue of immigration as impacting the culture more generally -- I've seen some research suggesting that increasing levels of diversity in a society significantly lower measures of social trust, which is pretty highly correlated with economic success. I'm not an expert on those issues and haven't studied the issue in detail, so that is a thought, not a conclusion. To me it is a very legitimate thing to worry about, however.

Of course, more provocatively, one might ask the Native Americans how open borders worked out for them. Hmmm.

I guess I'm just not convinced that open immigration is always and everywhere a good thing, like many commenters here seem to. I'm certainly open to being convinced that on-net, we'd be better off with more immigration, but I am not convinced, and my sense of the debate is that pro-immigration people would rather just rule the anti-immigration position out-of-bounds than do the hard work of making the case on the merits -- often, people seem offended by the act of merely asking the question of whether immigration is a good or bad policy for this country.

"Short-sighted reactionary", signing off.

Oh, too bad you signed off, because I guess you aren't going to read this. I thought you were going to come back with something based on the history of u.s. immigration, or maybe some of the analyses of immigrant productivity that you can easily google. Instead I got facile armchair musings. Oh, well. If you are going to argue that immigrants cost us in social services, you have to complete the analysis and look at what they contribute both today in taxes, social security/medicare contributions and in out-years as they enter their prime working years. Yes, it turns out they are positive contributors. They may in fact be the influx of young workers needed to sustain the current crop of retirees, who absolutely draw more in benefits than they ever contributed to the system. Real economic analysis of the contribution of immigrants to our national output and per capita income are readily available everywhere. Again, you can just google immigration history and find your pick of them. You can find them at conservative think tanks. Or you can trust the Bush White House, which maintained the same point of view on its own web site. Or you can just look at where our per capita GDP came from and realize that the bulk of it was during industrialization and most of that was manned not by Englishmen but by immigrant labor. As for unemployment, had you looked at your history, you would realize that the last 20 years of unemployment rates do not look entirely unlike that of the late 1800's, with periods of 5% unemployment punctuated by spikes. So really it is no different. And while we had a lot of land for immigrants to work (and still do) we had even more industrial jobs that needed filling in later years. Your logic on the carbon footprint is amusing. Either our carbon footprint is due to our wealth our due to our policy failures. If it is the former, then your proposal only keeps the immigrant's carbon footprint down by keeping them poor, which is immoral and infeasible. Trust me, they will make money somewhere. If it is the latter, it is hypocritical to be wasteful but keep the license to pollute ours and ours alone. Lastly on social distance and economic productivity, you only have to look at our national diversity and then look at the growth in per capita GDP over our nation's history to know that either the notion is false or that somehow the U.S. is a positive exception. Among large nations, only Japan, Finland and Norway have a per capita GDP growth over the last two hundred years that is higher than ours, and two of them are explained because they started at a very low number. If diversity impaired economies, we would already be proof of that. Instead we are one of the greatest economic success stories in modern history. So either the notion is wrong or it oddly does not apply to us. About the only thing that I can agree with is that our colonization was bad for Native Americans. But immigration and colonization are hardly the same thing. Trust me, if a bunch of Mexicans decide they want to take back California by force and push the natives to a reservation in Oregon, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you in defense of that great state.

But thank you for the Palinization of an important part of our nation's history. It was enlightening.