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No, I Don’t Have An Immigration Limit In Mind And Neither Should You
I am an unashamed, unabashed “open borders type.” I’m not a communitarian, so I don’t see the issue in utilitarian terms (although if I did, I’d still be an “open borders type”). I am an individualist, so I see things through the lens of the rights of the individual: an individual’s right to engage in non-violent actions, including to move without restriction, and my right to associate freely with whomever I damn well please.
In another thread, the question was put to me what, if any, maximum number of immigrants would be acceptable. The implied alternative to a numerical limit would be an infinite number. I don’t have a specific number in mind, nor should I.
We’re talking about people who come to America to work and live in freedom and peace and be productive. They leave their homes and travel to another nation because their home country is so terrible and America is awesome.
But why does there have to be a number? Frankly, any number would be arbitrary.
And no, it’s not infinite. It couldn’t possibly be infinite. As pointed out in that other thread, 40% of illegal immigrants come here by plane and hundreds of millions of people would come to America if they could.
Well then, why haven’t they? If the borders are as open as immigration hawks claim they are, why hasn’t everyone else in the world come here already?
The answer is that magic doesn’t exist. There are costs involved in immigrating to the United States. If you live in some terrible third world country on a dollar a day or less, you can’t afford a ticket to LaGuardia. It’s obvious, but I guess it needs to be said, that the number of people who immigrate to the United States in a given year is constrained by reality.
But even the idea of a specific arbitrary number is statist nonsense. In any other context, if we weren’t talking about illegal immigration, an arbitrary numerical limit would be seen for what it is. Andrew Cuomo think that six is enough rounds in a magazine. Barack Obama thinks that at a certain point you have enough money. There are plenty of liberals who think that people who own more than one gun are terrifying. Each of those is an arbitrary numerical limit on freedom.
People want to come to America. It’s awesome here and we all know it. A man can say and believe anything he wants. He can work at a trade and be prosperous. Anybody can own a plot of land with a house on it.
The whole seasteading movement is really a way to get around limits on visas for high tech work. Think about that: It’s the policy of the United States to keep people out who:
1. Want to come here
2. Want to work
3. Possess labor so valuable that there’s a movement to create artificial islands to get them here.
People are going to come to America. We can make it easy for them or we can impose arbitrary limits and keep out people who we actually want to come here.
I get it. Freedom is scary to people. They want the government to come in and limit things. I understand the psychology behind it. Just don’t expect me to agree with it or to participate in applying your statist shackles to freedom.
Published in General
I don’t see how any of this follows from my simple observation in #202. You are attacking a straw man of your own creation.
If you actually read my prior comments, I explicitly said I did not agree with Fred nor favor open borders. My proposal is for an expanded work visa program that requires employer sponsorship. I don’t think immigrants on a work visa should be eligible for most welfare programs, and as non-citizens they would not be eligible to vote.
A work visa program tied to employer sponsorship would automatically grow and shrink with the economy: if no one is hiring, there’s no visas available.
Instead of leaving it up to politicians or bureaucrats in Washington, this approach lets the market decide the right number.
Also, who calculates the right number?
Does any central authority have the necessary knowledge to say what the “right number” of immigrants is at any given time?
This is the right approach.
Agreed. Lets make it happen.
http://ricochet.com/why-do-the-editors-promote-sloppy-logic-and-condescending-taunts
So if an immigrant on an employer-sponsored visa gets fired, does he get deported? If he couldn’t, the immigrant could accept a job, get himself fired, and America would be stuck with him. If he could be deported for getting fired, all worker protection laws and regulations would be down the toilet, because reporting a violation wouldn’t just get him fired, he’d be deported.
Could any legal business sponsor immigrants? If so, I guess a legal brothel in Nevada could “sponsor” whores. And either abuse them under threat of deportation, or dump them into the welfare system when they stopped making enough money for the brothel.
Yes.
This is currently the case with the existing H1-B visa program. I’d actually be a bit more lenient, and give the immigrant a grace period to find a new job, perhaps 3 months.
Or he could look for a job with a better employer. Personally I think market competition is generally a more effective check on business misbehavior than bureaucratic regulation and enforcement.
So your view is that the regulatory state is crippling the economy and causing the current soft job market, but at the same time the regulatory state is necessary because “worker protection laws and regulations” are the only thing preventing greedy business owners from mistreating and exploiting their employees.
Seems like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Also I’d think an anonymous tip line would solve this problem pretty well, plus there are already extensive legal protections in place for whistleblowers. The authorities could come in and investigate reported violations of the law w/o revealing which employee tipped them off.
The problem with evidence is the same as the problem with intelligence. If it’s really good stuff, it’s not too hard for the other side to deduce the source. Employers can figure out who ratted them out, and the anonymity of the complaint just gives them deniability. The whistleblower will soon have a stack of poor performance reviews and disciplinary write-ups to document that he was fired for being a poor worker, not a whistleblower.
And if his visa is tied to his employer, and the employer finds out he’s looking for another job, he could find himself without a job and without a visa. An American worker might be fired for his “ingratitude”, but at least he wouldn’t face deportation, too.
Not really. It is possible to believe the regulatory system has become way too large and too complex and still believe that some regulations have value. The 40-hour week and required records of hourly employees’ time worked, come immediately to mind. I also think there should be some restrictions on hiring minors for hazardous jobs. Making it easy to hire foreigners who have no idea of their rights, and whose cultural background may discourage them from reporting violations is not going to make workplaces better for anyone but the boss.
But why? What is there about working over 40 hours a week that makes time-and-a-half pay some magical cure? Plenty of us have had weeks of working 12- to 14-hour days without extra pay. Why restrict hourly wage earners in this fashion?
You guys are no longer actually talking about Fred’s insane desire for there to be no border.
If you want to work more than 40 hours a week without being paid overtime, there’s a rather simple solution. Get a second job.
On a more serious note, I’d prefer not to have to join a union, pay union dues, and deal with union officials, just to have decent basic working conditions. If you want to bring unions back, stripping away generally accepted workplace standards is a very good way to do it.
The weeks many of us have had working 12- to 14- hours days tend to be sporadic, not a regular commitment like a second job. Why should hourly wage earners have to choose only between the 40hrs+overtime scheme and working two jobs?
What’s the point? Most of us have moved past his inane post to better topics or continue to wallow via dissection of the conversation in other posts. Being one of the latter, it’s nice to get closure, but I’m getting a lot more enjoyment now out of watching Dota 2 International finalist matches.
-E
Your sole argument for why your policy would not be disastrous appears to be the costs involved to emigrate would be prohibitive. I see nothing that would prevent other governments from shipping their entire uneducated illiterate welfare class to our country, obviating the sole check on preventing your policy from becoming a disaster.
Yes, but if the immigrants are largely unskilled, there is nothing in that observation that implies the net effect on wages will be positive. Particularly in a country with a high minimum wage that may prevent many unskilled workers from getting a job. You can’t have unlimited immigration and a minimum wage either.
Because 12 to 14-hour days would become the norm again. The only workers who would have any choice would be those who belong to unions with enough clout to say, “Hell, no.”
I don’t want to have to choose between working godawful hours and paying a chunk of my wages to a union.
Of course the net effect on wages will be negative. That’s the point of open borders – being able to displace American workers with cheap foreign labor. It may be the worst idea since Emperor Valens admitted Gothic refugees into the Roman Empire.
Bingo. My substantial evil side would love for the total-open-borders types to get their wish and let reality hit them hard. Unfortunately lots of other people including my children would suffer them too. Importing unlimited poor people, with a claim on government benefits many times what they can contribute- and the voting power to push for more!- is just extending redistributionism to the inevitable collapse of the country. Then we might as well have been born in Mexico. Yes. Being born in America was an unearned lottery prize for me. The poor unskilled immigrants are at least as deserving as I am. But the open-borders types do not have the right to give away my inherited birthright. This is not their country to give away.
One small bone to pick with the original post:
That last “right” to move without restriction is mostly true as an American right of internal travel, but I don’t know where in the world you expect to find the right to cross international borders without permission. You can’t even leave the US without a passport even if you are a citizen in good standing. Even travel within the EU can be restricted. Just ask Geert Wilders.
I don’t know what to do with that. Refugees had been admitted to the Empire for centuries. Adrianople happened not because those Goths were admitted to the Empire, but because the whole thing was terribly mismanaged.
The idea is that people should be given the benefit of the doubt to interact peacefully independently of international borders. Not that current conditions allow us to “find” the right. The belief is that the world is currently constructed in an unjust and immoral fashion, but morals improve over time. I believe one day (perhaps far in the future), generally accepted morals will reach a point where people decide it was always wrong to restrict innocent people’s movement across borders based on accident of birth, much like slavery is seen as obviously wrong now.
They were allowed in in large enough numbers to pose what proved to be a deadly threat to the Empire (the western half, at least).
Throwing open the borders would either create a permanent underclass of people if not eventually naturalized (and that’s assuming we changed the definition of citizenship to exclude their children), or create a horde of new voters with no tradition of or understanding of how democracy works.
It would be like the Greek city-states allowing Persians to immigrate, giving them the vote, and them voting not to oppose Xerxes.
And you would expect someone like Obama to manage a mass migration into America well? Obama doesn’t like America. He wants to fundamentally change it (or destroy it). He’d screw it up deliberately and blame it on the Republicans. And Boehner wouldn’t have the spine to call him out on it, because he wants to get them into the country for his K Street backers.
You are perhaps right, however, a nation that does not control its borders is not a sovereign nation. The only way your concept can work is if there is a unitary planet-wide government. You can see this in the EU now – Open borders among the EU states has necessarily led to the European Union having more power than the individual sovereign states. I do not believe that a unitary planet-wide government will represent moral progress