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Inconvenient questions about immigration
MR readers will know I hold a relatively cosmopolitan stance, sympathetic to immigration, including the immigration of low-skilled labor. But notice the tension with Milton Friedman's classic stance that businesses should maximize profit only, without regard for broader social concerns. If businesses have this liberty to behave selfishly, why do not governments? Similarly, cannot a mother give priority to her child, rather than selling it to save ten babies in Haiti? Why should governments be the unique carrier of cosmopolitan obligations?
I see a few possible stances:
1. Randall Parker thinks Western governments should be be elitist, nationally selfish, and determined to maximize national average IQ.
2. Perhaps government holds special obligations. Robert Goodin argued that government should be utilitarian while other institutions pursue selfish concerns. But where does this dichotomy come from, and still, why should the concerns of a government stretch past its citizenry?
3. Peter Singer and Shelley Kagan believe that all entities, whether collective or individual, should take the most cosmopolitan view possible. For Singer this includes the consideration of other species. Few people are willing to live the implications of this.
4. We have not (yet?) found a universally correct perspective from all vantage points. We have public obligations, private obligations, and no clear algorithm for squaring the two. We nonetheless can find local improvements consistent with both, or which do not greatly damage our private interests. Freer immigration, even when costly, is one of the cheapest and most liberty-consistent ways of addressing our (admittedly ill-defined) obligations to others. But surely those obligations are not zero. This implies, by the way, that Friedman's maxim is not strictly accurate.
Note that libertarians are often extreme nationalists when it comes to foreign policy ("Darfur is no concern of ours") but extreme cosmopolitans when it comes to immigration.
My views are closest to #4. Our inability to fully embrace cosmopolitanism is a central reason why the case for open borders is not more persuasive. Many people hear the cosmopolitan call and sense, instinctively, that something is wrong. But when we view the argument in explicitly economic terms -- what is the best way of satisfying marginal obligations which are surely not zero? -- the case for a liberal immigration policy is stronger.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 7, 2006 at 07:15 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I believe that Friedman's argument point about profits is really one of specialization and spheres of repsonsibility. That is, it is the responsibility of businesses to earn profits according to the rules. It is the responsibility of governments to structure the rules so that businesses that 'play by the legal rules' do well also do good (or at least no evil) at the same time. If the government fails at this responsibility, then the government is to blame when nice guys stagnate and fail and mean guys succeed.
The same logic does apply to governments below the national level. Voters in Idaho are not expected to consider what is best for citizens of Maine and North Carolina when voting for governor. And voters in Phoenix are not expected to take Bostonians into account when choosing a mayor. At these levels, voters can ignore such outside concerns because there are higher levels of government where such concerns are handled. But when you get to the level of the nation, the governmental organizations above it are sparse, weak, and not very democratic. And so countries are put in the (admittedly awkward) position of trying to take into account the well being of non-citizens.
How should the concerns of non-citizens be handled? They should be given some weight, but less weight than those of citizens. How much less weight? There is no right answer for every occasion, but off the top of my head, I would say the weighting depends on at least proximity, frequency of interactions, relative levels of well-being. By these measures, our responsibility to take into account the concerns of Mexicans and Canadians would be higher than for Albanians, and it would be higher for Mexicans than Canadians because of the differences in well-being.
Posted by: Slocum at Apr 7, 2006 7:50:37 AM
I don't know what Friedman would've said, but I have two reasons why I think I, and many libertarians, and perhaps even Friedman would question the analogy.
First, I was under the impression that Friedman's and similar arguments (Smith, Rand...) for the benefits of corporations and other economic entitities pursuing their own interests under a suitable set of institutions puts a pretty strong emphasis on the suitability of the institutions. Friedman, for instance, would be unlikely to claim that because the AMA is pursuing its own interests by excluding others from using many useful drugs without paying for permission from a member of the AMA, that makes that exclusion a beneficial thing.
One property related to suitability of institutions is just their inevitability. When some radical tells you that he will eliminate property, it is a good bet that there is some sleight of hand behind the claim; your typical left anarchist is not forthcoming about what will replace property decision mechanisms, but the underlying decision problem remains. Two people cannot eat the same rabbit, corn eaten cannot be used as seed, and land reserved for ecoparadise can't be used as an airport runway; property-like limitations will exist if only by the default of whose incompatible use excludes whose.
But passports and work permits are not inevitable, any more than legally-privileged guilds or hereditary aristocracy or religion. The underlying decision problems of "who is allowed to prescribe drugs" or "who is allowed to defend himself" or "what beliefs are allowed" or "who is allowed to participate in the USA labor and housing and other markets" can (unlike "who gets to eat [or otherwise use] this apple?") be answered "absolutely everyone" making them trivial. It is quite possible to have equality under the law for all (for all competent humans, anyway, leaving Singer's animals and young human children and other incompetents for another argument, please). Not just in theory: many real historical societies have come close enough to equality under the law for broad enough sections of the population in broad enough ranges of rights that we have lots of examples of it working well.
Second, I don't specifically know about Friedman (except by knowing about his proposal for negative income tax and reasoning backwards) but economists in general tend to strongly prefer transferable rights; the waste of A holding a right that B does not, while B would be willing to exchange it for something that A would prefer, tends to grate on them. Thus, if we take as given a world where only some fixed number of people who have USAprogrammingright are allowed to program computers between Canada and Mexico and even if our initial distribution of USAprogrammingright is by guild grandfathering or by bundling it with nationalists' inherited privilege, many economists would prefer that such a right be transferable.
(I would guess Friedman would also support the cosmopolitan arguments; part of my argument above is that if he does support the cosmopolitan arguments, it would not be a case of doublethink on his part.)
Posted by: William Newman at Apr 7, 2006 8:51:00 AM
when you list answers, such as in a test, or as in this post, and the 'right' answer is the longest, your reasoning is weak. The alternatives are staw men, and the 'best' answer is a muddle.
Posted by: efalken at Apr 7, 2006 9:12:24 AM
I don't mind debating what the appropriate immigration policy should be, but the current debate is primarly about policy towards illegal immigrants. The two are tightly linked, to be sure.
What bothers me about arguments such as this it its presumtion that there is no significant effect from bad actors in the system. It presumes that everyone who wants in wants to fully join the community. This is simply not true for a huge portion of the Latin immigrant population. It is catastrophically wrong in the case of enemy combatants.
Our current effective immigration policy is a wide open door. I hold that we absolutely must make it higly risky for enemy combatants to try to enter. I also hold that the non-assimlationist ideology common with the (especially illegal) Latin immigrant represents a long-term danger to almost all of our institutions.
The is especially true for the case of the political establishment's willingness to enact libertarian policies.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Apr 7, 2006 10:04:30 AM
"If businesses have this liberty to behave selfishly, why do not governments?" Ah, but which level of government is the unit of relevance? And do we only consider the utility of the current residents? Or do we consider the utility of present and future residents? If we consider future residents, should we only consider the children of current residents?
If we could somehow spawn off an alternate universes, one in which the U.S. had strict immigration and one in which it didn't, we would expect the one with strict immigration controls to be "better" by several measures, assuming the nativists are right.
We can't spawn off alternate universes unfortunately. But perhaps before putting up a wall across the continent, it would be sensible to try it out on a smaller scale first? After all, if immigration controls are desirable at the national level (to prevent low IQ, high crime immigrant populations from moving to the U.S.), wouldn't it also imply that intrastate borders are also desirable? If I don't want low IQ, high crime immigrants crossing national borders, why would I want them crossing my city or state borders?
It would be much less costly to "secure" a city's borders than the 2000 miles of national border between the U.S. and Mexico. If immigration restrictions are beneficial, cities with strict immigration controls should do much better than cities with relatively open borders.
Of course, then the question becomes, what outcomes would we measure? Lifespan? Birth rates? GDP? GDP/capita?
For example, which is more economically successful -- city A, consisting of a 100 residents with a $10000/capita income, or a city B, consisting of a 1000 residents with a $1500/capita income? Is city A, with a homogenous culture and less crime better than a city B, with a diverse culture, but more crime? Is a city A with a lower median IQ, but higher variance (and thus, more geniuses) better than city B with a higher median IQ, but lower variance (and thus, fewer geniuses).
Of course, given all of these disparate measures of well-being, the typical economist response would be to look at the revealed preference of the economic actors. Therefore, I suggest that we put a wall around Randall Parker's city with same immigration laws that he proposes for the rest of the U.S. (i.e. they're free to leave, but no one may become a resident unless they pass whatever IQ tests/racial quotas he advocates. )
The results should be enlightening, regardless of the outcome.
Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Apr 7, 2006 10:24:27 AM
The answer is that the divdends from government are in-kind where the dividends from business are cash.
A business can maximize profits because the shareholders can then use those profits to satisfy their utility in wahtever means they see fit.
On the other hand government is useful precisely when the profits cannot be captured. Thus the government distributres in-kind to its citizens (shareholders). Therefore, a choice has to be made about what bundle of services maximizes utility. Some of us feel an enormous utility from freedom both ours and others. Not to mention we know that the total productive capcity of the world is maximized when there is freedom.
By the bye why can't I see half of what I am writing. The textbox extends past the page.
Posted by: Karl Smith at Apr 7, 2006 10:26:03 AM
I thought business are encouraged to act selfishly because of Econ 101 arguments that such selfish behavior generally produces Pareto-optimal results for society as a whole. (I'm not an economist, there are probably more advanced economic arguments.) It is interesting that this often seems to get re-stated as "by definition a corporation's goal is to maximize profits," as if reasoning such as "by definition a hit man's goal is to kill people in exchange for pay" is compelling.
Posted by: Barbar at Apr 7, 2006 10:50:11 AM
The implication of Singer's philosophy is not at all as hard to live with as people initially imagine. It's just one of those things you simply do not know until you try.
Posted by: Macneil at Apr 7, 2006 11:10:24 AM
Milton Friedman himself has expressed substantial doubts about the effects of mass immigration. He wrote in 1995:
"The greatly increased ratio of low-cost labor to capital has raised the wages of highly skilled labor and the return on physical capital but has put downward pressure on the wages of low-skilled labor. The result has been a sharp widening in the differential between the wages of highly skilled and low-skilled labor in the United States and other advanced countries.
"If the widening of the wage differential is allowed to proceed unchecked, it threatens to create within our own country a social problem of major proportions. We shall not be willing to see a group of our population move into Third World conditions at the same time that another group of our population becomes increasingly well off. Such stratification is a recipe for social disaster. The pressure to avoid it by protectionist and other similar measures will be irresistible."
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Apr 7, 2006 11:28:23 AM
Christopher Rasch writes:
[After all, if immigration controls are desirable at the national level (to prevent low IQ, high crime immigrant populations from moving to the U.S.), wouldn't it also imply that intrastate borders are also desirable? If I don't want low IQ, high crime immigrants crossing national borders, why would I want them crossing my city or state borders? ]
I bet Houstan wishes they hadn't taken in the Hurricane Katrina refugees. The decision has cost lives. Your reduction to absurdity is prescient, though probably unintendedly. If high crime groups keep flowing into the US in gigantic numbers (hispanics have a 2.9 times higher incarceration rate than non-hispanic whites, see Steve Sailer's writings and FBI stats), costly, gaurded, gated communities will become more and more common (see South Africa). Open borders will lead to something more like borders within america itself, as people with the means to do so try to shield themselves from rising crime.
Posted by: scottynx at Apr 7, 2006 12:27:20 PM
P.S. I would hope Houstan would make the same decision to let the refugees in, even knowing what they know now, because they had no where else to really go. They are americans and they are america's responsibility. But we should avoid letting in more high crime groups in to America that would make a city want to think twice before inviting them in after a disaster.
Posted by: scottynx at Apr 7, 2006 12:47:19 PM
One of the reasons for government is to promote associational groupings by helping us define who is and is not a member of the group. Leave out the messy question of how well it does that, but in principle it is not illegitimate to say that the sphere of laws and property rights protections we have extend to a particular geographic location and to a particular group of people. The rules of republican democracy allow us to define who those people are. Outsiders are -- well -- outsiders. We have created a technology for rights creation and protection called the government, and we the people have the right to decide who gets to play. The problem with some libertarians is they believe in property rights protections unless it interferes with their priors about what rights are correct then they become cosmopolitans who support anti-legal measures to subvert laws that the majority of Americans clearly support.
You can say all you want about how no one is happy with the current regime, but you cannot get around the fact that the majority of Americans are not in favor of completely open immigration. Furthermore, even some of those sympathetic to open immigration look askance at favoring migrants who break the law over immigrants who went to enormous trouble to comply with the laws.
Posted by: anon at Apr 7, 2006 12:54:37 PM
P.S. here is a link of an NPR broadcast: "Houston examines post-katrina spike in violent crime".
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5178286
See, all immigration doesn't always help the host locale. But's let's be practical, rather than ideological. We can limit immigration from without the US, without limiting immigration within. Just because your reduction to absurdity says one leads to the other, doesn't mean we have to do both. Open borders is what WILL lead to more gated communities, due to people shielding themselves. Only simple, rational calculations by people will be required for this outcome, not some complex reduction to absurdity, which is what your outcome requires.
Posted by: scottynx at Apr 7, 2006 1:01:29 PM
I think this discussion confuses two issues that are conceptually distinct. On the one hand there is the question of how morally "cosmopolitan" an individual is obligated to be (i.e., how much of a sacrifice to himself or to people in his own group he is obligated to make for the benefit of an outsider). Clearly this question has relevance for things like the disposition of an individual's private charitable contributions. But some matters have to get handled at a level higher than an individual; only a firm can decide whether or not to adopt some unprofitable policy to advance some social end, and only the government can decide what immigration policy should be.
My own view is that, while like Tyler I don't have some final philosophical resolution on this matter in mind, I also like him am quite heavily inclined towards cosmopolitanism as a general matter, and I want the immigration policies of my government to reflect this. But it is perfectly possible to believe this and at the same time to believe that firms should not be cosmopolitan. My reasoning is expressed in a letter, reproduced below, that was printed in Reason magazine following the Milton Frienman interview that Tyler referred to.
"Friedman argues (correctly) that there is no particular reason why being good at high-end food retailing or producing semi-conductors is a qualification for making decisions about the disposition of society's resources, and that trying to make firms do both tasks just means that one or the other is likely to be done badly. I would add that not only are business firms unlikely to be particularly good at advancing the general welfare in any way other than through being good at their businesses, but rather that they are particularly likely to be a menace to it. Any "business leader" who gets an opportunity to be seen as some sort of guardian of social welfare will have every incentive (free-rider problems and the fact that John Mackey seems like a really nice guy notwithstanding) to advance a vision of social welfare that is good for rich guys who own/run businesses, and it would be shocking coincidence indeed if this bore any resemblence at all to be the vision that actually maximizes society's well-being. Firms should be viewed as what they (usually) are: very efficient but completely amoral institutions that are totally indifferent to society's welfare, and that will be very effective in doing what they are incentivized to do. The trick, therefore, is to make sure that they have proper incentives to turn that effectiveness to productive ends. This must be done by the other "stakeholders" in society (government, consumers, employees, and others), but in no way should the firms themselves be seen as partners, much less leaders, in this endeavor."
Posted by: David J. Balan at Apr 7, 2006 1:29:20 PM
scottynx -- your comments raise another very interesting question. Over what time scale should we judge the effects of proposed legislation? In the short term, allowing the Katrina refugees to immigrate to Houston may well have caused a spike in crime. If Houston had built a wall around itself, and refused residency to anyone who did not pass an IQ test, it might have excluded most of the refugees. But how would such a policy affect the long-term health of the city? At what time would we declare such a policy a success or failure?
Posted by: Christopher Rasch at Apr 7, 2006 1:51:30 PM
I fear Randall Parker's suggested restrictions might bring us too many of the pampered from originating countries and not enough of the crazy-ambitious types. When I think of Keynes's "animal spirits," those who would cross the desert to live in dorm-like conditions to work their tails off, and then send most of the money back home come to mind.
Despite the numbers involved, it's not easy or safe to sneak into the U.S., nor is it easy here once you arrive (unlike Europe where generous benefits may be had by all). There has to be a huge intangible benefit for the character of the country to have to people who would not only try, but succeed, to do this.
However, this makes me a kind of hypocrite, for I want it hard to get in (call it initiation), I want our borders secure against crime and terrorist; but illegals here and working don't bother me a whit. Isn't this our sort-of unstated policy?
(one caveat, I do have a problem with Mexican irredentist who would make a claim for the southwest as part of Aztlan).
Posted by: ElamBend at Apr 7, 2006 2:04:19 PM
The obvious libertarian answer: governments are providing a service to their citizens, so like any business they should be judged based on their "profits", i.e. number of satisfied citizens minus unsatisfied citizens. Bigger is better, and more satisfied is better than less satisfied. Under this model, governments should try to expand, expell undesirables, and take in desirables. Sounds about right to me.
Posted by: Nathan Whitehead at Apr 7, 2006 2:06:03 PM
sorry for my english but:
does brain drain not harm the poor people that remain in Mexico Guatemala ,El Salvador?
Usually only the most skilled , low for your country not theirs or ours,migrate.
so you fulfill your social obligation depriving them of the help of their better skilled connationals?
Many venezuelan running away from a want yto be dicator are illegaly in Flotida.They are lawyers , engineers ,doctors etc: It is their right to go were they want but why the USA must give them anything that they for sure do not deserve.why are you obliged to people that get a free education from their goverment?they will be more or less usefull for you,the education level in venezuela is below underground,But for sure you have no obligation
Posted by: Juan at Apr 7, 2006 3:31:55 PM
Regarding "It presumes that everyone who wants in wants to fully join the community. This is simply not true for a huge portion of the Latin immigrant population."
That is BS. Every Latin immigrant I know wants to fully join in the community as much as any other previous wave has. Adults have hard times learning languages, my great-grandparents who came to the U.S. had a hard time learning English, and they hung out with ethnic societies. Their kids spoke English fine.
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at Apr 7, 2006 3:32:11 PM
The obvious libertarian answer: governments are providing a service to their citizens, so like any business they should be judged based on their "profits", i.e. number of satisfied citizens minus unsatisfied citizens.
I have no idea what this is, but it isn't libertarian.
ObTopic: You're not going to stop illegal immigration unless the border is manned with machine guns. You're going to have to kill a whole lot of potential immigrants to stem the tide. If you support that kind of thing, you're a sick human being, econometrics be damned.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Apr 7, 2006 5:11:15 PM
Christopher Rasch writes:
[scottynx -- your comments raise another very interesting question. Over what time scale should we judge the effects of proposed legislation? In the short term, allowing the Katrina refugees to immigrate to Houston may well have caused a spike in crime. If Houston had built a wall around itself, and refused residency to anyone who did not pass an IQ test, it might have excluded most of the refugees. But how would such a policy affect the long-term health of the city? At what time would we declare such a policy a success or failure?]
Here is how violent crime is playing out over different immigrant generations, according to Harvard immigration lover Robert J. Sampson:
[ Indeed, the first-generation immigrants (those born outside the United States) in our study were 45 percent less likely to commit violence than were third-generation Americans, adjusting for family and neighborhood background. Second-generation immigrants were 22 percent less likely to commit violence than the third generation.]
Excerpt from "Open Doors Don't Invite Criminals", by Robert J. Sampson
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/opinion/11sampson.html?ex=1299733200&en=be13bc1a15648c8d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
As Steve Sailer says about that paragraph:
[...So, by importing vast numbers of Hispanic immigrants now, according to Sampson's data, we're just making an unholy mess for ourselves in the future.]
Excerpt from "Sampson's Silly Theory on Immigrants and Crime"
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/060312_sampson.htm
As for the "long-term health of the city", rising immigrant crime over successive generations bodes ill.
Posted by: scottynx at Apr 7, 2006 5:19:09 PM
I would say a government does not have a right to act selfishly because it can do much greater harm than a company that acts selfishly. Why? Quite simply because government owns a monopoly on the use of force (or violence if you will). You and I can ignore a company, but not the government.
Posted by: The Hook at Apr 8, 2006 1:32:39 AM
Speaking of Friedman, his introduction to “Capitalism and Freedom” he takes to task JFK’s famous inaugural line “ask not what your country can do”. . . and rightly spells out the proper relationship between government and citizen. I mention that simply to clarify what I believe a “selfish” government to look like. If the only responsibility a company has is to its share holders, then the only responsibility the government has is to the citizen.
Not what is best for all people in the name of an ideology with the individual at its core; an ideology to which I adhere. But what is best for the citizenry. If an immigrant working under the table is a small legal nuisance, then by definition of a small legal nuisance, it is probably not harming the citizenry. However, when a group of immigrants begin to pose a threat, in anyway, to the stability of the citizens’ society then the government has an obligation to the citizenry and bears no responsibility whatsoever to the immigrant. To do otherwise is to place the individual rights of the non-citizen over what is in the interest of the citizen.
The basic economic arguments for reasonably open immigration policies become blunted when national security is an undeniable issue, and whenever the current group of immigrants are not required to assimilate as earlier generations of immigrants have done.
What is happening today is that the differing sides of the issue are drawing very extreme lines in my view, and whatever reasonable solutions that might enable us to secure our borders for national security reasons, and also allow for guest worker status, are not even being considered.
Also consider the people promoting each idea. It sounds great from a purely ideological standpoint to support a good idea regardless of who puts it out there. However, if supporting a good idea will also propel a known violator of individual rights into the most powerful political position in the world, then this good idea is suddenly very expensive. One issue voters come to mind as examples of why such practices are bad for the long run.
Posted by: Ray at Apr 8, 2006 2:59:06 AM
To take the defining of a selfish government a bit further, if a government places a higher priority on the individual rights of all people, regardless of citizenship, this is a first step to a borderless world.
This borderless world sounds wonderful on paper, but for reasons that probably don’t need to be explained here, it simply won’t work.
So it would seem that the open borders argument would tend to lead more towards the collective, and thus ironically, away from the rights of the individual. To state otherwise is to argue for this Utopian borderless world, which just isn’t going to happen.
None of this is to imply that we should treat non-citizens badly in any respect, but what is the government for if not the protection of the citizen.
Quote:
"Note that libertarians are often extreme nationalists when it comes to foreign policy ("Darfur is no concern of ours") but extreme cosmopolitans when it comes to immigration."
So if we’re not worried about the individual rights in Darfur, why are we worried about the individual rights of non-citizens who have managed to make it to our country? There is an inconsistency there. One can argue that it’s not about the individual rights of the immigrant per se (although most of the pro-illegal immigrant platform is arguing this) but about the economic good to the society as a whole, but this brings it back full circle to the problem of national security and assimilation.
Posted by: Ray at Apr 8, 2006 3:19:03 AM
Border control to keep out "enemy combatants" is no guarantee of safety: the Tube bombers were British (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4676577.stm). A better strategy is to see if needlessly antagonising people to that level of desperation can be avoided.
Posted by: Peter Clay at Apr 8, 2006 8:59:03 AM
Border control to keep out "enemy combatants" is no guarantee of safety: the Tube bombers were British
They were British in the sense that they carried British passports, that is they were not British at all (assuming is a such a thing as British, a very arguable proposition). They were not descended from the people that have occupied from, say, 600 AD to 1950 AD. They obviously had little feeling either for the liberal society which the indigeneous of that island had created or for the English, Welsh, and Scottish themselves.
The British-born Pakistanis and West Indian felt more loyalty to their tribe--to the Ummah-- than to the society which educated them. That they were in Britain at all was the result of earlier, mistaken immigration policies that were based on economic arguments (cheap labor to keep British textile mills open.) We all see how well that has worked out.
We in the US are now seeing a milder version of tribal politics from the children of Mexicans we amnestied in 1986.
Posted by: Mitchell Young at Apr 8, 2006 10:50:06 AM
Could someone please explain to me why it is necessarily true that a government is not acting in its own best interests (that is, hopefully, the best interests of its constituents) by allowing open and free immigration? Perhaps I am misunderstanding Tyler, but why can't it be argued that a government is perfectly free to act selfishly and only pursue its own self interests, and allowing free and open immigration would further this very pursuit?
Posted by: robby at Apr 8, 2006 6:19:06 PM
From the bottom:
Robby, yes, the government (should be) our agent in the same sense that a corporation is the agent of its shareholders. Our government did not serve us well by allowing enemy combatants to enter our land, learn their skills, and slaughter our people. It also does not serve us well by allowing large numbers of people to enter at will and demand gifts. (welfare, free schooling, etc.) It most certainly fails us if it further allows a large group of people with sifinicantly different values to enter the political process.
Peter Clay:
Pray tell, where did I ever state that total safety is desirable? Indeed, I stated that I demand that it be "very risky" for enemy combatants to enter. As for antagonism, you antagonize them by not being Muslim. Convert or shut up.
The Hook:
You are confusing the issue. Our government certainly does NOT have a monopoly on the use of force outside our borders. Noncitizens (and even citizens, generally) most certainly can "vote with their feet".
On the Houston situation:
There is no reason that a group of people should not be able to change policies to adjust to changing situtations. Most of the discussion here has assumed time-independence of policy. "Time of war" is a meaningful phrase, for instance so is "natural disaster". On a personal note, I live in Austin. The evilness of the welfare state can get driven home in a big hurry if you know how to see it.
Wild Pegasus:
Such a sever measure is only sick if you don't consider the situation to be an invasion. If you do, then it is a rational, appropriate, and in fact quite limited method for a people to defend itself. Yes, limited. The invaders are rational actors, as well.
Mr Econotarian:
My great-grandparents spoke English fine because their parents forbid them to speak German. If the Latin immigrants are so good with English, why do our ballots all have Spanish? Not one of my ancestors marched the streets of this country flying the flag of another in protest. You don't know the anti-assimilationists because they don't want to know you.
Nathan Whitehead:
Yes, if you are talking about a wall to keep people out, your government has been more successful than if you are talking about a wall to keep people in. But just as in business, bigger is not always better. Just as a business can overdiversify, a society can be overwhelmed by an alien culture.
ElamBend:
If it's so hard to enter this country, then why does the flow reverse in December? These people go "home for the holidays", and come right back. First-timers have a more difficult time, but that is hardly a surprise.
Yes, our nation has always benefitted by harvesting the dogged of other societies. But doggedness in criminal behavior is something we don't need.
Rasch:
Yes, we're all fans of Swift. But analogies have limits, and functions over large domains have more interesting high-order terms. No one considered offering statehood to Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Empire, nor Japan after World War II. This is not nativist, but practical. A society won't work unless its members share a substantial value set. (Those few who don't are generally branded criminals & put in jail.) I am deeply concerned that substantial portions of the Latin migration not only share too few of our values, but that they demand that we adjust to them.
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