Anna at Dakota Women responds to one of my recent posts on immigration politics. I think we are largely in agreement on the basic questions, but I have a few responses. Anna says:
Amnesty may be unpopular but it seems to me to be the only option we have. Otherwise, we either 1. kick tens of millions of people out of the country (doing what with whatever children these people have who have been born here and are citizens, by the way?) or 2. keep everything as-is, which means that we continue to live with a situation in the US where millions of people work and pay some amount of taxes but have no rights and no voice in the society. These people are essentially serfs, and in this country in 2007, that's not an acceptable situation.
That looks like three options to me, even if two of them are unpalatable. If we really wanted to expel all ten million illegals (or however many there really are), we could probably figure out a way to do it. There is a snowball's chance in Tijuana that this will happen, and I do not advocate it. The costs, both moral and economic, would be far greater than any gains. As for the status quo, I agree that it is bad but not for the reasons Anna mentions. It is not true that "undocumented" persons "have no rights and no voice in society." They have all the rights afforded to persons under the Constitution, except for the rights of citizenship. For example, the children of illegals (even if they do not qualify for citizenship) cannot be excluded from public schools. Many illegals prosper here, which is not something that typically happened to serfs.
But I would be in favor of amnesty now, and I believe most Americans would follow me, if I believed that in ten or twenty years Anna won't be pointing at ten or twenty million new illegals and saying we can't kick them out either. If you really want amnesty, you have to real control of the border. Anna has more
I also think we 100% abandon the current family reunification system of immigration (in favor of admitting only high-skilled immigrants) at our peril. . . . Parents and adult siblings generally provide needed additional incomes, and assistance in caring for children. They are a necessary part of the life of any family - immigrant or otherwise. Making it nearly impossible for these family members to come to the US legally seems silly to me.
I agree with Anna that family reunification allowances in immigration are a good idea, and I would favor such allowances for all legal citizens. But I think that the high vs. low skilled immigration allowance is a different question. Allowing a lot of low skilled, uneducated workers to immigrate depresses wages at the bottom, for those who can least afford it. Allowing more economically competitive immigrants challenges those who can afford it, and makes the U.S. more competitive. I would also increase the allowance for skilled immigrants from "old Europe." After all, that's diversity.
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