Finally, someone else arrives at the conclusion I reached back when Obama was welcoming floods of Mexicans riding atop trains.
Don’t mend it, end it. Moratorium on ALL immigration to allow time for assimilation – probably two generations, maybe three, going by history.
Close the gates. Pull up the drawbridge. Build the wall.
Joe Doakes
Or – y’know – do what Canada, Japan, Australia and…you guessed it, Mexico do; make potential immigrants prove their value to the country before getting that visa.
Joe, in your link Derbyshire mentions “the Zman”. I’ve read him and listened to the Zman’s podcasts occasionally and find him to be a very eloquent speaker.
I also do not find much to disagree with in either Zman or Derbyshire; but while Derbyshire seems to be more an observer and commentator, Zman often refers to a “revolution” he is expecting. I’ve wondered what he means, since he doesn’t clarify it, and asked him several times to put some meat on them bones.
Specifically, “what exactly will the “revolution” look like? How will we know it’s happening; arm bands and flags? What are it’s goals and how will we know it’s successful?”
That’s the problem I have with race realists and the dissident right. They can expound eloquent around the general concepts, but when pressed for details, they are curiously mute. That is to say, they sound more dissident than realist.
I know nothing of revolution. I know our immigration system is broken. I suspect the only way to fix it, is to shut it down completely.
In the past, I used the analogy of America as the world’s lifeboat – we only have room for so many people, the others in the water cannot be saved because it’ll sink us all. A buddy pointed out that analogy was flawed since a lifeboat has somewhere to go, someone to rescue them. Not true. America IS the world’s rescue. If we screw this up, we have nowhere to go.
Nowadays, I use the analogy of the last castle in the wilderness, the peasants streaming in the gate, the king on the balcony seeing the hordes riding over the hill. There’s no help coming. More people inside eat more food, reducing siege survival time. Harsh reality: save who you can. Close the gates. Wait it out.
Moratorium.
Oh, I’m all in on a moratorium. We need time to digest the pile of uneducated, unskilled, low IQ GuataMexiSomalidorians that have snuck and been let in.
I’m convinced their impact on our economy (negative in the main) is going to take decades to weather, and unless the flow is stopped, their effect on our culture and society (completely negative) will be devastating.
Art of the perhaps possible; I think a good starting point would be to actually enforce the immigration laws we have, and punish states and cities that don’t help.
I read the other day that Merkel is publicly regretting her stance on immigration, as her party is moving away from the “all are welcome” mantra (losing a few key elections in your stronghold regions will do that). I’ll see if I can find the article again.
Here you are, NW. Perhaps there is more or other, but this is the one I saved away.
“Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.”
How is it possible than anyone could believe that “allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side” would work? What is the working model that they want to scale up?
I dunno, I think for America to be America in the way it has been in terms of economic vibrance over 150 years now, an immigrant class of low wage strivers is required, and it isn’t something you shut off… its a ‘built-in’. My thing is, ya know…. these people shouldn’t be imported from African refugee camps and put on welfare here. I cant say that I agree central American migrants are a damaging presence. What is it they do?
The US had almost no immigration, 1924-1964. That is the period when the middle class and the working class made their greatest gains.
Does the US really suffer from a lack of low-skilled workers?
I’m so old that I remember this discussion from two cycles ago. Maybe humans need to reinvent the wheel every 20 years or so, just so the newest adults get the benefit of learning from past mistakes.
Right now, we have Americans sitting around refusing to do grunt work, preferring to live on welfare instead. Importing Guatemalans to do the jobs Americans refuse to do could work, if the immigrants left again. But they don’t. They stay, and have kids, who are natural born American citizens who go to St. Paul Central and grow up watching MTV and wearing Nikes. They aren’t going to do the kind of grunt work their parents were glad to so – that work is beneath them because . . . they’re Americans. So what – import Hondurans this time around? And what do we do with the Guatemalan kids sitting around refusing to do grunt work? More welfare?
It’s an endless and vicious cycle. Expanding the supply of unskilled labor reduces the price that labor can charge. Subsidizing sloth increases the supply of sloth.
Moratorium.
Hey, while we’re at it, the newest scam is the fake “refugee” scam. Everybody who sets foot on American soil clams to be a refugee entitled to asylum, so they get to stay until their court hearing years from now. And if they fail to appear to be deported, they move to sanctuary cities to be safe.
And foreign students overstaying their visas – can you say “Mohamed Atta?” We don’t need them.
Moratorium on all immigration, withdraw from refugee treaties, end foreign students. We’re not taking anybody anymore, for any reason, at all. Give us 20 years and we’ll see where we’re at.
^ If the goal is every business proprietor who wants to sell cheap stuff can do so with no labor bottleneck, then yes, the US suffers from a lack of cheap workers…
Its to say, that’s a perfectly good question.
One thing that is missed in all of the illegal immigration talk, is the fact that there are well over two million Russians, Europeans, Asians (especially mainland Chinese) here illegally on expired visas. There are probably another million or so Pakistanis and Indians here on expired H-1B visas.
“Willing to do jobs Americans won’t do” is incomplete, and therefore misleading. “Won’t do AT THAT PRICE,” is the missing component.
Roofing is dangerous. Worker’s comp rates for roofers are exorbitant. So contractors cheat the system by hiring illegals who will work for $15 an hour, no insurance. Agreed, I wouldn’t work for that compensation.
$150 an hour, no insurance, now we’re talking. It’s not the work that I object to, it’s the wage. I’d work for the new wage except today, I’m being undercut by illegals willing to work for less.
If we got rid of illegal labor, sure, the price of roofs would go up, amortized over loans and diffused through insurance premiums. That’s just a matter of redistributing costs when the cheap-labor-subsidy is removed. Point is – illegal labor distorts the market, changes incentives, rewards bad behavior. End it.
I agree with your description of the economic reality Joe.
Whether or not its desirable, I don’t think we can get there. I don’t think a border agency big enough to control the inflow can be built. I don’t think as a matter of scale it can be financed / funded, staffed, and administered, even if there were votes for it.
So, John K, you’re saying that because you don’t think we can actually maintain our borders, we shouldn’t do it? I mean, defending borders and the citizens inside… isn’t that the absolute basic, bottom-line requirement for being a country?
I’m so old that I remember this discussion from two cycles ago. Maybe humans need to reinvent the wheel every 20 years or so, just so the newest adults get the benefit of learning from past mistakes.
I even older, so I remember these buildings to which our children were sent to educate on all sorts of things that wasn’t limited to past mistakes. I think they were called schools.
A head-shaking experience for me in this regard was when I asked one of my children, who had successfully graduated from high school, to specify to within a decade when the American Civil War occurred. An event of such monumental important that were are *still* living with the ramifications. Couldn’t do it.
jdm – if having a border that works in ways it doesn’t now takes doubling or tripling or quadrupling the size of the enforcement effort in terms of staff, money, and facilities, its not even in the realm of the possible in the first place.
Ah, the old Homer Simpson adage applied to border enforcement, “anything that’s hard isn’t worth doing”. I noticed you ignored my question regarding the most basic requirement for even being (considered) a country.
You cannot legally work for wages in this country unless you are a citizen or you hold a work permit. You cannot hire a person who is not a citizen or a person with a work permit. We could enforce that tomorrow, and you would see the population of illegal aliens in the US drop like a rock.