Sunday, March 26, 2006
Immigration, Corruption, and Elections
Thank God for immigration. At last the GOP can focus on an issue other than that of the lawbreaking of their leader.
I’m happy to say that immigration is one of many issues I’m happy to debate. The influx of 8 million undocumented immigrants over the last decade or so has certainly put a strain on our society, and the remedies for it have been long in coming.
Despite being the supposed paragon of immigrant nations, our government has set limits on immigrants for a century and a half, as I recall from my American history database. We have never in living memory been a nation with open borders, nor should we be, if the example of virtually every other industrialized nation on Earth is an example.
Undocumented workers break the U.S. system of government. They don’t pay taxes, they are a flight risk when charged with a crime, and they, because of their undocumented status, are prone to being abused in a myriad number of ways by their employers and their neighbors.
If you were an undocumented worker and you were the victim of a crime, would you report it when it might lead to your own arrest? What undocumented worker can claim the protection of the government if he or she is victimized by his/her employer?
So these people need to be documented, but there is a broad debate on how to document them, and how to regulate the borders, and how many new immigrants to allow into the country every year.
This is a wedge issue that is splitting the right in half. The corporate types just love that cheap labor. The rest are not too keen on foreigners in their midst, many of which don’t speak English.
Bush has taken the corporate line, in defiance of the will of the majority of Americans and even the majority of his base, a fact that should not come as a surprise after six years of failing to resolve the issue and the Dubai Ports Deal. A list of the people and organizations he has met with recently about this issue is quite enlightening. He echoes Vincente Fox, brazenly enough, when he says that these workers do jobs ordinary Americans are unwilling to do.
Of course, that’s utter bullshit. Americans are perfectly willing to mow lawns, clear tables, and act as domestic servants, just not for $6 an hour.
If immigration is curbed it will result in a tighter labor market, which will lead to a rise in prices for these services. It will also result in more money being paid, on average, to the people that perform those services.
Business is none to eager to be forced to raise the prices it charges for these services, because as my handy supply and demand curves tell me, this will mean a reduction in demand for these services, which should mean less profit for the big guys.
It will also mean that your average family will drop $100 going out to eat at TGI Fridays instead of $80. I’m not sure if I really care about the modest price increases in services this will entail.
Economists might argue that these price increases will be across the board, for services and not, but when they extrapolate to numbers that big they have to use a lot of guesstimation.
The bottom line is the same as it’s ever been: economics is a zero-sum game, Buddy. Most people will have to pay a little more for things while the poorest among us will make more money.
But in other news, Scalia shows yet again why he is hated among many liberal and centrist circles in America. The sad thing is that I don’t even necessarily disagree with him but his ethical problems vis-à-vis his continual refusal to recuse himself continue.
The issue is not as cut-an-dry as Scalia makes it out to be. Historically the United States hasn’t offered full trials for POWs, but then again, historically the United States defended the rights of slaveholders and segregationists. In this war that will never end, a war that has already lasted longer than WWII, there is no foreign government to release POWs to. Even if they were released for trial to Iraq and Afghanistan there is hardly a solid judicial system or society that could judge and reintegrate these people.
Couple that with the unacceptable way that these people have been detained and then treated once in custody and you might want to acknowledge that we need to reexamine the issue.
Previously I have endorsed the idea of military tribunals to process detainees, but that is a stop-gap measure. How, though, could a U.S. jury try these people with witnesses in Iraq and memories fading? Fundamentally, how could a society in the midst of a civil war produce and protect witnesses and documents fairly and accurately while protecting their safety after they testify on the witness stand?
I don’t have answers, nor have I ever even seen these questions addressed. This administration simply doesn’t care to address these questions. Their position has been for years to simply detain whom they will, torture whom they will, and leave any questionable people in prison for an indefinite period of time.
That is not an acceptable solution to the problem that has made us a pariah to the world. We need solutions, not a blanket dismissal from Scalia. I trust he will examine the issue more acutely when in comes before him in the Supreme Court. I don’t trust his judgment as to the answer.
As usual, Greenwald writes the best blog around. While recent posts circle unerringly over the same, sadly obvious fact (the Bush Administration simply believes it has the power to make or break any laws linked in any way to national defense), his March 24 blog is revealing.
I rarely cite these types of examples, because they’re obvious, because they litter the journalistic landscape like apples in October. Domenech, the recently-discredited plagiarist and Washington Post hire, brought this level of ethics to Jon Cornyn’s office and Regnery’s books (including Hugh Hewitt’s and Michelle Malkin’s books).
The New Yorker ran a story in the current issue about the mass of diseased legal thinking in the Executive Branch that produced torture justifications. Deceit and cronyism are diseases that have completely taken over the conservative political apparatus.
I could cite more examples, but I have written for months with justifications of this belief.
This last bit is a little shout-out to the righties who, after having defended their GOP president and congressmen unflaggingly, for years, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, now remain convinced that the GOP will hold their seats in the House and Senate and coast into 2008 strong and still in control.
Or not.
Complacency will kill your party, conservatives. My question to everyone else is this: Had Enough?
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 11:49 PM 
