The National Security Case for a Liberal Immigration Policy

Ryan Avent gives it a shot:

One thing that I wish Democratic candidates would or could emphasize is that a more liberal immigration regime isn’t just compatible with better security, it may actually facilitate it. If you allow economic immigrants ready access to the country, then they have no reason not to come in through the front door, at which point they can get fingerprinted, get their visas and identification cards, be placed in the government’s databases, checked against terrorist profiles, etc. This way, we know who is coming into the country, and we know that anyone not using the front door is probably not a legitimate economic immigrant.

I'm convinced. I'm not, however, convinced that people's concern about immigration is really driven primarily by national security worries as opposed to cultural anxieties.

Comments

correct. Although, in opposition to this idea, I do believe that recent successful terrorists went through the front door. I guess the presumption is that the system works now.

Posted by doug | January 7, 2008 1:31 PM

I think you are correct about the cultural anxieties aspect. I believe that even Samuel Huntington makes that rather flimsy argument. OMG they are brown and Catholic! We're doomed!

Posted by freddiemac | January 7, 2008 1:34 PM

There's no such thing as a secure border when your land borders are 7,500 miles and your coastline is more than 12,000 miles.

Posted by Freddie | January 7, 2008 1:35 PM

This is what I've been saying all along, so it's nice to see somebody else adopt that argument.

But you're right--it's driven more by cultural anxieties than national security.

Posted by Tom Hilton | January 7, 2008 1:36 PM

I know it will sound freakishly crazy, but maybe someday, far in the future, we could consider having a national policy which actually makes life better on the ground for the average person in Mexico or other neighboring Central American and Caribbean nations so that maybe they wouldn't feel such a pressure to flee, but I'm sure that I'm just being nuts and we all need to be patient and wait another 1,000 years or so until our awesome free market fundamentalist policies pave their lands with gold.

Posted by El Cid | January 7, 2008 1:37 PM

Does anyone have any idea how bad LEGAL immigration is right now?

My wife is Japanese. I started the application for her on August 27, 2007 and the USCIS actually opened the envelope on December 27, 2007. That is 4 months just to open an envelope.

We have no clue at all how long the entire process can take. USCIS had on its web site the entire process should take 6 months. Now, they don't have a clue how long it should take.

There is a reasonable chance that she won't get into the country before our SECOND anniversary.

Of course, she is entitled to come here any time she wants as a visitor without any visa but she also faces the risk of being deported and banned from the country for 5 years if the immigration officer doesn't like the way she answers a question.

It is insane and it makes me break down and cry when I think too much about it.

Posted by neil wilson | January 7, 2008 1:43 PM

I guess the presumption is that the system works now.

The fastest way to an informed electorate on immigration would be to put the USCIS in charge of voter registration. Ideally, give wannabe voters the basic English and civics test, too, just for shits and giggles. It might, at very least, make the point that an effective immigration system isn't just Border Patrol.

I know it will sound freakishly crazy, but maybe someday, far in the future, we could consider having a national policy which actually makes life better on the ground for the average person in Mexico

It's curious, isn't it? Because AMLO's candidacy was treated in some quarters as raising the possibility of having a 'Chavez at the border'. Instead, both parties endorse the neoliberal ruling party south of the border, which then chooses to outsource its welfare state.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 1:44 PM

Does anyone have any idea how bad LEGAL immigration is right now?

And can vote? The citizen family-members and employers of immigrants. Not a big constituency.

It's a dilapidated system, underfunded and burdened with layer upon layer of encrusted legislation. The employees -- many of them naturalized citizens, I noticed -- make the best of a bad lot. There's no electoral benefit in sending funding its way.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 1:50 PM

I think cultural anxieties are only one part of the concern among one particular conservative group. Anther concern is just the perception of chaos: the feeling that once upon a time we had actual laws and an actual system for handling immigration and foreign worker status, and now that system seems to be spectacularly and anarchically broken. Another is the resulting economic and governmental strains caused by the phenomenon of illegal immigration. Since the system is broken and dysfunctional, states are in a perpetual state of stress and confusion about what exactly their obligations are, and which obligations they should or should not take on. And a third concern is the sense that a corrupt business class is stealing jobs from American citizens by illegal employment of unregulated labor. The latter is not a "cultural" worry - or at least need not be, although that is sometimes mixed in.

This is going to be a huge issue in the general election, and I think some Democrats need to get over the erroneous and grossly stereotypical impression that the whole immigration debate is simply a by-product of wingnut xenophobia and nativism. There are real problems here; people of good will want answers to them; and candidates that cannot speak credibly on the issue will be hurt.

Posted by Dan Kervick | January 7, 2008 1:58 PM

There's no electoral benefit in sending funding its way.

No, there isn't. However, if the government is run by a group of people who thinks "the government should efficiently deliver services, because that's what government is for" such agencies will be run much better than when a group of people in charge feels "government is a wasteful beast that needs to be destroyed. Unless doing so somehow endagers my job."

Maybe I'm making too much of a partisan issue of this... but the government acts much like a slumlord. He MIGHT get around to fixing or improving something if the weight of the legal system is about to come down on him or if making improvements results in a lot more money in rent. Meanwhile, I'd like the government to act more like a homeowner... sure, redoing the kitchen might not produce a huge ROI, but it sure is nice to cook and eat in a nicer kitchen.

Posted by Tyro | January 7, 2008 1:58 PM

This seems like a good time to point out that prior to 1967 the immigration policy of the U.S. towards Latin America was essentially to allow nearly unlimited legal immigration. When immigration quotas based on nationality were first established in the early 1900's, Latin America was exempted - which meant that nearly all Latinos that requested immigration papers were routinely granted them, except during periods of strict immigration restrictionism.

As Matt's post suggests it would, this policy worked pretty well at the time. Since most of the folks sneaking across the border were smugglers, it was easy for the Border Patrol to focus on crime (smuggling) and security. Alot less expensive too.

Then in the 1950's migrant worker programs (still a bad idea) were established to appease unions and farming interests. And in the sixties, Congress finished "fixing what had not been broken". In 1987, Reagan applied a band-aid.

We broke it in the sixties.

Posted by LaurenceB | January 7, 2008 2:02 PM

The problem with any "open borders" for economic migrants is that there are _very_ large numbers of people around the world who would come here if they could. The Pew Hispanic Center (a reputable mainstream outfit) found that _40_percent_ of Mexicans said they would move to the US if they could do so legally. (That's >40M people) http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=52

Toss in the rest of the world and you easily have 100s of millions of people prepared to move here. We obviously can't accommodate that many more people, so some limits on migration have to be in place. Once we set up limits on migration they will need to be enforced and cheaters dealt with. Otherwise you get the current situation with ~12 million people here illegally, which all sides agree is unacceptable.

Posted by DC reader | January 7, 2008 2:06 PM

I don't see it.

I almost hate to use "9/11" in a sentence, but: didn't the 9/11 hijackers come in via the front door? And aren't many or most of the terrorists we need to worry about disaffected engineers, students, etc., and not poor migrant workers slipping across the Mexican border?

Posted by ostap | January 7, 2008 2:13 PM

Yes, LaurenceB is completely correct about this very important aspect of legal history.

To me, it's endlessly amusing that all the most fervent anti-immigrations are endlessly denouncing the 1965 Immigration Act for having "opened the doors" to Third-World immigration. Actually, the 1965 Immigration Act CLOSED the doors to unlimited legal immigration from Latin America. Prior to 1965, we pretty much had an "Open Borders" policy with Mexico.

That's one reason I tend to be enormously skeptical of any of the actual claims made by anti-immigrationists, unless independently verified.

How seriously would you take the historical arguments of people who write hundreds of op-eds denouncing Germany for having been a very ineffective ally of America during the Second World War?...

Posted by RKU | January 7, 2008 2:14 PM

There are real problems here; people of good will want answers to them; and candidates that cannot speak credibly on the issue will be hurt.

Agreed, but there's actual credibility and the 'credibility' of election season, which, in recent cycles, means talking tough and promising moats stocked with sharks with laser beams.

The honest answer is that the US immigration system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, in a transparent way. If done properly, it should piss off certain interests on both sides, and I don't say that out of Broderesque concerns.

Tyro: point taken. What makes immigration different, though, is that it's an area of government that's generally encountered second-hand, if at all, by voters.

In contrast, the Huckabee FartTax proposal, however innumerate, touches voters on a gut level: it's a blessing that the US doesn't hold elections during tax season, because someone campaigning to 'abolish the IRS' would win in a landslide.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 2:20 PM

I almost hate to use "9/11" in a sentence, but: didn't the 9/11 hijackers come in via the front door?

Quite true. You can lay some of the blame for that at the Visa Express program, introduced in March 2001, and at the lax standards impressed upon the US mission in Saudi Arabia.

There's never been much of an impetus to fund the bureaucratic side of immigration appropriately, which led to slapdash and politically-expedient approaches like Visa Express. If the US wants an immigration bureaucracy that works, it will actually have to pay for it.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 2:33 PM

I see the problem of illegal workers crossing our southern border as a wholly enclosed Republican party problem. It is a conflict between the Chamber of Commerce repubs clamoring for cheap labor and the higher profits and nativist's motivated by several types of fear or the generic "cultural anxieties". I would add for GOP activist's electoral anxiety as well. I live on the southern New Mexico border and it grates to hear how hungry Hispanic's take the "easy" route to come to this country. Nothing is easy about crossing the purgatory southwest deserts and too many perish on the journey. Bush's immigration proposal remains the absolute only policy of his I agree with.

Posted by nightjar | January 7, 2008 2:38 PM

Agreed, but there's actual credibility and the 'credibility' of election season, which, in recent cycles, means talking tough and promising moats stocked with sharks with laser beams.

Absolutely. I think the Democrats are wonderfully positioned to run as the party of grownups on the immigration issue. The Republicans have been so busy competing among themselves for right-wing voters over who can put forward the most demagogic idiot plan that they are now in a box from which it is going to be hard to escape. Their candidate can either go to the sensible middle, and alienate the riled-up wingnuts, or stay out on the fringe and alienate everyone else. McCain is the best positioned among them for the general election, because he has been willing to take risks during the primary by not pandering excessively.

Posted by Dan Kervick | January 7, 2008 2:45 PM

Mexico and points south were a great deal less crowded in middle of the 20th century than they are now. In 1950, there were about 27 million Mexicans, in 1980, there were about 69 million, and in 2007 108 million, with another 29 million or so Americans claiming Mexican origin. When circumstances change, laws need to change, too, and policies that worked when Latin America was sparsely populated and travel much more difficult than it is now can't be expected to work the same way.

Posted by Cyrus | January 7, 2008 3:00 PM

I want to second Neil Wilson's comment about legal immigration.

This alleged crisis has three causes:

-- The absurd dysfunction of the legal immigration on both a policy and operational level.

-- The persistent economic-political oligarchy in charge of Mexico that thwarts economic opportunity for millions of Mexicans

-- Hypocrisy on the US side of the border regarding preparation of an adequately sized and trained workforce.

If McCain, now furiously backpedaling from his former progressive stance on immigration, would pivot to a discussion of the broken-down legal immigration system, he still would get caned by the racist element in the Republican party, but he might convince a few thoughtful people.

More importantly, this issue is waiting to ambush the winning Democratic candidate, so I'd advise all of them to start considering immigration from these perspectives.

The purported "outrage" among the American public comes down to their view that illegal immigration is both unsafe and unfair. They see the illegal immigrant as merely a lawbreaker, stealing a spot from a legal applicant who's playing by the rules.

Fairness: Greatly expand the number of permitted legal immigrants, quickly process the applications in the pipeline and then proceed to legalize the working men and women who came here to do jobs we don't have anyone else to do.

Security: Make the legal entry process primarily about security rather than the weird cultural obsessions and bureaucratic inertia that drives it now.

Not to say it's easy, but it's doable, and I hope Obama in particular is readying a rational response like this.

Posted by John S. | January 7, 2008 3:03 PM

"Actually, the 1965 Immigration Act CLOSED the doors to unlimited legal immigration from Latin America. Prior to 1965, we pretty much had an "Open Borders" policy with Mexico."

I have heard of the western hemispheric open door policy. You bring up a good point. But this also makes me wonder why the ww2 through 1960's era bracero temporary worker program was ever needed if the door was already truly open? And if immigration was open from the western hemisphere, why were the workers temporary workers?

Posted by pjgoober | January 7, 2008 3:04 PM

1. The security thing is overemphasized except in the area of actual crime, not unlawful enemy combatant Jihad attacks. In actual crime, illegal immigrants and the children of illegals have become an enormous crime, "free" lawyer, and prison, burden, in certain states.

2. Besides the crime, law, and security costs - the broken system socializes immigrant costs over counties, states, even the whole nation while privatizing the profits gained by cheap immigrant labor in the hands of a few. Hospitals are going bankrupt, welfare and school costs are ruining some communities in the SW so profits go to a wealthy family in NYC, Paris, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh. Besides the direct costs for immigrants, the side costs that have to be included are mass displacement of young blacks from work they used to do by immigrants that "are cheaper, work harder, don't have black underclass patholgies or "attitude" according to employers.

3. The cultural concern is enormous, because in the worst case, we see it driving the routine breakup of nations these days, and a possible future of major war inside the USA to promote or fight Partition. There are too many people coming in now, let alone when McCain-Kennedy reward border jumpers with a full Z visa allowing access to all USA jobs as services as long as the lawbreaker pays a 5,000 fine, pledges to learn English and avoid crimes.
With that deal only for the Border Jumpers, not the ones in line that would gladly pay McCains 5K chickenshit fine to get in - let along the 100s of millions in China, India, Africa, and the Muslim lands that could readily afford a small fine to jump any line - or just as readily borrow the fine amount and pay off lenders with job paychecks. 5K is 1/4th to 1/8th the amount Chinese and Muslims are now paying smugglers or H1-B visa brokers to get in.

***************************
RKU - To me, it's endlessly amusing that all the most fervent anti-immigrations are endlessly denouncing the 1965 Immigration Act for having "opened the doors" to Third-World immigration. Actually, the 1965 Immigration Act CLOSED the doors to unlimited legal immigration from Latin America. Prior to 1965, we pretty much had an "Open Borders" policy with Mexico.

To me it is endlessly amusing to listen to Jewish dissembling about the critical role of Jews like Emanuel Cellar, Abraham Ribicoff, Jacob Javits, and wealthy Jewish landlords that pushed mass immigration back in 1965 with help from people like Ted Kennedy - because mass immigration of "wretched refuse" was not only what Emma Lazarus sought, it was also a financial windfall for Jewish middlemen serving the 3rd worlders coming in.

Posted by Chris Ford | January 7, 2008 3:16 PM

DC reader mostly said what I was going to say. I'll throw in that there are several billion people around the world poorer than Mexicans.

Perhaps MattY could consider being less of a hack and try to be a pundit for once and factor that into his analysis.

I'll also point out that MattY seems to assume that his cocooned view of this issue - and the view presented by the Dem/GOP/MSM establishment - will remain the narrative. Let me suggest to the DNC et al that that could change rapidly should people start questioning the hacks.

Posted by TLB | January 7, 2008 3:34 PM

Again with the Jews?

Why are intelligent left-leaning sites like this one becoming such a haven for "polite" anti-Semitism?

It is flat-out absurd and completely false that the corporations and private businesses benefiting from cheap immigrant labor are all, or even primarily, Jewish-owned.

The political personages you name were advocating on behalf of their constituents, in a city that had defined the "melting pot." They could trace their own lineage through struggling immigrant forebears. They saw both good politics and justice in advocating for the immigrants from this hemisphere.

News flash: The Protocol of the Elders of Zion was a hoax!

Posted by John S. | January 7, 2008 3:35 PM

Of the anxieties that illegal immigration engenders, cultural anxieties probably contributes maybe 20%, the rest is due to the willful lawlessness, i.e. it is unfair to those who do the right thing. From the off-the-books jobs, lack of taxation, use of public services not paid for, etc. people are rightfully upset. The Talmud asks for people not to put stumbling blocks before the blind; making it harder for people to do the right thing, i.e. follow the law, is a natural consequence of this illegal immigration debate.

This is not primarily a racist or xenophobic issue, rather it is a rule of law issue with many. The immigration laws and bureaucracy need fixing to make it fairer and less burdensome. It also has ramifications for those wanting a national bureaucracy for health care -- imagine describing why government will do a better job than private insurance -- this is prima facie evidence of the government's inefficiency.

Posted by mike c | January 7, 2008 3:54 PM

Jesus Christ, we ALREADY have one of the most liberal immigration policies in the industrialized world -- or the whole world, for that matter. Only Canada is more liberal than we in taking in so many people. And just how many people do we want in this country, anyway? 400 million, 500 million, a billion? Am I the only ZPG liberal left?

Posted by Traven | January 7, 2008 4:19 PM

Legal immigration sure has proven a winning formula for preventing terrorist bombings in London and car-burnings in France!

What do you think the under-over is on the number of seconds Matt spends cogitating about his immigration postings? Three?

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 4:58 PM

Nobody can be taken seriously on the immigration question if they can't answer this question to within a margin of error of one billion people:

How many people live in countries around the world with a lower average per capita income (purchasing power parity) than Mexico?

Any guesses?

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 5:16 PM

The answer to this central question about immigration is here:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/08/five-billion-updated.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 5:23 PM

Legal immigration sure has proven a winning formula for preventing terrorist bombings in London and car-burnings in France!

Straw men sure have proven a winning formula for helping Sailer Boy dance up the yellow brick road with Toto!

I do love the doublethink, though, that simultaneously allows him to believe that 'The Brown Is Sapping Our Precious Bodily Fluids And Killing Us!1!' and 'OMFG We Rule, The Entire World Wants To Live Next Door To Me, Except They're Brown!1!'

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 5:54 PM

I was wondering when Steve Sailer might show up.

I think the solution to this problem is pretty straightforward:

1) a legimate and ongoing effort to conduct national policy in a manner economically beneficial to South American and Mexico especially.

2) a substantial increase in legal migration from Mexico and points south in contrast to restrictions on legal immigration from elsewhere.

This combines a realization that a little improvement in the situation in Mexico will go pretty far in addressing our immigration problems while also recognizing the illegal immigration from overseas will never be anywhere close to the problem that it is from our southern border.

Posted by mpowell | January 7, 2008 6:13 PM

I guess nobody can answer the fundamental question ...

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 6:20 PM

"I guess nobody can answer the fundamental question "

I'm guessing here, but are you saying we need to worry about being overrun by the world's poor? If so, how are they going to get here, swim?

Posted by nightjar | January 7, 2008 6:51 PM

A big AMEN to what mpowell said! That answers Sailer's (rather silly) question quite ably.

Posted by LaurenceB | January 7, 2008 6:59 PM

mpowell: what you fail to factor in to your one-sentence plans is the actions of foreign governments. The MexicanGovernment has even explicitly stated that they're going to be using U.S. nonprofits to push their agenda inside the U.S., and they already have direct or indirect links to several well-known groups like the ACLU, SPLC, and AFSC. (Those in turn have links to the Democratic Party, and even some elected Democratic politicians have direct links to the MexicanGovernment).

So, increasing legal immigration from that country would give them even more power inside the U.S. which they'd use to push for even more immigration from that country.

At some point they might give up, and at that time our friends to the south would probably try to profit by becoming an jumping off point for those who don't want to "swim."

What we actually need to do is to get tough with Mexico and force them to stop encouraging IllegalImmigration. That will force them to deal with their own problems instead of looking to us as a SafetyValve.

Can anyone guess some of the reasons why we haven't done that? Perhaps following the money might be helpful.

Posted by TLB | January 7, 2008 7:49 PM

There are currently 109 million people in Mexico, and about 28-30 million people of Mexican descent in the United States. Two Pew Hispanic Center polls in 2006 found that over 40% off the remaining 109 million in Mexico would move to the U.S. if it were legal. So, that's another 44 million people.

The current GDP per capita gap between the US and Mexico is about 4 to 1, and it's currently wider than it was 25-30 years ago. So, even very strong economic growth in Mexico relative to the US would not close the relative gap enough to shut off the desire of tens of millions of Mexicans to move to American if it were legal.

Similarly, about 35% of Puerto Rico moved to the US after WWII, until the US started providing massive tax and welfare subsidies.

Now, Mexico is hardly the world's poorest country. In fact, X billion people live in countries with lower per capita incomes, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Can anybody guess how many billion X is? You then multiply X billion by your guesstimate of how many people would move to the U.S. if it were legal -- say, 10%.

If you don't know that number X, you really have no business punditating on how we could solve the illegal immigration problem just by legalizing it.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 8:32 PM

If you want to improve the economy of Mexico, you need to get rid of the privatized monopolies, such as the telecom monopoly that has made Mexico's Carlos Slim the world's richest man. By one estimate, anti-trust action in Mexico to break up the many monopolies would raised economic growth 1 percentage point per year. That's not much over the next couple of decades, but over a century it compounds to a huge difference.

However, there is virtually zero interest in America in fostering reform in Mexico. The Republicans like the vast profits made by the businessmen who are friends of the government. Indeed, the Bush dynasty has had business ties with Mexican politician-capitalists going back almost 50 years to George H.W. Bush's deal to use Diaz Serrano as his cutout to let him drill for oil in Mexican offshore waters. (Diaz Serrano later became head of the governmental Pemex oil monopoly and then went to prison because he was so extraordinarily corrupt).

Neither party's establishment wants to discuss corruption in Mexico because it's politically incorrect -- it's insensitive to Mexican culture. In fact, it's racist!

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 8:40 PM

Neither party's establishment wants to discuss corruption in Mexico because it's politically incorrect -- it's insensitive to Mexican culture. In fact, it's racist!

This is as ridiculous as your claim that Iowans voted for Obama because they wanted to send a message to African-Americans to be more like him. I know of nobody who thinks that talking about corruption in Mexico is racist. However, stimulating economic development in Mexico is much more complex than getting rid of monopolies.

Posted by Peter H | January 7, 2008 8:57 PM

Then where are the candidates talking about inducing economic and social reform in Mexico? Mexico is a vast problem for America, but it's dysfunctions and possible ways to ameliorate them are essentially not part of America public discourse.

For example, how much interest has there been in the close ties between the Bush family and the murderous Salinas family that ran Mexico during the elder Bush's Presidency? Or between some of the younger Bush's wealthiest Mexican-American supporters in Texas and the narco cartels across the border? A little Mexican-American intellectual magazine called El Andar covered these fascinating stories at the beginning of the decade, but nobody was interested. (Except me: I wrote about El Andar's investigative reporting here:

http://www.isteve.com/2001_El_Andar_Bush.htm )

El Andar is now more or less out of business.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 9:05 PM

For example, what % of Matt's thousands of foreign affairs posts are devoted to Mexico? Mexico is only probably the most important foreign country in the world to us, by objective standards. I doubt if 1% of his foreign policy posts are about Mexico. This isn't a particular criticism of Matt -- he's just being representative of elite public discourse in the DC - NY corridor.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 9:10 PM

It's simply impossible to deal with illegal immigration into this country by reforming legal immigration, as much as the latter is needed. Illegal immigrants fill a demand for workers with limited to no recourse to the law when subjected to abusive working conditions. That's simply not a demand legal immigrants fill, because THEY aren't afraid to contact the police.

And claims that we can't deal with illegal immigration because of the length of our border are innumerate. We're a large, wealthy country. Every mile of border is backed by hundreds of square miles of landmass, and billions in GDP. We could build TWO Israeli style high tech border fences, with a no man's zone full of land mines between, for a fraction of one year's defense budget. Making our border impenetrable to anything short of a major military invasion is literally chump change for a nation our size. The border patrol can't stop illegal immigration? That's because the border patrol isn't intended to stop illegal immigration. It's a farce with a pittance for a budget, and deliberately hobbled to make sure they fail. The border patrol is a public relations program.

An immigration policy which aimed to benefit the nation at large would severely crack down on illegal immigration, seriously limit immigration by those with little in the way of education, and throw the doors open to English literate college graduates. A sensible immigration policy would turn the brain drain into a high power brain suction. That would supercharge our economy, every economist knows it.

But we don't do that because illegal unskilled immigrants compete with the poor, and college educated literate immigrants compete with the children of the ruling class. And the people running our country are loyal to their own, and to hell with the masses. If you want your children to grow up masters, you import peons, not engineers and entrepreneurs.

And this, both parties are agreed on.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | January 7, 2008 9:21 PM

The truth is that America's public policy elite finds Mexico and Mexicans boring and depressing and they just don't want to think about them. It's more enjoyable simply to snark at how "angry" are the small number of Americans who actually do study Mexico and Mexicans empirically.

Let's take an obvious example of how nobody in America is interested in Mexico and Mexicans: compare the obsession with Obama's "story of race and inheritance" to Bill Richardson's story, which on objective grounds, would seem more important. Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention didn't include an attack on the Iraq War, as Matt might hope. Instead, it started off immediately with a detailed description of Obama's family background. Yet, while Obama is half-related (indirectly via Kenya) to America's second-biggest (but most famous minority), Richardson is three-fourths-related to America's biggest (but most boring) minority.

And nobody cares.

How many times have we read that Obama's spending age 6-10 in Jakarta will give him some kind of important insight into US-Indonesian relations? Yet Richardson grew up in Mexico City's elite circles (his dad was the head of the Citibank branch there) before going off to prep school in New England (and I presume he went back home for vacations). Mexico is much more important to us than Indonesia, and Richardson is much more plugged into what's happening in Mexico than Obama is in Indonesia.

And nobody cares.

Granted, Obama is a more interesting personality than Richardson, but the bottom line is that white Americans are _much_ more interested, whether pro or con, in blacks than in Mexicans. But Mexicans will, by sheer weight of numbers, have a much bigger impact on the long-term future of America than will blacks.

And nobody cares.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 9:25 PM

pjgoober:

I have heard of the western hemispheric open door policy. You bring up a good point. But this also makes me wonder why the ww2 through 1960's era bracero temporary worker program was ever needed if the door was already truly open?

Well, I was also a little curious and looked into these things a while back...

Apparently, prior to the 1965 Act, a Mexican who wanted to legally immigrate to America had to pay an $18 fee and also wait a day or two for official approval. Since most Mexicans were very poor and also pretty impatient, they often ignored these requirements, and just walked (or swam) across the border. Usually, nobody much cared, but every now and then, the government would round up and deport large numbers of these "illegals" as during Eisenhower's Operation Wetback.

American businesses were normally barred from going into Mexico and recruiting workers, so they lobbied for the Bracero program instead. And at various times, business interests persuaded Congress to temporarily waive the $18 immigration fee on the grounds that it was an overly "onerous" deterrent to necessary Mexican immigration.

Incidentally, Latin American immigration was such a tiny political issue back in 1965 that it was actually the *pro-immigration* side that added the first-ever restrictions on Western Hemisphere immigration into the bill, as a very minor sop to the anti-immigration side. But nobody on either side really noticed or cared much.

So, without the political efforts of Teddy Kennedy and his friends, perhaps there'd be closer to 100M Latin Americans living in the U.S. today, instead of just 50M or so. Maybe Tom Tancredo should claim Kennedy as his personal role-model.

Political history really does have lots of amusing twists and turns.

Posted by RKU | January 7, 2008 9:25 PM

Perhaps following the money might be helpful.

Indeed. Who's paying your Cheetoh bill, Kelly? The Foundation To Defend Pasty Bedwetters From The Brown Insurgency?

We could build TWO Israeli style high tech border fences, with a no man's zone full of land mines between, for a fraction of one year's defense budget.

You do realise, Brett, that Israel is not much larger than the landmined compound you call home? In other news, Google Earth is a free download.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 9:36 PM

Mexico was notoriously underpopulated, especially after the 1-2 million deaths during the Revolution of 1910-1920. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th Century that its population really took off, so it's hardly surprising that it wasn't on the political radar screen in 1965. Hell, it's barely flickering on the DC-NY radar screen in 2008. Everybody who is anybody in DC-NY wishes to hell all those yahoo voters would just shut up about Mexico and let us get back to talking about the really important places for America, like the West Bank and Waziristan.

The lesson is that you can never tell where the next huge influx of illegal immigrant is coming from. Brazil, with 167 million, is turning into a big source of illegal immigrants. Someday, I wouldn't be surprised to see a flood from, say, Indonesia (current population: 242 million).

So, can anybody guess within a billion how many people live in countries poorer on average than Mexico?

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 9:36 PM

So, can anybody guess within a billion how many people live in countries poorer on average than Mexico?

Simple solution, Popeye: tell them you'll be living next-door.

'Flood', indeed.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 9:39 PM

"You do realise, Brett, that Israel is not much larger than the landmined compound you call home? In other news, Google Earth is a free download."

Snark covering ignorance is the norm for discussions of immigration here.

Israel's West Bank border is about 1/10th of America's Mexican border. Israel's economy is about 1/100th of America's economy.

India is now finishing a big fence along it's border with Bangladesh to keep out Bangladeshi illegals. Their border is longer than America's 1,952 mile border with Israel.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 7, 2008 9:40 PM

"You do realise, Brett, that Israel is not much larger than the landmined compound you call home? In other news, Google Earth is a free download."

Like I said, innumeracy.

Israel: 20,770 sq km, 1,017 km of border,
GDP $170.3 billion.
That works out to 20.4 sq km/km of border,
$167.5 million in GDP/km of border

US:9,826,630 sq km, 12,034 km of border
GDP $13.06 trillion
That works out to 816.6 sq km/km of border,
$1,085.3 million in GDP/km of border

It's enormously EASIER for us to fence our border than it is for Israel, because we're larger. Border length is proportional to size, area and, roughly, GDP, proportional to it's square.

Next time you get involved with numbers, you might want to look up an elementary school student, to do the math for you. I think you're out of practice...

Posted by Brett Bellmore | January 7, 2008 10:04 PM

There is a great idea, spending a few billion to build a big fucking wall. Then we can be the country of redneck assholes standing on the wall and yell, "hey darkies, you're not getting past this here wall!" We can't even get our bridges up to date, our nations engineers give our infrastructure a D, yet somehow the priority is showing the world our heads are even deeper in the sand while the world globalizes.

Several of the 9/11 hijackers raised all kinds of red flags (for instance, there were warnings not to put their bags on airplanes until they actually boarded the plane due to the lack of foresight in seeing a suicide attack was possible). What was missing was a system that 1) could actually be enforced, 2) was actually funded and 3) had the left hand talking to the right hand. The NYC FBI field office actually had an agent who came close to figuring the whole thing out but since no one wants to talk to the FBI because of turf wars, all of the known data wasn't collected and put together.

Posted by Reality Man | January 7, 2008 10:40 PM

Just to get Sailer to pipe down...

I would estimate that three quarters of the world's population lives in countries poorer than Mexico. That would be 4.5 Billion people.

But, as usual, Sailer's factoid is far less interesting than he thinks it is. First, many of our current immigrants, certainly a majority of the Latino population in the DC area, are actually coming from Central America. Second, anyone coming from further away than Panama is going to have a hard time getting here by land, so the relative level of poverty in Zambia is generally irrelevant to our concerns about border control.

Regardless, the fundamental forces at work are supply and demand, and it would be nice if anti-immigration conservatives would actually contemplate the market that immigrants are serving. You wanted growth-oriented economic policies, low inflation, free trade, weaker unions, lower wages, and deregulation, and by God you got them. Congratulations! None of this would have been possible without a supply of cheap migrant labor. Are you prepared to build a legal immigration system that meets the needs of the current economy? Are you prepared to weather the economic turmoil that would occur if we actually succeeded at drastically reducing immigration?

Or is this really all just poorly thought-out knee-jerk white male identity politics?

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | January 7, 2008 10:56 PM

The number of people living in countries poorer than Mexico is 5,043,000,000. That's five _billion_ and change.

As LFP points out, lots of illegal immigrants are now from Central America. They mostly come via Mexico, which suggests why it's so crucial to get to work closing the Mexican border now. It's not just the 45 million Mexicans whom the Pew Hispanic Center says would come if immigration is legal, and the 20 million who plan to come anyway. It's the rest of the world. Many Brazilian immigrants, for example, come across the Mexican border. Until immigration skeptics raised a stink a couple of years ago, these "Other-than-Mexicans" were simply released by the Border Patrol and told to report for a hearing in a few weeks.

What really makes illegal immigration feasible is having a network of relatives in place in America. So, it's crucial to pinch down the pathways before whole new huge populations, such as Indonesians, get started moving here.

As for the cheap-labor addicted economy we have now, of course I'm willing to weather the change to a healthier, self-sustaining higher wage economy.

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 8, 2008 12:41 AM

It's enormously EASIER for us to fence our border than it is for Israel, because we're larger.

Well, you could build a pretty decent barrier with that pile of bullshit you served up, Brett. Like I said, Google Earth, free download. You can also personally take it the fuck up with the Native Americans whose territory crosses the international border, though I'm sure you'd be quite happy to show them who's boss with your personal armory. After all, it's not like they're not used to pale motherfuckers with ballistic testosterone supplements drawing lines, building walls, and herding them like cattle.

Ah, our comedy duo: One's A Media-Whoring Racist, The Other Hoards Guns!

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 8, 2008 2:05 AM

From Kevin Drum's blog quoting Joe Klein:

"Also, from the same post, Klein watched the Republican debate with one of Frank Luntz's dial groups and reports that when the subject came to illegal immigration, "their dials plummeted when McCain said we had to be 'humane.'" Makes you proud."

It also makes you wonder how much of this pounding on the table about immigration is really about legality and national security instead of the fact that Mexicans speak Spanish and there are a lot of them. If it was just about legality, we wouldn't get bullshit issues like Spanish being the national language coming up.

Posted by Reality Man | January 8, 2008 3:14 AM

Pseud, you can make plenty of arguments against building a border fence, but "the country is too big", or "we can't afford it" are 'arguments' that should provoke nothing more than amused laughter followed by ignoring anything the ignoramus who advanced them has to say. The country being big makes it easier, and we can afford it with the federal budget's rounding errors.

Building an effective border fence would indeed require property condemnation on a massive scale, (Though at least it wouldn't involve Kelo style violations.) and that's an objection anybody who takes property rights seriously must care a great deal about. Internal enforcement measures are liable to be more cost effective, IMO. But stick to arguments which aren't nonsensical on their face, ok?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | January 8, 2008 7:21 AM

And claims that we can't deal with illegal immigration because of the length of our border are innumerate. We're a large, wealthy country. Every mile of border is backed by hundreds of square miles of landmass, and billions in GDP. We could build TWO Israeli style high tech border fences, with a no man's zone full of land mines between, for a fraction of one year's defense budget.

Israel is not exactly a model for humane border policies. Anyway, there are differences between Israel's situation & ours. Completely absent from the national discussion about immigration is the attempt at economic integration between Mexico & the United States. You can't have free movement of trade, capital, investment, & goods and somehow avoid movement of people. As Doug Massey says:

Despite the fact that politicians sold NAFTA as a way for Mexico “to export goods and not people,” everything that occurs in the course of integrating the North American market makes the cross-border movement of people— including workers— more rather than less likely in the short and medium run. The expanding binational network of transportation and communication that evolves to facilitate trade also makes the movement of people easier and cheaper. The interpersonal connections formed between Mexicans and Americans in the course of daily business transactions create a social infrastructure of friendship and kinship that encourage migration and facilitate further movement.

If you support NAFTA, then more migration from Mexico is the result.

Posted by Peter H | January 8, 2008 7:23 AM

Pseud, you can make plenty of arguments against building a border fence, but "the country is too big", or "we can't afford it" are 'arguments' that should provoke nothing more than amused laughter followed by ignoring anything the ignoramus who advanced them has to say. The country being big makes it easier, and we can afford it with the federal budget's rounding errors.

He's making an unprincipled argument, Brett. Don't do him the favor of taking him seriously.

If you support NAFTA, then more migration from Mexico is the result.

Which is one of the reasons this right-winger doesn't support NAFTA.

Posted by Cyrus | January 8, 2008 10:03 AM

"As for the cheap-labor addicted economy we have now, of course I'm willing to weather the change to a healthier, self-sustaining higher wage economy."

I'm on the Left, so this sounds great to me in theory. But it also sounds suspiciously like the goals of our economic policy in the 1970s. What would this economy actually look like? How would you prevent stagflation when you're simultaneously making businesses less profitable and fostering rapidly rising wages in certain sectors of the economy-- particularly agriculture, construction, and tourism? The natural result would be desperate efforts to cut other costs-- leading to even more offshoring of food production, light industry... everything that isn't nailed down.

If they can't find cheap labor here, they'll find it somewhere. The entire global market economy has been addicted to cheap labor for as long as capitalism has existed.

It just seems to me that the only course that makes sense is to regulate and slow the pace of immigration, by opening safe avenues for entry that actually document who is coming, allowing them to organize, and giving them the chance to become citizens if they play by the rules, or send money back to their families and eventually return home if they don't. America's greatest asset is the fact that people want to live and work here. Any attempts to build a self-sustaining Fortress America are going to leave us rusting in the wake of the cutthroat brand of authoritarian capitalism that's rising in Asia.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | January 8, 2008 12:29 PM

Cyrus,

I'm glad that recognize the link between NAFTA & Immigration. That can't be said for most conservatives, given that they (1) support NAFTA and (2) oppose immigration.

Posted by Peter H | January 8, 2008 1:21 PM

I'm pretty sure that most (real) conservatives don't support NAFTA, nor do most "oppose immigration". Let me suggest thinking about the words you use. Also, quoting a literally open borders, anti-American loon like DouglasMassey shows where you're coming from.

As for Reality Man, nothing Kevin Drum writes can be trusted due to his blog deleting comments they find (literally) "annoying". Thus, they've removed any fact-checking by their readers, and you have to fact-check every single thing he says. And, JoeKlein not only explicitly supports IllegalImmigration, he has a habit of lying. Even if he's telling the truth about the dials - a trick he's used at least twice - there are alternative explanations, like the viewers getting wise to politicians' tricks.

As for LaFollette Progressive, "market" implies some form of rules that everyone has to abide by. What we have instead is a crooked system that isn't a true market at all.

Posted by TLB | January 8, 2008 1:34 PM

"What we have instead is a crooked system that isn't a true market at all."

Hell, the Soviet Union was a crooked system that wasn't true communism at all. What's your point? Markets exists whether we want them to or not. Black markets follow their own rules and we can't wave our hands and make them go away.

Where there is a demand and a supply, they will find each other one way or another. It's a better idea to create institutions that channel the supply to the demand in ways that serve the public interest instead of building walls and letting organized crime build a black market that serves their needs.

Create a legal immigration system that fits the market, and most people will wait in line to use it instead of risking their lives in the desert and living in fear. Then we can exert at least some measure of control over who is entering the country, and from where. Sure, the system won't be perfect, but what is? Building a wall and watching people come by sea? Raiding meat-packing plants and watching them move overseas?

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | January 8, 2008 2:05 PM

ShorterLFP: If we just made it legal, the HumanPartsBlackMarket wouldn't be an issue.

Just because there's a black market in cheap labor doesn't mean that we should create a legal market in it. Perhaps not having access to so much cheap labor would be better not only for our economy but for the country as a whole.

Posted by TLB | January 8, 2008 3:15 PM

Gosh, TLB, you mean we could both have our cake and eat it, too? Wow!

I'm talking about institutional changes that could mitigate the worst aspects of the status quo, whereas you're claiming we can make the problem go away based on no evidence whatsoever. It's clear that you're the one with a future in talk radio.

Yes, perhaps cutting off access to immigrant labor would be better not only for our economy but for the country as a whole. Perhaps children will say no to drugs, Arab Muslims will embrace liberal democracy, the Patriots will lose to the Jags, and Little Susie will get a pony for Christmas, since she's been a very, very good girl this year. Perhaps we really can all just get along.

In the meantime, though, since there's no reason to believe that any of these things will happen, I suggest we fix the damn legal immigration system so that there we can improve control over our borders and regulate the labor market more effectively in the public interest.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | January 8, 2008 4:39 PM