Fred Thompson has reacted to the latest bone-headedness in the immigration area.

But, back to reality.

Restrictions on immigration are not, as some posit, merely self-interested attempts to escape our moral obligations to others. To be concerned about workers who might be displaced by cheaper immigrant labor and to sympathize with those who find their neighborhoods transformed beyond recognition is not rank self-interest. We have obligations to children whose education suffers while teachers struggle with other students whose command of English is not up to par, and to doctors and nurses whose ability to serve their community is stretched by an influx of poor and uninsured migrants.

Immigration is the tension between a universal duty and a particular duty. We are called to recognize the image of God in every person, and we owe duties to each person. But we also stand in particular relationships with certain persons to whom we bear special responsibilites: sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. These special relationships channel our potentially endless obligations to persons under God, and make them practicable for us. The world contains millions of needy people. Who do we help? We start with those with whom we stand in special relationship.

Immigration regulations are a way of embodying in policy a preferential love for our fellow citizens and the way of life we share. Such a preference can be overridden, but is not suspect. The point of a comprehensive reform of immigration is to redefine who we are as a nation, not merely to tinker at the edges of gaps in current laws.

So what is my reform agenda? Having sent letters to all my representatives several times over the months, a few political hacks in their office are too familiar with them. But here goes anyway.

First, develop a program to make those who have been here long enough to put down roots into citizens. You can add conditions, like knowing English and paying back taxes or a fine, but they are already Americans in significant degree.

Second, we need to have effective control of our borders. This probably means radar, video, and electronic surveillance over much of it, rather than a wall, but something of the sort is needed.

Third, we need to address the economic needs for labor that our economy generates in a productive way, not simply choking off industry in a time of high employment (like now), but trying more closely to match legal immigration with workforce demands after employing our citizens.

Notice that NONE of this addresses post 9/11 security needs. They are not immigration questions, and are, properly, unrelated to them.

Update Michael Dowling, a friend, writes, "This looks suspiciously like you've read my notes on Peter Meilaender. Either that or you're channeling him." And, as I look back on Michael's correspondence, he's right. Which means he's more influential than I thought. Or I'm more malleable.

That's the title of Steven Mallaby's latest.

Favorite paragraphs:

People accuse immigrants of gang violence, drunken driving and a general contempt for the law. But in 2000 the incarceration rate for immigrants was just one-fifth the rate for the population as a whole, according to Kristin Butcher of the Federal Reserve and Anne Morrison Piehl of Rutgers University.

People say immigrants are feckless and lazy. But in California in 2004, 94 percent of undocumented men ages 18 to 64 were in the workforce, compared with 82 percent of native-born men. Far from being part of a shiftless underclass, the act of coming to the United States makes immigrants among the most upwardly mobile groups in the nation, only a bit behind hedge-fund managers.

People say, contrariwise, that immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans. But economists have patiently explained for years that there is no finite "lump of labor" in an economy. The presence of migrants causes new jobs to be created: Factories that might have gone abroad spring up in Arizona or Texas. Hasn't anyone noticed that California, where fully one-third of the adult population is foreign born, has an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent?

Read the whole thing. Again. Check out the links I didn't copy. Be better informed.

As I have written previously, the United States DOES NOT HAVE an immigration problem: we need all of them that we have, legal and illegal. It DOES HAVE a Citizenship problem: how do we regularize those who came here illegally and have contributed to American society since?

The Democratic Congress would do well to address this. And there are indications, from the usual unreliable sources, that they will.

Evidently, the ACLU is acting up again, their latest attempt being to pretend to be unable to read. A small town mayor is deciding to enforce statutes against hiring illegal aliens and against renting to them, and they are attacking -- not those who passed them, but those who enforce them.

This is an interesting strategy. Kill the enforcers, and the statutes, however democratically passed, are useless on the books.

And I'm not pleased by that thought. It is not the purpose of the government to prevent its citizens from committing errors. It is the purpose of the government to be corrected by its citizens when it commits errors.

Because, as brilliantly pointed out here, their only real agenda is anti-people.

In other words, there is something telling about the fact that so far as their critics are concerned, pretty much anything the Mexicans and Central Americans do appears to be a problem. If they work, that's bad because they are taking our jobs. If they don't, that's also bad because they are taking our welfare. Men come to America and live in groups instead of in families: This is bad because men in groups can be frightening and unruly. Men come to America and live in families instead of in groups: This is bad too because it means more Mexicans here. Women come to live with the men: This is worst of all because they are doing it to have what the critics call “anchor babies.” Similarly, the workers come here when they're young and healthy and that's bad because it makes them better at physical labor; but they are apparently also full of diseases that make them a menace to a First World community. And so on — and on and on. One wonders when an environmental impact study of the very air they exhale near the Rio Grande will be waved by Lou Dobbs to show just how far the law-breaking civilization-busters have gone now. Tancredo even manages outrage over the fact that undocumented aliens can apparently use the stacks of the Denver public library by presenting only a driver's license. Mexican farm hands, reading in a library? Dios mio! Will these people never learn to behave like Americans?

In sum, the insistence by impassioned theorists that illegal immigration south of the border is the pre-eminent problem of our time makes perfect sense — or would, had those been Salvadoreans piloting airplanes on 9/11, Guatemalans bankrolling their efforts, Hondurans plotting attacks on the subways and government buildings of Europe, and Mexicans across the global labor diaspora plotting how to bring down the American government, presumably by poisoning our gardens and toilets. If you do not think that is the way it went down, then Occam's razor dictates this: The sheer volume of emotion on the subject of illegal aliens makes most sense as a manifestation of denial about who would really like to see the end of the American republic — as it turns out, one form of many now circulating.

Original article here

Update:Two-fisted brawling on this subject here. You oughta see the other guy. Told you in my links that Free Republic was a "rough and tumble" kind of place. Removed prior slur in headline. Finally gave up, posted goodbye. Compulsively checked back a few hours later only to find that some people can't click on links, but want to disagree anyway. I think I'll leave this alone for a while.

I'm not kidding.

Look at those statistics. Anyone who wants a job can get one, and many jobs are going begging. These are not all "lawn care" jobs either.

This is appalling.

Let's get on the stick here and get a workable immigration program to get some people here (I know there is another way to get job applicants which is quite enjoyable, but there's a time lag before they become available, and we need them now.)

Smile, folks. Write your Congressman.

This is the rallying cry of those opposed to immigration.

The funny part is, his numbers don't say what he wants them to say, so he has to pick very carefully to make the point. The US has a current labor shortage with gigantic immigration: we're growing very quickly. He picks an ideal that takes in the Great Depression as an economic golden age. Someone should really give him a history book. It should include the know nothings and other Nativist problems. Finally, a short course in economics would be helpful, along with a brief perspective on immigration.

Not that I expect him to do that. I believe "know nothing" was an appropriate name for anti-immigration sentiment then and now.

The Pew Charitable Trusts (home of the infamous astroturf campaign for Campaign Finance Reform and therefore a tainted source of information) has just published a study purporting to show that illegal immigration (here, "foreign born") has no effect on native workers.

It is a good example of bad statistics.


Here's why:

1. The study uses the 50 states as its baseline comparisons of "increase of foreign born" and "above-average employment rate" -- despite the fact that Rhode Island and California hardly belong in the same universe with regard to numbers of either, their percentages are averaged and correlated in this study. You can only study data points if they belong to the same set. Using percentages distorts the effect of the differences inherent in the data.

2. Percentages themselves are usually described as "ordinal numbers dressed up:" -- the second place finisher does not do "50% worse" than the first place finisher, despite that well known relation between one and two. Running averages and plotting them, as done in this study, is a disservice to learning things. Absolute numbers are available, and would make a better statistic. With percentages, you should present data as to the confidence level, as well as weighting by the base, after adjusting the base to comparable groups. The study of employment outcomes is not adjusted for population ratios of families with young children or retired people: and these two numbers have an affect on the percentage employed in each state.

For an example of a better study carefully done, check out this. Result? For the part of the worker population which has not graduated from High School, immigration causes problems. For everyone else, immigration makes us better off. What does that imply from a policy point of view? Well, the vast majority of US workers have graduated from High School, and therefore, as a society, immigration is a net benefit to us. We might benefit from more emphasis on High School Equivalency Exams for the part of our population hurt by immigration.

To do the jobs we are creating.

The low layoffs suggest the job market may still be "pretty tight," says economist Robert Brusca of FAO-Economics in New York. "In fact, we have a shortage of low-paid workers but a surplus of high-paid jobs at places like GM, Ford, and Delphi." In other words, as established by this paper, among others, immigration hurts wages of only a very small group at the bottom of the ladder. That group is so small that they vanish in most statistics of immigration, but effort can tease them out.

We are creating a lot of jobs, including "good jobs". We need people to fill them. We don't have enough already citizens. We need more.

What we have is NOT an immigration crisis: we have an immigration necessity. We do have a citizenship crisis: we need to get them made citizens faster.

The good news: the United States created this crisis by making it too hard for people to become citizens quickly. And all we need is a law that allows people to become citizens quickly so we can get them working, paying taxes, and living here legally. That's good news. It means that it's our problem, and we can solve it with the stroke of a pen.

Defending a stupid law by saying that people should obey even stupid laws is not worth answering. Check out other stories on this. Finally, note that proper perspective on immigration means that you don't take the time to defend stupid laws.

Thomas Sowell shouldn't be thought of as ignorant of economics. Yet here it sure looks like it. Instead of an economic analysis of immigration (which indicates its mainly positive effect on the American economy), we have a rehash of all the old canards, Finally, it looks like he's aligned himself with people who are demagoging the issue without seriously proposing to understand it, and he's not doing even a decent job of being a demagogue. Orson Scott Card does better, but he's a professional author, and he's on the right side of the issue: unlike Dr. Sowell.

I'll settle for an answer to this question: "Dr. Sowell, unemployment is very low right now. What will the probable effects be of the removal of 11.5 million workers from the country on the GNP?" As a starting point, I'd suggest taking Alan Greenspan's statements to the Senate in 2003 and 2004 on immigration. You may reply when ready.

UPDATE: Saying that "studies don't produce knowledge" is a cheap shot when you don't point to problems in the study. Pew Hispanic center's study on the benefits of immigration was hardly the only one out there that showed positive effects of immmigration on the national economy. And you're dodging the question I asked. Try again. (It's in paragraph two.)

The invaluable Orson Scott Card makes a key point:

What Is This "Crime," Really?

A fifteen-year-old boy -- let's call him David -- has been yearning for his driver's license for a long time.

But today all thoughts of waiting for his license are out the window, because his little sister cut herself and he can't stop the bleeding. His family's phone service was cut off long ago. His parents aren't home. They live far from any neighbors. But they do have one uninsured car that David's been tinkering with. It runs.

So David puts his sister in the car and, holding a towel on the wound to apply pressure, he drives the car one-handed out onto the road and goes as fast as the car can go, heading for the nearest medical emergency center.

The trouble is, a state trooper sees him driving too fast and pulls him over. David tries to explain that he's only driving illegally in order to save his sister's life, but the trooper doesn't listen.

He drags David out of the car and handcuffs him and yells at him that he has no business driving a car without a license, besides which he was speeding and the car is not insured. "You will never get a license, we will confiscate this illegal car. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and you have forfeited that privilege by taking it prematurely."

David can't think about any of this. So he screams, "My sister is bleeding to death! Let me get her to the hospital!"

But it's as if the trooper is deaf to anything David has to say. "Don't scream it me, you miserable pipsqueak! Until you have a license you don't even have a right to be heard on these highways!"

Is your blood boiling?

Do you want to yell at that state trooper?

Do you recognize that Mr. Card has just told you what many Americans discussing illegal immigration look like in reality?

Read the whole thing. Then re-read it.

Finally, some of the leaders of the conservative movement have spoken out on immigration reform and emphasized the key facts:


The 1986 legislation combined amnesty for three million illegal immigrants with a promise of tougher enforcement, particularly in the workplace. But the law did not recognize the need for future immigration to meet the demands of a growing economy, and the new enforcement never materialized. The result? Twenty years later, illegal immigration is unabated. Why? Because while immigrants continue to be drawn to the jobs created by our economy, they have no legal way to enter the country.

What this history teaches is that the only way to control immigration is with a combination package--securing the border, enforcing the law in the workplace and creating legal channels for workers to enter the country.

What conservatives have to recognize, with their "new" enforcement first policy, is that the US needs workers. We have an expanding economy, and we are creating jobs fairly quickly. We need people for those jobs. It's a good article, worth reading carefully. In Las Vegas alone, our unemployment rate is at a level that if you can show up for work and not be drunk or high, you're hired. (And, by the way, that, too, is an answer to those who say "there are no jobs" -- a ticket to Vegas is subsidized on most airlines, and busfare can be even cheaper. Look it up.)

UPDATE: Evidently, Michelle Malkin still needs reminding of these basic truths. I'd steer her here, as well.

A letter in the Wall Street Journal this morning, copied for fisking:


It should be no surprise that the "open letter to President Bush and Congress" referenced in your June 20 editorial "Immigration Consensus," signed mostly by the usual lefty academics, will fail to convince the vast majority of middle-class Americans that they should support open borders and "free movement" of labor.

Mr. Rohrbacher begins with an error: that of "the usual lefty academics". The signatories include N. Gregory Mankiw, of Harvard, most recently seen in the Bush Administration, and many, many other respected economists. What is immediately interesting is that Mr. Rohrbacher does not cite any well-regarded economist arguing with the propositions in the letter. Right at the start, he should be ashamed of himself.

The open letter reads, "While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to the economy. . . ." Perhaps they should ask the 15% of unemployed workers who have less than a high-school education how they feel about being such a small, trivial group.

Mr. Rohrbacher has evidently not understood what an unemployment rate means, and so is unable to conceive of full employment as anything other than every single person having a job, a position associated with socialists and almost no one else. The fact that our current unemployment rate is absurdly low should cue him to the fact that perhaps those 11 million immigrants are needed by the American economy. It evidently has not occurred to him that the group he is describing, numbering about 897,000, might not be big enough in comparison to that number to have the same policy goal apply to them. I am somewhat appalled to note that I am citing government statistics easily available on the Internet, and that he, a Congressman, appears to be unable to come up with them.

The letter also says, "Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants." A more honest sentence would have read, "The stupid middle-class yokels should be thrilled to spend oodles of their tax money on importing low wage workers for big business while our poorest citizens continue to suffer under unemployment."

This is called DELIBERATE MISUNDERSTANDING, and is even more shameful than what went before. It is a reasonable point to note that when you have a relatively small group which is incapable of replacing a larger group should their jobs suddenly become vacant you should craft policies for them separately. A reasonable person would note that if people need help, that is what we have the welfare system for, and that this handwaving about immigration is just a distraction from discussing appropriate policies for them, like job-training and adult education programs, and childcare to make it possible for them to attend both the programs and accept employment. Mr. Rohrbacher is here deliberately misdirecting the argument. The key pont here is that no money is spent by the taxpayers "importing low wage workers". There are comprehensive studies on costs of immigrant workers, and one would have to work hard not to notice the extent to which immigrants are barred from public benefits. Mr. Rohrbacher knows better. Now you do, too.

And for its final offense, the open letter says "immigration of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to have been small . . . from eight percent to as little as zero percent." I wonder how many CEOs would ignore an 8% decrease in their bottom line and a decimation of their company's ability to compete.

Mr. Rohrbacher is here making the kind of argument that involves comparing apples and oranges, and expects you to fall for it with an image of greedy CEOs of multinational companies employing cheap immigrant labor. He knows better here, too. No Fortune 500 company takes chances with immigrant labor. Small businesses, the ones that can't afford Human Resource departments, those are the ones that end up hiring people without proper documentation, often under pressure to keep afloat. Are they delibarately hiring illegal immigrants? Not usually. But do they have the money to spend on services to verify documents? No. Will the government provide inexpensive verification for them? No. Should we be surprised that this is how illegals get hired usually?

The heart of this argument asserts that "Overall, immigration has been a net gain for American citizens, though a modest one." This conclusion is probably true for the CEO who cut labor costs and is rewarded with a million-dollar bonus that is used to hire illegal aliens as gardeners, maids and nannies.

Oh, yeah, those rich guys, it's all their fault. see above.

Meanwhile average Americans are forced to watch their schools deteriorate under the burden of educating millions of illegal aliens, their hospital emergency rooms close, and a third of their jails fill with illegal aliens while they are endlessly taxed to sustain these social ills. These average Americans see in their own lives what these economists consistently fail to comprehend from all their "research" and "analysis": Illegal immigration is killing the middle class and overwhelming their communities.

Mr. Rohrbacher is here complaining that providing public services costs something. Sadly, Mr. Rohrbacher, it always will. And the more people you have, the more public services will cost. However, as is well known, public health costs of immigrants are less than public health costs of citizens, so he should be loudly rooting for more immigrants if that cost is a concern. With regard to education, any community benefits by having people get a basic education: how else will you attract enough businesses to keep the tax base going? The heart of Mr. Rohrbacher's arguments involve prejudice, not fact. And, here done in a really silly manner, a prejudice long exploded.


These same common-sense Americans will continue to oppose amnesty and open borders no matter how many free lunches economists say are at the illegal immigration picnic.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.)
Washington

If you will not take the advice of people who spend time on these problems, their exacerbation from your ridiculous programs should be held to YOUR account. I'd be really ashamed to call you MY representative, Mr. Rohrbacher.

He compared paying fines for immigration violations to paying traffic tickets. And you know what? Both are noneconomic, neither is particularly a moral issue. Right metaphor.

I've had it with this debate.

How you can say that immigration is hurting this country when we have jobs, jobs, jobs just waiting to be filled (our unemployment rate is now ridiculously low); how you can say that immigrants are a "cost" to public services and not notice that after getting their feet, they pay taxes like everybody else (and studies confirm that -- and if the public has a cost at first to start these people on becoming productive members of society, it's worth it); how you can say, "They're not learning English!" when they are learning it as fast as they can, (and typically their kids try not to speak Spanish, and wouldn't pass an AP test in the subject)!

Immigration is how we are getting enough people to fill the jobs we've got. WE ARE SHORT OF PEOPLE. People regularly produce more than it takes to survive, and that "more" is what allows societal wealth to grow.

Yeah, I can see how we have a citizenship problem. We're not welcoming them fast enough. But we don't have an immigration problem.

And if you don't have three kids or more, don't even bother to respond to this post. You're part of the reason we need immigrants: to pay YOUR retirement benefits. Bum.