immigration

[topaz]

So I don't understand the big ruckus over immigration.

Specifically, I don't understand why immigration is restricted.  I don't understand why we perceive a need to have a category of "illegal immigrants" at all, why we don't classify anyone who comes to this country as a potential citizen if they pass all of the appropriate tests, and a non-citizen resident until then.

I understand the problems with having a large number of aliens who place a burden on public resources and don't contribute to the tax pool.  But it seems like a problem that would be more effectively addressed by taxing resident aliens than by trying to block them from coming here to live at all.

Anyway, happy immigration protest day to everyone!

Comments

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

This is just a category "we" have. It's an issue that the EU countries have, particularly in regard to the Spanish enclaves in Morocco (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4316702.stm), an issue for India (http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4197680.stm) and, amusingly enough, an issue for Mexico, where migrants to Mexico are treated in a manner only the worst racists and xenophobes propose to use in the US (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/14377873.htm).

The main issue is the same pretty much worldwide. There are countries with lots of poor people, high corruption and little social mobility..and people in those countries want to get to richer countries to work.

Some people have argued that welfare states have problems dealing with this (The Swedish one being held out as an example by the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/05muslims.html?ex=1296795600&en=722dbb00a718b0f9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)), but I think it's not an issue, so long as the recipient states have some control over the process.

The problem, worldwide, is that the process is not being controlled, and is feeding into transnational criminal issues and making it much harder for countries to deal with some criminal problems.

For us in particular, our immigration system is utterly dysfunctional. There are positive incentives to immigrate illegally, but it's a huge bureaucratic hassle to do so legally.

I'd like changes like you suggest, with an addendum that we stop granting citizenship to people simply for being born here and an change that makes it easier for permanent residents to become citizens.

[redjo.livejournal.com]

For us in particular, our immigration system is utterly dysfunctional. There are positive incentives to immigrate illegally, but it's a huge bureaucratic hassle to do so legally.

TELL me about it ... *bangs head repeatedly against wall because it's less painful than the green card process*

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Have you seen http://fj.livejournal.com/406429.html ?

[redjo.livejournal.com]

Great writing. And now I'm thoroughly depressed (since I'm also doing everything by the absolute letter). The one bright spot is that I'm driving distance from my home country whenever they decide to deny me entry.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why you want to take one of the good things about our immigration policy, which is that people born here become citizens, think of themselves as Americans, and become part of the country, and replace it with a situation like the French or German permanent underclass (http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007574). Don't we have enough racial issues in this country? What would be gained by permanently setting even more of us at each other's throats?

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I read that article.

It is rather deceptve. Part of the problem that Germany had was that they didn't let gastarbeiter naturalize at all until fairly recently-something I'm not proposing.

France had jus soli citizenship: that "second class" in France is overwhelmingly composed of French citizens. This great reference to citizenship laws of the world (http://www.opm.gov/extra/investigate/IS-01.pdf) is from 2001 and a little out of date, but see what it says about France. France had jus soli citizenship as of last September (http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_09_19/europe/debate_over_citizenship.htm), and still has it now.

Ireland had jus soli citizenship until 2004, when it was abolished after a national referendum (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3801839.stm).

There was a wave of moves similar to what happened in Ireland in other European countries in the 1990s in every country which had had jus soli citizenship (and even earlier-the UK made its change in 1983). This was prompted by problems like we're having now. (We've gone through this kind of thing before, too, which is why President Reagan amnestied the illegal population in 1986, which failed to solve the problem, although the temproary economic boom in Mexic in the 1990s seriously ameriolated the issue.)

(I'm sure you had no way of knowing this, but Tamar Jacoby is not exactly trustworthy on this issue. She has a definite agenda and is illing to lie through her teeth when she's making her arguments. I think of her as the anti-particle of someone like Peter Brimelow. She is quite aware of the fact that the French underclass has citizenship, but that would undermine her argument, so she's not going to mention it.)

I'm not sure why you think this is a racial issue-I want to change the current system for all non-citizens. I'm in favor of making the legal immigration process easier (to make it easier to get permaent residency and then to go on to citizenship), which would, I think, solve the only real problem.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

As it happens I wasn't basing my opinions solely on Tamar Jacoby - I did some reading back when the Paris riots happened. It's just that when I refer to something that I think everybody who reads it might not know what I'm talking about, I sometimes Google it & then link it to the first reasonably complete explanation I find, just so I don't have to bother explaining it myself. In this case, perhaps I should have read more closely. Anyway, I know the situation in France seems to have been built up by more strictly economic means, but in reading about Europe in general I discovered for the first time that not every country had jus soli citizenship. Call me a stupid American, but it boggled me. It just seems like such a perfect recipe for disaster to create a population that is born and spends its entire life in one country, but is not a citizen of that country, so that they really have nowhere to go.

French citizenship notwithstanding, it is also important to realize that other ideas that are being floated here in the U.S. (though, thankfully, not yet in Congress) are denying health care to illegal immigrants and denying their children public schooling (http://immigration.about.com/od/ussocialeconomicissues/i/EduIllegalIss.htm); creating an even-less-educated, unhealthy population is a straight road to the Paris riots, and denying American-born people citizenship will only exacerbate it.

As far as why I think this is a racial issue - because right now the issue is with Mexicans. Sure, immigration hasn't been completely sorted out with regards to people from other countries, but the reason it's a hot issue is people from Mexico & the rest of Central America.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason European countries were leery of jus soli citizenship was that most of them were built around an ethnic core, and letting peple from another ethnic core become citizens led to trouble when the nation built around that ethnic core started making territorial demands based on the presence of their kin in that territory. This is a post Napoleonic (and post-WWI in particular, after we Americans pushed the idea of self-determination) phenomenon, and the Sudeten Germans are probably the best example. It is not a totally irraitonal fear, though, and this is a major issue in relations between two of the Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and Russia: Latvia and Estonia have sizable ethnic Russian populations who are concentrated right on their border with Russia, and some Russian politicans talk about annexing those areas-talk which makes the Estonians and Latians really nervous given their last experience under Russian occupation. Since those two Baltic states are also NATO members, and we are thus pledged to defend them, it's a major headache for us, too.

The thinking was that people who, by jus sanguis, were citizens of another nation could move there.

I think that, while some people are obviously motivated by racial animus, the core problems would be there if, say, we swapped Mexico for a comparable, non-Hispanic country with high corruption, low social mobility and a poor economy: Ukraine, say. (You are right that the overwhelming majority of our illegal immigration comes from Latin America, and in particlar from Mexico {Mexicans are a majority of our illegal population}, but I think that's due mainly to lousy conditions in those countries-we'd be getting a crapload of Canadians if Canada were ruled by a corrupt kleptocracy) I also think that this problem would be ameriolated if we overhauled our immigration system to make legal immigration (whether aimed at eventual citizenship or permanent residency) easier.