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

[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.