Friday, October 03, 2008

Immigration notes

I'd be more sympathetic to the position of those who polemicize against illegal immigration if the same folks weren't typically indifferent to making legal immigration easier. The New York Times has an editorial making this point, that many folks who "rage against illegal immigrants ... are strangely uninterested in helping people who 'play by the rules' and 'wait in line.'” The Grey Lady's editorial board criticizes the fact that:
Every year thousands of potential green cards vanish, like unused cellphone minutes. The huge backlogs in legal immigration, which span years or even decades for applicants from some countries, continue to fester. ...

Teachers, nurses, engineers, researchers and other aspiring immigrants who follow the rules, file their paperwork, pay their fees and wait — and wait — get the chilly message that they are not wanted. Some of them feel great pressure to go illegally around the immigration system, instead of through it, as their wait to rejoin their loved ones becomes intolerable.
Relatedly, I noticed a fascinating recent suggestion by Alan Greenspan for bolstering the tumbling housing market. He says that expanding immigration for skilled workers would boost demand for homes and help prop up the economy, which when you think about it makes a lot of sense.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Buy the rules of law works for me.

Anonymous said...

I like Greenspan's suggestion. Old Salty

Ryan Paige said...

Of course, Greenspan's recommendation suggests a surplus or potential surplus of jobs for skilled workers.

Otherwise, you just add more competition in the job market, drive down wages and raise unemployment.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Luckily, Ryan, there pretty much is a surplus of jobs available for skilled workers. Nurses, engineers, etc., can go out and get a job any day of the week. For whatever reasons there aren't enough Americans pursuing those careers to fill demand, especially in the health care arena.

There's a stronger argument to be made about wage competition, etc., regarding low-skilled workers, however it's ironic, isn't it, that it turned out the best way to reduce illegal immigration of low-skill workers is just to kill the economy. :-/

More ironic still, "success" in reducing illegal immigration means half a million people cross illegally per year instead of 800,000. That's what people mean when they say "enforcement works."

Anonymous said...

Killing our economy only diminishes illegal immigration temporarily. As Mexico's economy feels the effects of our problems, there will be a huge influx of illegal immigrant's looking for work. I would much rather let them into the country legally, even if that means easing the immigration rules. At least if they come in legally, we can fingerprint them and know who they are, and when they screw up we can lock them up or throw them out of the country. Right now there are many illegal immigrants trapped in the United States. They would love to go back home to be with their families, but they are afraid to leave the United States and not be able to come back if they fall on hard times again. So, they stay, and cut your grass and feed you at restaurants and build your houses and pick your fruits and vegetables.

Anonymous said...

Illegal immigration is declining according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center. (Read "The Immigration Bubble Collapses, The Garrison State Thrives (Updated, October 4 FreedomInOurTime.blogspot.com)

It is so clear to me that the illegal immigration problem has been engineered by our "ruling elite." I am a conservative independent and I attended a workshop this weekend on illegal immigration and the upcoming Texas legislative session. I am also a person who is actively working to have Texas not implement the national Real ID act. I was amazed at how those "conservatives" at that conference appeared to NOT mind the implementation of Real ID in Texas. They think the SAVE program and the E Verify programs are great and just failed to speak about Real ID at all, except for a few indications they ARE for Real ID.

We cannot stop what our evil rulers are doing to the USA. The economic collapse, the housing bubble collapse and all that is happening in our country is happening by brilliant orchestrated design.

I am against "collectivist nationalism" and much of the anti-illegal immigration activity is of that NAZI nature. Another article to read can be linked from in the previous mentioned article and here is a quote by William Grigg (formerly chief editor of Birch New American Magazine and fired by JBS) from that one...

"Although it should be obvious, I'll say it anyway: I don't support open borders. But as North Korea demonstrates, solving the problem of illegal immigration is not the summum bonum of a free society. What I attempted to do was to demonstrate how this issue was being exploited by the architects of the emerging garrison state, and how the entire conservative movement - without so much as a single exception - is falling for the deception. "