Immigrants!
May. 5th, 2006 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynSince I missed the big immigration brouhaha earlier this week, I'm posting my thoughts late, just in case anybody is interested in them. I think that protesting about how you should be part of America while waving a Mexican flag may not be the smartest idea, but at least they showed some vigor.
But I don't think this story will have a very happy ending...
There is a bipartisan agreement on the Hill these days to ignore the immigration problem. You can go into histrionics as much as you please regarding PRotecting AMerican JObs (something so sacred that merely including a single capital letter in each word is not significant enough) or Supporting America's Lower Class Workers, or Keeping Our Border Safe, or Being Able To Get A Good Carnitas Burrito Whenever You Want One (which is my platform), but you must not, under any circumstances, under pain of pain, discuss anything resembling the root cause. Hence we have national Immigration Day (or whatever they call this week's rallies), and the Minutemen, and enough political bile that we could sponsor bile transplants for every Jihadist in Saudi Arabia, without word on the possible solutions. This is Washington as usual.
Congress, that great and confusing entity that staggers from one crisis to another, primarily exists to put band-aids on cuts and patch holes, and occasionally to drag the plunger out of the hall closet and clean out the plumbing. Every once in a while, something big happens and Congress gets off its collective behind and actually does something, but these periods are relatively scarce. Most of the rest of the time, Congress tries not to sink the ship we're all sailing in, and spends a lot of time manning the pumps.
Unfortunately, the plumbing is currently broken, not because little Billy flushed his toy soldier down the toilet, but because there is a very large alligator living in the bathtub who has eaten the toilet. Congress is, on the immigration issue at least, desperately trying to bail water out of the ship, unaware that the ship itself has sunk and its keel is now resting on the bottom. Immigration is so broken, so utterly catastrophically in a state of collapse, that fixing it will be a matter of a major policy change, which is unfortunate as our Decider-in-Chief seems to have decided not to get involved in this matter.
First, everyone has noticed that immigrants are necessary to keep consumer prices low, and to do all those jobs that Americans won't do. This is not an ironclad argument, simply because American consumerism is not a necessary component of the national economy. People can mow their own lawn, they can do their own gardening, or, that failing, replace it with gravel or bushes or something. They can also, horror of horrors, clean their own house by using my patented method of moving everything in my room into one pile and proclaiming the rest of the room clean. They can even reduce the amount of fast food that they need to eat, the amount of new home construction we employ, and generally spend less. This would probably make us happier in the long run, but it would piss off the Chinese, and it would require sacrifices from the American public. Since the American public won't make sacrifices to support a war in Iraq, they sure as hell aren't going to want to do it here.
Let's be blunt, immigrant labor keeps people happy. Keeping people happy keeps them from revolting, and right now with the Republicans holding all the seats of power, revolting would be a very bad thing for His Bushness. But even beyond that, the US economy can't keep doing what it's doing (and keep saving the world) without a lot of immigrant labor to prop it up. It's good sense.
On the other hand, let us not forget that, as much as we want immigrant labor, we would prefer it to be law abiding. Illegal immigration raises hackles all over the place, after all, these are known lawbreakers, existing illegally inside the United States. Who could possibly trust them? On a saner note, there are problems with illegal aliens in the border states; especially ones without automobile insurance, health insurance, or enough assets to cover either of those cases. The government would rather not have to pay for any trouble an immigrant causes. Most illegals would find that fair; they would not mind being covered by employer provided health insurance themselves. But as long as the situation stays the same, and the border leaks like a sieve, things are not going to get better.
And, to be honest, we can't afford to have the border leak like a sieve. In this day and age, where nuclear weapons can be carted around on the back of a pickup truck, and a small chemical or biological bomb can fit into a backpack, letting everyone with a compass and a water bottle get through the border is an astonishingly bad idea. Although representatives of immigrant rights groups are willing to swear that nobody coming from Mexico is a member of al-Qaeda, who really knows? The US government has the responsibility to insure a certain level of security for everyone in the country, something that it manifestly can't do as long as anyone with enough wits (and enough cash) can get right across the border without even having to wait in the customs line. Already we have a problem with both drug smugglers and gangsters coming back over the border from Central America, the last thing we need is terrorists too. That means closing the borders, and that's bad news for illegals.
The answer is so obvious that the refusal of Capitol Hill to debate it can only mean that they've come to the back door consensus that this is bad for publicity. Namely, why not change the immigration policy so that we can get the amount of workers we need legally, hence keeping a control over who we allow in (no slavers, drug-smugglers, arms traders, or murderers please) and assuring that these people will at least get the benefits of working legally in the US (such as getting smacked on a regular basis by the IRS) as well as getting them to follow the right law without surrendering our necessary source of labor? It's such a simple idea that it's bound to fail, unfortunately, which is why nobody brings it up.
Here's why:
First, it would require enlarging, yet streamlining, the draconian regulations and practices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, one of the great dinosaurs of American Bureaucracy. This task would fall to the executive branch, whose idea of streamlining is embodied in the action-oriented, acronym-spewing, press-conference holding Department of Homeland Security, a chaotic expressionist assemblage of turf fighting and finger pointing that serves as the single most bloated piece of American government since William Howard “Beached Whale” Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub. Instead of dying in the deserts of Arizona, immigrants would instead die of exposure and starvation while waiting in line to get the proper forms from an INS official on a permanent lunch break.
Second, it would mean keeping track of criminals, their aliases, and all other information. This is currently trouble, since terrorists are tracked by the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the NRO, the DHS, the NRA, the NFL, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, all of which would sooner stab each other in the back than give each other the time of day. Information sharing is difficult because, to protect their secrets, each agency has developed an entirely different encryption system, each based on speaking entirely in acronyms that none of them understand. None of this is helped by the existence of terrorist and criminal agents inside the US government, as evidenced by the FBI's recent release of a list of five hundred terrorist sympathizers in the State Department, so evidenced by the fact that their names all appear together on a big sheet of paper.
Third, it would require many of those nations who dearly wish for their citizens to go elsewhere to actually provide some sort of documents to prove that these people do, in fact, exist. How do we know that Diego from Guatemala is not really a dangerous Middle Eastern terrorist with a hispanic accent? Moreover, how is it even possible to become a resident in the United States without being able to put down your Social Security Number (or foreign equivalent), date of birth (with certificate), date of death (also with certificate, preferably issued after demise), and first grade report card (you thought you would never need that again, didn't you? Well you were wrong!). It's absolutely inconceivable to deny the US bureaucracy a chance to push the papers that they do the best job of pushing. Moreover, it's a message to foreign countries that they won’t like. If you don't care enough about this person to bother keeping records, then chances are that we don't want them either.
Fourth, it would require us to actually close the border, which is easier said than done. Although many of us would not mind putting land mines across broad stretches of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, we might inadvertently start a massive industry by which Mexicans creep across the border, dig up our land mines, and sell them to arms dealers to be used on kids in Uganda. Although there is a promise in reinforced concrete, it will take a lot of resources to close the border, and those resources are not forthcoming. Unless you see an immigrant sneaking across the border who looks Arabic.
Fifth, it would require the anti-immigrant knee-jerkers to STFU. Good luck on that. They haven’t stopped running their mouths since the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria heaved into sight over the horizon. Just tell me before you get them to fall silent: I have some heaters I can sell to hell.
So the solution is not going to happen. Illegal immigrants will continue to trickle in, lured by the promise of the American Dream, a land in which they can grow fat on McDonalds and recline in an armchair watching football on an old TV and complain about absolutely everything while doing nothing about it. In the meantime, employers, businessmen and everyone else will continue to hire these people as fast as they can to keep wages depressed. And people will continue to complain about it, up until the time that al-Qaeda sneaks a nuke into San Diego. And all these complaints will filter up to Congress, where, to stem the problem, Congress will pass a law forbidding sex with porcupines on Wednesdays (to my knowledge, having carnal relations with a porcupine is explicitly illegal in only one state-what has Congress been doing all these years?).
So rest assured and place your faith in the American system. The situation may not be getting any better, but chances are that it’s not going to get any worse. So we may merrily continue bailing water in the knowledge that the ship has already run aground, and desperately hope that the tide isn’t coming in.
But I don't think this story will have a very happy ending...
There is a bipartisan agreement on the Hill these days to ignore the immigration problem. You can go into histrionics as much as you please regarding PRotecting AMerican JObs (something so sacred that merely including a single capital letter in each word is not significant enough) or Supporting America's Lower Class Workers, or Keeping Our Border Safe, or Being Able To Get A Good Carnitas Burrito Whenever You Want One (which is my platform), but you must not, under any circumstances, under pain of pain, discuss anything resembling the root cause. Hence we have national Immigration Day (or whatever they call this week's rallies), and the Minutemen, and enough political bile that we could sponsor bile transplants for every Jihadist in Saudi Arabia, without word on the possible solutions. This is Washington as usual.
Congress, that great and confusing entity that staggers from one crisis to another, primarily exists to put band-aids on cuts and patch holes, and occasionally to drag the plunger out of the hall closet and clean out the plumbing. Every once in a while, something big happens and Congress gets off its collective behind and actually does something, but these periods are relatively scarce. Most of the rest of the time, Congress tries not to sink the ship we're all sailing in, and spends a lot of time manning the pumps.
Unfortunately, the plumbing is currently broken, not because little Billy flushed his toy soldier down the toilet, but because there is a very large alligator living in the bathtub who has eaten the toilet. Congress is, on the immigration issue at least, desperately trying to bail water out of the ship, unaware that the ship itself has sunk and its keel is now resting on the bottom. Immigration is so broken, so utterly catastrophically in a state of collapse, that fixing it will be a matter of a major policy change, which is unfortunate as our Decider-in-Chief seems to have decided not to get involved in this matter.
First, everyone has noticed that immigrants are necessary to keep consumer prices low, and to do all those jobs that Americans won't do. This is not an ironclad argument, simply because American consumerism is not a necessary component of the national economy. People can mow their own lawn, they can do their own gardening, or, that failing, replace it with gravel or bushes or something. They can also, horror of horrors, clean their own house by using my patented method of moving everything in my room into one pile and proclaiming the rest of the room clean. They can even reduce the amount of fast food that they need to eat, the amount of new home construction we employ, and generally spend less. This would probably make us happier in the long run, but it would piss off the Chinese, and it would require sacrifices from the American public. Since the American public won't make sacrifices to support a war in Iraq, they sure as hell aren't going to want to do it here.
Let's be blunt, immigrant labor keeps people happy. Keeping people happy keeps them from revolting, and right now with the Republicans holding all the seats of power, revolting would be a very bad thing for His Bushness. But even beyond that, the US economy can't keep doing what it's doing (and keep saving the world) without a lot of immigrant labor to prop it up. It's good sense.
On the other hand, let us not forget that, as much as we want immigrant labor, we would prefer it to be law abiding. Illegal immigration raises hackles all over the place, after all, these are known lawbreakers, existing illegally inside the United States. Who could possibly trust them? On a saner note, there are problems with illegal aliens in the border states; especially ones without automobile insurance, health insurance, or enough assets to cover either of those cases. The government would rather not have to pay for any trouble an immigrant causes. Most illegals would find that fair; they would not mind being covered by employer provided health insurance themselves. But as long as the situation stays the same, and the border leaks like a sieve, things are not going to get better.
And, to be honest, we can't afford to have the border leak like a sieve. In this day and age, where nuclear weapons can be carted around on the back of a pickup truck, and a small chemical or biological bomb can fit into a backpack, letting everyone with a compass and a water bottle get through the border is an astonishingly bad idea. Although representatives of immigrant rights groups are willing to swear that nobody coming from Mexico is a member of al-Qaeda, who really knows? The US government has the responsibility to insure a certain level of security for everyone in the country, something that it manifestly can't do as long as anyone with enough wits (and enough cash) can get right across the border without even having to wait in the customs line. Already we have a problem with both drug smugglers and gangsters coming back over the border from Central America, the last thing we need is terrorists too. That means closing the borders, and that's bad news for illegals.
The answer is so obvious that the refusal of Capitol Hill to debate it can only mean that they've come to the back door consensus that this is bad for publicity. Namely, why not change the immigration policy so that we can get the amount of workers we need legally, hence keeping a control over who we allow in (no slavers, drug-smugglers, arms traders, or murderers please) and assuring that these people will at least get the benefits of working legally in the US (such as getting smacked on a regular basis by the IRS) as well as getting them to follow the right law without surrendering our necessary source of labor? It's such a simple idea that it's bound to fail, unfortunately, which is why nobody brings it up.
Here's why:
First, it would require enlarging, yet streamlining, the draconian regulations and practices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, one of the great dinosaurs of American Bureaucracy. This task would fall to the executive branch, whose idea of streamlining is embodied in the action-oriented, acronym-spewing, press-conference holding Department of Homeland Security, a chaotic expressionist assemblage of turf fighting and finger pointing that serves as the single most bloated piece of American government since William Howard “Beached Whale” Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub. Instead of dying in the deserts of Arizona, immigrants would instead die of exposure and starvation while waiting in line to get the proper forms from an INS official on a permanent lunch break.
Second, it would mean keeping track of criminals, their aliases, and all other information. This is currently trouble, since terrorists are tracked by the FBI, the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the NRO, the DHS, the NRA, the NFL, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, all of which would sooner stab each other in the back than give each other the time of day. Information sharing is difficult because, to protect their secrets, each agency has developed an entirely different encryption system, each based on speaking entirely in acronyms that none of them understand. None of this is helped by the existence of terrorist and criminal agents inside the US government, as evidenced by the FBI's recent release of a list of five hundred terrorist sympathizers in the State Department, so evidenced by the fact that their names all appear together on a big sheet of paper.
Third, it would require many of those nations who dearly wish for their citizens to go elsewhere to actually provide some sort of documents to prove that these people do, in fact, exist. How do we know that Diego from Guatemala is not really a dangerous Middle Eastern terrorist with a hispanic accent? Moreover, how is it even possible to become a resident in the United States without being able to put down your Social Security Number (or foreign equivalent), date of birth (with certificate), date of death (also with certificate, preferably issued after demise), and first grade report card (you thought you would never need that again, didn't you? Well you were wrong!). It's absolutely inconceivable to deny the US bureaucracy a chance to push the papers that they do the best job of pushing. Moreover, it's a message to foreign countries that they won’t like. If you don't care enough about this person to bother keeping records, then chances are that we don't want them either.
Fourth, it would require us to actually close the border, which is easier said than done. Although many of us would not mind putting land mines across broad stretches of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, we might inadvertently start a massive industry by which Mexicans creep across the border, dig up our land mines, and sell them to arms dealers to be used on kids in Uganda. Although there is a promise in reinforced concrete, it will take a lot of resources to close the border, and those resources are not forthcoming. Unless you see an immigrant sneaking across the border who looks Arabic.
Fifth, it would require the anti-immigrant knee-jerkers to STFU. Good luck on that. They haven’t stopped running their mouths since the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria heaved into sight over the horizon. Just tell me before you get them to fall silent: I have some heaters I can sell to hell.
So the solution is not going to happen. Illegal immigrants will continue to trickle in, lured by the promise of the American Dream, a land in which they can grow fat on McDonalds and recline in an armchair watching football on an old TV and complain about absolutely everything while doing nothing about it. In the meantime, employers, businessmen and everyone else will continue to hire these people as fast as they can to keep wages depressed. And people will continue to complain about it, up until the time that al-Qaeda sneaks a nuke into San Diego. And all these complaints will filter up to Congress, where, to stem the problem, Congress will pass a law forbidding sex with porcupines on Wednesdays (to my knowledge, having carnal relations with a porcupine is explicitly illegal in only one state-what has Congress been doing all these years?).
So rest assured and place your faith in the American system. The situation may not be getting any better, but chances are that it’s not going to get any worse. So we may merrily continue bailing water in the knowledge that the ship has already run aground, and desperately hope that the tide isn’t coming in.