Dumbest Immigration Law Ever

Immigration
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For several decades, immigration has been the main source of economic growth in Alabama. Same with foreign investment and the people it brings in. Major swaths of the state would be sunk without both.

Immigration has brought not only economic growth but a much-needed cultural shift in the state. We now have ever more museums, schools, houses of worship of many varieties, and our theaters, movie houses, and orchestras are actually enjoying support. Alabama now has highly skilled hands that can do a variety of tasks that were impossible to get done before, from complex engineering to intricate tile work in public spaces. Of course the agriculture issue is gigantic: nearly all the workers were undocumented and now they are gone. Then there’s the food issue: without immigration, Alabama would be mostly burgers and chicken fingers. All of these industries, to one extent or another, rely on workers with sketchy documentation.

So what do the politicians do? This year, they whipped up an crazy xenophobic frenzy and passed a massive crackdown that led to a cruel mass exodus from the state. And they did this in the middle of a recession. Absolutely ghastly. And now the inevitable has happened: there is no one to fill these jobs. Industries are under serious strain. Businesses are going bust. Unemployment, which is already higher than the national average, is going up. There are no workers to do what the immigrants did because the necessary skills and work ethic just isn’t present in the native population (as any Alabama resident could have told you).

The latest solution: put the prisoners to work to fill the missing jobs.

Speechless.

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Somin on Gary Johnson and Ron Paul: A Reply

(Austrian) Economics, Immigration, Libertarian Theory, Vulgar Politics, War
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Ilya Somin over at The Volokh Conspiracy, it seems, is no more a fan of Ron Paul now than he was four years ago. His criticisms remain about the same. This time around, though, he’s got a candidate to contrast Paul with in Gary Johnson. His conclusion? Johnson is a better libertarian than Paul. My first response to this was laughter. This is my second response:

To start, Somin nearly lost me in his first sentence when he suggested that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was even on the radar for libertarians considering voting. If anyone thinks a hypocritical drug warrior, who might be most charitably described as untested on foreign policy issues (and much less charitably described as a propagandist for the Empire), should even be in the running, then they should probably be disqualified from commenting on the question of who the most libertarian candidate is. All that said, we’ll give him the benefit of his doubts about Daniels for now and move onto his criticisms.

Ron Paul’s Unlibertarian Positions?

Somin claims that Ron Paul “has very nonlibertarian positions on free trade, school choice, and especially immigration.” He goes on to criticize Paul’s views on the Fourteenth Amendment. He doesn’t spell these criticisms out in this piece, but rather directs us to an older article from 2007. We’ll take each one by one.

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Mexico: The War Party’s New Target?

Drug Policy, Immigration, Imperialism, Police Statism, The Right, War
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For decades, some elements of the Right (occasionally abetted by people who should have known better) have peddled the notion that Mexico has created a vast and well-organized “fifth column” within the United States dedicated to La Reconquista — the re-conquest of territories seized by the U.S. during the Mexican-American War. In this scenario, non-assimilated Mexicans by the millions are stealthily enlisting in a campaign of subversion orchestrated by the Mexican government with the help of foundation-funded anti-American groups on this side of the border — and, when the time is right, this fifth column will erupt in an orgy of violence and mayhem.

Whatever revanchist sentiments may exist in Mexico are the residue of Washington’s seizure of roughly half the country through a war of aggression. Washington’s proxy narco-war, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2006 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, has done nothing to palliate those feelings. An actual U.S. invasion might be the only thing that would turn the alarmist fantasy of a nationalistic uprising on the part of Mexicans living on the U.S. side of the border into something akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Since 2007, when the Fed’s most recent economic bubble collapsed, immigration from Mexico has tapered off dramatically. In Arizona, immigration (both legal and illegal) and violent crime have both been in decline for a decade. Yet the state’s Republican leadership, and much of its law enforcement apparatus — from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the corrupt septuagenarian headline whore, to Pinal County Sheriff  Paul Babeau, his younger and more telegenic understudy — insist that the state is under unremitting siege.  Governor Jan Brewer,  who claimed that the “majority” of illegal immigrants from Mexico are “mules” in the employ of drug cartels and that illegal immigrants had committed “beheadings” in Arizona, was headed for electoral oblivion following an unpopular tax increase — until she seized on the immigration issue, which propelled her to a dramatic political recovery.

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A Thought On Immigration And Time Preference

Immigration, The Right
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When talking about immigration, some conservatives complain that immigrants often times do not assimilate. They do not, among others, learn the language, settle down, establish themselves in the community and so on. What is puzzling about this view is that, though not necessarily incorrect, political conservatives appear to support policies that lead exactly to the result they want to avoid.

Take a look at farm workers visas, as well as other temporary work permits. Not only do they cause chronic employment shortages and similar problems (upstate NY is plagued by this issue), but because transient workers are not allowed to have permanent residency, their place in the workforce is tenuous. Indeed, lacking stable, reliable employment, their time preference is increased. No longer can they plan for long-term living arrangements, savings, settling down, establishing their families–things permanent residents/citizens can do. Temporary work visas bolster the existence of the “bad immigrant hood.” They end up with poor, crowded living conditions.

When I brought up this point to a friend, he said, “I used to deliver pizzas to a motel near the Monfort rendering plant on the north side of town. In each room there would be up to 8 people, all Mexican migrant workers, sharing like two mattresses on the floor. Their living conditions sucked but they all were trying to save money to take back home… Obviously if these guys could stay year-round they would likely not want to remain in such squalid conditions.”

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Jan Brewer, Big Fat Liar

Immigration, Vulgar Politics
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Big Fat LiarNot that a politician caught stating a mis-truth is shocking news to anyone, but this particular lie was pure gasoline poured onto the already-raging firestorm surrounding illegal immigration:

In a column released online today, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted that Arizona Republican governor Jan Brewer, a strong proponent of her state’s controversial immigration bill, has claimed that Arizona’s “law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.”

As Milbank noted, the Arizona Guardian checked that claim out and found no evidence of beheadings; Brewer’s office did not respond to a request from the columnist for documentation for the beheading claim.

Months later, as Brewer campaigns to remain Arizona’s governor, she finally admits she might have, sort of, kind of, not really told the truth:

But the claim has come back to haunt her after her stammering debate performance in which she failed to back it up and ignored repeated questions on the issue from a scrum of reporters.

Brewer has spent the time since backtracking and trying to repair the damage done from her cringe-worthy debate against underdog challenger Terry Goddard.

“That was an error, if I said that,” the Republican told the Associated Press on Friday. “I misspoke, but you know, let me be clear, I am concerned about the border region because it continues to be reported in Mexico that there’s a lot of violence going on and we don’t want that going into Arizona.”

She said she was referring to beheadings and other cartel-related violence in Mexico in comments she made earlier this summer about decapitated bodies found in the state’s southern region.

No, that’s not what she was referring to.  She didn’t say anything about headless bodies found in Mexico, unless Arizona law enforcement is now engaging in operations south of the border (emphasis added):

Appearing on a local television show Sunday morning, Gov. Jan Brewer described how bad Arizona’s illegal immigration problem has gotten.

“Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she said.

No reasonably literate person could read that statement and interpret it to mean that she was referring to drug war violence in Mexico.  Brewer lied in a grandstanding attempt to gin up support for the state’s fascist anti-immigration bill.  Everybody knows she lied, including her Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, the press, and most other people paying attention.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t include Arizona voters, who still favor her over Goddard by a nearly two-to-one margin.

What’s worse, Brewer’s mendacity, or the Arizona electorate’s gullibility?  It’s an embarrassment in either case.

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