Should immigration country quotas be increased?

Would this help with the problem of illegal immigration? There are, as  usual, pros and cons.

I am surprised that there is so much talk about illegal immigration, but little mentioned about possibly preventing it by increasing country quotas.

What Liberal Said This?

What flaming liberal said this?  


“I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here even though some time back they may have entered illegally.”


a. Barack Obama
b. Hillary Clinton
c. Dennis Kucinich
d. Michael Moore
e. none of the above 

Immigration quotas, an aspect of the immigration debate no one talks about

Sometimes I think that we make mistakes when we tempt reasonable people to break the law. Prohibition would be an example. When I was in a high school debate on legalizing pot,  I came up with an argument that said that since marijuana is a gateway drug to other drugs, we can take its "gateway" status away by making it legal. (I am not now prepared to endorse this argument now, however).

People like to talk about what to do about illegal immigrants (Path to citizenship? Attrition through enforcement?), and we also like to talk about border security (if we give a path to citizenship, and people are still entering illegally, aren't we going to repeat the cycle?), but could we reduce the problem of illegal immigration by making legal immigration easier?

What people sometimes say is we are a nation of immigrants, and that while we oppose illegal immigration, legal immigration is just fine. If that is our position, then we ought to make it easier to immigrate by increasing quotas. If, on the other hand, the real problem isn't just illegal immigration, but immigration itself, then we should be willing to say that honestly.

If guns are outlawed......

"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

"If immigration is oultawed, only outlaws will immigrate."

Is there any way that the first argument can be a good argument against immigration control, but the second is not a good argument against immigration control? 

Most of the people who would defend the first argument would hate the second argument.

How to Solve Illegal Immigration

There are several parts to a solution here. One is border security, and Obama isn't going to get anywhere on his plans if he doesn't increase security on the border more than he has done so far. If he doesn't show seriousness about enforcement, he won't get bipartisan support in the Senate and his reform bill is going to die by filibuster. But, more than that, it's a good idea. Especially if you reform immigration along the path-to-citizenship lines, you need improved security so that the cycle doesn't repeat itself. This border security has to be primarily aimed at the smugglers, drug traffickers, and gun runners. These criminals are a problem for both countries, so part of the "enforcement" operation has to be focused on a cooperative effort with the Mexican government to shut these people down.




I don't know what enforcement-first means. If it means that we have to commit to enforcement if we want reform, then yes. If it means we have to have a perfectly secure border before we make other changes, then that is putting off reform indefinitely, and that won't do.



Second, a system of workplace enforcement where a person's fingerprint could be indexed to his social security number, so that this could be checked at the workplace, and then coming down on people who employ illegal immigrants could become effective.



Third, I do support a path to citizenship for those already here. In a way that's not fair, but I don't think it's possible or economically feasible to deport them all, and leaving people in their illegal status is a worse solution.



Fourth, I think a more rational legal immigration policy that makes legal immigration somewhat less limited is also important. Particularly where this is simply a matter of ineffiency in the process, that has to be addressed. That doesn't mean it should be unlimited, or that quotas are always wrong.



Fifth, we have to re-examine our trade policies, to make sure that we are not encouraging labor exploitation of foreign countries. In particular, we should not be permitting American companies to be running slave labor operations in Mexico or anywhere else. When we get serious about stopping worldwide slavery, we will also produce a demand-side deterrent for illegal immigration.

Why don't they just come here legally?

Why don't they just come here legally? Here's why. From the Arizona Republic. 

There also are limits based on a person's country of origin. Under U.S. immigration law, the total number of immigrant visas made available to natives of any single foreign nation shall not exceed 7 percent of the total number of visas issued. That limit can make it tough for immigrants from countries such as Mexico, where the number of people who want to come here greatly exceeds the number of people that the law allows.
The estimated wait time for family members to legally bring their relatives into the United States from Mexico ranges from six to 17 years, according to a May study by the non-profit, nonpartisan National Foundation for American Policy. It is nearly impossible for a Mexican, especially someone without a college degree or special skills, to immigrate to the United States legally without a family member or employer petitioning on his behalf.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/06/28/20100628legal-immigration-high-demand.html#ixzz0sNmv0Xy4

Are illegal immigrants acting immorally?

People like Governor Brewer often say that we are a nation of laws, and that is why we must make a strong stand enforcing our immigration laws. Are people who insist on a strong stand against illegal immigration gratuitously assuming that persons who enter the country illegally are acting immorally?  If the only way to support your family was to enter another country illegally, wouldn't you have a moral obligation to break the law, since you have a moral obligation to support your family which trumps your obligation to obey the law?

I'm not drawing any strong conclusions from this, necessarily. Recognition of this is compatible with strong enforcement strategies such as SB 1070. But I don't even hear this point mentioned or acknowledged by defenders of strong enforcement. 

Prohibition, moral obligation, and immigration reform

Would a "Prohibition argument" be relevant to the amount of immigration we should permit? Here's what I mean. Many people could argue the downside of alcholic beverages, as every woman who has been beaten by a drunken husband can attest, as every mother whose son was killed by a drunk driver can attest. Yet the illegality of alcoholic beverages did more harm than good, and most historians would say we rightly repealed Prohibition. We tried to prohibit something that couldn't rationally be prevented by legal prohibitions.




The restrictiveness of our quotas concerning immigration may be helping to cause a problem with illegal immigration. Prohibition empowered the Capone gang, the attractiveness of illegal immigration empowers the coyotes and drug cartels. Somehow, the situation in which we find ourselves makes breaking the immigration law desirable and attractive.



Jan Brewer likes to remind us all that we are a nation of laws. Of course we are. But the rule of law doesn't even guarantee that all violations of the law are morally impermissible. It could be argued that if someone comes across the border and does so intending to work for a living, pay taxes, and apart from the immigration law, to abide by the law, they may be doing what is at once illegal and morally obligatory. Unless you accept a moral theory that says it is always morally wrong to disobey the law, you have to consider this possibility. That is, we have a prima facie obligation to obey the law, but we also have an obligation to care for our families which may transcend the obligation to obey the law, and in the case of some illegal immigrants, they might have done what is illegal but morally obligatory. (Brewer thinks they're mostly here to run drugs and commit violent crimes, but what is the hard evidence for this claim? Why are they all in front of Home Depot looking for work, if they can get their money through crime?)



You know the old Emerson and Thoreau story? Thoreau went to jail for not paying taxes that would support what he took to be the unjust Mexican War. Emerson asked "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau answered "Waldo, what are you doing out there?"

Arizona SB 1070: A Legal Nightmare

Two immigration attorneys agree that this law will overwhelm the court system with lawsuits.

This law is popular with conservatives. But I always thought conservatives hated judicial activism and "the trial lawyers." The trial lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.

Every law raises some issues which are going to be open to interpretation, and which have to be settled by the courts. This law was written in a deliberately ambiguous way, which in my view is irresponsible.

FAIR (the organization that wrote the law) also has attorneys who file lawsuits. Gee, do I detect a pattern?

SB 1070 is chasing law-abiding citizens out of the state

"The immigration law creates a difficult situation for both legal and illegal residents," said Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University. "Some illegal residents may have planned on leaving the Valley anyway because they can't find jobs. But I have talked to young Hispanics who are residents and so are their parents and grandparents. And those Hispanics plan on moving to other states because they don't want to be perceived as second-class citizens."

I'm going to keep appealing to the documentary 9500 Liberty until somebody watches it and tells me what is wrong with it. In that documentary, it was indicated that Prince William County suffered a lot of collateral damage, especially where the foreclosure rate was concerned, which increased at a rate far in excess of the other counties in Virginia. Foreclosures were already a problem in Arizona, and I am convinced it will get worse thanks to the new law.

What Price Enforcement? Another reply to Vallicella on SB 1070

   Let's try to generate a racial profiling scenario to see what is wrong with it. Profiling can take on different levels. Local law enforcement is expected to be a main player in the fight against illegal immigration. What that results in, is that anyone who looks like a lower-class Hispanic is targeted for what I call "fishing expeditions." Being Hispanic, perhaps along with evidence that the Hispanic is lower-class, is considered sufficient for "reasonable suspicion." People who look like lower-class Hispanics are pulled over on "tickytack" violations, other groups are not. When there is a loud music call about white people playing the Stones too loud, the police ask them to turn the music down. If the music is in Spanish, and the people look like lower-class Hispanics, papers are asked for. Whites get that 10 mph cushion with the speed limit, Hispanics are pulled over if they are so much as 1 mph over the limit. Everyone knows the police don't pursue every possible offense; they pick their battles. But in the hope that they will be able to get an illegal immigrant deported, they pick their battles with Hispanics differently from the way they pick their battles with the rest of us. "Legitimate stops" are generated on other ostensible grounds, but their real purpose is to ask a Hispanic about his immigration status.
      What this means is that, not just the immigration laws, but many other laws are enforced differently depending on the whether or not a person looks Hispanic. Or, perhaps only those police officers who harbor anti-Hispanic prejudices will enforce the law in this way, but citizens will have no protection against that kind of special treatment. That's the sort of thing I'm concerned about. I'm not willing to pay THAT price to enforce the immigration law. We are entitled equal protection under the law, and there should not be different rules for different racial groups or social classes. Can you agree that the above scenario would be a bad one? The fourteenth amendment guarantees equal protection under the law.
           Please note that I am concerned about how our citizens are treated. One group of citizens will be treated differently because of the color of their skin.
           Now, remember that Brewer says that the bill will be enforced without profiling, so I take it she thinks that there is such a thing as profiling, and that 1070 won't involve that. We are still waiting to see the specifics on how the law will be enforced. The question I have is whether the law won't result in a whole lot of undue litigation, whether it will be interpreted in such a way as to avoid the above scenario, and if it doesn't involve profiling, will it be an effective law at all, or just a symbolic gesture.
       Yes, some of the worst fears about the law are generated by its opponents, and that has resulted in the departure of some people. Whether those people are only illegals, or whether Hispanic citizens have left because they fear unequal treatment by law enforcement, is not completely clear. However, that doesn't make the law effective. Assuming that the law is implemented in a way consistent with the Constitution, will it continue to be effective?
          I have no problem with the immigration law being enforced at the border, where it should be enforced, and at the workplace, where some sort of workable ID will be more effective. I just hate the idea of a whole class of people, most of whom are law-abiding citizens, being treated differently by law enforcement because of the color of their skin.

Give me your tired, your poor

And if they're very, very lucky, they can come to America. This is from Forbes Magazine.

Some argue that they are only opposed to illegal immigration and that those who wish to move to the U.S. should go through the legal channels. I'm afraid this is a dodge: American immigration law is cumbersome and wasteful; further, most of the people who wish to move here stand no chance of being allowed to (Reason offers these handy directions to legality). Perhaps you're proud that your ancestors "came here legally." I'm pretty sure they would be denied entry today.

Without just advocating open borders, it seems to me that we can ask whether they should be more open than they in fact are, and whether our immigration policy is rational.

Michael Medved on Immigration

Is Comprehensive Immigration Reform Amnesty?

I often hear the statement that "comprehensive immigration reform" or a "path to citizenship" is just another word for amnesty.

If we took an offense that originally involved a jail sentence, and we change the penalty so that the person gets community service, is that amnesty?

This is from The Catholic News Agency

The reform would require those who have broken the law to pay a fine, pay owed back taxes and learn English. He said these requirements rebut claims that immigration reform is a kind of amnesty, since amnesty is a benefit granted “without anything in return.”
If you are penalizing an action, but you are not penalizing it in a different way than one would ordinarily have expected, is that amnesty?

The rebuttal might be that if you said if you let a murderer off with community service plus a fine, that's still surely amnesty, even though the person was penalized.

When I think of amnesty, I think of the law saying "Oh forget it." I don't see that in these proposals.

Do I support open borders?

Bill Vallicella asked me.

No. But I strongly suspect that barriers to legal immigration are probably excessive. We do have to keep out people with criminal records.
I think it's probably a false dilemma, or a straw man, to claim that anyone who wants to reform the immigration system simply wants open borders. It also doesn't follow that all "path to citizenship" programs are simply amnesty. Those that I have heard proposed involved paying a penalty, and earning citizenship. (I realize there are a wide range of fairness issues involved in all of this, but the idea that such plans involve our just forgetting that people are here illegally doesn't seem right to me at all).
This is an Ed Montini column which discusses the effort of Tyson Nash, the hockey player (not related to the Suns Steve Nash, apparently), who, in spite of being a model citizen, came close to being deported. It seems to me that I could ask whether we could make immigration easier without advocating open borders.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/05/21/20100521Montini0521.html
I am also convinced that we've have to combine a partial immigration reform with an increase in border security. I'd rather stop them before they come in than send them back after they've settled in and started contributing to our community.
As for the illegal immigrants that are already here, there are questions in my mind about what the economic impact of their removal from our community would be. The departures from Prince William County in Virginia, which was the basis for the movie 9500 Liberty, showed that it resulted in a lot of economic harm, and an increase in the rate of foreclosures. In short, illegal immigrants are a mixed curse, since they become part of our community and do contribute to its economy, pay taxes, etc. I'm not even sure it's physically possible to deport all of them, anyway. That flaming liberal Michael Medved said that in order to send all of the back you'd need buses that, laid end to end, would stretch from Tijuana to Seattle.
On the other hand, the people that actually do transport these desperate people over the border are, so far as I can tell, the worst sorts of criminals, and surely we can hit them as hard as possible.
I seriously doubt that 1070 is going to result in very many deportations. The cost in ill will between the Hispanic community and the rest of us, to my mind, far outweighs the improvement in will provide in law enforcement, which I suspect will be minimal.
So, without actually having done a full cost-benefit analysis on all of this, I would say start with security at the border, make the process of immigration more rational but don't just throw it wide open, and then provide some path to citizenship that involves a serious penalty and isn't just simple amnesty.
A fence? Yes, if it would work, no, if it wouldn't.

The Fifty Per Cent Solution

What's wrong with SB 1070?


Well, my main concern is with the "reasonable suspicion" clause. That strikes me as horribly vague. Some people think that when they see a lower-class Hispanic-looking person who speaks Spanish much better than English, then we can reasonably suspect that they are illegal immigrants. We already have a county Sheriff who goes fishing for illegal immigrants.




In our state, most illegals are Hispanics, but most Hispanics are not illegals. If you define your conception of what it takes to have reasonable suspicion, and on my blog I made an un-remarked-upon recommendation that we have reasonable suspicion just in case we have objective criteria leading to the conclusion that it is more likely than not that the person is illegal, then you could at least eliminate the worst of the profiling problems. You can't just stop a Hispanic and make an immigration status inquiry, because being Hispanic is not sufficient for it to be more than 50% likely that the person is here illegally.


It isn't just a racial issue; most illegal immigrants make less money than people here legally, and they are more likely to be monolingual Spanish speakers or poor English speakers than their legal counterparts. But if these criteria are going to be sufficient to justify and immigration inquiry then, since such in inquiry is considerably discommoding to its object, it runs afoul of a basic conviction that law-abiding citizens should not be treated differently by the government because of race, color, or national origin.



If these criteria are not sufficient, then I have doubts as to whether the law will actually get much of anybody deported. So my "fifty per cent solution" may result in the law not result in invidious profiling, but it might also render the law ineffective.



 

Reasonable Suspicion and a Preponderance of the Evidence

One article I read made the case the "reasonable suspicion" is in a family of terms including "preponderance of the evidence." A preponderance of the evidence seems to me to be require a better than 50% likelihood. That's why it was so easy for the civil jury to find O. J. liable for the double murders, even though he was acquitted in criminal court. Civil court requires a preponderance of the evidence, criminal court requires that it be beyond reasonable doubt. It seems to me that one way of construing SB 1070 so as to avoid some of the most serious concerns about it would be to construe "reasonable suspicion" in just this way. While most illegals in Arizona are Hispanic, most Hispanics in Arizona are not illegal, and therefore merely being Hispanic should not be sufficient to generate reasonable suspicion so defined. Even criteria like lower-class clothing, playing Spanish-language music, and communicating mostly in Spanish would not be sufficient for reasonable suspicion. Though I suppose standing on the sidewalk of a Home Depot looking for day-labor work might be sufficient.

The point is, if a person is asked for papers, there has to be sufficient objective evidence that makes it more than 50% likely that the person is here illegally. (I admit that being a subjectivist about prior probabilities makes this recommendation more difficult.)

I kind of doubt I'd vote for the bill if I were a member of the State Senate even with this gloss. But it would certainly help if it were understood in this way.

Is the Profiling Charge Trivial?

Steve Hays of Triablogue: Victor Reppert has made a shocking discovery. Thankfully, it took a man of his philosophical acumen to ferret this out. Reppert just discovered that laws disproportionately impact lawbreakers. Yes, you heard me right. Laws discriminate against outlaws. They have the insidious potential to single out non-law abiding citizens.

For example, laws against drunk driving single out drivers. By contrast, laws against DUI don’t profile joggers or swimmers–only drivers.

It’s appalling that in this day and age we still have such pernicious laws on the books. Time to stage a protest. Riot in the streets.

My reply: Hence, if a law is typically broken by a certain group, that group will on one level be disproportionately affected by the law. So the mere fact of disproportionate impact doesn't show that there is any invidious profiling.

However, it is possible that a law might have a disproportionate impact of one group as opposed to another that affects people who don't break the law. In other words, if a law, say, the law against illegal border-crossing, is violated by Hispanics far more than any other group, then if we try to catch them, there will of course be a completely benign disproportionate impact.

However, that doesn't dispel all objections to profiling, as some people seem to think that it does. It might turn out that a law not only affects law-breaking Hispanics, but also law-abiding Hispanics. If, let's say, the Maricopa County Sheriff were to perform a "crime sweep" in largely lower-class Hispanic areas as a sort of fishing expedition for illegal immigrants, using other statutes as a pretext for making stops that might lead to a paper check and a possible deportation, what we will find is that many law-abiding Hispanics will be caught in the net. Even if the vast majority of illegals are Hispanics, the majority of Hispanics are here legally.

Now, we can argue from here that the disproportionate impact on law-abiding Hispanics as opposed to law-abiding Anglos and African-Americans is a price worth paying to crack down on illegal immigration. That would be another argument. However, the implicit argument in this kind of statement, that the charge of racial profiling is invariably trivial, doesn't work.

Want to know what profiling looks like? Sheriff Arpaio's record speaks for itself

Do we really want the immigration law enforced this way?

No fishing, please: a conservative Arizona Republic columnist challenges SB 1070

Here is that Robert Robb column from the Republic again. Again please note he's a conservative columnist who supports border enforcement, you will find that he thinks that so long as the "reasonable suspicion" arises in the course of ordinary police investigation of other crimes. That is what the law intends. However, he thinks the law doesn't provide adequate protection against what I would call "fishing expeditions," such as the ones Joe Arpaio has been engaging in.


Consider the following:

Case 1: An officer sees a car with a broken tail light. He stops the car, asks for a DL, notices that the people look Hispanic and don't speak English, and can't produce a license. The officer calls ICE.

Case 2: The officer sees a older-model car with a Spanish-language radio station bumper sticker. He notices the people look Hispanic. He THEN looks at the car closely for an onstensible violation and finds one, one that he would let pass if the people in the car looked like Anglos. He makes the stop, and if the DL is not produced, he calls ICE.


The trouble here is that, from the point of view of public record, these two stops are indistinguishable. The first officer is not fishing, but the second is.

Fishing expeditions are going to harm citizens and legal immigrants, because a group of people (and actually this could include Hispanic-looking people who aren't Hispanic at all, such as Bhutanese refugees). I consider that unacceptable.


Another set of cases I'm concerned about, which Robb doesn't talk about, are cases with pedestrians or passengers, not to mention cases where the police are called to a home but ordinarily ID is not required. If an officer comes to a home to tell them to turn their music down, he doesn't normally ask for a license. But if the music is in Spanish, and the people look like lower-class Hispanics, should he ask for papers? To me, that's fishing also.

Please notice that Robb makes a distinction between a disproportionate affect on Latinos, which he thinks is inevitable given any attempt to enforce immigration laws, and inividious enforcement, which he thinks the law either allows for or fails to effectively prevent.

One test of a law would be that if a law results in a group of law-abiding citizens being systematically treated differently by government and law enforcement as opposed to other groups of law-abiding citizens in virtue of the color of their skin, then something is wrong with the law. You should be able to go about your business, and if you obey the law, your should be treated just like everybody else.