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It's common sense. Something you might be lacking if you got lost on what I said. If you live in Europe, then Europe's reality is YOUR reality. You live in the US, nothing that Europe does within their own countries has ANY effect on you as an American citizen. YOUR reality is what happens in the US.
To quote Einstein...
"Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by age 18"
What happens in America, or Europe, or China, or Japan or India, or Iran... affects everybody. THAT isn't based on someone's common sense, it is based in reality.
People simply don't understand international politics, which is why they're against FTAs. FTAs are a way the United States maintains its hegemony across the globe. You want to fight the war against terror? One of the only ways the US can get other countries to cooperate is through FTAs. Sometimes offering another country guns and bombs doesn't work, but what will work is if you threaten to hit them in the pocket book or offer them opportunities for them to increase their GDP through trading in exchange for intelligence and the ability to control regional integrations that favor the United States.
People simply don't understand international politics, which is why they're against FTAs. FTAs are a way the United States maintains its hegemony across the globe. You want to fight the war against terror? One of the only ways the US can get other countries to cooperate is through FTAs. Sometimes offering another country guns and bombs doesn't work, but what will work is if you threaten to hit them in the pocket book or offer them opportunities for them to increase their GDP through trading in exchange for intelligence and the ability to control regional integrations that favor the United States.
You can have sovereignty with open borders. As long as someone doesn't show a risk to national security, let them through.
Europe does it. It doesn't have a problem with it.
Interesting to me considering your username that you post this. Easy immigration into Europe is becoming a big issue as it causes financial stress on each country.
Sarkozy absolutely wants tighter controls on immigration.
Just a few examples that show Europe most definitely cares about open/closed borders. They have seen that over time, immigrants from other areas WILL go where the social benefits are richest. And now many, perhaps most, European countries face enormous financial pressure to address the drain on their economies.
Its also about private ownership and nation states. If there are more people trying to get in than trying to get out, that means the price of entry is too low. People will pay up to £20k to be trafficked into the UK, or have a sham wedding set up for them. Free markets would mean the state would sell border control contracts to companies, who could enforce charging people for entry. If £20k is the level where supply and demand meet and raise the greatest revenue, then £20k would be the price of entry.
In all honesty, I'm all for a free-market and open-borders as long as it was actually a real free market.
Open borders works great, as long as no one is entitled to anything from the government. If they come here, they can only stay if they produce something others are willing to pay for.
As the saying goes, you can have free immigration to jobs, you cannot have free immigration to welfare. And that goes far beyond what you probably believe to be welfare. It would require a trimming-down to almost a point of the abolishing of all government. Because from a social aspect, anytime one group feels they are paying a disproportionate amount for anything as a group compared to others of any variety, then you have the seeds for wanting the government to do something about it.
Lets take for instance the police. Who pays for the police? We do.
Is there generally a rise in crime when you have a large influx of culturally different people? Most certainly.
So if there is higher crime, that means there will need to be more police. And who pays for them? We all do.
So even if you could rid the government of everything except the most basic of obligations. You see that there will almost always be a cost imposed on certain people because of the actions of others. Which plants the seeds for the government to intervene for the protection of society itself.
How do you solve this? That is difficult to arrive to a conclusion about. But generally it takes three things... Decentralization, competition, and discrimination..
Think of it like building codes for a minute. In my city, all houses are required to be at least 50% brick. On top of that, the size of homes have to be relatively uniform in each neighborhood. Even the distance to the front door from the curb has to be fairly uniform. There are laws regarding the height of fences and where they can be located. They don't allow you to leave trash lying around. And also, they limit where you can park your car and things like boats and RV's.
These are government laws and regulations, and they differ from one municipality to the next. If I don't agree with these regulations, I don't have the live in this city. There are plenty of cities that have much more lax building codes and regulations that aren't that far from where I live, and if I found the laws here to be overbearing, I could always move somewhere else.
In society, there must be laws. Think of what cities would be like without building regulations. People could build anything anywhere. And if someone wanted to build something unattractive next to your home, it could kill your resale value on your home. So, having building restrictions and zoning is a very good thing to prevent people from doing indirect harm to each other.
The question is, how are these laws best administered?
Imagine the same situation above, except there was one federal law for the entire country. It would effectively make trailers illegal except in areas zoned for trailers. It wouldn't allow people in the country to store dilapidated vehicles on their properties. It would prevent unlicensed individuals from building their own homes or doing renovations in more rural settings. It might force people even to overinsulate their homes when it is relatively unnecessary because of climate.
Sure, it might make some people happy, but a lot of people will be unhappy because of it.
In any society you need to have laws and regulations. But, in a decentralized country, then if the laws in one area of the country are undesirable or impractical, then people have the option to move somewhere else. This is a form of competition, and competition is what the free-market is all about.
The last part is discrimination. I know the word is abhorrent to many people. But discrimination is a good thing. We discriminate constantly, even if we refuse to acknowledge it. When you are looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend, there will be a very long list of things you are looking for in that person, and you discriminate against anyone who doesn't fill that mold. If you only like blondes, you are discriminating against non-blondes. If you only like Asians, then you are discriminating against non-asians. If you choose to live in a wealthy area of town, you are effectively discriminating against the poor. If you refuse to hire someone because they don't have a high-school diploma. Then you are discriminating against people who are high-school dropouts.
I know we are trained to believe that all discrimination is bad, but in reality, there are plenty of forms of discrimination that are good. We discriminate basically to protect ourselves. It is a natural human tendency, and a very good thing.
So back to decentralization and competition. These decentralized municipalities need to be able to discriminate. And if they are discriminating for unjust reasons, then they should be allowed to fail.
If a city wants to allow every Mexican in Mexico to live there, and give them the right to vote and be involved in local politics. It should have that right. On the other hand, another city should be allowed to have the opposite stance.
If we look at the founding principles of this nation. They were absolutely wonderful on these points. The states operated as basically municipalities in my examples. Congress controlled citizenship. But in many states, as many as 1/3rd of all people living in them, were not American citizens. And in many of these states, those non-citizens were given the right to vote, because voting is regulated by the states, not the federal government.
There was no real United States citizenship then, so the federal government didn't have the obligation to protect borders. Under that system, each state regulated their own immigration. Under that system, a state like California could allow as many foreigners into it as it desires, but they simply wouldn't be allowed to travel to any of the other states because they weren't actually citizens. And moreover, there was no birthright citizenship back then either. So even the offspring of foreigners were still foreigners, not citizens.
So what changed? The 14th amendment completely changed the whole nature of this country. In fact, the 14th amendment is really what made this country a country. But, the 14th amendment was actually unconstitutionally ratified. There are plenty of historical documents to prove that this was the case. Without the 14th amendment, there is no United States citizenship. The scope of the Supreme Court instantly falls to almost nothing. There is no Roe v. Wade, there is no federal income tax. The federal government would have to largely abolish itself overnight.
But more importantly, without the 14th amendment. We again have, decentralization, competition, and discrimination. Throw in a free-market, stop our militarism around the world, and you can again have almost fully open-borders.
Last edited by Redshadowz; 03-23-2012 at 12:59 PM..
You really didn't read anything I wrote to Macaw in context, did you?
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Originally Posted by chicagonut
There are so many lies in this post I don't know where to begin. Illegals are not taking jobs that Americans won't do! They are being discriminated against by the employers in favor of cheap labor.
This subject has been studied extensively, and it is a multifaceted argument, but I'll leave FactCheck to break it down simply. To note, Farmers' aren't complaining about food rotting in the fields because of an influx of American workers. And just for ****s and giggles, how about when Alabama managed to arrest two successful business persons under their new immigration law--the one designed to stop the illegals from taking American jobs?
Illegal immigrants aren't taking American jobs--companies are offering these jobs to immigrants, and they are overwhelmingly low-skilled, high-labor jobs that most American's think is beneath them.
And this is anecdotal, but I know a farmer who hires Mexicans because they bust their ass all day to pick cherries. Non of the college students (which is who normally applied) would work more than a week before quitting.
We've been importing labor for 400 years to do **** we're too lazy to do ourselves. This is literally nothing new. We did it with Africans, we did it with the Irish, the Chinese, Germans, Natives, and among others, the cheap Mexican labor.
Quote:
Just what type of qualifications don't Americans have to do construction work, hospitality jobs, etc? How did this nation become the success it is without our own blue collar workforce? "Immigrants" tend to be smarter, etc.? You got a link for that? Besides the topic is illegal aliens, not immigrants.
Macaw was referring to immigration (not illegal) when talking about increasing the SS and Medicaid revenues. I was pointing out that legal immigrants in the country tend to be smarter, better educated, and wealthier than the average American. I have the statistics around here somewhere, but it's honestly such an unimportant argument, you don't need to take it at face value, and I'm too lazy to dig it up. It doesn't refer to illegal immigrants or refugees, just the ones that immigrate here usually for work or other opportunity.
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As for that poem on the Statue of Liberty, it doesn't negate our right to have immigration laws today. These illegals aren't coming through the Golden Door they sneaking in the back door. Back when that statue was erected we were a wide open frontier, sparsely populated and with plentiful resources. The same isn't true today. We can't regulate immigration to reasonable numbers today based on some damned poem from long ago?
Damned poem. Nice way of putting an American Icon. Kind of like it's just a god-damned piece of paper.
We're still pretty sparsely populated. Pretty much every argument against illegal immigration (taking our jobs, not paying taxes, using our resources, high-crime, and this year's flavor--voter fraud) is patently false. We should be more interested in developing better migrant worker laws than shuffling around bitchin' about illegals. If you didn't have such strict standards on immigration, they wouldn't be staying here. A lot of interviews were performed on these workers, and one of the reason's they don't go back South is because it's so hard to get here in the first place, so they set up residency and twiddle along hoping not to get caught.
Let's make it easier for them to work here, so that when the season's over, they'll go back home, and not user our resources, okay?
Okay.
Quote:
Your remark about "no vacancy" is totally ridiculous also. We currently take in a milion legal immigrants per year. How does that equate to "no vacancy"?
"No vacancy" is actually a movie quote from Lethal Weapon 4. But we don't welcome immigrants looking for opportunity here with open arms. We shun them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redshadowz
In all honesty, I'm all for a free-market and open-borders as long as it was actually a real free market.
Open borders works great, as long as no one is entitled to anything from the government. If they come here, they can only stay if they produce something others are willing to pay for.
As the saying goes, you can have free immigration to jobs, you cannot have free immigration to welfare. And that goes far beyond what you probably believe to be welfare. It would require a trimming-down to almost a point of the abolishing of all government. Because from a social aspect, anytime one group feels they are paying a disproportionate amount for anything as a group compared to others of any variety, then you have the seeds for wanting the government to do something about it.
Lets take for instance the police. Who pays for the police? We do. Is there generally a rise in crime when you have a large influx of culturally different people? Most certainly.
So if there is higher crime, that means there will need to be more police. And who pays for them? We all do.
Evidence supporting that claim?
Quote:
So even if you could rid the government of everything except the most basic of obligations. You see that there will almost always be a cost imposed on certain people because of the actions of others. Which plants the seeds for the government to intervene for the protection of society itself.
How do you solve this? That is difficult to arrive to a conclusion about. But generally it takes three things... Decentralization, competition, and discrimination..
Think of it like building codes for a minute. In my city, all houses are required to be at least 50% brick. On top of that, the size of homes have to be relatively uniform in each neighborhood. Even the distance to the front door from the curb has to be fairly uniform. There are laws regarding the height of fences and where they can be located. They don't allow you to leave trash lying around. And also, they limit where you can park your car and things like boats and RV's.
These are government laws and regulations, and they differ from one municipality to the next. If I don't agree with these regulations, I don't have the live in this city. There are plenty of cities that have much more lax building codes and regulations that aren't that far from where I live, and if I found the laws here to be overbearing, I could always move somewhere else.
In society, there must be laws. Think of what cities would be like without building regulations. People could build anything anywhere. And if someone wanted to build something unattractive next to your home, it could kill your resale value on your home. So, having building restrictions and zoning is a very good thing to prevent people from doing indirect harm to each other.
The question is, how are these laws best administered?
Imagine the same situation above, except there was one federal law for the entire country. It would effectively make trailers illegal except in areas zoned for trailers. It wouldn't allow people in the country to store dilapidated vehicles on their properties. It would prevent unlicensed individuals from building their own homes or doing renovations in more rural settings. It might force people even to overinsulate their homes when it is relatively unnecessary because of climate.
Sure, it might make some people happy, but a lot of people will be unhappy because of it.
In any society you need to have laws and regulations. But, in a decentralized country, then if the laws in one area of the country are undesirable or impractical, then people have the option to move somewhere else. This is a form of competition, and competition is what the free-market is all about.
Your analogy doesn't make any sense. Relevant regulation to an area doesn't promote competition to places that don't need that regulation. If it's a cold climate, and you don't like the cold, no amount of "look how much more thermal insulation we have than those bastards in California have!" is going to promote people to move to a cold climate. You need a better analogy.
FAIR competition is promoted with regulation. Imagine if sports didn't have any rules. A baseball team could spend 200 billion dollars hiring steroid-induced hulks with 2x4 rocket-propelled bats, while the Oakland A's only had Brad Pitt and Johan Hill. In order to promote competition, you have to regulate to keep competition fair. Otherwise all you end up with is a monopoly.
Quote:
The last part is discrimination. I know the word is abhorrent to many people. But discrimination is a good thing. We discriminate constantly, even if we refuse to acknowledge it. When you are looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend, there will be a very long list of things you are looking for in that person, and you discriminate against anyone who doesn't fill that mold. If you only like blondes, you are discriminating against non-blondes. If you only like Asians, then you are discriminating against non-asians. If you choose to live in a wealthy area of town, you are effectively discriminating against the poor. If you refuse to hire someone because they don't have a high-school diploma. Then you are discriminating against people who are high-school dropouts.
I know we are trained to believe that all discrimination is bad, but in reality, there are plenty of forms of discrimination that are good. We discriminate basically to protect ourselves. It is a natural human tendency, and a very good thing.
Personal tastes aside, society frowns about frivolous discrimination. You can't discriminate against someone building a house in your neighborhood because they're Asian. If you want to be a racist hillbilly, you can, but you can't enforce that narrow view on laws and regulations, or on other people, without being justify penalized for it.
Quote:
So back to decentralization and competition. These decentralized municipalities need to be able to discriminate. And if they are discriminating for unjust reasons, then they should be allowed to fail.
If a city wants to allow every Mexican in Mexico to live there, and give them the right to vote and be involved in local politics. It should have that right. On the other hand, another city should be allowed to have the opposite stance.
Are you referring to "sanctuary cities." A government cannot discriminate against individuals or groups based on race, sex, age, and a few other protected minorities. That's illegal. Companies get away with what is called redlining. Insurance companies do it (despicably) by raising insurance rates based on where you live. People would be paying four grand a year for car insurance on a car worth half that because they live in Detroit.
Quote:
If we look at the founding principles of this nation. They were absolutely wonderful on these points. The states operated as basically municipalities in my examples. Congress controlled citizenship. But in many states, as many as 1/3rd of all people living in them, were not American citizens. And in many of these states, those non-citizens were given the right to vote, because voting is regulated by the states, not the federal government.
One third of people in states aren't citizens? Where did you get that information?
Quote:
There was no real United States citizenship then, so the federal government didn't have the obligation to protect borders. Under that system, each state regulated their own immigration. Under that system, a state like California could allow as many foreigners into it as it desires, but they simply wouldn't be allowed to travel to any of the other states because they weren't actually citizens. And moreover, there was no birthright citizenship back then either. So even the offspring of foreigners were still foreigners, not citizens.
I smell something fishy here.
Quote:
So what changed? The 14th amendment completely changed the whole nature of this country. In fact, the 14th amendment is really what made this country a country. But, the 14th amendment was actually unconstitutionally ratified. There are plenty of historical documents to prove that this was the case. Without the 14th amendment, there is no United States citizenship. The scope of the Supreme Court instantly falls to almost nothing. There is no Roe v. Wade, there is no federal income tax. The federal government would have to largely abolish itself overnight.
But more importantly, without the 14th amendment. We again have, decentralization, competition, and discrimination. Throw in a free-market, stop our militarism around the world, and you can again have almost fully open-borders.
There it is! I have little doubt you're a "constitutionalist."
I see. You want to protect individuals livelihood while controlling competition?
And yet you support the free-market?
Just want a little consistency, Kkaos.
Yes, they're slaves, no, they aren't taking American jobs. No American has been ambushed by an illegal immigrant and had his job taken away from him. The overwhelming majority of Illegals in this country are doing ****-work nobody else will do.
Slow down their, ranger. We created the drug cartels. American consumerism combined with illicit narcotics? Anytime you outlaw something, there will be outlaws who fill the demand. Your best bet at killing cartels is to legalize. Building fifty foot high walls isn't going to do much good. It's a cat and mouse game between DEA, BP, and the cartels. The come up with something new, and our guys have to build something to stop it.
Better to just legalize and bring that industry into the United States.
Job creators those illegals are!
We have lots of work, just too many people who aren't qualified for them. Thousands of skilled trade positions are available because most of the people out of work don't have that kind of training. Let's try focusing on getting our public educated first instead of worrying about the fruit-pickers.
Immigrants tend to be smarter and wealthier on average when they come to the U.S. It's kind of irrelevant if they become citizens and start collecting Social Security. Why would you deny them that?
"Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
I guess it reads no vacancy now?
OH MAN!! Just seen this and can not let this go unanswered. First of all you left off the very end of the poem "Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Ever hear of someone taking something out of context. Here is the whole thing and I want you to take note of the very end.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
A door my friend is a entry point. No where does it say "screw the USA sovereignty and just sneak in and stay as long as you wish"!
I don't want to control competition but want a country that has fair trade. Immigration has NEVER been about what is best for the world's poor (although I do agree we should not take advantage of legal immigrants and illegals should be shipped out). See video below to explain why in part. You have a twisted view of what a free market system is. A true "free market" would be something where companies can throw nuclear waste in the great lakes and spew cancer causing chemicals in the air...is that what you are for?
At the very same time we have to have laws for the best interest of the country on trade and people allowed in. This is very basic.
Now on to the drug cartels. Fine. We make pot legal. More people get hooked on coke. The cartels then shift their effort to make cocaine, meth and others to fill the market. Do we make meth and coke legal? I am the son of a mother who was crippled by a drunk driver so please excuse me when I say I have no problem with people frying their own brains. But if you think that making drugs legal is going to solve this without shifting problems else where, you are living in a delusion.
The border wall. No one is saying a border wall alone will stop illegal entry by illegal immigrants, drug cartels, terrorists. But let me ask you a question. If I have you run 300 ft is it more difficult with nothing in the way or 2 50ft fences in the way? Again with more cameras, sensors, border patrol, unmanned aircraft etc it can be done. We do in Area 51 and we secure borders around the world. Securing the ports and borders is something that the feds have a responsiblity to do! (Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution).
"Better to just legalize and bring that industry into the United States."
Right because the system they have in Mexico, China, etc works so well for most of the people right? Your ideas are a death sentence for the middle class of the USA. You are either super rich or don't understand.
"We have lots of work, just too many people who aren't qualified for them. Thousands of skilled trade positions are available because most of the people out of work don't have that kind of training. Let's try focusing on getting our public educated first instead of worrying about the fruit-pickers."
You can not be serious! We hear that "these are jobs American won't do because they are jobs beneath most Americans". Now we hear from you and others we have to bring in more skilled workers because the USA does not have enough skilled workers to fill those jobs! Are you fricking serious? You can't have it both ways!
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