Opening with a drive-by accusation of inhumanity is uncalled for. First, it's the kind of casual political dehumanization that is THE problem with partisanship and polarization today. Second, it HAS to be dishonest because you actually engage with my main idea, the balance of suffering, in your post.
But I do appreciate that you did actually engage with the ideas, so moving on to the productive parts...
First, to briefly clarify, I said services, not welfare, and the specific example was policing. If immigrants contribute to the economy (i.e., the tax base directly or not) but don't need to have their crimes investigated or other basic (non-welfare) government services, then that just supports my statement that the status quo is pretty ideal for morally bankrupt politicians and/or businessmen.
Next: law and the status quo is out of balance, yes, and we can either move people until the law is in force, or move the law until the people are consistent with it (or some combination). So yes, I'm trying to balance abstract law - but since I DON'T want the rule of law to be inhuman, the question is of least harm.
Here are some numbers. These days the US deports ~410k people (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/31/u-s-immigrant-deportations-declined-in-2014-but-rem ain-near-record-high/). Current estimates of the illegal immigrant population are just over 11 million (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/). If nothing changes, then in a little under 28 years the US will have done the equivalent of deported all illegal immigrants in the country and be looking to continue deporting, breaking up families, and giving police the opportunity to selectively enforce for the foreseeable future. In short, not only will the equivalent of a maximalist deportation happen under the status quo, it will be, as ably noted in (3) of the original post (and elsewhere), a life of fear and paranoia that this could be the day their family is torn apart.
Thus I have pretty good reasons to suspect that the status quo is WORSE than deportation followed by effective enforcement and deterrence of immigration controls. That is, all the complaints about mass deportation seem to also apply to the status quo.
Next point: "Created Equal" is a fine ideal, and one I agree with. But it's not the only ideal. By itself, it implies no borders, no citizenship status, as dividing up people like that runs counter to the idea. But Democracy is another nice ideal, and I'm pretty sure "no borders" or "no immigration limits" is not going to pass the Democratic process these days, so that option is likely out. Similarly (though slightly less) politically untenable is any sort of grand compromise involving some amnesty/naturalization, some deportations, and border controls to prevent the horrible status quo from re-occurring.
That leaves #1 (Status Quo) and #4 (Mass Deportation). #1 is achieved by doing nothing, #4 plausibly achievable through executive power, thanks to decades of bipartisan executive power creep. (That's where the binary choice comes from. You're correct I wasn't clear on that, I hope it's clear now.)
This is why I'm on the fence and have misgivings, because as far as I can tell the status quo is set to cause more suffering for more people than deportation, and deportation seems to be the next most practical option after the status quo. I wrote the initial comment because I AM NOT HAPPY with that conclusion and wanted, as I said before, to see if there was some way out that I wasn't seeing.
Since I was apparently misunderstood, I'm writing a second long long comment to clarify. Telling me that the policy options should magically conform to all my ideals does not actually give me that policy option. Sadly.
Now for your last paragraph, and best point. The immigrants are choosing the hazards of illegal crossings, risks of deportation, and potential life of paranoia of all things government, and so the market has spoken. This is a good argument, a very good argument, but not sufficient. Oh, I could say it's insufficient because it utterly discounts the democratic opinion of current citizens and so tacitly suggests the immigrants' opinion counts for more, but the real reason (at least for me) is my misgivings of how that argument works.
Some people would prefer to be in the US even in a legal quagmire, so since they're willing to make that trade who are we to stop them. Fine.
Then by the same logic: Some people would prefer to work even at below minimum wage, so who are we to enforce minimum wage laws?
Or any number of other versions - OSHA compliance, anti-harassment laws, and ever so many others. It's a very libertarian idea, but there's a reason I don't call myself a libertarian and it's because the argument for regulation, ANY regulation is that without boundaries people will find ways to abuse the freedom - without minimum wage, local monopolies on jobs can lead to servitude and no power to demand job safety rules, etc. Similarly, to the topic at hand, that accepting a pool of legally gray labour will enable and encourage people to abuse that labour force.
For the final argument to be TRULY convincing, I'd like a reason to believe that, at least in this case, the moral hazard argument does not apply. The descriptions I have read of gray labour working conditions both hear and abroad do not make me optimistic.
I like this post - it lays out the arguments against enforcement completely and concisely, which is why it clarified for me exactly why am fence-sitting on this issue with considerable misgivings for either side.
I don't disagree with any of those three points, my misgivings come from what they imply.
1) If enough of the economy depends on so many immigrants, than there should be enough people voting pocketbook to get the laws changed. Then too, if (as is OFTEN argued) the economy depends on the illegal immigrants because they are willing to do hard work for minimum wage or less, then the conclusion is that immigrants ARE in fact driving down the price of labour for the least skilled and least privileged (or alternatively that minimum wage is economically wrongheaded and prevents unskilled CITIZENS from getting work?), AND that the grey area of undocumented status is nearly as exploitative as that of Indian & Sri Lankan workers in the UAE.
2) Granted, and this unfortunate legal gray area that has so many people in fear is because amnesties and non-enforcement was allowed to exist in the first place. How is lack of immigration enforcement NOT encouraging and maintaining an exploitative second class citizenry? Not that your post makes this mistake, but many arguing on this point basically go on to make a sunk costs fallacy argument - the cruelties of changing the status quo mean we have to maintain the cruelties of the status quo indefinitely..
3) Again, undocumented status is described here as a horrifying kafkaesque trap that might as well have been designed by elitists wanting cheap labour and a boost to the economy without needing to pay for government services or worry about political representation.
The deportation argument is rule of law, and the amnesty argument is the human cost, and so the two sides talk past each other because the arguments are at different conceptual levels. My point here is that it has always seemed to me that there are human costs to the lack of the rule of law, and a decline in the rule of law associated with human suffering. The two sides really are two sides of the same coin. Thus: what is the solution?
-The horribly exploitative status quo that nobody likes? -End of borders and border controls (as Anarchists and capital-L Libertarians call for)? -Amnesty for some or all of those here now followed by full enforcement of whatever procedures, limits, or quotas that are or might be set? -Full enforcement now and discouraging future illegal immigration that would recreate the status quo sometime in the future?
Is there an option I'm missing? (And let's stick with principle - we don't, at this point, need to be bogged down in how incompetent the handling of any option could be in practice, even with Trump in the White House.) The first option I don't want, but seems to be the end result of all the calls to not enforce current law. The fourth is legal (though, again, I agree terribly unpleasant) and is, in theory, short term pain for long term gain as far as the exploitative legal gray area goes. The middle two require changing the law, not just criticizing the enforcement of the current law.
So again, am I missing something? Do you see another option to actually solve this problem? For myself I think I'd like to see a grand compromise version of #3, but if sufficient support does not exist to legalize more immigrants (and I see little evidence that there is), why is supporting the existence of a disenfranchised underclass and its endless drip of misery so OBVIOUSLY superior to the (admittedly more dramatic, more sudden, and more visible) misery of deportation?
There is a way to see this as a problem for theatres. $50 is about four or five tickets (last I went). With the proposed system, one guy with a nice TV system in his basement could easily cut the cost of viewing a movie for a whole bunch of friends who chip in a bit extra on top of the pizza money. The high up-front cost would also encourage buyers to avoid going out in order to make the purchase feel worthwhile.
Now, obviously, cheaper viewing could increase viewership - but not infinitely. This service really does have the potential to replace some of the incumbents with a couple of 'home theatres' in a way that would more directly compete with them than Netflix ever did.
As a consumer, I agree that this competition would be good, but because it actually would be something approaching competition, the theatres' fears are not quite as groundless as the tone of the article suggests.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
But I do appreciate that you did actually engage with the ideas, so moving on to the productive parts...
First, to briefly clarify, I said services, not welfare, and the specific example was policing. If immigrants contribute to the economy (i.e., the tax base directly or not) but don't need to have their crimes investigated or other basic (non-welfare) government services, then that just supports my statement that the status quo is pretty ideal for morally bankrupt politicians and/or businessmen.
Next: law and the status quo is out of balance, yes, and we can either move people until the law is in force, or move the law until the people are consistent with it (or some combination). So yes, I'm trying to balance abstract law - but since I DON'T want the rule of law to be inhuman, the question is of least harm.
Here are some numbers. These days the US deports ~410k people (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/31/u-s-immigrant-deportations-declined-in-2014-but-rem ain-near-record-high/). Current estimates of the illegal immigrant population are just over 11 million (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/). If nothing changes, then in a little under 28 years the US will have done the equivalent of deported all illegal immigrants in the country and be looking to continue deporting, breaking up families, and giving police the opportunity to selectively enforce for the foreseeable future. In short, not only will the equivalent of a maximalist deportation happen under the status quo, it will be, as ably noted in (3) of the original post (and elsewhere), a life of fear and paranoia that this could be the day their family is torn apart.
Thus I have pretty good reasons to suspect that the status quo is WORSE than deportation followed by effective enforcement and deterrence of immigration controls. That is, all the complaints about mass deportation seem to also apply to the status quo.
Next point: "Created Equal" is a fine ideal, and one I agree with. But it's not the only ideal. By itself, it implies no borders, no citizenship status, as dividing up people like that runs counter to the idea. But Democracy is another nice ideal, and I'm pretty sure "no borders" or "no immigration limits" is not going to pass the Democratic process these days, so that option is likely out. Similarly (though slightly less) politically untenable is any sort of grand compromise involving some amnesty/naturalization, some deportations, and border controls to prevent the horrible status quo from re-occurring.
That leaves #1 (Status Quo) and #4 (Mass Deportation). #1 is achieved by doing nothing, #4 plausibly achievable through executive power, thanks to decades of bipartisan executive power creep. (That's where the binary choice comes from. You're correct I wasn't clear on that, I hope it's clear now.)
This is why I'm on the fence and have misgivings, because as far as I can tell the status quo is set to cause more suffering for more people than deportation, and deportation seems to be the next most practical option after the status quo. I wrote the initial comment because I AM NOT HAPPY with that conclusion and wanted, as I said before, to see if there was some way out that I wasn't seeing.
Since I was apparently misunderstood, I'm writing a second long long comment to clarify. Telling me that the policy options should magically conform to all my ideals does not actually give me that policy option. Sadly.
Now for your last paragraph, and best point. The immigrants are choosing the hazards of illegal crossings, risks of deportation, and potential life of paranoia of all things government, and so the market has spoken. This is a good argument, a very good argument, but not sufficient. Oh, I could say it's insufficient because it utterly discounts the democratic opinion of current citizens and so tacitly suggests the immigrants' opinion counts for more, but the real reason (at least for me) is my misgivings of how that argument works.
Some people would prefer to be in the US even in a legal quagmire, so since they're willing to make that trade who are we to stop them. Fine.
Then by the same logic: Some people would prefer to work even at below minimum wage, so who are we to enforce minimum wage laws?
Or any number of other versions - OSHA compliance, anti-harassment laws, and ever so many others. It's a very libertarian idea, but there's a reason I don't call myself a libertarian and it's because the argument for regulation, ANY regulation is that without boundaries people will find ways to abuse the freedom - without minimum wage, local monopolies on jobs can lead to servitude and no power to demand job safety rules, etc. Similarly, to the topic at hand, that accepting a pool of legally gray labour will enable and encourage people to abuse that labour force.
For the final argument to be TRULY convincing, I'd like a reason to believe that, at least in this case, the moral hazard argument does not apply. The descriptions I have read of gray labour working conditions both hear and abroad do not make me optimistic.
Re: Re:
I don't disagree with any of those three points, my misgivings come from what they imply.
1) If enough of the economy depends on so many immigrants, than there should be enough people voting pocketbook to get the laws changed. Then too, if (as is OFTEN argued) the economy depends on the illegal immigrants because they are willing to do hard work for minimum wage or less, then the conclusion is that immigrants ARE in fact driving down the price of labour for the least skilled and least privileged (or alternatively that minimum wage is economically wrongheaded and prevents unskilled CITIZENS from getting work?), AND that the grey area of undocumented status is nearly as exploitative as that of Indian & Sri Lankan workers in the UAE.
2) Granted, and this unfortunate legal gray area that has so many people in fear is because amnesties and non-enforcement was allowed to exist in the first place. How is lack of immigration enforcement NOT encouraging and maintaining an exploitative second class citizenry? Not that your post makes this mistake, but many arguing on this point basically go on to make a sunk costs fallacy argument - the cruelties of changing the status quo mean we have to maintain the cruelties of the status quo indefinitely..
3) Again, undocumented status is described here as a horrifying kafkaesque trap that might as well have been designed by elitists wanting cheap labour and a boost to the economy without needing to pay for government services or worry about political representation.
The deportation argument is rule of law, and the amnesty argument is the human cost, and so the two sides talk past each other because the arguments are at different conceptual levels. My point here is that it has always seemed to me that there are human costs to the lack of the rule of law, and a decline in the rule of law associated with human suffering. The two sides really are two sides of the same coin. Thus: what is the solution?
-The horribly exploitative status quo that nobody likes?
-End of borders and border controls (as Anarchists and capital-L Libertarians call for)?
-Amnesty for some or all of those here now followed by full enforcement of whatever procedures, limits, or quotas that are or might be set?
-Full enforcement now and discouraging future illegal immigration that would recreate the status quo sometime in the future?
Is there an option I'm missing? (And let's stick with principle - we don't, at this point, need to be bogged down in how incompetent the handling of any option could be in practice, even with Trump in the White House.) The first option I don't want, but seems to be the end result of all the calls to not enforce current law. The fourth is legal (though, again, I agree terribly unpleasant) and is, in theory, short term pain for long term gain as far as the exploitative legal gray area goes. The middle two require changing the law, not just criticizing the enforcement of the current law.
So again, am I missing something? Do you see another option to actually solve this problem? For myself I think I'd like to see a grand compromise version of #3, but if sufficient support does not exist to legalize more immigrants (and I see little evidence that there is), why is supporting the existence of a disenfranchised underclass and its endless drip of misery so OBVIOUSLY superior to the (admittedly more dramatic, more sudden, and more visible) misery of deportation?
"negligible impact on box office revenues"
$50 is about four or five tickets (last I went). With the proposed system, one guy with a nice TV system in his basement could easily cut the cost of viewing a movie for a whole bunch of friends who chip in a bit extra on top of the pizza money. The high up-front cost would also encourage buyers to avoid going out in order to make the purchase feel worthwhile.
Now, obviously, cheaper viewing could increase viewership - but not infinitely. This service really does have the potential to replace some of the incumbents with a couple of 'home theatres' in a way that would more directly compete with them than Netflix ever did.
As a consumer, I agree that this competition would be good, but because it actually would be something approaching competition, the theatres' fears are not quite as groundless as the tone of the article suggests.
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