now that is moral high ground.


Its just as easy to come along and say "That really sucks that the law is so crappy, too bad they had to break it, I hope they dont have to pay the consequences".

By saying that the laws are unjust (which I think most in this thread agree on), and that the American people (largely unaffected) are too lazy to truly voice an opinion about the issue in an attempt to change the law equates to moral high ground? I don't see it.

Yeah, I totally agreed with the point he was making, it just didn't need to be about white males, it should have just been about Americans. I have never been able to get myself worked up about illegal immigration. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have been born in Mexico.

You didn't. Chud did. I agree with your statement above 100%. Just like i cant understand that saying "following the law" is taking moral high ground like I was accused of.

I dont think I said "wrong," and if i did, i didn't mean it. The guy did what he had to do, and ive acknowledged that. I just said i dont feel sympathy for his whole "living my life in fear" tone. He was aware of what he was doing, and made the choices he made. I am sympathetic to the fact he had to make those tough decisions, but ultimately he made the choice he made.

Nope. Not at all. Just pointing out that taking the affirmative on an internet debate is no easier, no harder then taking the negative, in response to all the "It sure is easy for an employed 'has it made' white american to say that" responses. How is your opinion as a white, male american any more difficult to hold than my opinion? Having opinions, as you stated is easy... and all opinions are equally easy to have.

What really bothers me about immigration laws is that I feel they are largely driven by our problem controlling the US/Mexico border. States that are deeply impacted (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas) tend to have a negative view of immigration. It feels like we're 'punishing' immigrants from other countries who on the whole are far less problematic because we can't get a handle on the Mexico situation.

It feels like there are two stances on the issue: anti-immigration (typical of those areas bordering Mexico, especially), or you're indifferent. It shits me.

Because my opinion, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but bear with me, my opinion active and engaged rather than dismissive, and that's a point I will not budge on. Yes, having an opinion isn't necessarily a hard thing to do, but there's a marked difference between having an opinion that is contrary to the status quo and dismissing an issue because of the letter of the law. And I don't mean to crucify myself here as a martyr for immigration reform, because in truth, there's plenty of possible, dissenting opinions you could hold here that would be just as active and engaged with the issue and wouldn't be easy. I don't think we'd be having this specific debate if your dissenting opinion had something to do with increased crime rates or taxpayer burden because of immigration policy--it's the fact that you're content to let the letter of the law, which you admit is unjust, solve the situation that makes yours an easy opinion to hold. You don't even have to read the article to hold that one.

I would bet Skitch doesn't even think of immigration most days.

I deal with, and think of, immigration nearly every day. I work in Ann Arbor, which has a very heavy asian population. In most cases, It is younger, recent college graduates who have moved their parents (and other family members) over here after graduation from UM. The parents and family members remain in the asian area of Ann Arbor. Many of them do not learn english. Many of them are on state assistance, despite the fact their families can afford to take care of them. The legal ones will house multiple illegals as well. All of whom shop where I work, and the surrounding businesses.

I do not bet often, for these reasons.

That's my exact problem with the whole issue. The laws are unjust. Beyond the DREAM Act, there is a very real immigration issue, and it's much easier to bury our heads in the sand about it. Let's face it, most people who are participating in this thread are never going to be challenged or burdened by these laws. So coming along and saying, "too bad, that's the law, they broke it, they now have to pay the consequences" is the easy way to handle it.

Laws don't change unless they are challenged. Illegal immigrants have no legal ground to challenge the law. Most American have no interest in challenging it, because it doesn't impact them. So what now?

It is possible to challenge a law as unjust and still accept the consequences for challenging it. That's exactly what I've advocated in this thread.

Clearly this fellow should have had his coyote take him to within a hundred yards or so of the beach in Florida, let him swim to the shore and then let it be assumed he was Cuban. Problem solved.

There are clearly better ways for the Marlins to acquire a 2nd Basemen, 4/5s.

What really bothers me about immigration laws is that I feel they are largely driven by our problem controlling the US/Mexico border. States that are deeply impacted (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas) tend to have a negative view of immigration. It feels like we're 'punishing' immigrants from other countries who on the whole are far less problematic because we can't get a handle on the Mexico situation.

It feels like there are two stances on the issue: anti-immigration (typical of those areas bordering Mexico, especially), or you're indifferent. It shits me.

How to Be a Patriot: Hire an Illegal Immigrant
10 July 2011 | Charles Kenny

For a country of immigrants, the U.S. remains vexed about how to deal with the fact that people from elsewhere still want to come here. Two successive Presidents have now been stymied in their attempts to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The latest foray is the DREAM Act, a narrow but important piece of the immigration reform puzzle that would, at a minimum, give the children of undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. The bill failed in the Senate last December, despite the Obama Administration's support. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reintroduced the act in May, but the prospects for passing any meaningful legislation before the 2012 election are slim.

In the meantime, the millions of illegal immigrants already here must continue to live and work in the shadows, one false move away from arrest and deportation. Indeed, legislation in states such as Alabama and Georgia is moving toward treating not just illegal immigrants, but also those who employ them, as criminals. And yet if forced to do without illegal labor, vast sectors of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to construction, would founder—not to mention the putting greens infested by crab grass and the children who would run riot without care. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports legalizing undocumented workers who are "already contributing to our economy," provided they don't otherwise run afoul of the law.

What makes the political impasse over immigration particularly frustrating is that hiring an illegal alien is good for the illegal alien, good for the U.S. economy, and good for the country he or she comes from. So what's not to like? In cases like this, there is only one moral course available for true patriots: Go find an illegal to hire. Huge numbers of people in border states are doing precisely that.

There are about 11 million people living illegally in the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center. By most estimates, the overall net economic impact of this illegal immigration on Americans is pretty small. Consider, for instance, the common argument that illegal immigrants are a drain on public services. A comparatively conservative analysis by Gordon Hanson at the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that illegal immigrants contribute about 0.03 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. If the net cost of government services to immigrants is included, their overall economic impact amounts to -0.07 percent, or roughly $10 billion—"essentially a wash," Hanson concludes.

But don't immigrants take jobs from and depress the wages of unskilled, native-born workers? Actually, immigrants tend to leave when there are fewer jobs available—that's one reason why migration to the U.S. from Mexico is at an all-time low at the moment. As economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri argued in a paper in 2006 for the NBER, the impact of total immigration on the wages of unskilled, native-born workers was less than 2 percent, or roughly $8 per week. In a 2010 paper, Ottaviano, Peri, and Greg Wright looked across U.S. industries and found that the net effect of immigration has been to create more jobs for native workers—including low-skilled workers. That's in part because many immigrants take jobs that would otherwise be sent abroad.

In a separate study, Peri analyzed cross-state evidence and found no proof that immigrants crowd out native, unskilled employment—and considerable evidence that they increase productivity. Each 1 percent increase in employment due to immigrants is associated with a half-percent rise in state income per worker between 1960 and 2006. Immigrants provide services efficiently and are themselves a source of demand for local goods and services. Unskilled immigrants take on manual tasks such as construction, while unskilled natives move into communications tasks such as call centers. This is an efficient division of labor that increases overall productivity.

There's no question the U.S. can do more to improve the life chances of citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder. But Congress could better accomplish that through approaches such as expanding the earned income tax credit, or more generous and flexible payments to replace food stamps, than by rooting out illegal immigrants and sending them home. In the end, it makes almost no economic difference to low-income Americans whether or not business owners and households decide to hire illegal aliens.

And what of the material improvement in the lives of illegal immigrants themselves? Most illegal aliens have made a considerable effort to get across the border—traveling long distances, paying human smugglers, avoiding border guards and Homeland Security Dept. agents. They make the effort for a reason. Hanson, of the NBER, estimates that illegal unskilled workers from Mexico in the U.S. earn 250 percent of what they would earn legally at home. That adds up to $170 billion in additional wages—a considerable proportion of which is remitted back to families in Mexico itself. Not surprisingly, economists such as Hanson conclude that illegal immigration is a strong net positive for global prosperity.

The scale of that impact is enormous. Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development has calculated that four out of five Haitians worldwide who are living on more than $10 a day are living in the U.S., not Haiti. The most plausible way to get to a decent income if you are Haitian—not an income that allows a big house or a taste for expensive wines, but one equivalent to three Happy Meals a day—is to move to the U.S. Lant Pritchett of Harvard University has calculated that if rich countries increased the size of their labor force by just 3 percent through increased migration, this would add $300 billion to the welfare of citizens of poor countries. Immigration is by far the most powerful tool at our disposal for making the global poor better off.

So at this point it's surely worth asking: How much do we value the negligible-to-nonexistent threat to the livelihoods of a few U.S. citizens against the immense, life-transforming benefits to people born on the wrong side of our borders, people who move here without waiting on an immigration process that pretty much won't let them in legally unless they are already privileged by considerable education and experience? (Even for foreigners with a high school education and a skilled occupation, the chances of getting a visa through the lottery process are 1 in 242.)

The macroeconomic argument in favor of employing immigrants, even those without papers, is unassailable. But what about the problem that, absent reform, it's breaking the law to do so? When a law itself prohibits doing the right thing, when it is immoral rather than just annoying or inconvenient, and when breaking that law does no great harm to any others, it is justifiable for people of conscience to choose to break that law. That is close to where we find ourselves with immigration legislation. It limits freedom of movement by immigrants and freedom of choice by employees. It does no good, but it causes considerable suffering. Current U.S. immigration laws have all the moral standing of pass laws in apartheid South Africa.

The moral course of ignoring immigration legislation is being widely followed already, particularly in some of the states that are, on their surface, the most anti-immigrant. For example, a Texas immigration law introduced this year would make hiring an illegal alien subject to a fine or two years in jail. But it explicitly excludes home help and gardeners, because, its backers admit, they'd have to lock up much of the state if they didn't.

Given the fact that native-born Americans keep having fewer kids and keep aging, they're going to need some more people around to tend the farms, businesses, golf courses, and rest homes. The cynic would say that's what the good people of Texas have already realized. But perhaps they are doing the right thing because it is, well, the right thing. Perhaps the mass disregard of immigration laws in the state makes Texans the rightful heirs of a civil disobedience movement outlined in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." If so, in the spirit of American exceptionalism, let us praise the rank yet noble hypocrisy of the border states.

Beth, I want to say that one of our very first political discussions on this board had to do with immigration--and it was quite an agreeable discussion. More or less a pretty good article.

I just wish the world at large could discuss the issue without dissolving into the politics of fear. It seems that America and Australia have that inability in common.