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Why “It’s the Legality, Stupid” Immigration Argument Falls Flat

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  • Why “It’s the Legality, Stupid” Immigration Argument Falls Flat

    Source: http://barticles.blogs.timesdispatch.com/2014/07/22/legality-stupid-immigration-argument-falls-flat/


    Why “It’s the Legality, Stupid” Immigration Argument Falls Flat


    My Sunday column on immigration provoked a fair amount of feedback, as pretty much anything anyone says about immigration will do. The principal rebuttal (at least numerically) took issue with how I characterized immigration hawks. It was not accurate, some readers said, to suggest immigration hawks oppose immigration. What they object to is illegal immigration.

    Really? As Walter Williams would say, “let’s look at it.”

    First, some immigration hawks do object to (at least some) legal immigration. One salient example is Dave Brat, the Cantor Killer, who has argued that the U.S. shouldn’t even take high-skilled and Ph.D. immigrants, let alone unskilled workers. More broadly, there are groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies, which want to reduce legal immigration as well as the illegal kind.

    Second, the claim that immigration hawks are worked up about legal technicalities, not immigration itself, needs to be challenged. If what they say is true, then one obvious answer would be to return the U.S. to the open-borders policy it had until the early 1920s. If the immigration hawks are sincere, then they will not mind doing this, since it resolves the legal question — and at a far lower cost to the taxpayers than massive border-control efforts.

    On the other hand, if the hawks blanche at the idea of greatly increasing legal entry to the U.S., then their objection really is all about immigration per se, and the legality question is simply a fig leaf to cover it up.

    Posted by A. Barton Hinkle
    – editor and columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and contributor to Reason magazine.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Thoughts?
    That's what
    - She

    Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
    - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

    I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
    - Stephen R. Donaldson

  • #2
    Add him to the list of people who should be lawfully executed for treason.
    "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

    There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Darth Executor View Post
      Add him to the list of people who should be lawfully executed for treason.
      I can't tell if this is an on going joke or...
      "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

      Comment


      • #4
        I'd really like some meaningful commentary here, and not one line hyperbole.
        That's what
        - She

        Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
        - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

        I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
        - Stephen R. Donaldson

        Comment


        • #5
          Letting in millions of poor and unskilled immigrants is not, even a little bit, a lower cost to the taxpayers than border control efforts. That line of argumentation is a complete nonstarter.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
            I'd really like some meaningful commentary here, and not one line hyperbole.
            Nah, the hyperbole simply needs to be honed a bit. "Behead those who debase America's people" sounds a little better.

            Comment


            • #7
              I agree with the editorial.
              "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                I agree with the editorial.
                The editorial lies about Brat's stance on legal immigrants, and blatantly so.
                That's what
                - She

                Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
                - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

                I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
                - Stephen R. Donaldson

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                  I agree with the editorial.
                  I agree with the editorial in the sense that the legality or illegality of the illiterate Chiapas drywaller you fly in for your own purposes is generally immaterial to the choice of whether or not to deport him, and that focusing exclusively on the words 'legal' or 'illegal' is a fool's game. In general, whether you let a whole bunch of people into your country should be determined by your country's needs, not the needs of the people immigrating (news flash: the United States needs practically NO ONE to populate our wildernesses anymore, we can handle that on our own, and most studies show that the majority of immigrants concentrate in cities in any case, driving up land prices and crowding out the natives.)

                  "Absolute moratorium until unemployment reaches less than 1%" or "America is full" sounds like a much better slogan to me. Most of the law needs to be made much more restrictive than it already is, let your slogans reflect that reality rather than a timid cringe toward the status quo favored by your enemies.

                  Comment

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