perfidy

right on. Personally, I want every person who wants to be here, here. True scumbags aside, of course. But I want them here legally.

There's an article in the Atlantic this month about the migrant-aiding industry along the Mexican side of the border, thousands of entrepreneurs who each are only after the available pesos and greenbacks, but who collectively aid and abet the massive problem. It's also about how the guys on the Mexican side - police who really do want to uphold the laws of Mexico, etc., figure that even if the USA puts up a wall five hundred feet high, guarded by robot dogs with laser beam eyes and a sharkfilled moat a mile wide, people will still find a way to cross. The income ratios are just shocking: something like 10:1 depending on the industry. Chiapas and Oaxaca are apparently teh suck, so much so that nothing short of shooting people like ducks from airships as they cross will stem the flow. And that must never happen.

Why not set up gigantic Ellis Islands in Phoenix, Santa Fe, San Diego, etc., where people can come for a day or two while they get cursorily checked out and get work visas or something? I dunno... probationary green cards? Something that doesn't amount to an indenture or create a permanent class of resident alien like we see in Germany among poor African and central Asian workers, the ones who seem to like bombs so much?

The problem ain't going away, and it ain't right that so many people are here outside the law. And we really can't just ship them all back. Unlike your C-average American teenager, these people busted their asses to get here.

Right on. The chrome lining to this cloud is that at least our illegal immigrants/potential gastarbeiter are Christian Mexicans, as opposed to Islamic Arabs. A Mexican, should he either come here legally, or obtain legal status, is a damn sight more likely to assimilate (both because of America's borg like powers, and common western and Christian heritage of both cultures) than some disaffected, unemployed Algerian Wahabist is to, say, decide that his ancestors are the Gauls.

I'm not terribly concerned about the pospect of decent, law-abiding white culture being swamped by the mud people. What is essential about American culture will survive, and be embettered by the addition of other cultural bits and pieces. If the original WASPs had had their way, spaghetti wouldn't be part of my heritage, or getting drunk on Mar 17, or eating pierogies at Christmas, and I wouldn't know what naan, curry, or kabob were, be able to go to Ethiopian restaurants, or ever wonder who the hell General Tso was.

Bring em on!

Just, do it legally, and don't let 'splodeydopes sneak across unguarded borders hiding in a sea of wetbacks.

Whatever we decide, it really shouldn't be a guest worker program, as those have been kind of a nightmare. Either assimilation track, or short term work visas like normal. The former might be made a lot easier.

J,
The only problem with a modern Ellis Island is that it's imminently sensible.

Sensible solutions to a serious problem are pretty far off the radar these days. As I wrote the other day, I think we're getting amnesty. And those who did the thing legally will just have to suck it. But more importantly, amnesty today does nothing to address the problem of illegal immigration in another generation.

And besides, these days you couldn't even build a desert Ellis Island, or compel people to go to it, because both would violate the dignity and fundamental human rights of the migrants in question. Or something.

As it is, even asking that applicants (or current recipients) of gubmint assistance be legal residents is considered racist, nativist, and other -ists by immigrant leaders and sympathetic media.

I'm not sure when the country got quite this weird, but I'm ready for it to be less so now.

G:

Of course you're not sure when this country got so weird, because the causative events predate your birth. But only just by a little.

Less weirdness and self-delusion on the part of the populace would be a plus.

GL wrote:
The only problem with a modern Ellis Island is that it’s imminently sensible.

I beg to differ. Have you ever been to Ellis Island or Angel Island in CA? We'd have to make nice expensive cushy places for people to stay. I'm not wild about that idea. Look at all the flak we're catching over Gitmo. Yuck.

Someone asked me the other day how I felt about this current debate. I'll be honest. I had no idea what to say. My family came here legally. But it's not easy to get here from across the Pacific legally or illegally.

I feel that most of this debate is about La Raza Bronze and not about chinky folks who look like me. Though I am quite surprised at how many Asian Americans are rallying around this issue. I think immigrant rights are important, but let me clarify that to say legal immigrant rights. Xenophobia is bad for society.

Jumping through the hoops to come here legally sucks. My uncle waited 10 years. The forms are not easy to fill. A sponsor goes through a lot to bring someone here. I've filled out the forms for family. It's expensive and insane to get a green card. A European friend is paying $10K-12K to take his F-4 visa and turn it into a green card, and he's the kind of person we want to keep! His green card should be FREE! 15 years of university education & post-doc work, he's going to be paying more than $12K in taxes during his lifetime here. Letting him go because of a denied green card would be brain drain for us.

For illegals, if the home country fixed what was wrong there, people wouldn't come here. I'm dead serious. My parents and one half of their siblings came here. The other half stayed behind because their economic prospects were just as good, if not better. If life was really crappy in Korea, they all would have come here.

I support the Ellis Crossing idea. Generally we should make legal immigration easier and illegal immigration harder. My take is, if you don't have a felony record or TB or something, welcome to America. It would help to dismantle the welfare state, to reduce the perverse incentives for immigration (and enhance the positive incentives).

Y'know, it's funny. I am what many people would call a liberal. I mean, in the cultural sense I'm almost libertine, but in the political sense I do retain faith against all evidence that the richest country on earth can use some of its massive wealth to try to work against some of teh suck in life.

Of course, I'm also not stupid, so I acknowledge that government is not a Leatherman all-purpose tool, but more of a Dremel rotary tool- nonpariel at some jobs, put perfectly unsuited for all others.

I find it interesting that an Ellis Crossing (great name, Ken!) system is, basically, a giant liberal dose of government cash and bureaucracy thrown at the problem. And yet, my conservative friends seem to not be allergic to the notion. Personally, I think that border security and immigration is one of the several tasks that a the national government HAS to do, and as such it does take money, bureaucrats, and attention. Which, I assume, is where the rest of y'ouns are coming from.

I mean, the fact is, mapgirl is right, and so is GL. Hell, same with Ken and Buckethead too. As long as the USA stays rich, and as long as other nations in the world remain relative crapholes, we're going to have a lot of people that want to be here. And until every last square inch of Idaho and South Dakota is full, we can use them, their talents, their aspirations, and their desire for security and stability.

But an amnesty program merely moves the g-d d-mn goalposts and should be dismissed out of hand. If, upon institution of Ellis Crossings, current illegal immigrants want to go, get legalized, and start playing the game, great. I say, let it slide then. But illegal IS illegal, and it's a massive failure of vision, will, and honesty that the federal government is so dedicated to pandering and so reluctant to think about SOLVING the problem.

End transmission.

An Ellis Crossing with two entrances - one on the Mexican side, and another, smaller one on our side. Once you're in, you're processed regardless?

That's an amnesty (of sorts) that I could live with.

It's interesting that this issue divides both conservatives and liberals. The idiots on this issue are the nativist whackjobs on the right, and the "hey, let's invite all of Somalia to Hoboken" open borders freaks on the left. The sensible people might quibble on exact numbers of people to let in legally, or the exact means to discourage the illegals. But we all seem to agree that 1) Illegal immigration is bad, 2) Control of the border is a good thing, security-wise if for no other reason, 3) Legal immigration is how we all ended up here, and since it hasn't screwed the pooch yet, we really ought to keep it.

Anyone who argues with that basic program can't really have a brain in their head.

It would be nice (apropos GL's comment earlier) if, as part of regaining rational thought on this matter, we could dispense with the "Racist!" retorts that seem to become part of many disagreement on the matter.

One other possible help would be to come up with some new word for "amnesty" - it gets everyone's panties in a knot, but at the end of the day, some form of amnesty is logistically mandatory. Let's either call it some made-up word, or let's just get used to the fact it ain't optional.

Patton,
Besides the immediate benefit of processing entrants in as logical and consistent a manner as the feds are capable of, Ellis Crossings also address long-term immigration as well. So long as people want to come, they can come through one of the Ellis ports of entry- be it tomorrow or the year 2525.

Now, if you're soliciting made-up terms to replace "amnesty", I submit "kaginga".

It might be advantageous to separate those who are here on visas from those who are actually immigrating. Immigrants go to the Ellis-type places, and get processed in one way. They renounce former citizenships, take oaths, etc.

Something more like the current system, but better, would deal with workers, tourists, etc. Since they're not joining the team, they get more hassle, but are still allowed in.

G:

Agreed. Amnesty, by definition, would apply only to those already here. Proper future handling would eliminate the need for future amnesty, just as the 1986 act was supposed to.

Oh, and for all occurrences of "amnesty" above, please feel free to substitute "kaginga", or my proposed pseudosynonym, "blatfrag".

A major misconception is running through this thread: that the lack of opportunity is in itself the cause of major migrations. Indeed, major immigration movements since th 19th century have come from places in which the beginings of economic and political modernization have made traditional modes of production unsustainable. The Irish or Slavic peasant who could not compete with agricultural capitalism or the beef and grain dumped on the market from overseas became the ideal worker for American factories. Economic backwardness did not make them want to leave; dealing with backwardness created ever-growing surplus populations. If you put the emphasis on Mexico and Central American nations to reform, you only increase the mobile population who will look to the United States for solutions for their personal distress.

N:

I'm utterly unqualified to debate your assertions in the post above, at least not with you, so please don't think I'd even consider it. I accept them as fact.

But I do have a question: What, other than emphasis on reform (or, as I prefer to think of it, assistance from industrialized nations in their reformation) should be done for CA and Mexico? Whatever's being done right now sure ain't cutting it, and the exodus, other than from major cities, remains alarmingly high.

NDR, am I to understand that you are saying that it wasn't backwardness itself, but insufficient modernization in their home countries that led the migrants to come here?

The drop in infant mortality and so on created surplus populations that could not be absorbed by at least partially backward nations, and these people came here?

I think I get what NDR is saying about economic forces, but let me put a social scientist spin on it. It's social and economic mobility or the lack thereof that causes people to come to the US. They still all believe in the American Dream, and even if you aren't the next Bill Gates, owning your own home here is still achievable in a way that is not in most other nations.

We live in a great and amazing country that's more of a meritocracy and less corrupt than other nations. No matter how scary it is to take the leap of moving to a country where you don't speak the language, if you are living in abject poverty without clean water to drink, you'll go anywhere that's better, the big city, the US, etc. Besides being 'poor' in the US is still rich by most of the world's standards.

I also want to go on record here as saying that a widespread guestworker program would be un-American. That is, it's unAmerican because it goes against the notion that people come here because they aspire to get a piece of the action and buy into whatever version of the American Dream floats their boats, not just to get paid well and shipped home. Not, of course, that this notion works the same from person to person or population to population, but I feel comfortable generalizing on the macro scale.

Doing a guestworker program on a large scale invites a reconceptulization of America's stance toward immigration in the first place, toward something that resembles Germany or France more than the US, with large enclaves of un-integrated and insular immigrants with little to no incentive to build any ties whatsoever with groups outside theirs.

Why haven't we seen coast to coast suicide bombings from American Muslim immigrants (I hear asked from time to time)? Hmm.... is it maybe because in coming here, immigrants both legal and illegal have on the whole bought into the larger idea of the USA and begun to think of the USA as home, as a place where they have a future?

Guest workers have no future in their host nation beyond the date of expiry of their pass. Not for us, thanks. Bad idea.