Welcome friends!
I thought I might say a few words about immigration this week. I can’t say it’s something I think about very often myself but I infer from the headlines some other people are interested. I was just reading the other day about some issues generated by Germany’s oversized efforts to handle the flood of desperate poor people trying to escape, sorry I meant emigrate, from the myriad dysfunctional hell holes, sorry I meant countries, in the Middle East and Africa. And of course here in the US we have Trumpo the Clown wanting to build a wall around the US and fretting about Mexican rapists. Oh, there’s been a lot of talk. A lot of talk. Most of it pretty damned idiotic. But talk is good, so let me put in my two cents worth. Nothing too novel or profound mind you; just a couple of observations to pass the time.
One aspect of this issue is what one might call the cultural or social aspect and my thought on this aspect is that I think people are prone to silly over simplifications that tend to lead nowhere in particular. The issue has to do with the value of diversity versus homogeneity or social cohesion and it’s just not really that simple. Let me tell you what I’m talking about.
On the one hand we have people who seem to me to place the most extraordinary emphasis on the most insignificant of issues. I’m talking about people who object to immigration because immigrants talk funny, dress funny, eat funny vegetables, follow funny religions, listen to funny music, and so on. I have to say this sort of thing always sets me on edge because diversity in these areas seems perfectly acceptable to me. Indeed, as a proud proponent of the old timey notion of the USA as a cultural melting pot I’ve always considered an amalgam of cultures to be inevitably stronger, more robust, and more beautiful than any single culture could ever be. A nation with a healthy mix of cultural backgrounds gives everyone involved exposure to different ways of living and thinking and not only leads to better everything (by which I mean food, music, art, literature) but also just a more open and intellectually curious sort of cultural life. That’s why the idea I sometimes hear from foreigners that the US has no real culture of its own and that it’s just a conglomeration of other cultures tends to irritate me just a little bit. That is our culture or perhaps I should say our meta-culture. That’s what makes us who we are. The opposing attitude is of course conservative exclusivity and that is certainly nothing new. That’s been going on a long, long time. We wouldn’t have the country we have now if the conservative anti-immigration movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had succeeded in stemming the tide. I suppose we would have been stuck in some vast provincial backwater chock full of white Protestant rednecks. (I mention Protestants only because part of the old time nativist ideology in this country was to consider Catholics potentially dangerous outsiders. You should know they’re all pretty much the same to me.) Churches, honky tonks, lynchings, and shoot outs in the parking lot. I’ll take the US we actually have now if you don’t mind. And the funny thing about conservative exclusivity of course is that it isn’t typically limited to foreign persons but applies equally to all manner of other ostensible outsiders: poor people, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and in some benighted countries they even manage to throw in the female half of the human race. Can you imagine? I have to laugh when I read about some of these counties where these sorts of traditional conservative values hold sway. Were you wondering why your country can never seem to compete with the US along any dimension at all? Well, gosh I don’t know. Could it be you only accept contributions from half or perhaps even fewer of your citizens? The ones that meet your fabricated and completely arbitrary qualifications. But I’m sure you have your own explanations, right? Probably some kind of conspiracy of godless liberals or something along those lines. Yeah, that probably makes more sense.
On the other hand we have some people who seem unwilling or unable to exercise any judgement at all when it comes to acceptable and unacceptable immigrants. Diversity is just fine for some issues but as I’m sure I must have mentioned before we do need everyone to agree to some minimal set of basic values relating to how we intend to interact with one another. You know the type of thing I mean. Accepting the political system under which we live must surely be one of them. I don’t mean agreeing with every detail but agreeing simply that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to voice one’s displeasure and to try to change things up. Writing a blog is fine. Bombing someone’s house is not. Other sorts of values might be involved as well. Freedom of speech (within limits), freedom of (and from) religion (within limits posed by the existence of other people), respect for other people including women and minorities of various types and so on. We need to keep in mind many would-be immigrants come from failed or at least struggling states that never heard of any such thing as democracy or the rule of law or even respect for other people. We shouldn’t simply take for granted that prospective immigrants will share our meta-values. The USA is by no means a suitable environment for everyone. Some people arriving on our shores should be invited to return to their original place of residence as quickly as possible.
What tends to really set me on edge when it comes to discussions of these cultural issues is the simplistic all or nothing idea that we must either accept any old immigrant spouting any manner of antisocial nonsense or become like latter day Nazis and fret about protecting our precious and delicate cultural heritage from the depredations of ostensibly inferior foreign influence. It seems to me there’s a pretty big patch of ground in the middle we should be focusing on. I’d like to hear a lot more about what belongs in our set of basic meta-ethics and a lot less about how the clerk at the local convenience store can’t speak proper English.
The other big aspect of this whole immigrant question to me has to do with economics by which I mean in this case jobs and profit. One important component of this issue is that when we bring in new people or anyway allow people to enter willy nilly we create a larger pool of would-be workers and thus erode the bargaining power of existing workers. One presumes this must be why many conservatives of the economic sort as opposed to the social sort advocate open borders and why working stiffs and domestic unemployed and underemployed people tend to be the most agitated about the idea. Think of it as a sort of union busting technique. Not that I’m sure anyone needs such a technique at least here in the US. Conservatives have managed to convince most workers they don’t need no damn union and they should just mail the greater part of their paychecks directly to their CEOs and be thankful the job creators have blessed them with an opportunity to work at all. Yes, nothing better to keep wages down and profits up as an army of unemployed poor people grasping at any opportunity. Well, at least as long as there’s someone around to buy whatever the army of impoverished workers is producing. Yes, it seems to be yet another one of those tragedy of the commons affairs where private incentives may not lead to optimal results. Lowering wages is good for any particular company but if everyone does it one may wonder if effective demand will become an issue.
I was thinking just then of unskilled and semi-skilled labor but I think the same basic issue applies to skilled labor. Many foreign countries have very respectable educational systems but no place for their graduates to go. It’s quite possible for employers to pick up more highly qualified candidates at lower cost if they bring in people from other countries, assuming they can’t simply ship the job itself to the foreign country and be done with it. Similar situation. It’s good for business or that particular business anyway, but is it good for the nation including the displaced workers?
Wait. Now I think we might be getting somewhere. The issue seems to me to revolve around whether we have some sort of responsibility to look after the people who are living here now. Ah yes, distributional issues. The ones we’re bad at because we seem to never want to discuss. Damn. This is going to be like pulling teeth. Well, what the heck. Let me just get the ball rolling. Yes, I think “societies” matter, which I suppose must put me in some sort of socialist camp according to how conservatives think of these things. I feel we must have some responsibility to get the people currently living in the country gainfully employed. If we don’t have enough trained workers for whatever job then I suppose we should really train some people. Does that mean we will miss out on some potential cost savings or we might have to turn down the most suitable candidate considered at a world wide level? Hmm. I suspect it might.
However, it’s not as simple as that because of course we don’t just live in a national society. We also live in a world society as part of the human race here on planet Earth. So what are our responsibilities with respect to people living in foreign countries? Shouldn’t be worried about them not having jobs? It seems to me we should because people are people after all. But how exactly does that play out? Does it imply we should hire them ourselves? Does it mean we should do more to help other countries to develop their economies? I hate to get all awkward about it, but what if it comes at the expense of our own development? That’s seems like a tough one and it’s complicated by the fact that whenever one takes on responsibilities for people living outside one’s political and legal system everything gets much more difficult. You know what I mean. You try to give some aid to wherever and the emir pockets the money and promptly moves to a villa in the south of France. I know we have some worldwide legal institutions but it does present some sort of argument for more and better, does it not? But I suppose that’s another whole can of worms, right? Many conservatives will start banging on about the dangers of world government (keeping in mind many conservatives are opposed to the idea of any government at all, let alone a government that includes foreigners) and at the same time some foreign potentates will start banging on about how dare anyone interfere with their money making schemes, sorry, I mean their domestic economic policy. But anyway those are the sorts of things we should be talking about.
That’s all well and good you say but what about the nitty gritty? What should we do while thinking this all through (or more likely studiously avoiding thinking it all through)? Well, OK, let’s get all practical about it. I think here in the US we should stay the course and maybe put a bit more resources into managing illegal immigration if some people are concerned about it. I don’t think it makes sense to go all crazy about it. If you’re living next to a country or a region of a country with a lot of unemployed poor people they will try to sneak across the border. They’re not going to just lie down and die. I would do exactly the same thing. I’m not sure fixing this issue without fixing the underlying causes is even possible but what I do know is that seriously trying would probably require some pretty draconian and also pretty expensive policies. Talk about building a wall around the US. Anyone want to guess what building a wall around the US would actually cost? And what do we get for it? A reduction in illegal immigration? Nice. Yes, our infrastructure may be crumbling and the train just fell in the river because the bridge collapsed but we have one hell of a wall. You can see it from space! How about staffing and maintaining the wall? Because you know people will naturally try to circumvent it once we build it, right? They’re not going to just stand there and look at it in awe. They’ll be trying their best to go over it or tunnel under it or most likely through it. And of course we would then also have to worry about the alternatives. Walking across the border or hitching a ride in a pickup or whatever might be the cheapest way right now but probably people will shift to planes and boats if necessary. More difficult and more costly to be sure but where there’s a will there’s a way.
The ironic thing is that setting aside the rapists the vast majority of these illegal immigrants are honest hard working folk who are just doing what they feel they need to do to survive and make a buck. Kind of hard to think of them as any sort of serious villain. And my understanding is that in many cases they’re actually working in jobs that domestic workers don’t want anyway because they don’t pay enough or are too difficult. That is to say, it’s not even clear to me how much displacement of domestic workers is actually going on. I suspect if we ever really found a solution to illegal immigration certain sectors of our economy in certain regions of the country might very well grind to a halt entirely.
I feel I’ve been talking a while now. I could probably go on for days but let me just wrap it up. I think our first objective should be to cool everything down a few hundred degrees. I have no problem at all entertaining sensible improvements in how we control unauthorized immigration but let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot here. If some people have managed to sneak in at some point and they’ve been living and working here the past however many years and the sky hasn’t fallen then maybe it’s not the end of the world. Maybe it’s easier, cheaper, and just all around nicer if we can just try to find a way to get them fixed up legally now. Maybe we can just concentrate on doing a little better job in the future? Not a perfect solution but life is so often imperfect, wouldn’t you say? Just trying to keep it real. And if ever we think we can stand to talk openly and honestly about economic issues let’s take up the thorny distributional issues that underlie what’s going on here. I realize that’s probably not going to happen any time soon. I can already hear conservatives ranting and howling about socialists and new world orders and all that stuff. But one day. It’s not going anywhere until we do.
