How to Respond to Illegal Immigrants?

Last week we talked about illegal immigrants. This week we will continue to talk about illegal immigrants, but we'll talk about the in the context of the global economy.

Many Americans ask: What is the best response to illegal aliens living in the US?

One possible response to illegal immigrants is to deport them out of the US. And, to make life in the US as hard as possible for illegal immigrants. Kris Kobach offers an example of this approach:

This year may be Kobach’s most influential yet. From a base in Kansas, where he is the newly seated secretary of state, Kobach will help Arizona defend his laws against all comers. Both the Justice Department and American Civil Liberties Union have sued the state, claiming that immigration is a federal matter. He’ll also counsel a dozen or so states that are considering copycat laws and a coordinated assault on birthright citizenship. And he’ll litigate at least four ongoing immigration-related cases, including lawsuits against California (for extending in-state college-tuition rates to the undocumented) and San Francisco (for failing to notify immigration authorities before a thrice-arrested alien allegedly murdered three people). It’s a “legal jihad,” according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which calls the path he’s blazing “a trail of tears.”

Another approach to illegal immigration is to be more open and to make it possible for illegal immigrants to become legal US citizens with Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Stephen Walt offers a good example of this approach.

Although the United States has hardly been free of racial or ethnic conflicts during its history, these features have made it possible for every new group to integrate itself as full citizens. The United States is an attractive destination not just because it is a wealthy society, but also because many different groups and individuals can become integral parts of that society instead of facing permanent second-class status.

If I'm right, then the pressures of international competition give an advantage to any society that can "cream" some of the smartest and/or hardest working people from all over the world. How? By making that society an attractive place to live and work, mostly by creating an atmosphere of equality and toleration. By contrast, societies that limit their de facto talent pool by defining citizenship narrowly, by treating minorities badly, by discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or other characteristics are placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Over time, therefore, we should expect a growing gap between "cosmopolitan" societies that develop institutions and cultures in which diversity and tolerance are prized and where potential conflicts between them are managed well, and more restrictive societies that are either attractive only to a fixed population of particular ethnic identity, or who are face recurring internal conflicts between various contending groups. My bet would be that, other things being equal, the former do better over time.

So, what do you think?

How should the US respond to illegal immigrants?

Should the US focus on securing its territorial borders from foreigners illegally crossing into the country? Should enforcement focus on punishing companies that hire illegal immigrants and on deporting illegal immigrants out of the US? Should the focus be on protecting American jobs and industries? Also: What would be the economic consequences for you if there were fewer cheap foreign laborers to pick your vegetables and build your houses?

Or should the US relax territorial border enforcement and focus on opening up to more immigrants as a way of becoming more competitive in the global market? Should money, businesses, workers, and goods and services be able to move freely between Canada, Mexico, and the US? Should the focus be on increasing American wealth and power and standing in world politics?

Are there other possible responses that the US government should take toward illegal immigrants?

Illegal Immigrants and America

In a widely read Opinion Editorial that appeared in newspapers across the US, Gregory Rodriquez argued that basically all Americans are hypocrits when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration.

What does he mean that we are all hypocrits?

When it comes to illegal immigration, nobody seems to take responsibility, and we are all, through action or inaction, complicit.

It should be no surprise that illegal immigration is one of the primary means by which the U.S. economy gains access to low-skilled, low-cost labor. As the share of low-skilled native-born Americans falls – in 1960 half of U.S.-born working-age adults had not completed high school, compared with 8 percent today – employers have become ever more dependent on illegal immigration as a steady source of cheap labor.

According to a 2009 Pew Hispanic Center study, 40 percent of the nation's brick masons, 37 percent of drywall installers, 28 percent of dishwashers, 27 percent of maids and housekeepers and 21 percent of parking-lot attendants are undocumented. In California, those percentages are likely to be higher. A 2006 U.S. Department of Labor survey estimates that most California farm workers have no papers.

So whatever your feelings about illegal immigration, if you eat vegetables, enjoy restaurants, reside in a house built in the last 30 years or ever let a valet park your car, the chances are you're implicated in the hypocritical politics that allows 7 million to 8 million people to work illegally in the country....

And the more we blamed those awful illegals for coming to this country, the less willing we became to claim any responsibility for their being here – or for treating them decently. As illegal immigrants were increasingly cast as a threat, Americans cast themselves as victims.

What do you think?

Are American's hypocrits on the issue of illegal immigration? Are American employers who are seeking out cheap labor partly responsible for the immigration problem? Are American consumers partly responsible for the problem of illegal immigration because they always seek out cheaper products? In more personal terms: Are you willing to pay more for vegetables so that better paid, legal, American labor will pick and package the vegetables? Are you willing to pay more for your new home because it was built by better paid, legal, American labor?

Or, is there no hypocracy here? Are American employers and consumers not at all responsible for illegal immigrants? Are the illegal immigrants making the wrong choice and they alone hold responsibility? Can Americans expect to get the best of both worlds?-- no illegal immigrants and cheaper goods?

Whatever your response, explain yourself. Tell me why or why not you believe what you do?

Is the US a Neocolonial Power?

Compared to any other country, the US maintains a lot of military bases around the world.

According to the Pentagon's own list PDF, the answer is around 865, but if you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand. These thousand bases constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country's territory.

Many people, especially many Americans, see these bases as playing an important part in maintaining US national security.

Other people, especially those people in foreign countries impacted by US military bases, see these installations differently. For sure, some people see the US military bases as important for their country's national security, but certainly not everyone sees the US bases in that light. Others see the US military bases in their country in less positive terms. For instance, many of the people living in Vieques, Puerto Rico were unhappy with the use of their island as a bombing range by the US Navy. There have been protests in Seoul, South Korea outside US military installations against US involvement in North-South Korean relations. Japanese citizens living in Okinawa have reservations about US Navel and Marine bases. In Ghana, Kwame Nikrumah, an important African politician and anticolonial intellectual, argued that:

Foremost among the neo-colonialists is the United States, which has long exercised its power in Latin America. Fumblingly at first she turned towards Europe, and then with more certainty after world war two when most countries of that continent were indebted to her. Since then, with methodical thoroughness and touching attention to detail, the Pentagon set about consolidating its ascendancy, evidence of which can be seen all around the world

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What do you think?

Do you think that it is legitimate to call the US a neocolonial power? Why or why not? Can you see how foreigners may dislike US military installations in their country? Or, can you not really see it? Do you think that arguments like this are bogus? Is it more the case that US military bases are more a benefit to the locals and their national security? Should the US be concerned with what locals think about its military installations? Are US national security interests too important to consider local peoples' concerns about the military bases?

American War Making: The Role of the President, Congress, and the Citizenry

Continuing our discussion of foreign policy, this week will talk about the US President and his ability to make foreign policy -- especially, his capacity to make war.

Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon:

Back in January, 2006, the Bush Justice Department released a 42-page memo arguing that the President had the power to ignore Congressional restrictions on domestic eavesdropping, such as those imposed by FISA (the 30-year-old law that made it a felony to do exactly what Bush got caught doing: eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without warrants). That occurred roughly 3 months after I began blogging, and -- to my embarrassment now -- I was actually shocked by the brazen radicalism and extremism expressed in that Memo. It literally argued that Congress had no power to constrain the President in any way when it came to national security matters and protecting the nation.

To advance this defense, Bush lawyers hailed what they called "the President's role as sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs"; said the President’s war power inherently as "Commander-in-Chief" under Article II "includes all that is necessary and proper for carrying these powers into execution"; favorably cited an argument made by Attorney General Black during the Civil War that statutes restricting the President's actions relating to war "could probably be read as simply providing 'a recommendation' that the President could decline to follow at his discretion"; and, as a result of all that, Congress "was pressing or even exceeding constitutional limits" when it attempted to regulate how the President could eavesdrop on Americans. As a result, the Bush memo argued, the President had the power to ignore the law because FISA, to the extent it purported to restrict the President's war powers, "would be unconstitutional as applied in the context of this Congressionally authorized armed conflict...

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton told the House of Representatives that "the White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission." As TPM put it: "the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama's power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions," as such attempts would constitute "an unconstitutional encroachment on executive power." As Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman noted, Clinton was not relying on the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR); to the contrary, her position is that the Obama administration has the power to wage war in violation even of the permissive dictates of that Resolution. And, of course, the Obama administration has indeed involved the U.S. in a major, risky war, in a country that has neither attacked us nor threatened to, without even a pretense of Congressional approval or any form of democratic consent. Whether the U.S. should go to war is a decision, they obviously believe, "for the President alone to make.

What do you think?

Has the war on terrorism fundamentally changed the role of the US President in making foreign policy, especially in terms of war?

Should the US President (the Executive branch of the government) be the primary maker of foreign policy? Or, should the US Congress have equal authority to make foreign policy and check the policies of the US President?

Should citizens be more involved in US foreign policy making? Or, should citizens be kept out of foreign policy decision making and trust their political leaders?