Asymmetrical Information

I'm all for immigration too, just not the illegal kind. My forebears played by the rules, waited their turn and came to the United States legally. Would their lives and the lives of their children have been better, faster if they came here illegally? Perhaps, but I don't think that's a good enough reason for not obeying the law.

FWIW, I don't think there's that much anti-immigration sentiment. I think there's a lot of anti-illegal immgration sentiment.

Your clarity and even-handedness here is why I read you regularly Jane. Swell post. S'alright, done with the fawning.

As a first gen immigrant myself (3 yrs old, legally, from India) I am rather biased towards more and open immigration. Also, having travelled extensively through the US and India I can plainly see that there is much room here in the US and the country can physically carry a larger population rather easily. Ever been to West Texas? You could fill all of Haiti there.

Not, however, that we should. For all the sensible reasons that you mentioned. There has to be a cost for moving here. New immigrants should learn English, should be productive, should be liberal (classic sense of course). The problem is finding the right balance of how many v. cost v. benefits to both immigrants and the U.S.

My ancestors got in when there basically weren't any rules . . . as did the ancestors of anyone who came here before 1925. Saying "my ancestors played by the rules" when "the rules" allowed in anyone not visibly carrying some horrific contagious disease, is a little harsh.

I mostly agree.

The main difference is that what some call "a ring of poverty", I call "great cheap Mexican food, cheap construction and gardening labor, and a bunch of employees who greet me every morning with a smile, and crisp and deferential 'Buenos dias, el Jeffe!' ".

Bring it.

Say it ain't so. The ususally cogent Jane Galt goes off the deep-end on this one. Not one mention or allusion to the illegality of, well, illegal immigration.

As the son of LEGAL immigrants to the USA -- personally, I find this stance unpersuasive, if not, insulting.

Your grade: F for effort. F for execution.

After all, why even have borders? Why not anyone, anytime?

Jane, don't you think that Mexicans in particular are problematic because of the possibility of the close border allowing 'dual allegiances' that override desires for assimilation?

In addition, how are Latinos not from 'places where families are the primary economic unit and nepotism is a cultural good'? Matter of fact, isn't that essentially the entire undeveloped world? I'm not saying it's bad (it might be) but

Finally, aren't the right's concerns on sovereignty in the US Southwest worthwhile?

Jane, are you willing to pay higher taxes for the purpose of supporting the tens of millions who want to come here? Making a moral argument is ridiculous, why is the US responsible for the plight of these aliens? Why is it that no one puts that responsibility on the Mexican government, afterall, they have a wealthy economy. We are not making Mexico stronger and more free, we are simply importing their social problems. To the detriment of US citizens. These are the poor brown poeple the white Spanish do not want to deal with.

Why is it that economist never consider the negeaive extrenalities of open borders? Are the cost they impose really worth 2 cents off a head of lettuce?

Maybe she didn't mention illegal immigration because it seems logical to ask ourselves what our immigration policy should be before we consider going about enforcing it? Especially on a blog, where one has the luxury to imagine how a thing should be as a preamble to fixing how a thing is? Besides, presumably from this article Jane is in favor of laxer immigration laws, which would cut down on the number who would currently be considered illegal (presuming you had a grandfather clause).

As the son of a legal immigrant, the great-grandson of legal immigrants, and the grandson of someone whose native territory was taken by America as spoils of war, I give Jane As for Effort and Execution.

I'm going to have to agree that I don't personally know of anyone who opposes immigration (though I'm sure there are some!)

The main problem is thousands of people simply _walking_ over the border into our country each month without so much as a wave. We don't have any idea who is entering our country, and that seriously bothers me.

I'm also troubled by the fact that 20% of the prison population in this country is made up of illegal immigrants. That's a heck of a lot of criminals coming into our country.

The way I read it, she's not advocating open borders. I don't think anyone with any sense is advocating that. Controlled immigration and even to the extent that current illegal immigration is publicized (illegal immigration has always been a large portion of immigration to the US) is on the whole of economic and military benefit to the US.

The question really is how best to control immigration itself? Increased trade to Latin American countries so that they become better governed and more economically equal?

I'm not particularly accusing Jane of this sin, but the use of the phrase "average income less than $700 a year" just gets my goat.

In my arrogant opinion, measuring foreign income levels by using American currency tends to mislead.

There are probably quite a few places on Earth where the annual cash cost of living is damn near zero. That doesn't mean the people living there are 'poor', just that they are so nearly self-sufficient that they don't trade. $700 per year could then be incredible wealth.

There are other places which have a quite robust local economy, denominated in currency that is 'weak' compared to the dollar. If the local labor force can support a family of four comfortably for 70,000 quatloos per year, and such a wage is easily secured, then the fact that quatloos trade at 100 to the dollar is irrelevant.

This is one of the problems I've always had with the 'fair wage' movement. If you have an economy such as the second case above, then paying 'fair wages' will create a horrible inflationary problem that will throw anyone not employed at the factory or supporting industries into poverty, even if they didn't used to be.

Glenn, while obviously in Honduras, things like land are cheaper . . . c'mon. You could live in a cardboard hut on a garbage dump too, for "practically nothing" . . . and unlike the poor people in Manila who actually do this, you'd be able to get free, top-of-the-line health care from the American hospital system, while feasting off the lush garbage carelessly tossed away by affluent Americans.

Obviously, direct comparisons are fraught, but subsistence farmers in Africa and Latin America are really, really poor. "Children die of diarrhea" poor. "Malaria-preventing bednets make a good substitute for a wedding dress" poor. "Can't afford that American luxury, the plastic bucket" poor. "No doctor within 100 miles" poor. If you would consider living in a tin hut, drinking untreated water liberally laced with human sewage, seeing relatives die because you can't afford antibiotics, and occasionally feeding your children sugar water to quiet their hunger pangs because you haven't quite enough food for dinner, an adequate standard of living, then it is appropriate to say that $900 a year isn't poor. Otherwise, I'd say they live in gross, inhumane poverty.

That came out a little harsher than I meant . . . but while there are some arguments about what poverty means in middle-income countries, in many of the countries from which we draw our immigrants, there's simply no doubt that much of the population is grossly materially deprived of basic things like clean water, adequate nutrition, and elementary health care. Honduras is one of those places.

(though I haven't heard anyone suggest that Mexicans are part of a Papist conspiracy to rule America),

Oh, you missed that memo. Except it isn't "Papist conspiracy," just Mexico trying to recover the Texas territory plus interest, and rule it by proxy. Or something like that. I try not to pay too close of attention to those types of people so I may have missed a few details here and there.

This would create a ring of poverty around our cities that Americans would find unacceptable. But that's really an aesthetic argument; it's hard to give it moral force, when you consider that all those poor people would be living there because it's even worse at home.

According to France, it's a violent crime argument. Granted, France has serious stuctural problems not presently mirrored here, but the possibility of creating that kind of high-unemployment, "outer-city" subclass through careless policy is not something to take lightly.

Frankly, I just don't understand right-wing paranoia about immigration. I mean, aside from speaking Spanish, which seems like a pretty minor pecadillo on the scale of things, latino immigrants seem like a right-winger's dream: hard-working, family-oriented, and religious as all get out.

The first generation, typically. And many members of the second, and following. But I can review the local weekly birdcage liner's "Birth Announcements" section in any given week and find a long list of children -- all with clearly Hispanic names -- whose parents have different family names, or a father simply isn't listed. A majortiy of violence in the community is Hispanic-on-Hispanic. There is no guaranteed outcome.

My ancestors got in when there basically weren't any rules . . . as did the ancestors of anyone who came here before 1925. Saying "my ancestors played by the rules" when "the rules" allowed in anyone not visibly carrying some horrific contagious disease, is a little harsh.

Worth noting that by 1925, the US had achieved a population just one-third of the current population size, and very large chunks of the western US were still operating on a frontier mentality. It would be exceedingly difficult to accommodate a near-open-door policy on immigration with present urban/suburban development and infrastructure.

Which leads to the elephant in the room as others have noted, and which you have somewhat touched upon by inferrence but not really addressed -- are you making any clean distinction between legal and illegal immigration here?

Great post as usual Jane.
But, a few "but's":
The pro-immigration forces the past few days have tipped their hand and shown that a lot of them are bizarrely anti-American and seperatist. They have definitely ruined any sort of chances of movement on the issue.
Also, The US needs to tap Mexico on the shoulder and suggest that it has a major emmigration problem that it needs to take care of. Or is emmigration good for Mexico??

"I'm all for immigration too, just not the illegal kind." That's what everyone says, and yet the quotas and other rules that prevent most would-be immigrants from doing it legally never get relaxed.

$700 per year could then be incredible wealth.

There are other places which have a quite robust local economy, denominated in currency that is 'weak' compared to the dollar. If the local labor force can support a family of four comfortably for 70,000 quatloos per year, and such a wage is easily secured, then the fact that quatloos trade at 100 to the dollar is irrelevant.

That's why any decent compilation of economic & social welfare statistics will include a comparative figure called "PPP" (purchasing-power parity), which tells you how much buying power that income actually has. If real average income is equivalent to US$700 and the PPP column says $190,000, then have your travel agent make an extended booking and prepare to eat gourmet surf-and-turf every night for the next month.

For low-income Latin American countries, however, the PPP column usually says something more like $2500, meaning, 3.6x a small number is still a small number, and well below the poverty line.

Tyler is way off too. Mexico has no incentive to become less crooked/less 3rd worldly as long as illegal immigration allows Mexico to bleed off social steam.

Bluntly, everybody knows Mexico is crap, that is why they come to the States. Why try and change things in an corrutptly ossified 3rd world country where politicans are totally unresponsive and in no way beholden to its citizens when obe can, as an illegal, openly protest and change American domestic policy /o fear of retribution??? (See: latest protests in La-la land)

In fact, in the long-run Mexico becomes worse off and less free.

Your argument would carry more weight with me if I cared a lot about the welfare of poor Mexicans, or indeed if I thought that it was the responsibility of the American government to improve their lot. I operate on the presumption that the 'general welfare' that the government is charged with improving is the general welfare of US citizens and not that of the world. The negative effects of Mexican immigration here fall disproportionately on those already poor - who have to compete with them for jobs, who can't afford to leave if crime increases due to immigration, who use the same social services that illegal immigrants overburden. As a result, while illegal immigration does increase economic growth, I don't believe it increases the welfare of the American people.
The historical argument is obviously fallacious. Something happened one way a hundred years ago and it seems to have turned out OK, so we shouldn't object to something sort of similar? To me this is almost a tacit admission that you don't have a real argument, aside perhaps from your concern for the welfare of the Mexicans - but that one won't win the day politically in America.

You say you can't agitate for closing the borders, I guess because that means preventing others from enjoying a benefit that you have only due to the actions of your ancestors.

You also want to eliminate the estate tax. So how does that work?

Maybe she didn't mention illegal immigration because it seems logical to ask ourselves what our immigration policy should be before we consider going about enforcing it?

You have it exactly backwards. Rule of law always comes first.

Maybe she didn't mention illegal immigration because it seems logical to ask ourselves what our immigration policy should be before we consider going about enforcing it?

You have it exactly backwards. Rule of law always comes first.

We enforce our immigration policy before deciding what it should be? Shoot first, ask questions later?

Varangy -

If Jane, say, worked for Immigration, then you'd have a point. Since she doesn't, I don't think you do. If I want to, say, decriminalize prostitution, do I first need to figure out how to more effectively combat it in accordance with the current penal code? If Jane advocated open borders (not saying she does, and I believe she doesn't) then would the rule of law compel her to first draw up a plan for keeping (what are currently) illegal immigrants out? If someone wants to have a widely-ranging conversation on the topic of immigration policy, it seems reasonable to start with: "How much immigration is desirable?" instead of "How can I more effectively keep out a whole bunch of people I eventually want to figure out how to let in?"

Alvin - have you ever lived in the San Diego area, particularly any of the working-class areas? (I'd try to speak for L.A., O.C., and up north, but I know better.)

There's plenty of hostility to go around, and no-one seems to consider interracial amity to be a significant goal (in my experience).

...What about a part of the rural Midwest or West Coast where Latinos have shown up in numbers, thereby changing the cultural landscape into something that would've been considered unthinkable as recently as 20 years ago?

The places people call home stop being quite so welcoming, and that rattles the otherwise rational, easily enough.

It's not about legality, or maybe even jobs. It's about kids feeling isolated in their own schools. It's about a different church becoming the biggest in town. It's about needing functional Spanish literacy in order to do your job effectively.

Put bluntly, from my POV it's about the U.S.A. undeniably turning into somethng other than the WASP paradise... which can turn out as well, or as badly, as we want.

Getting back to the meat of J.'s post, it occurs to me that making the immigration illegal, but with a wink and a nod, results in many of the undesirables weeding themselves out before they get anywhere near the border (or beach). The ones left over are the ones most anxious to do well for themselves, which has the additional benefit of minimizing their impact on the social safety net.

The status quo also minimizes downward pressure on unskilled wages without eliminating that pressure entirely - the People In Charge who take undue advantage of illegals' circumstances would be doing the same to natural born citizens if there were no illegals at hand (Exhibit A: Wal-Mart). Instead, the status quo encourages those with the easiest access to a good education to get one (albeit through negative motivation).

I routinely vote straight-ticket Democrat after researching issues and candidates, but I won't think of U.S. citizenship as an entitlement until the day you pry common sense from my cold, dead psyche... but I believe that's the ethic the anti-immigrant consituency is attempting to enforce.

No one's worried about high rates of crime and illegitimacy among the Hmong

Jane, occasionally you say something very, very stupid. And it's not because there's anything wrong with your logic, per se, but rather because, as you've become such a transatlanticist, the last vestiges of the Midwest have eked their way out of your blood.

If you go to any lower-middle-class neighborhood in Minneapolis or St. Paul, you'll find plenty of people who are worried about the criminal element of the Hmong population.

Your flippant counterfactual does not undermine your argument, but it does lend credence to those critics who claim that you have lost touch with what the-vast-expanse-of-America-that-is-not-New-York is really like.

Forgive the hyperbole, but it really saddens me a wee bit.

We enforce our immigration policy before deciding what it should be? Shoot first, ask questions later?

Posted by Joe Martin at March 29, 2006 06:03 PM

Easy with the hyberbole that makes no sense. If it isn't obvious, current immigration US policy is hardly a) policy per se and b) enforced in any comprehensive way.

Having swiss cheese for a border and not actually deporting openly illegal immigrants is not rule of law/policy. It is this very ad-hoc political approach that has landed us in this pretty kettle of fish.

I stand by what I wrote. Enforce current law (cuz it ain't right now) -- then have the debate about where to go from thereon.

Oh yeah, and let's start differentiating between the so-called 'undocumented workers' and legal immigrants.

My ancestors followed the rules, too, but still found that some of the previous arrivals objected vehemently; in fact one immigrant ancestor, my mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad, John Nutting, "was killed by Indians during a raid against Groton and his head was severed and put on a pole by the Indians to discourage others from settleing in the area." (from http://www.wallacenuttinglibrary.com/wnfamily.htm )

I'm in favor of immigration, but we immigrants have caused troubles in the past.

Historian David Kennedy took up the question of whether today's immigration experience will mirror that of the past in a November '96 Atlantic Monthly essay.

Without endorsing either his arguments or Jane's, the article (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96nov/immigrat/kennedy.htm) seems worth excerpting here:

"BUT if economic necessity requires that the United States be a nation of immigrants into the indefinite future, as it has been for so much of its past, some important questions remain. Neither men nor societies live by bread alone, and present-day immigration raises historically unprecedented issues in the cultural and political realms.

Pluralism -- the variety and dispersal of the immigrant stream -- made it easier for millions of European immigrants to accommodate themselves to American society. Today, however, one large immigrant stream is flowing into a defined region from a single cultural, linguistic, religious, and national source: Mexico. Mexican immigration is concentrated heavily in the Southwest, particularly in the two largest and most economically and politically influential states -- California and Texas. Hispanics, including Central and South Americans but predominantly Mexicans, today compose 28 percent of the population of Texas and about 31 percent of the population of California. More than a million Texans and more than three million Californians were born in Mexico. California alone holds nearly half of the Hispanic population, and well over half of the Mexican-origin population, of the entire country.

This Hispanicization of the American Southwest is sometimes called the Reconquista, a poetic reminder that the territory in question was, after all, incorporated into the United States in the first place by force of arms, in the Mexican War of the 1840s. There is a certain charm in this turn of the wheel of history, with its reminder that in the long term the drama of armed conquest may be less consequential than the prosaic effects of human migration and birth rates and wage differentials. But the sobering fact is that the United States has had no experience comparable to what is now taking shape in the Southwest.

Mexican-Americans will have open to them possibilities closed to previous immigrant groups. They will have sufficient coherence and critical mass in a defined region so that, if they choose, they can preserve their distinctive culture indefinitely. They could also eventually undertake to do what no previous immigrant group could have dreamed of doing: challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the very institutions in which they do business. They could even precipitate a debate over a "special relationship" with Mexico that would make the controversy over the North American Free Trade Agreement look like a college bull session. In the process, Americans could be pitched into a soul-searching redefinition of fundamental ideas such as the meaning of citizenship and national identity.

All prognostications about these possibilities are complicated by another circumstance that has no precedent in American immigration history: the region of Mexican immigrant settlement in the southwestern United States is contiguous with Mexico itself. That proximity may continuously replenish the immigrant community, sustaining its distinctiveness and encouraging its assertiveness. Alternatively, the nearness of Mexico may weaken the community's coherence and limit its political and cultural clout by chronically attenuating its members' permanence in the United States, as the accessibility of the mother country makes for a kind of perpetual repatriation process.

In any case, there is no precedent in American history for these possibilities. No previous immigrant group had the size and concentration and easy access to its original culture that the Mexican immigrant group in the Southwest has today. If we seek historical guidance, the closest example we have to hand is in the diagonally opposite corner of the North American continent, in Quebec. The possibility looms that in the next generation or so we will see a kind of Chicano Quebec take shape in the American Southwest, as a group emerges with strong cultural cohesiveness and sufficient economic and political strength to insist on changes in the overall society's ways of organizing itself and conducting its affairs.

Public debate over immigration has already registered this prospect, however faintly. How else to explain the drive in Congress, and in several states, to make English the "official" language for conducting civil business? In previous eras no such legislative muscle was thought necessary to expedite the process of immigrant acculturation, because alternatives to eventual acculturation were simply unimaginable. Less certain now that the traditional incentives are likely to do the work of assimilation, we seem bent on trying a ukase -- a ham-handed and provocative device that may prove to be the opening chapter of a script for prolonged cultural warfare. Surely our goal should be to help our newest immigrants, those from Mexico especially, to become as well integrated in the larger American society as were those European "new" immigrants whom E. A. Ross scorned but whose children's patriotism George Patton could take for granted. To reach that goal we will have to be not only more clever than our ancestors were but also less confrontational, more generous, and more welcoming than our current anxieties sometimes incline us to be.

The present may echo the past, but will not replicate it.

Tom Myers -

John Nutting wasn't an immigrant, he was an explorer/conqueror! If he'd been an immigrant he'd have had to learn Indian.

Agree. Two aspects of illegal immigration are not commented on. There has been a tradition of seasonal workers coming across the border, an extension of the 'migrant workers' there was such a great documentary on in the fifties. Work done, money made, the people would return to South Texas or Mexico. It didn't look good (to us) to see people running back and forth across the border. We inhibited it; it would be more considerate, account for the personhood of the Other, to make some administrative arrangement to allow it rather than just look at it from our perspective. People complain about them 'jumping in line,' Jack, maybe our politics puts them in that line; they 'just came in for a drink' as the saying goes.

The other is the effect of the Fourth Amendment (banning 'illegal search and seizure'). We have this theology about checks and balances in our system. But here is a place where it is really overlooked. Just like it may have steamed the King of England that he couldn't collect all the proper taxes, it steams those who count illegal immigrants that we can't just go in and get rid of those without 'papers.' The fact that the Constitution was written by smugglers becomes inconvenient and those damned, and we really needed them, (no terribly sorry!) revered forefathers did that to us.

I'm a right-winger in agreement with Krugman. Two modern national policies - 1) free trade with poor countries, and (2) porous borders - suppress the free-market wages of America's working poor. You and I should be willing to pay more for shoes, shirts, groceries, and restaurant meals, so that our less-blessed countrymen can *earn* a decent market wage. I want them coaching baseball teams and helping out at the PTA, not sweating away at second and third ill-rewarded jobs.

Present-day policies make our national borders into dashed lines, dishonoring our war dead who shed their blood that we would enjoy a better place to live than other places. In this light, guest worker programs are no help.

This is slightly off-topic, but goes to Kenneth's post. The older I get (now in mid-40's), the more I realize that today's "honorable war dead" are tomorrow's stepping stones for economic/political mobility. Which has to make one question, deeply, when any given war is "justified."

The long and the short of the Mexican border/immigration issue, can be boiled down to the following: 1) Is it ok to develop an amnesty policy on illegal immigration because we haven't enforced it in the past (i.e., the end justifies the means); if so, what prevents future ill-usage of law enforcement -- or, in other terms -- are we, or aren't we, a nation of laws? Is it possible that certain interests are exploiting illegal immigration (i.e. "guest worker" status), and if so, do you vote (i.e., does your elected representative represent *you*) to the detriment of the middle-class American. What long-term impact does this have? (Higher taxes? Lower wages? Less economic mobility? A lowering of the educational attainment by the middle class?)

There are very large issues distilled in the immigration question. Given other harbingers, I'd say it is looking like an entrenched political class is using an immigrant underclass to undermine a traditional middle class in order to further solidify their power and redistribute wealth, to the detriment of the liberties currently held by a relatively educated and economically free populace.

In other words -- a great majority of Americans (a cultural entity, not an ethnical one, and all they represent) are going to hell in a handbasket.

Jane needs to realize that the costs to the border states are real and large. I pay a special property tax to fund the local public hospitals (the median house here will pay about $280 in this tax), with the bulk of the funding going to pay for the uninsured - most of which are illegal immigrants. The insurance rates here to cover uninsured motorists have gone up quite a bit, since illegals don't buy liability. (My brother was in a fender bender and before the cops showed up, all of the occupants of the other car vanished.) There are significant law enforcement costs in having a significant population that can be preyed upon and can't go to the cops.

No one's worried about high rates of crime and illegitimacy among the Hmong

No, but locally, we have a real problem with Asian gangs (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.). And my wife worked at a charity obstetric hospital that had significant caseloads of Vietnamese, as well as Hispanics.

The Chicano leaders have, since the 60s, pursed a policy that results in preventing assimilation - bilingual education and government services, flirting with separatist politics, etc.

Add all this up, and there are significant reasons to want some border control.

Incidentally, people do worry about Hmong immigrants:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/immigrat/beckf.htm

As the son of an immigrant who is still working(at age 86!) because she wants to work, I would say that there are several big differences between my mother's sort of immigrant, and the ones we are seeing now. First, the immigrants of the 1920's were trying to get away from a place that they hated, and they did not want to go back. Some sent money, but usually not for long, and I distinctly remember a discussion with my grandfather, who said that he NEVER wanted to go back to the old country - there was nothing there that he ever wanted to see again.

Second, those immigrants did not speak English, but they were determined that their children should speak it, and speak it well. They sometimes taught the mother-tounge to one or two children, so that they could help communicate with the new world, but in general, they insisted that their children learn the local language well.

Third, the current "diversity culture" encourages multiple generations of immigrants to STAY in one place, and not intermarry with the other groups. It encourages a separate-but-equal existence, and the maintenance of all of those quaint customs that we all adore, as long as they only relate to food or music or dance or art - we try to cleanse out the not-so-nice customs that relate to oppression of women, genital mutilation, or macho revenge tactics. But since it is really hard to separate all of these traits, we end up with pockets of "local color" that make everyone so unhappy.

I have mixed feeling about immigration - the ones that want to work, should be allowed to do so, but with a deadline to become citizens or go home. If they want to bring families, they should be allowed to do so, but only close families, not the cousins and the aunts and uncles. And they should not be allowed to retain citizenship in the former country - if they want to be citizens, it should be because they want to share our values and want their children to do so as citizens - not just as a job to generate cash to send home.

"My ancestors got in when there basically weren't any rules . . . as did the ancestors of anyone who came here before 1925."

There absolutely were rules before 1925. Haven't you heard of the Chinese Exclusionary Act of 1882? The United States barred entry to Chinese laborers and forbade naturalization for those already in the United States. There might not have been many rules for immigrants from the European countries but there were most definitely some rules in place. The newly arrived didn't get processed at Ellis Island by accident!

Actually, Sam Huntington is made somewhat uneasy by latino Catholicism. On the other hand, people may not be as agitated about Papist takeovers, because they welcome their new, (shall we say) supreme masters. Yes, the Popish Plot conspiracies have come true, at the hands of one Irishman, two Italians, some probably northern-European guy named "Roberts", and (improbably) a fellow whose ancestors (some of them anyway) hail from Africa. Factum est. Et esto perpetua, in seculum seculi.

To further what others have said, if there were 15 million Hmong here illegally, and another 50 million plus that wanted to come here, there sure as hell would be a lot of people complaining about them.

After the recent demonstrations, I think we can afford open borders only if we can deport anybody who blocks traffic.

If they want to bring families, they should be allowed to do so, but only close families, not the cousins and the aunts and uncles.

This is mrely a fundamental difference between how "family" is viewed in the US, and how it is viewed in other cultures. Notably in Mexico it is not uncommon for a large segment of extended family to live in one household and function as one household unit.

Even among better off second- and sometimes third-geenration immigrants from Mexico it is not uncommon to see two grandparents, a mother, her sister, two young children, and an aunt or uncle all out together on the weekly shopping trip, even while the father and labor-age brothers/sons are out obtaining wages. If the shopping trip happens on a weekend, they may be in the party, too.

There is no reason for immigration rules to be divorced from recognizing this kind of inbuilt social networking mechanism (a) when it exists and (b) when it is not accompanied by US-incompatible ideals such as the abuse of women, because to artificially break it up may have negative consequences all around.

I've read through every comment on this thread, and nobody has yet pointed out what was, to me, the most shocking assertion in Jane's post -- namely, that her ancestors from Ireland "probably didn't speak English when they got here."

Jane, unless your Irish forebears came across the sea with the Vikings, I can almost guarantee that they knew English, and that it is likely that they did not speak Irish Gaelic. My own grandmother from County Mayo from a Gaeltacht(Irish speaking region), but my grandfather from County Tyrone was not, and spoke only English.

There might not have been many rules for immigrants from the European countries but there were most definitely some rules in place.

Yeah, but it's still a terrible comparison. "Playing by the rules" today means filling out reams of paperwork, opening your life and travel to complete scrutiny, and agreeing to wait many years for your chance to come through. None of these requirements applied to Europeans, and if they had, few of our ancestors would have been able to successfully win the prize. The difference in degree really does amount to a difference in kind.

Yeah, but it's still a terrible comparison. "Playing by the rules" today means filling out reams of paperwork, opening your life and travel to complete scrutiny, and agreeing to wait many years for your chance to come through. None of these requirements applied to Europeans, and if they had, few of our ancestors would have been able to successfully win the prize. The difference in degree really does amount to a difference in kind.

The geographic proximity of Mexico also creates a difference in kind.

Conor's 3/29 7:51 PM reference to David Kennedy's article strikes me as the best content in this thread so far. We really are dealing with a qualitatively different phenomenon than Ellis Island immigration. And, no disrespect to Jane, I suspect that those living in border states are better qualified to comment on this matter as a result. In New York City, she doesn't see that what is happening now really is on a different scale than what happened with her ancestors.

I don't know what the best answer is, but I do know that uncritical acceptance of de facto unlimited immigration based on simple inference from the past is not it.

The geographic proximity of Mexico also creates a difference in kind.

It hasn't gotten any closer in the last 150 years. :)

Seriously, I understand the point you're making, but while Mexico's population has increased quite a lot, the population of Europe was proportionately so massive between 1880 and 1920 that it may as well have been a country the size of Mexico floating 5 miles off of our Atlantic Coast. Immigration flows were over 1 million per year at a time when our country had yet to break 100 million. We're pushing to 300 million and we probably aren't matching that immigration in absolute numbers, let alone relative.

You can argue that the southwest is affected disproportionately from immigration, but between 1880 and 1920 the South and mountain states were effectively ignored as a destination, and many northern states had either 40+% or majority foreign-born populations. New England was swamped by immigration from its own neighboring poor-overpopulating-Catholic neighbor.

Think of all the Eastern European names in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the German and Scandinavian names in the Dakotas, Italian and Jewish names in New York and southern New England, French names in Maine and Vermont, and you can see how mass immigration then was much more transformative across a broader part of the country than even Mexican immigration has been. At worst, they're roughly comparable, but only for a few states vs. the whole former northern part of the U.S.

Laura wrote: '... I've read through every comment on this thread, and nobody has yet pointed out what was, to me, the most shocking assertion in Jane's post -- namely, that her ancestors from Ireland "probably didn't speak English when they got here." ...'

Not only that, but they were singing "Danny Boy" while drunk in the gutters over 100 years ago which is really amazing since the lyrics to "Danny Boy" were written (by an Englishman) in 1912.

Regarding the preponderance of Mexican immigrants among today's newcomers: Michael Barone has a convincing argument that in terms of assimilation, ties to the home country, economic advancement, education, and political evolution, Mexican immigrants of today completely track the experiences of earlier Italian immigrants.

Something to think about as we imagine the America of 2050.

Brittain33 wrote: '..."Playing by the rules" today means filling out reams of paperwork, opening your life and travel to complete scrutiny, and agreeing to wait many years for your chance to come through. ...'

Tell me about it!!!!

I married a Mexican girl in 1993 and immediately applied for her Green Card. By the time we finally got the Green Card, our first child was already 6 months old!

9 months to make a baby; 15 months to get a Green Card. And that was 15 months of non-stop hassles with moronic, arrogant, obnoxious &^%$& government scum-bag bureaucrats.

(Meanwhile, other people that we knew were just waltzing into the USA illegally with no hassles whatsoever.)

My wife became eligible to apply for citizenship about 8 years ago, but we still haven't done it because every time that I think about opening that can of worms again -- every time that I think about having to spend another year kissing the Government's arse -- my stomach starts to churn, and I find some pretext for putting it off.

I'm only reporting what observers noted of famine immigrants; an astonishing number of them didn't speak English. I know that no one outside of the gaeltacht in modern-day Ireland speaks Irish, but that was apparently not the case of the pre-civil war Irish immigrants, which is when my family hit the shores of North America.

And no, my family did not bring Danny Boy over with them, nor do they allow it to be sung in their house. ;-) But it has infected our nation's Irish pubs like an epidemic.

It hasn't gotten any closer in the last 150 years. :)

Seriously, I understand the point you're making, but while Mexico's population has increased quite a lot, the population of Europe was proportionately so massive between 1880 and 1920 that it may as well have been a country the size of Mexico floating 5 miles off of our Atlantic Coast. Immigration flows were over 1 million per year at a time when our country had yet to break 100 million. We're pushing to 300 million and we probably aren't matching that immigration in absolute numbers, let alone relative.

As Kennedy mentions, previous immigration was multi-source, and was cut off in 1924. Both of these factors aided assimilation; maybe they are unnecessary, but I don't see the evidence.

Regarding the preponderance of Mexican immigrants among today's newcomers: Michael Barone has a convincing argument that in terms of assimilation, ties to the home country, economic advancement, education, and political evolution, Mexican immigrants of today completely track the experiences of earlier Italian immigrants.

Something to think about as we imagine the America of 2050.

This does provide grounds for optimism. At minimum it suggests that a 1924-style cutoff is sufficient to induce desired assimilation that currently isn't happening.

As someone whose mother qualified for the DAR, and one who has great-grandparents who fled starvation in Ireland and porgroms in hole in your argument about the comparitive value of older waves of immigration and the present day flood from Mexico. It can be illustrated by the death of my paternal grandmother's brother and mother. Short version: breech birth at home. Emergency room? What's that? They buried both of them in the same coffin. Today's illegal immigrant shows up at the local hospital, and not only gets great medical care on the US citizen's nickle, but an "anchor baby" to defer future legal problems.

There were practically no "social services" available to my (or her) immigrant ancestors, and what there were were not financed by the government. Immigrants were almost 100% "productive" because they had no choice. Whether today's immigrants are or are not a net gain is a question that I haven't seen adequately answered, but it's certainly not a factor to be ignored.

"Also, The US needs to tap Mexico on the shoulder and suggest that it has a major emmigration problem that it needs to take care of. Or is emmigration good for Mexico??"

And how exactly is Mexico supposed to "take care of" its emigration problem? The same way that the East Germans did? I seem to recall that we generally consider that to be a bad thing for governments to do to their own people.

"I'm a right-winger in agreement with Krugman. Two modern national policies - 1) free trade with poor countries, and (2) porous borders - suppress the free-market wages of America's working poor. You and I should be willing to pay more for shoes, shirts, groceries, and restaurant meals, so that our less-blessed countrymen can *earn* a decent market wage."

And how exactly are they *earning* it when a large number of people who would compete for their customers' business are barred from doing so? You can't rig the game and then pretend that native-born citizens are winning it fair and square.

"I'm all for immigration too, just not the illegal kind." That's what everyone says, and yet the quotas and other rules that prevent most would-be immigrants from doing it legally never get relaxed."

Assuming that you're even right, that's the way it should be.

We are after all a representative republic. Debate over legal immigration should be debates over legal immigration, not a defacto "let's just ignore it" plan.

This is about -illegal- immigration from the country right next door to us, in unprecedented numbers, with no posited end in sight.

Number 1 reason to be cautious: There's country above us, they seem to have this potential seperation problem with a concentrated Francophone minority majority...and France isn't even next door.

There's plenty of 'workers' out there, the real elephant in the room is why everyone just assumes that the 'workers' have to Mexican.

The other interesting bit is criticizing Mark for making ethnic generalizations, and then celebrating Hispanics (Mexicans also?) as family oriented, hard working people.

It really has nothing to do with Mexicans, per se - it has to do with demographics, borders, and the general failure of multicultural societies.

Does Krugman actually claim to believe that the Americans that allegedly won't take a hard job for, say, $7.00 an hour, would look at $7.56 an hour (8% more)and say, "Oh, that's different!"

I laugh in his general direction.

"I'm all for immigration too, just not the illegal kind." That's what everyone says, and yet the quotas and other rules that prevent most would-be immigrants from doing it legally never get relaxed.

Probably because being for immigration does not necessarily mean one is for increased levels of immigration or even immigration at the current levels or (moving from the quantitative to the qualitative) may have different ideas on whether we are admitting the right kind of immigrants (e.g. focusing too much on family reunification rather than bringing in more immigrants with useful job skills).

Or it could just be that they want to stop the flow of illegal aliens first and sort through the ones who are already here to decide which should be allowed to stay before discussing making provisions to admit more legally or provide an amnesty for the ones who have broken our laws. Considering how often we have been promised that an amnesty or "guest worker" program to admit more legal immigrants would help stem the tide of illegal ones (along with increased levels of enforcement that are promised but rarely if ever delivered) rather than encourage it by rewarding law-breaking, I cannot say that they are wholly irrational in demanding that enforcement measures finally be enacted first before being entertaining any talk of another "guest worker" program.

Does Krugman actually claim to believe that the Americans that allegedly won't take a hard job for, say, $7.00 an hour, would look at $7.56 an hour (8% more)and say, "Oh, that's different!"

Um no, he is probably arguing that but for illegal aliens, lower income Americans who are working would have 8 percent more income to provide food, clothing, and shelter for their families and many of those on the margins would be less likely to have to be on public assistance as a result. The reason being that illegal aliens who work at those jobs and are willing to work for less money or under poorer working conditions lower the price that employers have to pay to fill those positions. Thus an American working a light construction job for $10 an hour might have made $10.80 instead.

I do not necessarily find it a persuasive argument and generally agree that laughing at Paul Krugman is good thing but it is not an irrational one.

This column is full of trite generalizations. Obviously you are young and don't know too much. Here's one example:

"No one's worried about high rates of crime and illegitimacy among the Hmong"

Hmong "gangs" -- young men not properly assimilate -- are a concern in the cities where they're settling. (one ie. Minneapolis)

At least you acknowledge that the cost to you is outweighed by cheap landscapers and nannies. Laborwise, it's a mess for more than short order cooks and janitors.

Immigration is good. Keep it regulated. Keep it legal. The idea that we have so much land here is silly. Water resources, education, etc is limited.

As far as your wanting us to tell you how to help make low skilled workers already here into higher ones? Education, education, education. Less tax cuts for the wealthy to beef up the primary schools for those already here. We're failing them. And equalizing the US to Mexico standards won't help.

I'm pro- hard-working people. (You forgot to mention Jamaicans). Haitians might be carrying AIDS, so their should be a communicable disease check before you hand them a green card as a reward for making it here. Think you silly. Who will pay for the healthcare costs? Who will build the cultures to support them? It would be nice to think they could be self supporting again like immigrants of yore, but that denies reality of how our society works.

Yes to immigration -- limited and properly planned. I don't believe that no one would do these jobs so we need immigrants. That's hooey. Here, no one would continue to do these jobs under the working conditions and pay rates now offered. That's sad for labor, and you will look back and realize that Darwinian Survival of the Fittest undermines American culture.

"I'd say they live in gross, inhumane poverty."

Yes, but why should we respond primarily with a lottery system where a few get a better life here and the rest can suffer? If our main concern is world poverty, then we should try to fix it by improving governments. At the country level, most poverty is self-inflicted through corruption and bad policies. The ultimate solution is to do what we can to get the governments to change.

In the meantime, the US should decide what level of legal immigration we can handle, and we shouldn't give up the rule of law. But I don't think that the best way to help poor people around the world is to only help a few while ignoring all the others.

So many rationalizations for arguments for a country where you don't have to see anyone but white people.

So many rationalizations for arguments for a country where you don't have to see anyone but white people.

Meaning, perhaps, that you didn't read (m)any of the comments carefully, but just couldn't hold in that witty one-liner any longer...?

Hint: It's not witty if it mainly serves to make you look ignorant and foolish. Pick arguments that someone actually made, quote as necessary to induce clarity, and then address those arguments cogently.

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