A Libertarian Take On Immigration:

[Aquila]

Here's a Libertarian take on immigration. Please share your thoughts...

Immigration Law Should Reflect Our Dynamic Labor Market
http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration


By Daniel T. Griswold


Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.


Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.


The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.


Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs — in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism — that require only short-term, on-the-job training.


At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs — those without a high school diploma — continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.


Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration.


In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.


Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.


Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.


When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.


We've faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.


For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency.


The fatal flaw of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was not that it offered legal status to workers already here but that it made no provision for future workers to enter legally.


Immigration is not the only area of American life where a misguided law has collided with reality. In the 1920s and '30s, Prohibition turned millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans into lawbreakers and spawned an underworld of moon-shining, boot-legging and related criminal activity. (Sound familiar?) We eventually made the right choice to tax and regulate alcohol rather than prohibit it.


In the 19th century, America's frontier was settled largely by illegal squatters. In his influential book on property rights, The Mystery of Capital, economist Hernando de Soto describes how these so-called extralegals began to farm, mine and otherwise improve land to which they did not have strict legal title. After failed attempts by the authorities to destroy their cabins and evict them, federal and state officials finally recognized reality, changed the laws, declared amnesty and issued legal documents conferring title to the land the settlers had improved.


As Mr. de Soto wisely concluded: "The law must be compatible with how people actually arrange their lives." That must be a guiding principle when Congress returns to the important task of fixing our immigration laws.

[Pressing-On]

1)As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.

In Texas, between 2008 and 2012, we have arrested 143,000 illegals, charged with 447,000 crimes - 5,000 rapes, 2,000 murders.

2) In the 1920's, 30s and 50s......

Border ranchers have stated, and I have experienced this myself with my father being a farmer/rancher, it is a totally different breed of people coming through the border than it was back then. Enough said on that account.

3) Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes

How will "low-wage" workers ever pay these fines and back taxes? That has been debated in Congress. It is simply not feasible and will never happen.

On other points:

4) Illegals will do tough, low-wage jobs that Americans and legal immigrants will not do.

Faulty argument. Most of these workers are paid under the table or with cash, asking no questions. When they are out of the shadows, they will be competing for jobs in the mainstream job market among less educated Americans who are already experiencing wage instability and a very tight labor industry.

5) Affirmative Action

After obtaining legal status, these people can then apply for Affirmative Action programs. That doesn't help a person become independent.

6) It will put more strain on our social services

57% of legal and illegal households use, at least, one welfare program. They are poor with no health insurance or job security. We know some illegals are using these services, but once legal, all will be available to them.

The taxes paid by immigrants don't come near covering the cost of the services rendered to them.

7) Catch and Release - We need to end this - immediately!

We need to detain unaccompanied minors until their cases are properly adjudicated. No granting of special status. If we release unaccompanied minors to their families and friends, the problem continues to exist.

8) Drug Cartels

They are able to quickly adjust to any loss of manpower along our border. The same cartels that are responsible for the violence in South America are the same ones escorting unaccompanied children across our border, making millions of dollars to boot! They've tied up the Border Patrol with these children, allowing the smuggling to become easier. That is what the National Guard is being called in for - to loosen up the duties of the Border Patrol and DPS.

We must secure our Border. We cannot allow every person who lives in a dangerous or economically challenged country to come here. We cannot sustain the continued influx.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz introduced a bill, H.R. 3463, The Border Patrol Pay Reform Act of 2013. It addressed the Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUO). National Border Patrol Counsel brought this up during a hearing last month - June 2014.

It replaces the AUO with three options:

• Work 100 hours per pay period and receive a 25 percent differential
• Work 90 hours and receive a 12.5 percent differential
• Work no overtime (80 hours per pay period). Additional unscheduled overtime will be treated as compensatory time off. Scheduled overtime will be paid.

The plan would save $7,000 per agent and approximately $125 million per year or roughly $1.25 billion over 10 years.

We need to close our Border. Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives Homeland Security the right to remove any and all aliens who haven't been paroled or admitted - it needs to be enforced.

[BrotherEastman]

Good points PO!!!!

[aegsm76]

Aquila, libertarians ain't what they used to be.
For an example go here:
(you have to go about halfway down in the article)
http://humanevents.com/2014/07/17/putin-robbed-blind/

Here is a snippet:
"Today’s “libertarians” chant the anti-Cuba embargo mantra in perfect rhyme and cadence with every socialist elitist and every secretive supranational outfit mentioned above. Bedfellows don’t get much stranger. Let’s stand back and have a look: All of the above clamor for an Imperial Democratic President to further circumvent the U.S. Congress and nullify the work of legendary conservative Republican legislators Dan Burton of Indiana and Jesse Helms of North Carolina."