Jenna responded to my last essay. At this point, we agree that immigration, when legal, is a good thing. We agree that immigrants should be able to immigrate just because they want to be Americans, whether or not an employer is “sponsoring” them.
Jenna and I still disagree on one small point. I was planning to overlook it, until I realized that it was the perfect segue into the next stage of the debate. Here’s what Jenna had to say:
The number of people breaking a law does not necessary invalidate the purpose of the law. Millions of people speed, don’t where their seat belt, smoke marijuana, engage in public drunkennesss, remove the tags from their mattresses (I’m kidding), and engage in other types of illegal behavior.
Does their pure disobedience warrant the abolishment of those laws? Not necessarily.
I agree. Pure disobedience does not necessarily warrant the abolishment of laws. However, wide spread disobedience may indicate that the law was ill-considered, may indicate that a majority of people don’t actually consider the “crime” to be a crime. Does that mean we should automatically change or abolish the law? No, absolutely not. But wide spread disobedience might indicate that the law is toothless, ineffectual, ill-advised, poorly implemented, or otherwise flawed.
It’s worth noting that poorly written laws (or laws that are just plain stupid) create just as much disrespect for the law as outright law breaking does. (For instance, Wisconsin’s new mandatory booster seat law is causing me to lose respect for both the Wisconsin legislature and the governor. It’s both poorly written and just plain stupid.)
Of course, immigration laws are a trickier subject. They are enacted by the citizens of one country in the expectation that they will be obeyed by the citizens of another country. In the case of America’s immigration laws, the biggest law-breakers are Mexican citizens. The INS estimates that an average of 150,000 Mexicans have been illegally immigrating every year, over the past two decades. As I mentioned in a previous post, America only issues 10,000 green cards to Mexican immigrants each year.
Jenna says:
I believe Joe makes a good point when he says that the number of those wishing to enter our country far surpasses those we allow in. That may play a small role in why some choose to enter illegally: increasing the number allowed in may alleviate a tiny percentage of illegal immigration violations.
I think this understates the truth quite a bit. When we give out 10,000 green cards and 150,000 people enter illegally, I tend to think that those 150,000 people entered illegally because it simply wasn’t possible for them to obtain a green card. If all 150,000 people waited for a green card, they people at the end of the line would have to wait 15 years for their chance to immigrate. And that’s just for the people who illegally entered in one year. If everyone that has entered illegally, during the past two decades, had waited to immigrate legally, the people at the end of the line would have to wait over 1,000 years for their chance to get in.
When a person is faced with the desparate poverty of their home nation combined with a 15 year wait to legally improve their status, I can well understand the decision to risk illegal immigration. After all, their family’s very survival may be on the line. Rather than alleviating a tiny percentage of the illegal immigration problem, I believe increasing the green card numbers would alleviate the vast majority of the illegal immigration problem.
I’ll stop here. I think this post nicely sets up my response to Jenna’s questions, but I’ll have to wait until later in the day to post it.
2 Comments
Just one small point–in regards to laws that are mass-broken may be broken themselves, we should not change laws purely because someone doesn’t like them. After the ‘00 elections, the left was up in arms about the electoral college system–however we shouldn’t (and didn’t) change it simply because they’re pissed off. Reactionary politics and lawmaking can be the worst kind around.
As well, and I’m sure you’ll touch on this later, your entire last half about how difficult it is to immigrate legally–we can’t make it too easy. We have to find a line between so difficult aliens choose not to wait, and so easy it means nothing.
But like I said, I have a feeling we’ll be touching on this later!
while I think Joe has some interesting points about illegal immigration, it’s my opinion that he fails to see the forest for the trees.
“When a person is faced with the desparate poverty of their home nation combined with a 15 year wait to legally improve their status, I can well understand the decision to risk illegal immigration. After all, their family’s very survival may be on the line. Rather than alleviating a tiny percentage of the illegal immigration problem, I believe increasing the green card numbers would alleviate the vast majority of the illegal immigration problem.”
increasing the number of green cards might not have much impact on the “illegal” part of the situation.. a significant number of illegal aliens choose that method because it’s the most cost effective in the long run.. to get into the United States, quite often they have to hire “coyotes” (trained border smugglers) to help them across, and get them set up with the forged documents they need to get jobs here.. it’s not as cheap as you might think.. certainly no cheaper than going through the immigration process.. and that same money could be used to feed their families back home
the real incentive to come here illegally is to bypass the tax system and be absorbed into our government as a citizen.. they know that would take a chunk of the change they send back home to their families in Mexico (an amount that surpasses the national foreign aid we give Mexico).. meanwhile, they use our schools and health care benefits, while staying “off the books” intentionally
then there is the topic of illegals that would clearly be refused entry due to criminal records.. opening up more green card slots would wouldn’t stop their illegal entry
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[...] When I last wrote about immigration, I was talking about the gross disparity between the number of green cards issued and the number of people wishing to immigrate. I advocated lifting the green card limits and giving residency to anyone who wishes to immigrate — regardless of skill levels, country of orgin, or anything else. [...]