"The danger to 'the West comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing borders, but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into adulthood."

"Globalisation is here and cannot be stopped. With cheap and easy transportation around the globe (unless a country walls itself off--like North Korea--with similar meaning and consequences), the differences in race and culture of 100 years ago are going to melt away.

"Take the worldwide growth of English, and American English in particular. The French reportedly hate the growing use of English words. It cannot be stopped. Take the growth of interracial marriage, unheard of 60 years ago. It cannot be stopped. Neither can interfaith marriages and other 'mixed marriages.' ...

"You may bemoan the loss of national or regional identity, but it cannot be stopped.

"Generally, what goes into the mixing process are the best elements of each culture. Or so it seems to me, and it makes sense: why would people of culture B value the things about [a] culture A that are objectively inferior? ...

"So, to the extent that people feel turned off or threatened by people coming into their country who look different and act differently, that concern is going to fade into the background over the next 20 years.

"Differences over ideas, not foods or dress, are an entirely different matter. The difference between Islamic jihadists and [others] is a matter of literal life and death, not something optional. Even there, globalisation will have a big impact. The ultimate defeat of Islamism will be accomplished by young people in the Islamic countries seeing the rational values of the West. That's unless the West commits suicide---a distinct possibility.

"The oft-noted "moral weakness of the West" has become "God damn America!" [and god damn the West]. The cause is not immigrants; the cause is the (Kantian) ideas taught in our schools and universities.

"The danger to [the West] comes not from a handful of terrorists crossing the border[s], but from the millions of university graduates crossing from academia into [adulthood]. ... "

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Immigration—some mostly new thoughts'

"Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first."

 

"We are discussing the soon-to-be ratified NZ-India free trade agreement and the opposition by Messrs Jones and Peters. It’s proving a popular strategy, but it has been my observation, perhaps unfairly, that New Zealand First can sometimes be a little, shall we say, imprecise when it comes to their interpretation of the facts. ...

"[T]he treaty allows for 1000 software engineers, 1000 civil and mechanical engineers, 700 construction managers, 500 teachers and 1200 nurses. That’s 5000 in total. This isn’t 5000 a year. It is 5000 at any one time. And then they have to go home. ...

"[W]hat [else] do we get in this agreement? ... We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Not billions. And without dairy this isn’t a game-changer as the Prime Minister describes it but it is, for those industries affected, transformational.

"The other nonsense being peddled by NZ First is the obligation to invest US$20b into India; this is not what the document says. The wording is clear; we shall promote foreign direct investment '…from investors of New Zealand into India with the aim to increase investment by US 20 billion dollars within 15 years…'

"This is an aspiration, not a commitment. I suspect that this was included to give New Delhi cover to justify the internal political cost of reducing tariffs. ...

"It is significant that the Labour Party stepped up to support a treaty that was in the nation’s interest. They [belatedly] placed country ahead of party and for this Labour deserves our appreciation. Ironically, New Zealand First did not place New Zealand first. ...

"Like the trade deal with China, the initial document isn’t the final one. It opens a bilateral economic engagement that will improve the quality of life for residents of both countries.

"Luxon and his trade minister deserve respect and credit for this achievement."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'Reading the NZ-India free trade agreement made my stress levels rise'

"The blight of Pauline Hanson is that her dumb bigotry offers a fantasy."

Former Aus PM Paul Keating -- aka the Lizard of Oz -- has deservedly unloaded on the pathetic race-baiting of newish Aus Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor.  "Many people, me included, wished him well in fighting One Nation with a conservatism anchored in principles. How dispiriting is his cowardice."

The Liberal party, battling an extreme version of itself – One Nation – has again fallen back to its default political policy: racism.

Angus Taylor, announcing a policy at primary odds with an immigrant nation, says a Liberal government under his leadership will adopt Trump ICE-style policies to weed and “boot out” people who fail to adhere to “national values” and who are responsible for the erosion of national culture including the Balkanisation of communities.

And, to hammer the point, sitting beside Taylor at his policy launch was Mr Racial Opportunism himself, John Winston Howard, late of anti-Asian migration in 1988 – the picket fence suburban racism of his first round as Liberal leader, and the wilful anti-humanitarianism of his electorally-driven Tampa atrocity of 2001. ...

Angus Taylor came to the Liberal leadership with a reputation of being mainstream Liberal; that is, a keeper of the Liberal party’s best longer-term instincts both in social and economic policy.

And many people, myself included, wished him well in consolidating the Liberal base and in fighting One Nation with a conservatism anchored in principles. If not righteous, decent.

But by adopting racism with its shabby appeal to differentiation and primal instincts, Angus Taylor marks himself out as a political leader unworthy of the leadership of a party that has managed Australia for the greater part of the last century and which celebrated the country’s unifying values.

Racism is not simply immoral and abhorrent, it is absurd. The notion that some of us are in some way different to the rest of us – in some way born differently, of some alien biology. ...

The blight of Pauline Hanson is that her dumb bigotry offers a fantasy. The fantasy that Australia in the modern age can return to a monoculture. A monoculture which fails to acknowledge or accept that a continent of our scale is able to turn its back on the multilateralism of neighbouring states or on the vitality of their societies. And, more than that, shun them while disparaging any contribution they may make or bring to us as migrants.

How dispiriting for the rest of us is Angus Taylor’s cowardice in not even attempting to stand and argue for principles that have been integral to Australia’s strength – principles his party has long championed.

RELATED:

=>Welfare State Leaves Boat-People to Die

Thursday, 30 August 2001, 11:01 am | Libertarianz Party

"New Zealanders who wish the 434 Afghan refugees on board the Tampa moored off Christmas Island would just 'go away' are exposing the dark underbelly at the heart of the Welfare State," says Libertarianz Leader Peter Cresswell....

=>Better Way for Boat-People

Thursday, 30 August 2001, 11:06 am | Libertarianz Party

"There is a better way forward for politicians wrestling with a way to deal with the 434 homeless Afghan refugees that no country wants to admit," suggested Libertarianz leader Peter Cresswell today....

1 in 4 people born in New Zealand live elsewhere by age 30

Some fascinating research by Tim Hughes and his team at Treasury reveals that "25-30% of people born in New Zealand are living elsewhere by age 30."

We find that only about a third of emigration each year is of the NZ-born, and about 40% of NZ-born emigrants return to live in NZ again. Those with the highest qualifications are most likely to leave but also the most likely to return. Those who return earn more and pay more tax than those never to leave.
    Yet much emigration is permanent and the diaspora is still substantial, with 25-30% of each birth cohort living elsewhere by age 30. Approximately $4b of public investment in human capital [sic] each year is ultimately lost to emigration, needing to be replaced with migration from other countries.

Complementary research further reveals that this "human capital [sic] is replaced via migration of people born elsewhere. 

Foreign-born residents contribute a disproportionate share of personal tax revenue, reflecting their age structure and other factors.
    In 2024, foreign-born NZ residents made up 32% of the population, and paid 38% of the personal tax.
    This analysis helps demonstrate the growing importance of migration policy settings for fiscal sustainability.

[hat tip Eric Crampton]

Americans? Libertarians did try to warn you

"[I]n light of how the past year has unfolded, consider cutting your friendly neighbourhood libertarian some slack. After all, we did try to warn you.

"On immigration, speech and trade, Americans are living in a libertarian’s nightmare. ... a terrifying pattern and an undeniable vindication of the long-held libertarian view that the steady growth in the size of the federal government and executive power would lead to precisely this kind of runaway authoritarianism.

"Libertarians have argued that the only way to prevent such abuses is to reduce the power of the federal government itself — abolishing unaccountable federal agencies, scaling back the administrative state, cutting spending — and to restore the balance of powers by reining in the executive. This path has generally been treated as hopelessly naïve at best, and morally suspect at worst. ... Yet it has never been more obvious that the grab-and-grow approach to power is a destructive and self-defeating way to conduct politics.

"To see why, consider how we got here.

"The Department of Homeland Security arose with very little opposition in the wake of Sept. 11 ... As the years went on, Homeland Security — and especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement, within it — got comfortable operating under a series of exceptions to the Constitution ... So it can be no surprise that ICE officers are roaming the streets of American cities today with an unclear mandate, overpowered military-style gear and a dire misunderstanding of the constitutional limits on their behaviour.  ...

"Trump 2.0 has made the libertarian case more obvious ... But it would be a mistake to treat President Trump as the origin of the ultra-powerful presidency. He is merely picking up the weapons that previous administrations left lying around and waltzing through the loopholes they opened.

"Mr. Trump has a record of threatening media and platforms under various statutory and emergency authorities. He recently mused that when '97 percent' of media coverage is negative, it ceases to be 'free speech.'  ...

"But the project of growing executive power has been bipartisan. On speech, officials in the Biden administration leaned on social-media platforms to take down what they deemed Covid and election misinformation without explicit action from the F.C.C. The Supreme Court disposed of a case, Murthy v. Missouri, challenging this “jawboning” ...

"And Mr. Trump’s tariffs — levelled and removed at will and without the participation of Congress, where the Constitution places the primary power — have disrupted and destabilised the global economy and undermined America’s role in it. ...

"Mr. Trump’s tariffs depend on a legally dubious claim that trade deficits and ordinary commerce constitute a national emergency, allowing him to bypass Congress under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (Jimmy Carter once invoked it to freeze Iranian assets.) Mr. Trump’s tariffs are not an aberration so much as the latest example of how emergency powers, once normalized, become a standing invitation to rule by fiat.

"One thing immigration, speech and trade have in common is that in recent American history, the power to control each of them has settled into the hands of the executive. ... The Supreme Court is reviewing the limits of the president’s control over tariffs and executive agencies. ... The libertarian prescription, now and always, is to scale back the size and scope of the federal government. Devolve power to states and individuals. Cut spending. And rebalance power away from the executive branch. ...

"The good news is that Americans are increasingly waking up to the dark reality of [an] overbearing federal government. ... Similarly, Americans of all stripes have turned dramatically against Mr. Trump’s ICE enforcement actions. There could be — a libertarian can still dream — a grass-roots movement to shrink government that doesn’t end up co-opted by one of the major parties, as the Tea Party was. ...

"But this glimmer of hope is faint. ...

"Instead of a winner takes all approach to power, it’s time to consider working toward a system where there is much less power for the winner to take. No one wished events would prove libertarians wrong more than libertarians themselves. There’s nothing more annoying than an 'I told you so.' But if more Americans are now ready to limit power before it is abused again, they are welcome to join us."

~ Katherine Mangu-Ward from her New York Times free-access op-ed 'Libertarians: We Told You So'

'Trump’s Gestapo is now murdering protestors'

"ICE is Trump's Gestapo or SS. They have no proper function, no constitutional authorisation, and are loyal to Trump personally. ... (My use of 'Gestapo' is figurative. Literally, ICE is the transition to that kind of evil agency.) ...

"In Minneapolis on Wednesday, an ICE agent murdered a woman in her car. ... Trump’s goon squad, created out of xenophobia, shot a non-violent protestor three times in the face, killing her. ...

"The next day another shooting by federal border patrol agents (not ICE) occurred in Portland. ...

"Trump has claimed that the [murdered] victim was part of a 'far Left' network. Even if true, which I've heard no evidence to support, how does that justify killing her? If far Left organisations are protesting ICE and deportations, good for them.

"The two young people shot in Portland were not killed and are in the hospital. The Trump line is that they were part of a criminal drug gang and were here illegally. Drug gangs exist only because of the drug Prohibition. There are no Gatorade gangs, no chocolate bar cartels. Why not? Because these things are not illegalised and their prices are such as earn an average rate of profit. ...

"The [American] public's wrong view of immigrants and wrong ideas regarding drugs are enabling a power-mad low-life to change America into a police state.

"The public's wrong view could not have happened without the destruction of the concept of individual rights. ..."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Trump’s Gestapo is now murdering protestors'

'Dictator from Day One'

"Donald Trump warned us that if he returned to the White House, he would be 'a dictator on day one.' It wasn’t just on day one."

Robert Tracinski has written a book detailing "in breadth and detail, the story of America’s political devolution from a free society to an authoritarian dictatorship."

They say you shouldn't ever take Trump literally, but you should at all times take him seriously. Tracinski's book, released this week, does that.

This book lays out, systematically and dispassionately, the five prongs of this attack on the American system: stealing from Congress the power to control government spending and to decide what government agencies exist; creating a police state that can seize and imprison people without due process and occupy our cities; defying the courts and controlling the legal profession; imposing centralized control over the economy with arbitrary powers to tax and regulate; dominating independent institutions like universities and the press.

Steven Pinker reckons it is "the best short summary of how Trump is turning the US into a dictatorship.”

The book was released on "Constitution Day, commemorating the day 238 years ago when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the final document. 

"It seems an appropriate day to warn people that the current president is busy putting the Constitution through the shredder. This day is also known as Citizenship Day, a day to remember all the immigrants over the centuries who have enriched this country by becoming citizens—which also seems an appropriate occasion for a protest against the current US administration."

Buy it here: Amazon.Com.

"You can't punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty."

" 'American found guilty of murder and multiple rapes' is a headline you'll never see. But how often have you seen:

" 'Illegal immigrant found guilty of . . .'

"People reading the latter are highly unlikely to realise that they are being manipulated. But they are: the headlines about illegal immigrants are cherry-picked by the anti-immigrationists.

"The statistics are irrelevant: you can't punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty...

"There is another crucial point: crime is small potatoes---compared to the government's crime against millions of potential immigrants. ...

"Immigration controls are a rights-violating way to 'solve' a problem created by a rights-violation (drug laws). And, since the immoral is the impractical, the 'solution' solves nothing."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'American found guilty of murder and multiple rapes' 

                            PS: "US Citizens Were 80 Percent of All Convicted Drug Traffickers in 2024"

"Immigrants justifiably celebrate when they obtain citizenship in their new country ..."

"Immigrants justifiably celebrate when they obtain citizenship in their new country ...

"Aside from patriotism, however, the sense of jubilation they feel is significantly due to having secured at last the freedom to live and work without impediment by government.

"They should never have required citizenship in order to exercise these rights.

"Dispense with the fallacious zero-sum thinking that every migrant is a burden (as if we all partake from an imaginary finite pie of opportunity).

"Let anyone arrive and work, so long as they are law-abiding and willing to stake no claim on the welfare state, insofar that it exists.

"On this basis, there ought to be no compelling impetus for migrants to seek or obtain citizenship.

"Let them apply after 20 years of continuous and law-abiding residence."

~ David P.

"Government immigration restrictions are how tyranny will come to modern America."

Two weeks ago Cato's Alex Nowrasteh debated comedian Dave Smith at NY's Soho Forum on the resolution “Government restrictions on the immigration of peaceful and healthy people make sense from a libertarian standpoint, especially in present-day America."

Alex was on the negative side.

He began by arguing that government immigration restrictions are how tyranny will come to America.

As he says below, "I didn't expect it to happen so quickly."

CLICK to watch (15 min.)

"Trump might see several advantages to engineering a dramatic showdown in a city and state run by his political enemies."

"President Trump has deployed the National Guard, along with several hundred marines, to Los Angeles — despite the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom. ... the first time a president has invoked this authority since Lyndon Johnson sent them in to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama in 1965... The circumstances in Trump’s case are dramatically different, and it’s far from clear that his decision meets the legal standard for federalising Guard troops. ... The protests over the weekend weren’t even particularly large, numbering in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, most of whom were demonstrating peacefully. ...Trump’s response was unprecedented in recent American history. ...

"Trump might see several advantages to engineering a dramatic showdown in a city and state run by his political enemies.

"He also probably wants to posture for his base as a tough and decisive leader. ... The incentive to pander to his base might be particularly strong in this case because the underlying issue is immigration. ... but his administration has struggled to deport anything like th[e millions promised] By sending the marines to Los Angeles to stop protesters from blocking ICE vans, perhaps Trump is seeking to symbolically compensate for the gap between rhetoric and reality.

"There are other plausible explanations which are far more disturbing. Is Trump hoping that inflaming tensions will provoke a violent response from Angelenos extreme enough to justify seizing further emergency powers? Or could it be a trial balloon: an opportunity for Trump to gauge how much authoritarianism he can get away? That would fit the pattern of the rest of his second term, during which he has sent deportees to a prison in El Salvador without trial, and ignored a judge’s explicit order to turn back deportation flights that were already in the air. ...

"Something similar might be going on here. While senior White House aide Stephen Miller has explicitly used the word 'insurrection' to describe events in Los Angeles, Trump has so far stopped short of using the i-word. ...Even so, this sets a precedent: that marines can be sent to sites of domestic unrest. And this might make the public and the press a bit less rattled if Trump ever does invoke the Insurrection Act in the future.

"Trump, though, tends to act on impulse. Few presidents have been lessconsistent in their decision making: administration officials and advisors come and go, the President’s moods change, and everyone has to scramble to keep up. But while he fumbles in the dark, acting on instinct, many of those instincts are deeply authoritarian. Testing how far he can push the limits of presidential power is par for the course."

~ Ben Burgis from his op-ed 'Trump is testing Los Angeles'

Q: Why do we need the concept of 'citizenship'?

"It's time for Ayn Rand's Power Question: What facts of reality give rise to the need for such a concept as X?

"Here, X is 'citizenship.' Why do we need this concept? Mainly, to determine who can vote. You can probably think of a few perquisites that attend to attaining the status of 'citizen.' But that status has nothing to do with the rights of man.

"The territory within the boundaries of a given country is the area in which its law has jurisdiction, the area in which a specific government, by its apparatus of compulsion, maintains a de jure and de facto monopoly on the use of physical force.

"We used to discuss whether the police, in a voluntarily financed laissez-faire nation, would protect the rights of non-contributors against criminals. The answer was: yes, mainly because the thug who would assault anyone is a threat to everyone, including the contributors. The 'yes' answer follows from practical, moral, and symbolic considerations. Defending the rights and freedom of everyone currently in the country is symbolic of a government devoted to justice.

"The same considerations that require the government protect the rights of non-contributors apply to protecting the rights of non-citizens. ...

"But due process and all the safeguards are there to rein in and make safer everybody who faces the possibility of government interference. The safeguards are there to eliminate arbitrary power.

"Government is potentially a far bigger threat than criminals.

"To introduce a preserve within which government agents can exercise unsupervised power is a threat that dwarfs that of any gang of hoodlums (citizens or non-citizens).

"And this is what we are seeing with Trump's every action—the quest for arbitrary power, unconstrained by checks and balances or anything other than the will of Donald Trump.

"If Trump doesn't have to follow due process in regard to non-citizens, does he have to follow it in regard to determining whether or not the person is a citizen? That's not theoretical. That's today's headlines.

"It can't be repeated too often: the solution to crime is not "screening" or "roundups" of anyone; it's repeal of the drug laws.

"It can't be repeated too often: the solution to lawless behavior by immigrants is not lawless behavior by the police.

"You can avoid a criminal gang; you can even move to a different locale. You can't avoid a SWAT team, the FBI, or any part of the state's apparatus of compulsion and incarceration."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'A sense of proportion'

Those slow-moving near-invisible market crashes ....

"Trump’s tariff mayhem has crashed stock markets across the globe. ... Doing nothing would have been far better than doing what he did. ... [When the stated policy risked a sovereign downgrade from Moody’s and probably kicked off a small recession, reversing course is indeed a win for all Americans, much in the same way that surviving a self-inflicted gunshot wound is a win.]

"[But consider.] Are there any pre-2025 policies that have already done damage on the scale that Trump is now inflicting on the global economy?

"While you might object, 'If any such policies existed, we would have noticed,' you shouldn’t. Imagine Trump imposed his current tariffs gradually over the course of the year, while constantly reassuring the world that he had no intention of raising overall tariffs. The total damage of this would ultimately be about the same as what we’ve seen. The visibility of the damage, however, would be far lower. ...

"Once you accept the possibility of pre-existing massive wealth-destroying policies, plausible candidates are easy to find. Here are [two]:

"1. The near-ban on international trade in labour. Raising tariffs from around 3% to around 30% crashed the market. But the effective tariff on foreign labor ranges from about 250% to 1500%. Indeed, that understates the damage, because arbitrary non-tariff barriers are a greater burden than precisely-defined tariffs.

"2. Draconian regulation of construction. Existing regulations roughly double the price of housing, imposing a massive burden on not only consumers, but any business requiring offices, factory space, and so on. ...

"We recently got to watch a horrific spectacle of policy dysfunction unfold before our eyes. Tariffs spiked; markets crashed. But after seeing this crash with your own eyes, you shouldn’t merely acknowledge that ... one mistake. You should open your mind to the possibility that ... for every major market crash heralded on the news, there could easily be a dozen invisible crashes — policies that wantonly but stealthily destroy trillions of dollars of value. Immigration, housing, and nuclear power are only my top candidates.

"A further deep lesson: ... We’re habituated to their harm ... to the point that few of us realise how much wealth we’ve lost, how much wealth we’re losing, and how much wealth we and our descendants will continue to lose for decades or centuries to come.

"[P]opulists [like Trump] do immense harm blatantly. Traditional politicians, in contrast, favour stealth. When they inflict immense harm, they do it gradually. And in the face of blatant opportunities to to make the world dramatically better, they yawn. ... But once you learn to see the invisible crashes, you won’t be able to unsee the ugly truth ... "

~ Bryan Caplan from his post 'The Invisible Crash'

"The biggest ideological changes of the Trump era are not on *my* side. It’s the rest of the 'right' that changed."

 

"The biggest ideological changes of the Trump era are not on my side. It’s the rest of the 'right' that changed. ...
    "To those observing from the outside, it is obvious that people who sign up for Trumpism completely transform themselves. Free marketers become protectionists, secularists become 'culture-war Christians,' people who once sang paeans to the Constitution become advocates of one-man rule. Most disturbingly, people who used to talk in old Reaganite terms about the positive contributions of immigrants now delight in the administration’s performative cruelty toward immigrants. Look at Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban refugees who is now the chief enforcer of the administration’s arbitrary detention of foreigners.
    "Compared to that, I have been an island of stability. ... [W]hile my background would have been described as being 'on the right—back when that meant something different—I was never a conservative and not even quite a libertarian. For the general reader, I usually described myself as a 'secular free-marketer,' and that’s still true. But the context of the times has changed, and the main fault line in American politics is very different from what it was ten or fifteen years ago. ...
    "I’ve been talking for a while about how I suspect we’re in the middle of a vast new political realignment, and that has now crystallised. The new political spectrum isn’t left versus right. It’s liberalism versus authoritarianism."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'How I Changed, Or: How I Became a Mugwump'

"You do not *understand* America.”

"The Declaration of Independence stated, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are create equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Note the phrasing 'all men' (in this context meaning 'all humanity'). This idea of universal human rights was later enshrined in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment guarantees due process to all people, not just citizens, and not just white people.
    "So if you are defending the idea of deporting people, or sending them off to some hell-hole in El Salvador, without a trial or any opportunity to defend themselves, then you do not love America. You do not understand America.”

~ Stewart Margolis from his post 'Let's Get Real'

"Nationalism is not patriotism!"

"Alchemy is not chemistry.

"Altruism is not caring.
"Socialism is not sharing.
"Astrology is not astronomy.
"H2SO4 is not water.
"Nationalism is not patriotism."

~ Keith Weiner

"Nationalism is not patriotism! A French patriot roots for their Olympic basketball team; a French nationalist grumbles that almost all the players are black....
    "Note that 'identity politics' is not an inherently left or right wing idea. Where it favours minority groups, it is typically framed as left wing. When it favours the majority ethnic group (or more precisely the group in power – recall South Africa before 1994), it’s typically viewed as right wing. Thus [both varieties of] nationalists tend to oppose immigration, which threatens to dilute the [favoured] ethnic group."

~ Scott Sumner, from his post on 'The authoritarian nationalist playbook'

SUNDAY READ: There Is No Good Reason to Revoke Birthright Citizenship

A US president may only issue an executive order in accordance with current law and his powers under the Constitution. A Reagan-appointed judge just issued a Temporary Restraining Order halting Trump's Executive Order outlawing birthright citizenship as outside the law. “I can’t remember another case whether the question presented was as clear,” he said.

Perfect time to read today's guest post by Alex Nowrasteh on why birthright citizenship is lawful, why it's good, and why there's no benefit to ending it.

There Is No Good Reason to Revoke Birthright Citizenship

by Alex Nowrasteh
Shortly after being inaugurated, President Trump issued an executive order that purports to restrict birthright citizenship. The only authority he invoked for redefining some features of birthright citizenship was “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.”

Birthright citizenship has been the norm in the United States since before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and even before the American Revolution, going back to Calvin’s Case in 1608 that established jus soli in all areas ruled by the English Crown. In 1869, the British jurist Lord Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn summed up English common law as:

By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.

American courts affirmed jus soli before the Civil War, as attorney Alexandra M. Wyatt wrote for the Congressional Research Service in 2015. She mentions several cases, such as the 1824 Supreme Court case of M’Creery’s Lessee v. Somerville, where the court proceeded on the assumption that three girls born in the United States were citizens even though their father was an Irish citizen who never naturalised. In the 1844 case of Lynch v. Clarke, a New York court held that Julia Lynch, who was born to Irish nonimmigrant sojourners in New York, was a US citizen. The most relevant quote from Lynch v. Clarke was this:

I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.

That standard was then codified in the first sentence of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, also known as the citizenship clause, which reads:

All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The only exceptions are those who are not under the jurisdiction of the US government, such as the children of diplomats, who are not under the direct power of the American government. Many online commentators point to a quotation by Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the Fourteenth Amendment and defended it, to argue that the amendment wasn’t intended to create birthright citizenship. During one debate, Howard said:

This amendment which I have offered, is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

Howard’s first sentence is just an affirmation of the old English common law rule of jus soli that the United States inherited from Great Britain and that was earlier enforced by US courts, except for slaves and American Indians. But the second sentence is being misread online by people who support revoking birthright citizenship. The phrase, “This [the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment] will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers,” is being interpreted by some to mean that the three groups—foreigners, aliens, and those who belong to the families of ambassadors—are not children.

Wait a second, did you notice the difference between my summary and the original quotation? I inserted the word “and,” while Howard did not. That’s because Howard was describing the families of ambassadors as being foreigners and aliens. Howard did not list three distinct groups of people who were not under the jurisdiction of the US government; he described one group: ambassadors and their US-born children.

The 1898 Supreme Court decision of United States v. Wong Kim Ark established that the US-born children of immigrants were and remained citizens even if there were changes in law that would not have allowed them or their parents to legally immigrate here or naturalise. The Court held that a person born in the United States to Chinese parents who had travelled to China in his early 20s was a citizen of the United States and could not be denied reentry to the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Combined with the earlier English common law, its application to the United States before the Civil War, and its codification in the Fourteenth Amendment to correct the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that repudiated centuries of English and American law, it’s clear that the children born on US soil to nonimmigrants on worker or student visas, illegal immigrants, or mere travellers are US citizens.

Many lawyers, attorneys, and scholars will recount the above legal debate far better than I have. There are other issues that should be addressed if birthright citizenship is to no longer be the law of the land. 

The practical problem

To start, there are practical problems. There is no central registry of American citizens; native-born Americans show their birth certificates as evidence of citizenship. Everybody born here who registers their birth is granted a certificate in our decentralised system. Naturalised immigrants simply show their naturalisation documents. When either receives a passport, they use it to show citizenship. Trump’s order is prospective for those born to some non-citizen migrants, but if the courts uphold it, then he will issue future executive orders to broaden its scope—possibly to people who are already adults. At a minimum, any broadening will cause mass administrative chaos and uncertainty. Even if the executive order is not broadened, the chaos will still spread with births. If birth certificates are not good enough anymore, then we’d have to rely on proving that our parents were citizens or had another immigration status that allows their US-born children to be citizens. Can you do that?

There’s already an American law for inheriting citizenship referred to as jus sanguinis [meaning "right of blood"]. It is intended for children born to US-citizen parents overseas, but it can be quite cumbersome. It’s certainly more complicated than showing a birth certificate that says you were born in the United States. The elimination of birthright citizenship could eventually place every single person in America in the precarious position of having to prove American citizenship via descent to justify their own citizenship, or that of their children.

Creating a national registry of citizens would avoid some of the confusion described above. Of course, that would add another layer of complex determinations of citizenship at birth at potentially many thousands of locations by either immigration law experts or bureaucrats. This would be a managerial nightmare and not quite the destruction of the administrative state that we were all promised by the Trump administration. Then what happens to the share of children born here who are stateless, the people born in the United States who are ineligible for American citizenship and don’t have it from their parents’ home countries?

The practical administrative effects are bad, but the broader impact of revoking or constraining birthright citizenship on assimilation is worse. At a minimum, about 7 percent or so of those born on US soil each year would not be US citizens if birthright citizenship were revoked along the lines of the Trump executive order. That condition would worsen the assimilation of the children of immigrants and their descendants in the United States. After all, the children born here who aren’t citizens wouldn’t pass citizenship on to their US-born children if they married other noncitizens. It’s easy to see how that would produce worse outcomes—just look at Europe.

How to create resentment

The German Citizenship and Nationality Law of 1913 only granted citizenship to those with at least one parent who was a German citizen at the time of the child’s birth, a fairly extreme version of jus sanguinis. Those citizenship laws created an assimilation crisis after World War II when post-war guest worker programs admitted many Turks, Tunisians, and Portuguese to work in the booming economy. Many of these workers stayed and had children who weren’t automatically citizens.

Among other causes, a lack of citizenship led to resentment among generations with only partial allegiance to the country of their birth. German-born non-citizens formed “parallel societies” and were more prone to crime and political radicalism than German-born German citizens. Germany provides the best opportunity to study the effects of birthright citizenship on assimilation. In 1999, the German parliament amended that law to create a birthright citizenship component for children born on or after January 1, 2000, if at least one parent had been ordinarily residing in the country for at least eight years. The law also created a transition period for many children born from 1990 through 2000 to be naturalized if they met the requirements of the new law.

This change in German citizenship law prompted a flood of research on how the new law affected immigrant assimilation in Germany, as I have written about. Economists Ciro Avitabile, Irma Clots-Figuera, and Paolo Masella looked at how the new German law affected parental integration in a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious Journal of Law and Economics. Their paper uses responses from the German Socio-Economic Panel survey to see how immigrants whose children were affected by the new citizenship law changed their behavior relative to those unaffected. The paper focuses on measurements of these immigrants interacting with Germans (visiting or being visited by a German in a social situation), speaking German, and reading German newspapers. On all three metrics, the immigrant parents of children who could be naturalised became more integrated.

The effects were small but noticeable. The percentage of immigrant parents who had interactions with Germans rose from 71 percent before the reform to 77 percent afterward; the ability to speak German rose from 65 percent before the reform to 69 percent afterward; and reading of German newspapers increased from 2.6 to 2.9 on a five-point scale (1 is home country papers only, and 5 is German papers only). Importantly, the measure of speaking German doesn’t control for fluency. They also found that the outcomes are larger for immigrants who came from a country that speaks an Indo-European language. Importantly, Turkish is not an Indo-European language. For those from a non-Indo-European language group, the reform had no effect on language acquisition, but it increased their interactions with Germans to the same degree as those of Indo-European language speakers.

Taking a wider view of the impact of this law in Germany, Avitabile, Clots-Figuera, and Masella, the same economists mentioned above, published a peer-reviewed paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that looks at how child citizenship laws affected fertility decisions among immigrants. Fertility is partly (but not entirely) influenced by culture, so many social scientists and economists think it is an important indicator of immigrant assimilation. Consistent with Gary Becker’s quality-quantity model of fertility, they found that birthright citizenship reduced immigrant fertility and improved their health by cutting obesity and improving the social-emotional outcomes of the affected children. Again, the effects are small, but the citizenship reform moved immigrants closer to German fertility and health norms.

Researchers Nicolas Keller, Christina Gathmann, and Ole Monscheuer also examined how fertility and family structure change under the altered citizenship laws. They found that within 7.2 years of eligibility for citizenship, the immigrant-native fertility gap fell by 20 percent by raising the age of first births to immigrant mothers and reducing the likelihood of them having children. The citizenship reform also narrowed the marriage gap between German and immigrant women by 45 percent and German and immigrant men by 50 percent. Immigrant women were also more likely to marry men who were not from their own country of origin after the reform, but the effect was small.

Christina Felfe, Helmut Rainer, and Judith Saurer found that immigrant parents enrolled their children in preschool at a higher rate after the citizenship reform, closing the gap with native Germans. They also enrolled them earlier in primary school and pushed their children into the university track at higher relative rates. Furthermore, reported “attention deficits” and “emotional problems” for the children of immigrants also decreased in schools relative to natives, while there was no effect on reported “social problems,” “German language proficiency,” or “school readiness.” Another paper by Felfe, Rainer, Saurer, and Martin Kocher found that the educational achievement gap between young immigrant men and their native male peers nearly closed due to the reform and that immigrant boys became more trusting. The latter effect virtually eliminated in-group favoritism for immigrant boys. The granting of citizenship to immigrant children also reduced return migration and increased the rate at which mothers who stay at home with their children were counted among the parents whose children were affected.

Conclusion

The revocation of birthright citizenship not only goes against almost 420 years of legal precedent but also will raise practical difficulties for native-born Americans regardless of their parentage. Furthermore, revoking birthright citizenship will likely worsen assimilation outcomes for the children of immigrants who aren’t born citizens. Perhaps those added problems are worth it in exchange for large benefits, but proponents of revoking birthright citizenship can’t point to any of those. With the law, tradition, common sense, reason, and empirical evidence on the side of maintaining birthright citizenship, we can only hope that the courts maintain our exceptional system in its current form.

* * * * 

Alex Nowrasteh is is an American analyst of immigration policy currently working at the Cato Institute. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States. Nowrasteh regularly appears on Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NPR, and numerous television and radio stations.

"How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place? "

"I don’t believe it makes sense to accuse people of being Nazis or Maoists. Almost everyone, including even extremists, now understand that these were highly flawed political movements.
    "Nonetheless, it’s worth thinking about why Maoism and Nazism were once so popular. Why did so many Chinese college students join the Red Guard and enthusiastically persecute their professors (and others)? Why did 37% of the German electorate vote for the Nazi Party in 1932? These questions cry out for an explanation. ...
    "Of course, not everyone joined the Red Guard, and not everyone voted for the Nazis. [But] which people alive today [in those circumstances] would have joined the Red Guard? And which people alive today would have joined the Nazis?
    "Consider the woke extremists that enthusiastically denounce and shun people for not being sufficiently left wing on a check list of issues. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been part of the contingent that joined the Red Guard? And think about people that are so anti-immigrant that they don’t even want us to accept high-skilled people from India and China because they worry about America’s European heritage being diluted. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been among the 37% who voted for the Nazis?
    "I wish more people would do some serious soul searching, and honestly ask themselves how they would have behaved in some of these extreme situations. ...
    "I’m not accusing modern nationalists of literally being Nazis. ... Nor do I believe that today’s woke extremists wish to beat and torture their professors. Instead, I see far left and far right wing ideologies as a sort of virus, which can infect people’s minds, even otherwise reasonable minds. And I see liberalism as a sort of vaccine. ... making [one] immune to the lure of authoritarian ideologies. [I’m not defining liberalism in the American sense of left-of-center Democrat. I am using the term in the international sense of supporter of free speech, human rights, a market economy, democracy, civil rights, opposition to nationalism, etc. ] I have no doubt that if [the liberal] had been born in another time and place, he would have avoided becoming an authoritarian of either the left or the right.
    "How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place?
    "When politics gets extremely contentious and extremely tribal, people are pressured to take sides. ... People hate it when they are ostracised by fellow members of their 'tribe.' Sorry, but the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Your only reliable political allies are those that share your core principles."

~ Scott Sumner from his post 'Liberalism as a vaccine'

 

15 YEARS AGO: Now a more bigoted state

Since this blog has been going now since 2005 (which is bloody frightening) I'll occasionally head back a few years to pull out something particularly prescient to re-post. Such as this (from almost fifteen years ago), a warning that wasn't heeded about what happens to everybody when big-government thuggery demands a "crack-down" — 'cos there's nothing big government likes more than a good crack-down, like a multi-million-plus mass deportation...

Just a bigoted state [update 4]

The only honest line British Prime-Minister-in-absentia Gordon Brown has ever been heard to utter came last week when he told aides that a women who had just confided to him the alleged evils of Eastern-European immigrants was “just a bigoted woman.”

And so she was. 

Cross the Atlantic now to Arizona, where a bigoted state now requires everyone to carry around their birth certificate, just so they aren’t mistaken for someone who’s living and working in the state without big-government’s blessing. 

If Gordon Brown’s apology for his momentary rush of honesty was the shot heard still being heard around the British electorate, then Arizona’s attack on personal liberty is the shot against individual freedom that’s being heard right around the world.  It’s a reminder that it’s not just the left side of the aisle that are big-government bullies--and a reminder too that neither side has a monopoly on taking advantage of those stateless souls who leave their homes in search of a better life.Just so we’re clear, This Is What Arizona Republicans Want America to Be Like—a place where people of a certain race can be arrested dragged off to jail at the whim of a policeman for the crime of not carrying their papers.  Only Godwin’s Law precludes me from pointing out a particular police state of which that might remind you.

The police-state crackdown is bad enough.  But what it’s demonstrated all too clearly is that for many people apparently committed to individual liberty and small government are anything but.  Scratch the surface of too many small-government conservatives, and what you find there is nothing more than stinking, ill-informed authoritarian racism.  (Just one reason I’ve taken the likes of Andrew Bolt off my blog roll).

I say ill-informed, because it’s the only possible defence people like Bolt might have for being bigoted men and women themselves.

Because the facts confound the bigots. The fact is that in a free society, more people are a boon, not a burden. 

That as author Robert Heinlein suggested, successful immigrants demonstrate just by their choice and gumption in choosing a new life that they are worthy of respect. 

And as James Kilbourne says, “God damn you if the only two words you can find to put together when talking about people who leave their homelands to seek a better life for themselves and their families are ‘illegal aliens.’”

The fact is—and let me say it again just to stress the point—that in a free society, more people are a boon, not a burden. You think that’s hyperbole?  Well, it’s not.  Look at the American experience—the country’s wealth was built upon open immigration—on the melting pot that was the result of the open immigration of the nineteenth-century. But even in more oppressive times of today, the facts are clear that that the freer the country, the more immigration is a boon for everybody—and that immigrants themselves are overwhelmingly more productive and better behaved than most of the bigots are.

Just consider the litany of facts the bigots need to contend with regarding American immigration:

• The runaround needed to immigrate legally to the US is one prime reason so many do it illegally. 
• 'Illegals' are not milking the government; if anything it is the other way around. The National Research Council found for example that most immigrant families "contribute an average of $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume over their lifetimes." 
• Immigrants generally earn more than they receive. 
• More than 60% of illegal immigrants pay income tax, and two-thirds kick in to Social Security (and most get nothing back). 
• Immigrants help sustain economic growth and cultural dynamism. 
• Immigrants "are generally less involved in crime than similarly situated groups," and crime rates in border towns "are lower than those of comparable non-border cities." 
• Crime rates in the highest-immigration states have been trending significantly downward. 
• Even economists who favour restrictive immigration policies admit low-skilled immigrants are a net plus to the economy. 
• Unemployment is low and crime is down everywhere, especially in places teeming with immigrants. 
• Immigration gives you the benefits of geniuses who were born elsewhere. Google, Yahoo! and Sun Microsystems were all founded by immigrants. 
• Immigrants are more likely than 'natives' to be self-employed. 
• Immigrants tend to create their own work -- when they're allowed to. 
• The power and reach of Spanish-language media in L.A. for example shows supply of productive people creating its own demand. 
• Immigrant labour makes work easier for all of us, and brings new skills to the table. 
• Immigrants and low-skilled American workers fill very different roles in the economy. 
• Immigrant labour makes all businesses easier to start, thus spurring 'native' creativity. 
• "Some argue that we should employ a more restrictive policy that allows in only immigrants with 'needed' skills. But this assumes the government can read economic tea leaves." - Tyler Cowen and Daniel M. Rothschild 
• New arrivals, by producing more goods and services, keep prices down across the economy -- the net gain to US from immigration is about $7 billion a year. 
• There's no reason that the North American Free Trade Agreement (or NZ's own free trade agreements) shouldn't apply equally to people as to widgets. 
• Even in the halls of Congress, economic arguments against immigration are losing their aura of truthfulness, so pro-enforcement types are focussing on “national security.” 
• "The only way to actually prevent terrorists from slipping in is to legalize as much 'illegal immigration' as possible. If one is looking for a needle in a haystack, as the saying goes, one has a hell of job. Finding that needle on a relatively clean floor, however, presents an achievable goal." - James Valliant
• Immigration is good for the immigrants themselves. . . . 

Those facts were extracted from the following articles, which provide whole magazines full of ammunition against the bigoted and the ill-informed: 

• How about a little common sense on immigration - Tony Snow 
• Immigration plus Welfare State equals Police State - George Reisman 
• Immigration and the Welfare State - the real root of the problem - Brian Doherty 
• Who's milking who? - illegal aliens pay more in taxes than they impose in costs - Shikha Dalmia 
• Don't bad-mouth unskilled immigrants - Tyler Cowen & Daniel M. Rothschild 
• Exploitation or expulsion - illegal immigrants in a double bind - Jesse Walker 
• Fighting terrorism requires legalizing immigration - James Valliant 
• Worse than a wall - Kerry Howley 
• A legacy of the unforeseen - Carolyn Lochhead 
• Breathe free, huddled masses - Cathy Young 
• Open the borders - why should citizens of NAFTA countries need visas at all - Tim Cavanagh 
• Bush's border bravado - non-militarized solutions to a non-problem - Nick Gillespie 
• Open immigration, Si! Open borders, No! - Sixth Column 
• Stand in Line . . . and Wait! – Not PC 
• Immigration and Individual Rights – Craig Biddle

And of course there are the two classic Harry Binswanger articles which are 'must-reads' for the moral and practical case behind open immigration (note, open immigration, not open borders.): 

• The solution to 'illegal immigration' - Harry Binswanger 
• Immigration Quotas vs. Individual Rights: The Moral and Practical Case for Open Immigration - Harry Binswanger 

The fact is that there is neither fact nor right on the side of the bigots.  As George Reisman explains for America:

    “The philosophy of individual rights and capitalism implies that foreigners have a right to come and to live and work here, i.e., to immigrate into the United States. The land of the United States is owned by individuals and voluntary associations of individuals, such as private business firms. It is not owned by the United States government or by the American people acting as a collective; indeed many of the owners of land in the United States are not Americans, but foreign nationals, including foreign investors.     

“The private owners of land have the right to use or sell or rent their land for any peaceful purpose. This includes employing immigrants and selling them food and clothing and all other goods, and selling or renting housing to them. If individual private landowners are willing to accept the presence of immigrants on their property as employees, customers, or tenants, that should be all that is required for the immigrants to be present. Anyone else who attempts to determine the presence of absence of immigrants is simply an interfering busybody ready to use a gun or club to impose his will.

The fact remains that the only possibly human objection that well-informed people might have to open immigration is that immigration is a drain on the Welfare State. That they object to being forced to pay for people they’ve never met. This much is understandable. (That is the dark truth at the heart of the whole Welfare State—far from offering charity, it sets man against men.)   Again, George Reisman makes the argument: in summary, that Immigration Plus Welfare State Equal Police State.

    “Illegal immigrants are overwhelming the resources of the Welfare State: government–funded hospital emergency rooms are filled with them; public schools are filled with their children. On the basis of such complaints, many people are angry and want to close the border to new illegal immigrants and deport those who are already here.     “They want to keep new illegal immigrants out with fences along the border. It is not clear whether the fences would contain intermittent watchtowers with searchlights and machine guns. The illegal immigrants who are already here would be ferreted out by threatening anyone who employed them with severe penalties and making it a criminal offense not to report them.     

“This is a classic illustration of Mises’s principle that prior government intervention into the economic system breeds later intervention. Here the application of his principle is, start with the Welfare State, end with the Police State. A police state is what is required effectively to stop substantial illegal immigration that has become a major burden because of the Welfare State.”

And Tibor Machan makes a similar argument, that the biggest problem with the welfare state is not that it might lead to even greater control by government, but that in providing a pseudo-moral argument to treat other human beings like cattle, it habituates people to the sort of easy brutality seen now in Arizona, and in sundry other cases of inhumanity. 

But far from being a reason to abandon open immigration, the problems that state-enforced welfare cause for open immigration are reason instead to abandon the short-lived anti-human experiment that is the Welfare State. 

    “The philosophy of individual rights and capitalism implies that the immigrants do not have a right to be supported at public expense, which is a violation of the rights of the taxpayers. Of course, it is no less a violation of the rights of the taxpayers when native-born individuals are supported at public expense. The immigrants are singled out for criticism based on the allegation that they in particular are making the burden intolerable.
    “The implementation of the rights both of the immigrants and of the taxpayers requires the abolition of the Welfare State. Ending the Welfare State will end any problem of immigrants being a public burden.
    “Of course, ending the Welfare State is much easier said than done, and it is almost certainly not going to be eliminated even in order to avoid the environment of a police state.
     “But the burdens of the Welfare State and the consequent resentment against immigrants could at the very least be substantially reduced by means of some relatively simple, common-sense reforms in the direction of greater economic freedom. . . .”

And they could be reduced too by the simple and easily-introduced expedient of allowing existing citizens to sponsor and take financial and legal responsibility for new citizens.

But this would require a basic humanity that too many of the bigots seem to lack.

In the meantime then, you want an immediate solution to the 'problem of illegal immigration? Then here it is": 

    “The problem of ‘illegal’ immigration can be solved at the stroke of a pen: legalize immigration. Screen all you want (though I want damn little), but remove the quotas. Phase them out over a 5- or 10-year period. Grant immediate, unconditional amnesty to all ‘illegal’ immigrants.”

There endeth the problem.

UPDATE 1:  More good anti-bigoted commentary here [hat tip Thrutch]:

• THE NEW CLARION: The Rights of Man, the Privileges of Citizen
  This is the end-of-road for conservative anti-immigrationists:  the selective  degradation of the liberty to live in a particular place from a right to a “privilege”.  As a hostile commenter put it sarcastically… 

      “Nothing says freedom from government interference like ‘show me your papers.’ Of course, limited government only applies to people who are real Americans, not to Mexicans.”

  Let us examine the conservatives’ trip down the anti-immigration road, and see how it ended there — and what it means for conservatism’s purported fealty to Americanism….
  Read on to see many more anti-immigration shibboleths summarily dispatched. 

•  PAJAMAS MEDIA: Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom: Welfare State Is Draw for Illegals
  While I commiserate with Arizona voters [says Gus Van Horn] public services are the problem, not ‘illegals.’
      …SB 1070 is wrong for Arizona for reasons far beyond civil rights issues.
      SB 1070 deserves only one fundamental criticism: It would fail to protect the individual rights of American citizens — even if it hermetically sealed our borders and the police never touched a single American hair in the process of enforcing it. This is because the biggest headaches attributed to illegal immigration are not caused by it at all…

UPDATE 2: I’m starting a list.  And in ‘tribute’ to Gordon, I’m calling it “Just Some Bigoted Arseholes.”

First on the list is Blair, for this . . . 

To which you can add Silent Running, run by a New Zealand blogger advertising “strong right-wing views” on his banner, who thinks “Mexico is polluting us”; Cactus Kate, who has “sanctimonious” on her banner (and bigotry in her waters); and Crusader Rabbit, who has “liberty” on his banner, and black thoughts about Mexican crowds being “a target-rich environment” in his heart …

UPDATE 3:  Says an editorial in the Arizona Republic: 

    “We need leaders.
    “The federal government is abdicating its duty on the border.
    “Arizona politicians are pandering to public fear.
    “The result is a state law that intimidates Latinos while doing nothing to curb illegal immigration.
This represents years of failure. Years of politicians taking the easy way and allowing the debate to descend into chaos…
    “Comprehensive [immigration] reform will make the border safer. When migrant labor is channeled through the legal ports of entry, the Border Patrol can focus on catching drug smugglers and other criminals instead of chasing busboys across the desert.
    “Real leaders will have the courage to say that.”

UPDATE 4: Reason magazine, whose superb 2006 issue on immigration was the source of many of those linked articles above, has four online articles on the current melee that deserve the attention of everyone not already blinded by bigotry: 

• Immigration Isn't the Problem, David Harsanyi, May 3, 2010 
    “For the most part, the controversy we face isn't about immigration at all. It's about the systematic failure of federal government to enforce the law or offer rational policy. There's a difference…
    “The uplifting tale of the hard-boiled immigrant, dipping his or her sweaty hands into the well of the American dream, is one thing. Today we find ourselves in an unsustainable and rapidly growing welfare state. Can we afford to allow millions more to partake?
    “When Nobel Prize-winning libertarian economist Milton Friedman was asked about unlimited immigration in 1999, he stated that ‘it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.’” 
• Mysteries of an Immigration Law, Steve Chapman, April 29, 2010 
    “The worst-case scenario is that Hispanics will face possible police harassment anytime they venture out of the house. Not to worry, says Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who helped draft the text.
    “He told The Washington Examiner that cops can ask for immigration information only when they have ‘lawful contact’ with someone—when ‘the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he's violated some other law.’
    “In fact, the law doesn't define the crucial term. One of the dictionary definitions of ‘contact’ is ‘immediate proximity,’ which suggests that anytime a possible illegal immigrant comes in sight of a cop, the cop has a legal duty to check her papers.” 
• How Immigration Crackdowns Backfire, Steve Chapman, April 22, 2010 
    “It's no surprise that Arizonans resent the recent influx of unauthorized foreigners, some of them criminals. But there is less here than meets the eye.
    “The state has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants. But contrary to myth, they have not brought an epidemic of murder and mayhem with them. Surprise of surprises, the state has gotten safer.
    “Over the last decade, the violent crime rate has dropped by 19 percent, while property crime is down by 20 percent. Crime has also declined in the rest of the country, but not as fast as in Arizona…” 
• Don't Let Obama Touch Immigration Reform, Shikha Dalmia, April 13, 2010
  ”America's immigration system is badly broken and in desperate need of fixing. And that is precisely why President Barack Obama should not be allowed to touch it.”
• Immigration & Crime, Steve Chapman, February 22, 2010
    “From listening to the more vigorous critics of illegal immigration, our porous borders are a grave threat to safety. Not only can foreign terrorists sneak in to target us, but the most vicious criminals are free to walk in and inflict their worst on innocent Americans.
    “In xenophobic circles, this prospect induces stark terror. Fox News' Glenn Beck has decried an ‘illegal immigrant crime wave.’ A contributor to Patrick Buchanan's website asserts, ‘Every day, in the United States, thousands of illegal aliens unleash a reign of terror on Americans.’
    “Sure they do. And I'm Penelope Cruz…
    “A 2007 report by the Immigration Policy Center noted that "for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population…
    “[Ron] Unz points out that in the five most heavily Hispanic cities in the country, violent crime is "10 percent below the national urban average and the homicide rate 40 percent lower." In Los Angeles, which is half Hispanic and easily accessible to those sneaking over the southern border, the murder rate has plummeted to levels unseen since the tranquil years of the early 1960s.
     “This is not really hard to understand. Today, as ever, most foreigners who make the sacrifice of leaving home and starting over in a strange land do so not to mug grandmothers or molest children, but to find work that will give them a better life. Coming here illegally does not alter that basic motivation.
    “In other words, they want to become full-fledged Americans, and they're succeeding. Is there something scary about that?”

Well, is there?