tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post4081019934936117127..comments2024-03-28T12:29:39.157-07:00Comments on Graphic Firing Table: Hispanics in your backyard at 3 a.m.FDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-65279156327157745702010-05-10T07:53:20.827-07:002010-05-10T07:53:20.827-07:00FDChief: "My concern is that we'll see a...FDChief: "My concern is that we'll see a substantial, unassimilated hispanic community/communities over the next 50 years who will develop into an undigestible voting bloc. "<br /><br />No, that doesn't seem to be happening; hispanics are assimilating quite nicely, Remember, we're seeing a decades-long process from the inside; history books present a thirty-year assimilation of an immigrant group in a tidy paragraph.<br /><br />What will probably happen is that the GOP has reached a decision to piss off as many Latinos as they possibly can, which will make for a voting bloc which will give the GOP heartburn, over the next twenty years.Barry DeCiccohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04735814736387033844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-37045942768906535722010-04-30T15:46:10.548-07:002010-04-30T15:46:10.548-07:00EGrise: One problem with all our theorizing, thoug...EGrise: One problem with all our theorizing, though, which I have no real idea of a solution for, is the combination of the physical proximity and the economic disparity of the U.S. and Mexico. I just don't know how you solve that, and I can't see it going anywhere but to bad places.<br /><br />The only real solution I can see is a real, dramatic, solid improvement in conditions for the average citizen of Mexico. But there's so MANY structural problems there! A friend of mine, a Chilango (dude from Mexico City) used to say that one huge obstacle was the ruling families in Mexico. They realized that if they helped the U.S. close the border that they would trap themselves in their country with the very people the porous border encouraged to leave; the ambitious, the desperate, the hard-working...in otehr words, the sorts of people who would be in the vanguard of a revolution.<br /><br />His theory was that the reason tha there hadn't been a revolution in Mexico since WW1 was because of the combination of the economic ascendency of the U.S. and the tacit understanding between the elites in Mexico (who wanted their "troublemakers" scrubbing floors and trimming lawns in San Diego for pocket change) and the elites in the U.S. (who wanted the same thing).<br /><br />I don't know whether to consider this a complete conspiracy theory, but he believed it, and he knew his own country better than I...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-75829502743608750392010-04-30T12:45:06.972-07:002010-04-30T12:45:06.972-07:00A border wall would be an incredibly corrupting in...A border wall would be an incredibly corrupting influence. The stories coming out of south Texas about local police being corrupted by drug gangs are very unsettling, and the situation would only get worse.<br /><br />Not that that would stop us from trying :)<br /><br />And one of the big points in all this is that there are <i>plenty</i> of people preying upon and benefiting from the movement of illegal aliens, be they gangsters or Mexican politicians or American businessmen. The solution is to remove the comparative economic benefit, not the supply (much like with some illegal drugs).EGrisenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-52495409773534848312010-04-30T12:34:21.446-07:002010-04-30T12:34:21.446-07:00Thanks for the thoughtful reply (with which I pret...Thanks for the thoughtful reply (with which I pretty much agree 100%). I'll try to respond in kind:<br /><br />I think you're on to something when you point out our ahistoric situation. To me, this presents ahistoric possibilities like Col. Lang's suggestion. Decoupling citizenship from income could have a number of cascading effects, such as stabilizing wages or even *increasing* them through competition (ISTM that the chief reason so many aliens work cheaply is because of their deportable status; on a more equal footing they might be less willing to work for peanuts, especially if they have trade skills) which would lead to increased tax revenues, more unionization (for good or ill), better worker protection and so on.<br /><br />(I could go even further and see agreements with other nations like Brazil and blocs like the EU to permit complete income portability, but that's a "Flight of the Creative Class" fantasy for another day.)<br /><br />To address my earlier point about crime, I have to think that 1) workers with a reasonable legal entryway into the US will be more resistant to criminals (the "Plata O Plomo") since they wouldn't want to jeopardize their status, and 2) aliens with a stake in a stable and orderly society would be more likely to cooperate with the community.<br /><br />Such a thing would be a bold judo move to be sure, which is why I fear we won't do it or any other highly creative ideas. I was listening to a history professor recently and he pointed out that empires in their later years tend to move away from pragmatism and towards reliving their myths and justifying their virtue (was it Garrett Fagan? I can't remember, but he put it better), usually resulting in warfare externally and tyranny internally. I look around at the stupid and wasteful wars abroad and the war on drugs and terrorism at home and have to conclude that past is prologue, and that we will most likely resort to a military/police effort, like fortifying the border. <br /><br />Like you (and George Santayana) pointed out, we know how that story ends. <br /><br />But hopefully that will be in the short term. I hold out hope that we will come to our senses in the longer term and do way with some of the nonsense and try new things. It will require courage, housecleaning and possibly a demographics change (i.e. the dying off of old white conservative Southern people), but it *is* possible.EGrisenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-17343668018383086742010-04-30T09:59:01.223-07:002010-04-30T09:59:01.223-07:00Barry: I agree that the thing that the GOP anti-im...Barry: I agree that the thing that the GOP anti-immigration shouters haven't really thought out is what happens if we DO run off all these illegals.<br /><br />I see immense tension in the Right here between the "business conservatives" who really don't want much change in the status quo and the "teabag conservatives", many of whom seem to be motivated by Fear of the Brown. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.<br /><br />My concern is that we'll see a substantial, unassimilated hispanic community/communities over the next 50 years who will develop into an undigestible voting bloc. We've watched as the combination of the wealthy, Old South, and New West "conservatives" have paralyzed our deliberative process because they want to spend money for wars and Medicaid but not pay taxes for jack shit.<br /><br />What happens when this bloc collides with a hispanic "bloc" with its own agenda I have no idea...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-14029802620065239922010-04-30T09:43:01.220-07:002010-04-30T09:43:01.220-07:00FDChief: "...Not to mention that you'd h...FDChief: "...Not to mention that you'd have to construct what would be effectively a police state to catch the underground that would spring up to get people under, over, and around the Hadrian's Wall you built."<br /><br />Considering that a whole bunch of business really, really, really like having an cheap, expendable and unempowered source of labor, getting a true 'Hadrians' Wall' built ain't gonna fly.<br /><br />In a sense, this is like wondering if you should favor a war to 'liberate' your country from it's dictator - the USA isn't striving for 'liberation', but for a docile Our SOB, and even if it were, war has many bad side effects, so to speak.Barry DeCiccohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04735814736387033844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-23158700614321453182010-04-29T15:32:37.788-07:002010-04-29T15:32:37.788-07:00(con't)
So I think the "control of the b...(con't)<br /><br />So I think the "control of the border" issue becomes secondary to "social and economic control" as a means of dealing with this.<br /><br />Because basically people aren't a problem if they're just existing somewhere. They become a problem when they become a political issue - a fractious minority, say, like the Basques in Spain or the Algerians in France, or the Tamils in Sri Lanka. And they become a problem when they create OTHER social problems, like Russian mafioso or Salvadorian drug dealers.<br /><br />The drug problems, IMO, are largely our own creation. If we had sensible drug laws, including legalizing much of the softer drugs like flake cocaine and weed, we'dgo a long way to taking the steam out of the <i>narcotraficantes</i>.<br /><br />And as far as the rest goes, Lang's proposal - tax the wages, forget the citizenship - seems sensible enough to me. I don't see border crossing as a problem per se. It's the problems caused by an underground of "illegal" residents that are the real issue. Deal with the social ills and let the rest sort itself out...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-90877204060268347152010-04-29T15:22:18.530-07:002010-04-29T15:22:18.530-07:00EGrise: Pat Lang is always worth a read, and I thi...EGrise: Pat Lang is always worth a read, and I think he's on to something here.<br /><br />I mean, when you think about it, what's at stake here?<br /><br />1. Control of the border. A nation that cannot control what and who crosses its border is missing a vital element of soverignty. The problem here is that the border is both immense and porous, and the factors driving the latino <i>Volkerwanderung</i> are immense. complex and hard to get a handle on from both sides of the border.<br /><br />I was thinking about this after I read your comment and Lang's idea and realized that the situation that the U.S. and its southern neighbor find themselves in is really almost <i>sui generis</i> in human history. Think about it; when has the combination of<br /><br />a. two neighboring polities of such vastly disparate wealth who were<br /><br />b. joined by a land frontier hundreds of miles long<br /><br />ever existed without a state of <i>de facto</i> war between the two? The only remotely similar historical parallels I can think of are the great continental empires (Roman and Han Chinese) with their "barbarian" neighbors, the Romans with the central European tribes, the Han with the horse nomads to the north and west. And those empires basically warred with the "illegal aliens" until the border-crossers grew strong enough and pulled them down.<br /><br />So we can't find a historical parallel to guide us. Is there any hope of stemming the movement from the south?<br /><br />Well, we could fortify the border, really fortify it. ISTM that doing so would be to declare war on the peoples to the south. Not to mention that you'd have to construct what would be effectively a police state to catch the underground that would spring up to get people under, over, and around the Hadrian's Wall you built.<br /><br />(con't)FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-14777860538058302032010-04-29T12:44:57.878-07:002010-04-29T12:44:57.878-07:00Pushing criminal activity further underground worr...Pushing criminal activity further underground worries me; here in Austin we just had an illegal alien sex-slave ring busted thanks, in part, to cooperation from the Mexican community. Without that cooperation I wonder...<br /><br />Col. Lang has an <a href="http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/04/arizona-immigration-bill-cs-monitor.html" rel="nofollow">interesting idea</a>:<br /><br />"De-couple residence and economic activities from citizenship between the US and Mexico. In other words we/they can live anywhere we want in the two countries, can own anything we want and take our money wherever we want. You would pay taxes in the country(s) in which you made it or lived. This would have nothing to do with citizenship. In this plan if you wanted to become a voting citizen, you would have to go through whatever process the receiving country prescribed. I suspect that few Mexicans would want US citizenship. they just want the money."EGrisenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-8324730976561254802010-04-29T09:14:00.547-07:002010-04-29T09:14:00.547-07:00Or order a chorizo scramble at Denny's...
The...Or order a chorizo scramble at Denny's...<br /><br />The thing is, I am serious about the problem of controlling borders. A county that can't control who and what goes across its borders isn't truly soverign. We have a problem with people crossing our border, most of those people are coming from Latin America, but this isn't a smart way to solve that problem.<br /><br />1. It asks Arizona cops to become immigration agents in their work time. Now every contact - every bystander interview, every traffic stop - is supposed to become immigration enforcement if the copper has a "reasonable suspicion" that the person (s)he is talking to is illegal.<br /><br />2. It therefore ensures that a lot of stuff that happens in the illegal community will go underground, making it even tougher for the cops to police that group. Nobody will talk to the coppers if they thing they're gonna be hauled off to La Migra.<br /><br />3. It punishes the low-level snuffies - the people who are here to get work and live better - for problems that they can't solve and that punishing them won't solve.<br /><br />4. There's no way to apply this in a way that's not either prejudicial or dictatorial. One of the people who responded to this (I crossposted it to my Facebook page) talked about how there was a "similar law" requiring people to prove their residence as a condition of employment. THAT would be a much better solution to trying to reduce the number of people here illegally because you don't have to make a judgement call. Everybody who works gets checked. This law forces the working copper to make a decision on the fly as to when it's "reasonable" to check Der Papers.<br /><br />The only way this problem gets "solved" long-term is to make Latin America more attractive to its own people. I'm not sure how you do that. But I'm sure that this isn't really a workable solution.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31246093.post-45675275378581088272010-04-29T07:40:31.958-07:002010-04-29T07:40:31.958-07:00Chief,
Simple solution- don't drive low riders...Chief,<br />Simple solution- don't drive low riders thru Arizona.<br />jimrangeragainstwarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02126542922536584950noreply@blogger.com