Immigration

[akashiver]

Green Card!It arrived when I was at ICFA. It is, in fact, green! Apparently I'm supposed to keep it on me at all times. I'm going to ask other immigrants about this, because I don't like taking important, hard-to-replace documents with me to the gym

Comments

[vschanoes]

Why is it that the same people who support small government and free markets tend to be the ones calling for more government control over the mobility of international laborers -- mobility that's dictated by the supply and demand of the free market?

Because they're not really in favor of small government or free markets. Really, they're pro-capital. As such, they do all they can to disempower labor. This is one of the reasons, though not, I think, the main one, that they also favor government interference in my reproductive system.

I sound like my father. But sometimes he's right.

[mindstalk]

I don't think your reasoning works. Wanting to disempower labor leads to *favoring* open immigration, to increase the labor pool and drive wages down.

On the 'right' losely speaking I see three clumps:
big business: favors low government controls on them, easy immigration, for cheap labor
social conservatives/Religious Right: favors low government on business for reasons unclear to me (perhaps related to opposition to Godless Communism, or the history of the South), stronger government on sex, generally hostile to immigration of Those People.
libertarians: favor low government controls on everything, including immigration, because they actually believe that's moral.

Honest to god libertarians aren't that common, so it's mostly Big Business vs. nativist "America for God-Fearing Americans".

Krugman had a nice division:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/the-curious-politics-of-immigration/

[vschanoes]

I disagree.

Legal immigrants have traditionally voted progressively and have traditionally powered many union organization efforts. But the US wants the cheap labor. So what's the solution for the right?

It is to the advantage of business owners to maintain a pool of workers who cannot legally organize, cannot demand the protections legally afforded to workers by the state, have such limited opportunities for advancement that they have to take whatever jobs are offered, cannot vote in order to advance their interests, and cannot access welfare, disability, unemployment benefits. In other words, undocumented immigrants.

The point isn't to halt immigration. The point is to maintain and increase the number of immigrants whose presence in the US is illegal.

[akashiver]

And yet I also think a lot of the "man on the street" types I meet who hold this position are vehemently opposed to illegal immigrants. The race factor, and the "they're not our group" factor have a lot to do with this.

Also, re: illegal immigration: to keep up the number of "free" taxpayers, who pay taxes but are afraid to use the facilities their tax dollars are funding.

[swan_tower]

Congrats on the green card!