Let's Cut The Baby In Half
Illegal Immigration In The United
States
Can a nation exist without borders? Is
it possible to humanely uproot millions of people and send them back
to a country that lacks resources and opportunities for them? The
answer to both of these questions, unfortunately, is no. So the
United States seems to be presented with a choice where both options
are wrong. It is as if we must either forfeit our property rights
and rule of law, or go ask Balkan governments to instruct us on
the do's and don'ts of ethnic cleansing in the modern world.
Although in this case, since the United States is an ethnically
diverse nation it would be more of a civic cleansing. With options like these it should be no surprise we can't find a consensus on
what to do. We are a nation that has fought and worked too hard to
just stop existing and with too much moral certainty to suddenly lose that either.
As you may have guessed from the title
I'm going to attempt to use one of King Solomon's tacts to move the
dialogue on this closer to a solution. I'm going to intentionally
propose a solution that should equally horrify elements of both of our political parties. Some of these elements, I suspect, are not so much tied to the core
issues of national sovereignty and treating people humanely as they
claim with their rhetoric, and how they may react to the following
solution could reveal that.
My proposal requires that we pass laws
contingent on the United States and Mexico (the primary source by far of our illegal immigrant population) signing a treaty. The
laws and the treaty together would solve both
the sovereignty and human rights problems.
The Treaty And The Laws
The treaty would make it so citizens of
both countries can freely travel, live, and work in both countries
without the need of visas. Both nations may require these foreign
residents and workers to register for purposes of tracking taxes and
government services but unlike visas the registrations would have no
standards for issuance beyond the registrants being law abiding residents or workers.
This would make all Mexican illegal aliens in the United States effectively legal.
The laws that should be passed in the
United States before the treaty is signed would be as follows.
Require all former illegal
immigrants to register with the government. Failing to register
would result in deportation and possible jail time. Due to the ease of registration, the number of those failing to register would be very small and manageable.
In order to assure that illegals don't cut ahead of legal immigrants, all formerly illegal immigrants
would be required to wait an amount of time equal to the time they
were in the country illegally before they could apply for
citizenship (exemption for military service).
All federal agencies must
cooperate with states endeavors to remove and keep non-citizens from
their voter rolls.
Require all United States
employers to report the citizenship of all of their employees.
How this deals with both core problems
The sovereignty issue is solved both in
the short and long term. The treaty makes it so the only
illegal aliens from Mexico would be those
who refuse to register or who break other laws and thus can't be
registered. The currently huge number of illegal aliens is the
greatest challenge to enforcing our immigration laws and that would go way with this treaty. Also, the treaty would make it such that no new
illegal influx from Mexico would be at all likely. The ease of
registration when compared to the potential consequences of not
doing so would make it very unlikely that someone wanting to live or work here would choose not to register.
The laws protect and restore currently
lost sovereignty by registering the foreigners, penalizing those who
were here illegally in terms of a path to citizenship, and requiring
federal agencies to help rather than hinder state efforts to make
sure foreigners can't vote. The requirement that employers report
their employees citizenship is already being applied in places with
great success through E-verify, and it assures that employers don't
attempt to use an employee's illegal status as a means to pay them
under the table. The combination of E-verify and a foreign worker
registration system would discourage this from both directions.
Now as for treating the millions of
illegal immigrants humanely, that is also achieved. The treaty would
legitimize their current struggles just to make a living, just as
long as they weren't getting payed illegally small wages or breaking
other laws. The laws would all be fair and of minimal burden to the
people involved. They're only suffering would be from having a
longer path to citizenship than those who came here legally, and from
the inevitable consequences of formerly illegal employment practices
suddenly having to meet legal standards or go away.
Sources of expected opposition to this proposal
Now that I've proposed cutting the
proverbial baby in half, let's hear from those who would object. Of
course I'm only speculating here but I've heard enough from all sides
of this issue over the last six years to make a pretty good guess. After each number I will first state the objection and then after a "↔" I will make my own comment about what I suspect the motives behind the objection are.
From the right, the side I'm most
familiar with, would come the following objections.
Amnesty is amnesty, no matter if
you delay their path to citizenship or not. They broke the law so
they shouldn't have any path to citizenship at all. ↔ The
anti-amnesty hardliners are clearly wanting to be uncompromising on
the national sovereignty half of the baby, and seem willing to let
the other half be harmed.
A treaty like that effectively
eliminates our border with Mexico. That's a loss of sovereignty
pure and simple. ↔ Those who object to foreign treaties in
general have their hearts in the right place, and I suspect they
aren't even thinking about any other part of this issue, just a
general principle. It's tough to determine their motives towards
the baby because they just aren't thinking on that small a scale.
They probably should but they aren't.
We need to be able to pay the
people who pick lettuce and other crops less than the legal
requirements in order to keep produce prices from shooting sky high.
↔ Any real solution that addresses both halves of the baby will
probably force farmers to pay their pickers more than they do now.
These farmers are similar the cotton farmers before the Civil War. They
seem to depend on a source of labor working under conditions morally unacceptable to most Americans.
Programs like E-verify are too
onerous on smaller businesses. ↔ E-verify is only onerous if
your typical employee will leave if you use it. The treaty part of
the solution makes this objection just misguided, and as for the
added work for the business, the E-verify system is a national
database that any business with internet access can use in
minutes. As added paperwork from the government goes, this is
insignificant.
From the left would come the following
objections.
The registration process would be
intimidating and smacks of oppressive practices in other countries.
↔ Concerns about how the registration process will look seem aimed at protecting the human rights half of the baby, but human
rights is not a superficial thing. Rejecting a workable solution to
a huge problem, just because it reminds one of something it clearly
is not, suggests a less than sincere interest in solving the
problem.
The registered foreign worker
would be an institutionalized second class person. ↔ The second
class nature of the registered foreign worker should only be
problematic if one doesn't care about the sovereignty half of the
baby (note #1 from the right). Of course citizens should have it
easier in their own country than foreigners.
Registration enforcement would
inevitably tend to profile people based on their ethnicity. ↔
The idea that the role played by the ethnicity of Mexicans is some
how significant implies that if poverty stricken lite skinned
Canadians made up most of the problem, few would see the problem as significant. This seems silly to me. It's as
though they don't believe sovereignty is a real issue. As if we
invented it to cover up our bigotry. For the sake of the proverbial
baby the issue isn't whether they respect us, it's that they don't seem to care about
sovereignty. That's half the baby.
The loss of jobs for people
working for illegal pay would cause too much suffering and could
result in a sort of de facto ethnic cleansing where the former
workers leave the country for lack of income. ↔ The issue of
hardship for those currently employed illegally who would lose their
jobs if their employers had to pay them legally is a legitimate
concern for the human rights side of the baby, but like the #3 from
the right, any real solution will probably result in these low pay
situations ending. There is something inherently unsustainable
about an industry that requires workers with clearly inferior labor
rights to the rest of the country.
Purging the voter rolls will
result in errors which will intimidate some citizens from voting.
Those wrongly purged will be disproportionately from
disadvantaged minorities. ↔ Voter intimidation is when poll
workers try to close the polls while people are waiting in line, or
when mean looking thugs stand outside polling places. It is not the
inconvenience of having to vote with a petition because one was
mistakenly purged from the voter rolls. This concern is suspect as
to the sincere concern the objector has for both halves of the baby. A
potential inconvenience to a voting citizen cannot compare to the
potential that a non-citizen may be able to vote.
It's clear
there would be considerable opposition to this proposed solution from
both sides. What I want to determine is which objections stem from a
legitimate concern for national sovereignty and human rights and
which don't. In other words, who should get the baby before it's cut
in half?
So who gets the baby?
Solomon gave the baby to the mother who
was willing to lose the baby in order to save the baby's life.
Where's that mother in this?
No one side of this issue, as the
political lines are currently drawn, completely owns that proverbial
mother. Who is willing to let their own partisan or financial
interests go in order to protect both national sovereignty and human
dignity? While both sides have
their extremists who keep insisting on hard lines that make consensus
impossible and lose at least half the baby, there are those who show
sincere concern for both national sovereignty and human dignity.
To get to a real solution both sides
must make some of their members unhappy. They both can start with
those who don't want the underground illegal labor market to end.
Some on the right don't want certain industries to incur the greater
labor costs and some on the left don't want to lose the incentive
that draws in a new underclass for their political exploitation.
Both are placing their own financial and political interests ahead of
national sovereignty and human dignity. Both poison the dialogue.
Those who should be talking are those
who sincerely care about at least half the baby. They should be able
to convince each other that both halves are needed. National
sovereignty and respect for individual human
dignity are inseparable. You can't respect individual human dignity
unless you respect a person's right to own things and keep the things
they own. You can't ensure this right without some degree of
government and that government must have a sovereign jurisdiction in
which it operates. If that sovereignty is threatened so is the
protection of the individual's property that it provides, and thus the individual's human rights.
Another way to look at is this.
Governments exist to serve the individual. Thus a government cannot
justly be more important than the dignity of the individual. If a
government is preserved at the expense of individual dignity, for
example, forcibly relocating millions of people, that government's
legitimacy is potentially compromised. While if having to choose
between its own citizens and that of another country it should choose
its own, it should also sincerely seek the lesser of all potential
evils. One group's interest may be more legitimate than another's in
a given situation but no group's interests outweigh the dignity of
the individual.
By now you should see where I as a
third person individualist come from on this issue, nations are
important because they protect individuals but the individual is
paramount.
I fabricated this solution to illegal
immigration intentionally to be objectionable to some on both sides.
I strongly suspect the Mexican government would also never agree to such a
treaty either, based on their current restrictions on foreigners. It
is my hope this exercise will reveal who the ones on both sides are
that don't actually want a solution. They would rather let the baby
be cut in half. I believe if we could weed them out of the
discussion those remaining would have a reasonable chance to achieve
a reasonable solution.
Those who dream of new voting blocks or
don't want to lose cheap labor, no matter what you think of their
motives, have no interest in a solution here. They benefit from the
problem continuing. Anyone who cares to listen to them should
obviously feel free, but never forget their motives. The solution is
going to come through a dialogue amongst those who actually want one.
They are the people who care about the issues of national
sovereignty and individual dignity.
By the way, I strongly suggest caution
when it comes to the social justice crowd. Their respect for
national sovereignty is conditional depending on whether the nation
involved is advantaged or disadvantaged, and their respect for
individual dignity is self-delusion at best. The phrase, “their
heart is in the right place” was practically invented for them, as
almost nothing else of theirs, when it comes to true justice and
individual dignity, is in the right place (see The Heresy Of Social
Justice, from Tuesday, June 19, 2012).
As I believe with all civil and
international issues, cherish individual liberty and dignity and the
best human solutions possible can be found. Put any other natural or
human thing ahead of the individual and the Tower comes crashing down and
we stop understanding each other.
Next week, it seems high time I explain third person individualism itself.
