I sometimes wonder what would happen if we were to use a jury system to deal with illegal immigrants. That is, let an immigrant who is here illegally appeal to a jury of citizens for the right to become a citizen.
I think that a jury system might do two things. It might lead some anti-immigrant citizens who serve on such juries to appreciate the human issues involved for, say, a 16-year-old of Mexican origin who has lived for 14 years in the U.S. and known nothing of Mexico. It also might lead the immigrants themselves, about to come before juries, to think in terms of how they can assimilate and thereby come across as more appealing to a jury of citizens.
It seems to me that the defeat of Eric Cantor will be interpreted, probably correctly, as making it very difficult for Republicans to compromise on immigration issues. My guess is that this will help Democrats. I think that group-identity wedge issues tend to be their comparative advantage, but I could be wrong about that.
How exactly does failing to import more democrats help republicans?
Because we aren’t “failing” to import them.
You forgot the “more”.
Do you think that republicans compromising anymore at this point could lead to less immigration?
It is not a binary choice. See below.
There is no reason to deal with Democrats who don’t have any reason to deal in good faith. They don’t even want a “solution” to this issue.
As I think about it today, I even wonder if my vague recollection of Obama deportations was more to stir up a response from the Hispanics.
What Republicans need to do is create a solution that Hispanics like but hurts Democrats.
(it would be almost perfect if Obama said something like “I wish I didn’t have to execute these deportations, but I am bound by my duty to follow the law”)
There are supposed to be 11 million illegal aliens squatting in the US. Do you think they should all get “jury trials”? How much would that cost? What a ridiculous suggestion. Also, given the lack of assimilation among illegals, to say the kid in your example, who likely is more fluent in Spanish than English, and outside of school lives in an almost entirely Spanish-speaking milieu, “knows nothing” of Mexico is pretty far-fetched.
No one denies that there are many affecting, LIftetime-TV-ready sob stories among the illegals squatting in this country as honored guests of the federal government, the legal establishment and corporate America. The question is whether accommodating this entire huge group of people will make life better or worse for the majority existing American citizens and their descendants. Sending foreigners back to their own countries does not strike me as cruel and unusual punishment or as treating people as less than human beings, although people like Bryan Caplan try to make it sound like we would be sending them back to Auschwitz. All human beings are equally human, but not all of them are American, and the US, as a nation, and like any other nation, is morally entitled to set policy primarily to serve the interests of its own citizens and their descendants. That proposition has never been questioned until the last 10 years or so.
I am certain that there are quite a few affecting human interest stories behind the Supreme Court decision this week upholding the supposedly compassionate Obama administration’s position that foreign-born children brought legally into this country by their legal resident alien parents lose their place in line for naturalization when they “age out,” i.e.,, reach an age at which point they are no longer covered by their parent’s naturalization petition. In fact, it was reported a year or so ago that the Obama administration was actively trying to deport a college-age British-born girl, who had lived in this country since early childhood with her family (her father had come to the US to work for a company in Georgia) because, having reached the age of 18, her family’s visa no longer covered her. I don’t know what happened to that girl, but to say that the Obama administration and its open-borders supporters are motivated by compassion is not accurate.
As to compromise, what kind of genuine compromise have the Democrats ever offered on immigration? We all know that their agreements about border enforcement (which is really a side issue anyway) are bogus. The Gang of Eight deal was generally acknowledged to be a capitulation by establishment Republicans who were only putting on a show in the hope of fooling their restrictionist voters.
If you want a compromise, here’s one I would support, given the mess this country’s feckless, worthless, highly-credentialed ruling class has created over the last two generations: amnesty for the 11 million illegals already here in exchange for strict limits on future immigration, strict enforcement of the new limits (at the borders, in kicking people out after their visas expire, and at workplaces), and an end to the ludicrous, self-destructive policy of chain migration. This deal would avoid the heartbreak to the open borders crowd of deporting anyone already living here, but would the Democrats be interested? Fat chance.
No, it is not that ridiculous.
And, it is thought-provoking.
Lastly, it feels good to rant. But the reality is (without idea generators like Arnold Kling) we will just keep letting in lower class immigrants while giving more productive and rule following immigrants a hassle and in the end we’ll get the illegals anyway, and in the mean time we will waste a decade or two arguing over it.
To your proposal. Why wouldn’t the democrats just accept your deal, then do exactly what they have and accept millions of more potential voters?
Ask a Democratic politician about ending chain migration. See what response you get.
First I’d have to google “chain immigration.”
Yes, I meant chain immigration. According to the Democrats, it is one of the bedrock principles of the Constitution. I don’t they’re interested in shutting it down, under any circumstances.
No, I wasn’t goofing on you, I was goofing on me.
I don’t know what that is. I guess I’ll go look.
Chain immigration is the policy of allowing the immediate family members (regardless of age, health, or ability to work) of legal immigrants to join their relatives in the US, and then allowing the family members of those family members to immigrate, and so on. There is no conceivable argument that this kind of immigration helps the country’s economy – although it undoubtedly helps the profitability of manufacturers of toilet papers and adult diapers.
“But the reality is (without idea generators like Arnold Kling) we will just keep letting in lower class immigrants while giving more productive and rule following immigrants a hassle and in the end we’ll get the illegals anyway, and in the mean time we will waste a decade or two arguing over it.”
So if we’re letting in these unneeded (except as Democratic voters) immigrants anyway, why go through the expensive charade of a rigged “jury” system? Arnold has a lot of great ideas, but this isn’t one of them.
And it is not an undifferentiated “we” who are letting hordes of unneeded immigrants into the country without a second-thought to the interests of American citizens and of America as a nation. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the courts, the legal profession, and the donor class (to both parties) want these people to come and have decided to usher them in, regardless of the interests or views of the majority of American voters. I think this is a good example of what is called the problem of agency. In this case, the agents have decided that they want a new principal and are creating it.
A jury system couldn’t be rigged. That is why the jury system.
“A jury system couldn’t be rigged.”
Oh, come on. In the first place, who would be arguing for deportation at these silly “trials”? And what standard would the jury be told to apply? And who would be on the juries? Plainly, the proposal (which is not practically feasible) is a fantasy in which the immigration issue is made to disappear by way of shifting responsibility for what is happening from the politicians, their donors and the bureaucracy/legal system to anonymous “jurors.” I can’t believe voters would be dumb enough to fall for this.
In any event, the focus on “deportation” is a tiresome distraction used by the open-borders crowd. If the federal government would just enforce employment laws against businesses, the problem would be alleviated without a large number of actual “deportations.”
Democrats don’t want a path to citizenship, they want a path to a new voting bloc. What Republicans need to do is deal directly with Mexicans (don’t try).
What I have in mind is something like this. You have a 10 year vesting process, 7 years if you do it at the border. The sooner you apply the sooner your clock starts. Your taxes paid benefits accrue. If you get into real legal trouble (not parking tickets) you get expelled and/or your clock starts over or years are added. If you are expelled you of course lose your accrued benefits. At 10 years you do the citizenship test and then get to vote after that.
You can also buy down years at the border. $10k gets you one year less on the vesting clock.
The beauty of this proposal is that it is what would happen if any business of any kid ever had to perform a service anything like this- which is why it would never ever happen through this political process.
Who exactly is unwilling to ‘compromise on immigration issues’?
There are lots of smart, clever, and humane proposals to steer the ship of this policy. Republicans think they are currently being steered in the disastrous direction of the rocky reefs. But compromising on the bearing is pointless if there’s also a hole in the boat and your counter-party refuses to fix it. That’s the real unwillingness to compromise here.
What are the extreme positions in the current debate? Only tiny fringes are arguing for complete open-borders and zero-cost amnesty on the one hand, or putting a stop to all lawful immigration on the other.
In general, Republicans favor legal immigration, have advocated for guest workers and so forth, and have been open to suggestions on humane ways to deal with the large number of illegal immigrants short of universal deportation so long as they are given some credible assurance that the immigration laws will be enforced in the future, physical barriers built to secure the border, and measures taken to ensure that we don’t get a repeat of 1986 in which an amnesty just encourages lots more people to become illegal immigrants in the hope of yet another amnesty.
Democrats are not willing to budge at all on any of this, and the administration seems to be doing everything in its power to avoid enforcing the law at all while making claims to the contrary. It seems like the Democrats would have had a better chance of achieving their immigration agenda with Cantor in place, but the steady stream of news stories showing the deterioration of order and enforcement and the recent significant increase in illegal immigration of unaccompanied minors certainly helped Brat, and the administration probably had some ability to at least temporarily suppress that phenomenon, but chose not to do so.
Republicans have to make Democrats look as silly on this topic as they are.
I’m not sure why they weren’t able to do it with Voter ID, but they couldn’t and have to try something else.
We should move towards open economic borders, but I’m not sure why economists gloss over the problems with political open borders (letting newcomers vote in things like…oh I don’t know, closed borders!)
” Only tiny fringes are arguing for complete open-borders ”
Few argue for open borders since 9/11, but many elites dislike restrictions on immigration and complain that actions to enforce the law are cruel to immigrants or a burden to employers.
I wonder what mechanism could be created to incentivize making the law consistent with enforcement.