"A Borderless World" - Interesting RW take on immigration debate.

[pampango]

An interesting article from NRO posing an argument against illegal immigration using some of the same logic that we see frequently at DU.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDVkZDk2ZDA1YWU0YzA5ZDhkNGRlODczZWMyNjk0MWU=

"Stable democracies and free markets ensure economic growth, rising standards of living, and, thus, lots of jobs, while these countries’ birth rates and native populations fall. In contrast, immigrants usually flee mostly failed states that cannot offer their people any real hope of prosperity and security." (This overlooks the complexity of how the Third World got that way and our responsibility for it.)

"...immigrants soon get angry. And rather than showing thanks for a ticket out of the slums of Mexico City or Tunis, blatant hypocrisy can follow: The once thankful, but now exhausted, alien may wave the flag of the country he would never return to while shunning the culture of the host county he would never leave. Governments in countries such as Mexico and Morocco usually care far more about their emigrants once they are long gone. Then these poor are no longer volatile proof of their own failures, but victims of some wealthy foreign government’s indifference. And these pawns usually send cash home."

"The lower middle classes complain most about massive immigration, but then they have to compete with aliens for jobs, often live among them and don’t use their services. The wealthier, who hire immigrants for low wages and see them only at work, often think mass immigration, even if illegal, is wonderful."

"It is past time to remember that paying our own poorer laborers more, doing some occasional physical work and obeying the laws — the immigration ones especially — are not icky or a bummer. Rather, this is the more ethical and, in the long run, cheaper approach." (Has it gotten to the point that even the RW anti-immigration types are proposing paying
poorer American laborers more?)

If you drop a paragraph or two from this piece, this could easily have been an original DU post.

[yurbud]

1. the devil is in the details--"free trade" favors corporations over workers, so the deck is stacked