Cutting Through the Shit of the Debate on Immigration:

Before getting to my post, I just created an RSS feed for my blog. I encourage all interested to take advantage of this. Also I have added a counter. It may have unimpressive figures at first, but I won't give up until it does.

With that said, I briefly want to discuss the issue of illegal immigration. I want to discuss this mostly because Bill O'Reilly is on his bi-monthly jihad to expose the horror. Bill O'Reilly repeats a lot of plain false arguments made about this issue. The first and most egregious is the "cost" of illegal immigrants. Often times we are given the grave amount of money that illegal immigrants cost in state and federal programs like education and various forms of healthcare. O'Reilly recently put the figure at $68 billion every year, citing a Columbia University study.

I have a couple of responses to this. First of all, most illegal immigrants pay taxes, they pay sales tax, they pay income tax, and they pay payroll taxes. Assuredly some work under the table, but evading taxes is a crime the government enforces, employing illegal immigrants is not, thus the number is not high. So returning to my argument, while they may "cost" billions, they also pay taxes. To put it another way, the American people "cost" our country trillions in various programs, which are paid for with, their taxes. Now assuredly few illegal immigrants migrate if they are wealthy, so with the progressive system of taxation they do not totally pay for themselves, but neither do most people.

But illegal immigrants do have a net gain for the United States, while we are on the topic of costs. Right now when an illegal immigrant signs up for a job, they either provide a bogus Social Security Number or the expired number they were given when they had a green card. Either way, billions goes to the Social Security fund, never to be taken out. This is a net gain for the American worker, the American retiree, and the American taxpayer. So if anyone attempts to couch their views on immigration in "costs" they are wrong.

The next frequent argument is the issue of jobs. That these migrant workers pay for little to no money, taking jobs away from hard working Americans. This is not true. Globalization and free trade have been an overwhelming net gain for the United States for the same reason that having cheap migrant workers is a net gain. Sure some may lose their job who were getting 15 dollars an hour to pick vegetables, but if a couple of thousand people lose their job there, go get retrained, and the price of vegetables is able to drop, meaning more people can buy more vegetables, then all have benefited. This is why protectionists are always wrong. This is why Wal-Mart is really something that is good for poor people (but I will probably be writing more about this in the future).

Now, the brand new argument recently made about illegal immigration is on the issue of terrorists crossing the borders. Bill O'Reilly makes the unsubstantiated claim that, "thousands of Middle Eastern people have gotten into the USA via the southern border." This is of course unsubstantiated. But is just a bad argument when looked at more closely. First of all, if a terrorist from the Middle East desperately wants to get into the United States they will. It does not matter how much we reform our system of immigration. Unless the United States wants to pull a 15th century China and isolate itself from the rest of the world, we are going to have to assume that 20 people can get into the United States if they desperately want to, not to mention that terrorist groups would have no problem recruiting just 10-20 Americans already in the country to do their bidding. This is why the obvious and much more effective way for fighting terrorism is not to shut down our borders, but instead to strike at the cause of terror, this is of course an argument that George Bush made over and over again, I am sure Bill O'Reilly bought it then (at least I bought it and still do).

So where does this leave us? Well I think the chief reason Bill O'Reilly and many of his kind hate illegal immigration is because it is illegal. Because people are breaking the law and creating all of these harms that they have manifested it causing. Should we have a debate in this country on the merits of immigrants, the level of their presence, and the fluidity of our borders, both to the north and south? Absolutely, but when it is couched as a debate on terrorism and economics, it skews the issue. So lets all contemplate while I finish up midterms.

-Mr. Alec