US Immigration and Border Security Thread

[spmetla]

But again, isn't immigration beside the point here? This is a collective human problem, and if we have any hope of addressing it then where or whether people migrate doesn't really make a difference, does it?

It is a collective human problem but migration certainly does make a difference. Countries can only accommodate a certain amount of immigrants without collapse. Larger countries like the US can do so more easily, especially since the US was NOT founded as an ethno-nationalist state as the trend of the 18th and 19th centuries were. Small countries like Lebanon have been utterly ruined from too many refugees. Remember it used to be the "Paris of the Middle East" and the financial center of the region, it should have been able to prosper like the UAE and Qatar do today given internal peace and peace with it's neighbors.

Same for European countries, they are richer and have more territory and population so they can absorb immigrants a bit more easily but only to a certain extent. Too much and it overstresses the social safety net too much and can cause collapse. The cost of language training, housing, and job training will certainly be extensive, especially if it's on the scale of 200,000 migrants a year as Germany is capping it now.

Germany like the US also faces a shortage of SKILLED labor:
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-faces-h...ers/a-40294450

With technology replacing more and more jobs it will become more and more difficult to find jobs for migrants that face language and skills barriers not to mention cultural ones in regards to work, punctuality and personal responsibility.
There are attempts to work around this but it is difficult:
http://www.dw.com/en/german-organiza...rly/a-39699605

lthough Rami had years of experience in Afghanistan working in physical therapy, that did not qualify him to work in the health care field in Germany. Many refugees are facing this problem: their qualifications are not recognized by German institutions. Finding a proper job can take years and requires additional certifications and training courses. Rami decided to enter the BeQuFa program to give him a chance in the job market.
Fendi noted that many of the refugees have a difficult time understanding why their qualifications and experience are not recognized in Germany. Many of them want to jump into the field they worked in back home, but may not realize that Germany demands special qualifications to enter fields such as nursing or geriatric care. By attending the BeQuFa program the refugees will be able to get their diplomas recognized during their courses - but only if they can present a paper copy of the diploma. Others may have to start from scratch and do more training beyond the BeQuFa program to be able to work.

Think of it also from the point of view of the country that just educated and trained said person. If poor countries apply their scarce resources to educate people in these special skills and they skip the country to go to another just to find they will drive a truck instead it's a net loss for both countries. One has a loss on the investment they sunk in the individual and the other has to spend money to retrain said individual to work in a career that may or may not be what that person wanted to work in.

http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7031

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Abstract
Objective To estimate the lost investment of domestically educated doctors migrating from sub-Saharan African countries to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Design Human capital cost analysis using publicly accessible data.

Settings Sub-Saharan African countries.

Participants Nine sub-Saharan African countries with an HIV prevalence of 5% or greater or with more than one million people with HIV/AIDS and with at least one medical school (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), and data available on the number of doctors practising in destination countries.

Main outcome measures The financial cost of educating a doctor (through primary, secondary, and medical school), assuming that migration occurred after graduation, using current country specific interest rates for savings converted to US dollars; cost according to the number of source country doctors currently working in the destination countries; and savings to destination countries of receiving trained doctors.

Results In the nine source countries the estimated government subsidised cost of a doctor’s education ranged from $21 000 (£13 000; €15 000) in Uganda to $58 700 in South Africa. The overall estimated loss of returns from investment for all doctors currently working in the destination countries was $2.17bn (95% confidence interval 2.13bn to 2.21bn), with costs for each country ranging from $2.16m (1.55m to 2.78m) for Malawi to $1.41bn (1.38bn to 1.44bn) for South Africa. The ratio of the estimated compounded lost investment over gross domestic product showed that Zimbabwe and South Africa had the largest losses. The benefit to destination countries of recruiting trained doctors was largest for the United Kingdom ($2.7bn) and United States ($846m).

Conclusions Among sub-Saharan African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, lost investment from the emigration of doctors is considerable. Destination countries should consider investing in measurable training for source countries and strengthening of their health systems.

The shortage of doctors in most African countries is attributed to institutes lacking the capacity to train sufficient numbers of doctors, coupled with an inability to retain doctors, who choose to emigrate for what they consider better career opportunities. Many wealthy destination countries, which also train fewer doctors than are required, depend on immigrant doctors to make up the shortfall. In this way developing countries are effectively paying to train staff who then support the health services of developed countries. Although developed countries often provide development assistance to resource limited countries, the amount that goes into the training of health workers is variable and limited.

This is a collective human problem, and if we have any hope of addressing it then where or whether people migrate doesn't really make a difference, does it?

To reiterate the above should point out that it DOES make a difference and as a collective human problem the current migration problems is making things worse for both losing and gaining nations.

In countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan with an active war going it is of course a much more complex problem. Expecting people to stay in place with starvation, disease, violence, and all the corruption and other problems of a 3rd world nation make it more difficult for individuals there.
That's why in other threads I've been a staunch advocate of intervening to help as able. No nation is an island to the problems of the world and to ignore them only lets problems escalate. The solutions shouldn't always be military, or the imposition of a new system of government.

For refugees from these reasons they aren't always leaving with a clean slate either. The ethnic, religious, and cultural tensions will be brought back to the new host nation. Sri Lanka was in civil war for decades and the diaspora had to endure the terrorism of the Tamil abroad as well:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/03/1...iaspora#935788
My earlier example of Lebanon aided Palestinians after the creation of Israel and were later dragged into civil war and then wars with Israel as a result of that refugee community.

You see Turkish expatriates being coerced by Erdogan to vote in his favor. Kurdish and Turks now fight out their problems in Germany as well.
http://www.dw.com/en/german-police-c...orf/a-41241660
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g...-idUSKCN0XA18Y


Heck you can go back to ancient Rome and the Gothic and other germanic 'refugees' if you want a truly extreme example as well.

The problems leading to refugees need to be addressed in some manner. Even if it means dealing with a dictator like Assad as opposed to an overthrow and the anarchy we've got in Libya and Yemen.

[Montmorency]

I will own to one tension in my pro-immigrant position, which is that I see it as socially constructive, while the basic socialist or anarchist/libertarian argument is that people have an inherent right to free movement. I'm too authoritarian to accept that.

To reiterate the above should point out that it DOES make a difference and as a collective human problem the current migration problems is making things worse for both losing and gaining nations.

I acknowledged this, but my point was - what solution actually gets to the root of the problem? You are recognizing various difficulties, but instability and inequality in poor countries will drive migration to richer ones. It is a related, but ultimately parallel problem that economic and technological forces are set to create similar conditions in the currently-rich countries, whose citizens will have nowhere to go to.

Let's say Western countries coordinate an optimum mix of skilled/unskilled immigration, and advertise it loudly and with clarity (in its details) to the world. But refugee and economic crises abroad will inevitably be exacerbated this century, which includes internal displacement and chaos in rich countries. Eventually we have a dichotomy: let more people in than our optimal ceilings dictate, or violate human rights in an effort to offload the problem on the nearest country we don't care about, thereby destabilizing them (to say nothing of that unspeakable recourse, genocide). The scenarios has room to get even worse.

A coordinated multilateral immigration policy would be a good idea in itself and can mitigate inflows, but it will be overwhelmed at some point.

If you want a permanent (better to say, durable, robust) solution, you need to look at changing the logics driving migration, and causing the conditions driving migration.

That's why in other threads I've been a staunch advocate of intervening to help as able. No nation is an island to the problems of the world and to ignore them only lets problems escalate. The solutions shouldn't always be military, or the imposition of a new system of government.

I think we can agree here that, both as an ethical matter and as a practical one of "handling the problem abroad rather than at home", rich countries need to intervene in migration crises, whether caused by war, economic upheaval, or by natural disaster and climate. If these interventions are to have a military/security component, it should be essentially defensive to avert the imperialist impulse (which also needs further checks on a case-by-case basis).

The object is to provide physical security, food and shelter, but also entertainment, community, education, employment: a return to normal life, even if subsidized by foreign states. To that end refugee camps will have to become new cities, and vice versa. How to integrate local leadership and government, and how to manage corruption, are serious questions, ones that we can hope will be constantly renewed under the auspices of enormously expensive operations. Hopefully a non- or low-military profile encourages rigorous oversight.

[Agent Miles]

I find it incredible that all of you totally miss the point. No one cares if millions of illegal aliens work in the U.S. and then go back to their homeland with their offspring and a paycheck they earned. Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts. Leftists have already made the case that in the 19th century foreigners could vote in some states. So it's not about poor little aliens being kicked out of work by evil Republicans. The problem is the Left importing voters. Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.

[Fragony]

Leftist isn't something you are, it's something one has

[Agent Miles]

If you prefer Marxist anarchist thugs, I have no problem with that.
;)

[Fragony]

All my friends are very leftist, I don't really care

@miles

[spmetla]

Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts.

What you say here is as crazy as the the 9/11 is an inside job conspiracies. The massive number of illegal immigrants we have are a result of over 30 years of ignoring our own laws. A good number of them should be given amnesty and become legal citizens because most of them aside from the initial immigration have not committed any transgressions against us.

In the future we need to enforce our border properly and enforce our laws.

There's no secret 'leftist' training camps that teach people to do this, that's actually an illicit business conducted by very enterprising criminals and people smugglers.
As for the potential voters, by and large most hispanics are very conservative on almost all social issues from abortion, to the role of god in our lives and so on. They would by and large vote mostly Republican if the rhetoric on that side wasn't dominated by the extreme opinion of round up all the illegals and kick them out and then enforce shoot to kill on the border.

In regards to the school systems, those are not for 'citizens' but for legal residents. Even if those kids are illegal though it is to our benefit to educate those kids lest we create a further shadow society of people that in addition to other problems have no education.

Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.

If over the next several decades millions of US citizens moved to Canada illegally and the Canadian government continued it's current lackadaisical policies then they'd have a similar problem.
We however are the nation that shares a border with Mexico and as such must enforce that border.

[Husar]

I find it incredible that all of you totally miss the point. No one cares if millions of illegal aliens work in the U.S. and then go back to their homeland with their offspring and a paycheck they earned. Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts. Leftists have already made the case that in the 19th century foreigners could vote in some states. So it's not about poor little aliens being kicked out of work by evil Republicans. The problem is the Left importing voters. Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.

Then make them legal so they can pay taxes for their childrens' education.
Voters get imported either way, who asked the original inhabitants to vote about who runs the country?
And again, if the republican base of Florida bankers stopped sniffing so much cocaine, maybe fewer illegal leftists would cross the border to flee from the friendly drug lords that the Republicans keep financing. The Republicans are entirely financed by billionaire business owners who are importing all these people to save on their trickle down expenses and because they hate paying taxes and healthcare plans for their workers. Stop the victim blaming here and focus on the real issue, which is the party you love so much!