common sense on immigration policy

we don't have a bit of it.

i can't really glean a great deal of actual information from the recent blathering about the new immigration bill. most talking heads spend all of their time whining about how bad it is without actually going into details. i don't have the energy to actually find the bill on the net to read it--i'm sure that i can predict what's in it. let's see, my guess is there is a section on dealing with the illegal aliens in the country now. prol'ly a combination of the two extreme positions in america now--some sort of slow forgiveness process with some punitive tax paying and whatnot. then an entire section about increasing the size of the border patrol, some money thrown at the fence idea...just a smorgsaborg of ideas and half-formed bits of policy. ultimately, we'll end up throwing billions of dollars at the situation and end up an unstable dynamic equilibrium that will last another 10 years or so and then we'll have the same "discussion" again.

ultimately, i believe that most folks are trying to deny the essential nature of our system here. the disparity in standard of living between our country and mexico is so large that for all intents and purposes we can regard mexico as a third world country. i don't understand how some of the smartest people in the world could look at a deal like NAFTA and NOT understand what it meant for our two economies. mexico always had a comparative advantage over us in terms of inexpensive labor, and we absolutely exacerbated the situation with NAFTA. with the passing of NAFTA, unfortunately for mexico, labor became a fungible commodity. i mean...that's all they had. a few years ago...well, the last presidential election, the huge economic issue was the outsourcing of jobs to mexico and other places, but primarily mexico. now, i think we are witnessing the logical economic progression given our relative economic positions. it only stands to reason that instead of staying in mexico and working for local wages at jobs that were originally american, those that can leave their homes and make their way north will do so.

we can talk all day long about punishing employers that utilize illegals, or expanding and modernizing guess worker programs, or expanding ICE and letting them arrest busloads of illegals and sending them home but we will NOT come one step closer to solving the immigration problem because we refuse to recognize the economic imbalance that creates the immigration pressure in the first place. *shrug* in a lot of ways, it is just as ignorant as our approach to drug policies in this country. putting addicts in jail is not solving the problem, and we just don't seem to be willing to face that. in order to create a situation where the population centers of our two countries are relatively stable, we must redress the economic imbalance between our countries.

technology transfers, infrastructure, significant financial investment in mexico...everyone benefits from a stronger, more economically independent mexico. population centers will stabilize, manufactored goods will become cheaper, soybeans will compete with poppy as a cash crop, peace and harmony will spread throughout the land. tra-la-la-la. i don't know. it seems that we need to take a step back and acknowledge the breadth and width of the problem and the accompanying breadth and width of the solution. this is something that is 10 or 15 years down the road, but i believe that the dividends are immeasurable and go far beyond the obvious economic benefits.

we'll see...