Americans First – Citizenism as a Moral Principle to Regulate Immigration

[bankside]

The problem here is that you're viewing the situation in a binary fashion, that there is a finite number of jobs available and they come from the "job creators".

I have tried explaining the "lump of labour" fallacy umpteen times. If a person chooses not to get a rather basic principle, that holds from introductory economics courses through to the practical application by leading economists, then I begin to wonder whether the usual refrain is just a pretext for a policy advocated for other reasons.

 

[bankside]

Absolute excrement.

Try surfing through the material at the Independent Institute, which is about as liberal as Napoleon Bonaparte. My favorite is one advocating worldwide open borders, with an estimate that it would add up to $90 trillion to the world economy, with the presently biggest economies getting the biggest chucks.

That's about $12 000 per person. Meaningful to me; life changing to most of the billions of other people in the world, even if we get the lion's share in the wealthier countries.

But Immigration can be disruptive. The main reason for the benefit you cite is that it unites labour, capital, and resources where they can be most productive. Rather than moving the labour, could we also not move the capital and resources for an equivalent mutual multi-trillion-dollar payoff?

 

[Benvolio]

I was raised in the South and hold an opinion that this “freezing out” involved something more substantial than a “huge influx of immigrants.”









I see no reason to object to their use of a “polite term.” It seems to me that the term accurately describes the situation and is substantially neutral




It is an appropriate explanation and it also illustrates the mischievous nature of the cite.

I have hired and employed persons under the H-1B program. The process is relatively straightforward, but at the same time precise and somewhat complex. There is a longstanding demand to increase the number of persons allowed to enter the US under H-1B visas. If you read the link I offered in an earlier post above, you’d have noticed that the 2014 cap was exceeded rather quickly.

​

I’m not convinced that common sense is necessarily “common.” But in any event, I think it is reasonable to question whether it represents the best approach when attempting to solve a complex and difficult issue.

Tsk, tsk, it is not nice to take things our of context. I said:"Conscientious individuals will recognize that for a large portion of the time since 1865, blacks were frozen out of the labor market.....
Industry had a vast need for labor at that time. But it still did not need blacks because of the huge influx of immigrants. "
I did not, as you suggest, say blacks were frozen out because of the influx, I said they were not needed because of the influx. They were frozen out for racist reasons, facilitated by the large supply of immigrants to do the work. Industry needed labor but it did not need blacks because it had immigrants. Blacks even now have the largest unemployment. Some discrimination, no doubt, but again, they are not needed. No need to actively recruit them. And immigrant jobs get little respect. Better to be unemployed that stoop that low.

"Undocumented" is not just polite, it alters the nature of the relationship. It makes it seem an easy step from undocumented to the goal of "full protection of the labor laws." Actually, that step involves giving the aliens legal status to stay, and in effect, to come in. It changes the employers from law breakers (assuming they know of the illegal status).
I am not sure you understood my point about giving them legal status. A problem with immigrants is that come in large numbers and are willing to work cheap. Giving them legal status would entitle them to the minimum wage, subject to exceptions. But it would not require employers to pay more than minimum wage. They would still be willing to work cheap and by their numbers, bring wages down-but not below minimum wage.

 

[Benvolio]

Only if you agree that we should end all other forms of people joining together in common causes, from churches to corporations to clubs.



Historically, immigration has had the effect of moving millions from joblessness and poverty into prosperity.

Or maybe all those millions of Germans who came to the midwest actually aren't homeowners and business owners and professionals and such.... or all the Irish who came to the East Coast and the Great Lakes....

The problem here is that you're viewing the situation in a binary fashion, that there is a finite number of jobs available and they come from the "job creators". But the job creators are those with initiative, whether they own a business or not, because those with initiative start businesses when they see opportunity. All those other immigrants came and not only took jobs they could do well, but also started their own businesses and created jobs for others. Immigrants have churned out innovations and inventions and patents, as they continue to do today, benefiting everyone.

Were it not for immigrants, this country would still be a mediocre wilderness with little standing among the nations.



And you oppose higher taxes even when they're necessary. By your standards, Ronald Reagan was a liberal, along with Nixon and George H W Bush and, in fact, most Republican presidents. Even Eisenhower, one of the truest conservatives we've ever had, rates a liberal in your book.

That's a sign of closed thinking, of deliberate blindness to anything but an ideological standard of purity.



Today's GOP is ruthlessly socially Darwinian. I don't know anything about liberal epithets, but I know that social Darwinism is a clearly defined point of view in politics, and the GOP holds to it almost elegantly.

As always, you missed my point on unions. You claimed that competition for jobs was a very desirable thing. So, logically we should end unions which exist in large part to protect members from competition for jobs.
Historically, the US had room for immigrants while we were rapidly expanding etc etc.(and freezing blacks out. But times have changed. We are struggling to keep what we have from foreign competition and internal excess regulation. Much heavy industry is gone. China and other countries can produce most everything cheaper. And most importantly, we have huge numbers of poor and unemployed. 47% get welfare, 100 million get food stamps, fewer than half pay income tax. And the liberal answer is we need millions of millions and millions of immigrants to work cheap and get free benefits from fewer and fewer taxpayers.
It is just no answer to say that we should bring in millions because some of the immigrants start diners and convenience stores. That notion is not solving the problem and will not.

I challenge you to find a single instance of a Republican in the last 100 advocating social darwinism. It is a epithet by liberals no more. But, your notion of allowing immigrants, because competition for jobs is good, smacks of darwinism. But, remember, survival of the fittest also means non-survival of the non-fittest.

 

[TX-Beau]

Poor Ben, no shallow right wingnut dittoheads around to back you up.

Ya know, part of the problem is that instead of responding to things people actually said, you just make shit up complementary of the crap you can't back up in the fist place.

No one will ever take you seriously if you keep on operating like that.

 

[opinterph]

Tsk, tsk, it is not nice to take things our of context. I said:"Conscientious individuals will recognize that for a large portion of the time since 1865, blacks were frozen out of the labor market.....
Industry had a vast need for labor at that time. But it still did not need blacks because of the huge influx of immigrants. "
I did not, as you suggest, say blacks were frozen out because of the influx, I said they were not needed because of the influx. They were frozen out for racist reasons, facilitated by the large supply of immigrants to do the work.

Thanks for clarifying. You omitted “for racist reasons, facilitated by” in your original remarks.

Conscientious individuals will recognize that for a large portion of the time since 1865, blacks were frozen out of the labor market. Why should I have to convince anyone of that?
Industry had a vast need for labor at that time. But it still did not need blacks because of the huge influx of immigrants.

 

[Benvolio]

I thought perhaps people understood that blacks were frozen out for racist reasons. The point I have very often made is that immigration facilitated the discrimination by providing the labor needed. I did not say, as your omission suggested that "blacks were frozen out..... because of the immigration."

 

[Benvolio]

If I needed confirmation of the rectitude of my position, I would find it in the complete inability of any of the liberals here to understand or care about the critical role immigration has played in excluding the blacks from economic progress.

 

[TX-Beau]

Translation - ...I'm not going to back shit up because all I've got are obviously biased and probably bigoted sources reasonable people will refuse to accept.....

 

[Kulindahr]

As always, you missed my point on unions. You claimed that competition for jobs was a very desirable thing. So, logically we should end unions which exist in large part to protect members from competition for jobs.

The point of a union is exactly the same as the point of a corporation. If you want to ban unions, then for the very same reason -- better job competition -- you should ban any but single-owner enterprises where that owner is the entire management.

But both unions and corporations rest on the right of freedom of association; they are both instances of people banding together for a goal.

And by wanting to ban either of those, you are seeking to restrict the competition that's the driving force of American success. In the same way, wanting to ban immigration seeks to restrict that same competition. Your position is to choke two of those three sources of competition -- which means that your position is anti-American, in the terms of this thread.

I challenge you to find a single instance of a Republican in the last 100 advocating social darwinism. It is a epithet by liberals no more. But, your notion of allowing immigrants, because competition for jobs is good, smacks of darwinism. But, remember, survival of the fittest also means non-survival of the non-fittest.

Oh, they'll never call it that -- I doubt most of the last batch of GOP candidates for president were even educated enough to be able to define it, if they were even aware of it. But Romney, Perry, Bachmann all advocated it, as do the so-called Tea Party members of Congress with their notions of "every man for himself". Their politics refuse to regard America as a nation that is also a people, preferring to treat us as atoms in a gas, just bouncing around and individually unimportant in either our actions or our existence. It's an extreme individualism which by its extremism makes the individual of no worth at all.

 

[Kulindahr]

If I needed confirmation of the rectitude of my position, I would find it in the complete inability of any of the liberals here to understand or care about the critical role immigration has played in excluding the blacks from economic progress.

Whether the role was critical is debatable. But at the same time, at this point immigration is also helping blacks, by making them -- to put it crassly -- just another color among the darker shades.

 

[TX-Beau]

The point of a union is exactly the same as the point of a corporation. If you want to ban unions, then for the very same reason -- better job competition -- you should ban any but single-owner enterprises where that owner is the entire management.

But both unions and corporations rest on the right of freedom of association; they are both instances of people banding together for a goal.

And by wanting to ban either of those, you are seeking to restrict the competition that's the driving force of American success. In the same way, wanting to ban immigration seeks to restrict that same competition. Your position is to choke two of those three sources of competition -- which means that your position is anti-American, in the terms of this thread.



Oh, they'll never call it that -- I doubt most of the last batch of GOP candidates for president were even educated enough to be able to define it, if they were even aware of it. But Romney, Perry, Bachmann all advocated it, as do the so-called Tea Party members of Congress with their notions of "every man for himself". Their politics refuse to regard America as a nation that is also a people, preferring to treat us as atoms in a gas, just bouncing around and individually unimportant in either our actions or our existence. It's an extreme individualism which by its extremism makes the individual of no worth at all.

Of no worth AND of little political impact.

 

[Benvolio]

I have not said that I want to ban unions. But when you say it is good for workers to compete against immigrants for jobs, you are undercutting a basic purpose of unions. But you don't seem to recognize your hypocrisy.
You assertions about Republicans and candidates are a wild and dishonest distortion. I defy you to find a Republican candidate who has advocated " every man for himself". (Your quotation marks.)

 

[EastMed]

On a note of optimism, I would venture to suggest that immigration reform that is fair and transparent will occur at some point in the future.
And besboke moral 'principles' for the purpose will not be required.

Obama may be doomed to be a reactive president in his second term, with even the most common-sense proposals swatted down because, well — if he’s for it, Republicans will have to be against it. What could be a signature achievement, immigration reform, faces quicksand in the House. But a gerrymander is good for only a decade or so. Eventually, demography and destiny will catch up with a Congress that refuses to do the people’s bidding.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/house-of-un-representatives/

 

[Kulindahr]

I have not said that I want to ban unions. But when you say it is good for workers to compete against immigrants for jobs, you are undercutting a basic purpose of unions. But you don't seem to recognize your hypocrisy.
You assertions about Republicans and candidates are a wild and dishonest distortion. I defy you to find a Republican candidate who has advocated " every man for himself". (Your quotation marks.)

Really, you should lose the ideological glasses.

If ending unions is essential for competition among workers, then capitalism is anti-cooperation at root and should also be banned.

 

[opinterph]

Here is a study showing that most of the new jobs go to immigrants.http://cis.org/who-got-jobs-during-obama-presidency

This study you linked, written by Dr. Camarota (CIS’ Director of Research), very closely resembles a similar study he published the year prior titled, “Who Benefited from Job Growth In Texas?” In response, the Texas Public Policy Foundation reported that “CIS used faulty methodology to make its main point.” One of the key problems in that study related to the fact that the number of jobs it cited as having been “filled” was much larger than the number of new jobs “created.” The National Review used terms such as, “an apples-to-oranges comparison” and “flawed methodology” to describe the study. [National Review Online]


Camarota’s 2012 study attempts to reveal that immigrants are taking most of the jobs created since President Obama took office and was released just prior to the November General Election.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, concludes that Dr. Camarota’s study “fails to show a correlation, let alone causation, between immigration and native unemployment.” Along with a number of other remarks and notations, he points out that one of the several cites CIS uses to blame native unemployment on immigrants is its own “severely flawed” memo.

Immigrants Did Not Take Your Job​

 

[opinterph]

The liberal practice of name calling , such as labeling most things they disagree with as racist, has the effect of pressuring liberals to conform. It explains why there such lock- step in thinking among liberals who claim that they are "open" and" inquisitive ".

Labeling things as “racist” is sometimes appropriate. For example, you may recall back in May when The Heritage Foundation released a report suggesting a high cost would result from enactment of the Senate immigration bill.

The Heritage Foundation on Friday announced the resignation of Jason Richwine, the co-author of an immigration report who came under fire after his college dissertation claiming immigrants have lower IQ scores than the "white native population" went public. [USA Today]

Shortly thereafter, Steve Sailer (author and proponent of Citizenism) responded in his blog:

… f you are from L.A., like me, it's hard not to notice that there is, on average, an IQ gap and that it doesn't go away, and that has all sorts of implications for education, real estate, immigration, mortgages, and so forth and so on.

One of the goals the Democrats have in inviting in more illegal immigrants by amnestying the ones already here is to rub the noses of more white people in the facts of diversity, so that they have to choose between being Evil or being Complicit.

And nobody hates us Evil folks like the Complicit.

It should be fairly obvious that Mr. Sailer thinks white people are more intelligent than people of one or more other races.

That is racism.

 

[Zingerific]

Just as an aside: I'm old enough to remember the end of the Cold War, when the right would brag about the numbers of highly-educated legal immigrants. That so-called "brain drain" proved the superiority of American Capitalism.

Funny, the position shifts 180 degrees, but it's still just as jingoistic.

 

[Benvolio]

Labeling things as “racist” is sometimes appropriate. For example, you may recall back in May when The Heritage Foundation released a report suggesting a high cost would result from enactment of the Senate immigration bill.

​

Shortly thereafter, Steve Sailer (author and proponent of Citizenism) responded in his blog:


It should be fairly obvious that Mr. Sailer thinks white people are more intelligent than people of one or more other races.

That is racism.

No doubt there are racists on both sides of the aisle. But, you missed my point. By falsely labeling most ideas with which they disagree as racist, liberals pressure other liberals to conform. Any time someone attempts to discuss the effect of immigration upon our existing millions of poor and unemployed, including the racial minorities, the liberals start calling it racism. The result is that liberals are reluctant to think negatively about immigration for fear of being, or being thought racist.

 

[Rolyo85]

Also, immigration is simply consistent with liberalism, so liberals don't really have any inclination to think otherwise...