some thoughts on illegal immigrants

well, lately there has been a lot of controversy over illegal immigrants, and this is not really one of the issues i care that much about. mostly i care about the theocratization of politics and the dire need to re-secularize our politics like they were prior to the rise of the religious right over the past 2 decades, and the need to shrink the gap between rich and poor, and the need for a more humble and humane foreign policy that treats foreigners with respect and is based on sound moral principles and a spirit of open cooperation with allies. this issue of illegal immigration is particularly difficult for me, because i see that illegal immigrants drive down wages for everyone else in the country, and they are being exploited by the wealthy business elite, to the detriment of our nation’s working class. in that spirit, we should oppose any attempts to allow illegal immigrants to stay here or continue working, and oppose any sort of guest-worker program, and simply round up the lot of them and deport them. whether or not they have violated the law is unimportant: what is important is the economic and social implications of their presence, and they seem to be having many detrimental effects on our country.

but, the other side of this issue has, in my view, an even more profound argument. first of all, one could argue that freedom of movement is a fundamental human right, and people should be free to choose any country to live in. this is especially necessary when you have free trade with another country, because the elimination of tariffs allows economic relations between nations to become exploitative, which can only be fixed by allowing people to freely move between the countries in question and thereby counteract this exploitation. there are many families in this nation that are part illegal immigrant, part legal citizen, and it seems quite immoral to break up families just on the basis of some silly law. if someone cares about improving the lot in life of the working class of this nation, is it not arrogant and racist of them to not care about the lot in life of the illegal immigrants, or the working class of foreign countries? marxists believe in building a class consciousness that spans across the globe, a worldwide solidarity of the working class, united by their economic status, and rejecting all nationalist distinctions, seeing the modern nation-state as a capitalist entity that protects the exploiters and brainwashes the proletariat into submission. conversely, most economists and free-market advocates believe in the elimination of barriers to international trade, such as tariffs, and the usage of international treaties and non-governmental organizations to undermine the sovereignty of nation-states and force them all to accept similar pro-market reforms. by ensuring similar laws across the world, the world bank and the international monetary fund help level the playing field among nations, thereby helping to eliminate the economic need for cross-border migration. obviously, this means that the standard of living in the united states needs to go down, and the standard of living in each third-world country needs to go up, until everyone is equal. that is, unless nation-states have inherent differences that justify some being wealthier than others (such as different natural resources, climates, types of terrain, land areas, amounts of coastline, etc.).

so, both the marxist and the capitalist believe in some form of economic globalization that will undermine workers in the united states by making them directly compete against workers in third-world countries. only the economic nationalist thinks otherwise. the economic nationalist argues in favor of closed borders, limiting immigration, and having tariffs to protect domestic industry from foreign competition. the united states has a long and proud history of economic nationalism. the economic nationalist does not care about foreigners, or about business and profits; the sole concern of the economic nationalist is the workers in this country, and maximizing their standard of living. economic nationalists include both the republican tom tancredo, and most labor unions; they are a bipartisan group.

the republican party is the party of big business, however, and their corporate sponsors have a strong distaste for economic nationalism. the republicans in the house of representatives are renegades, refusing to side with the businessmen, despite the fact that the republicans in the senate, white house, and republican national committee all want to undermine american workers with a guest worker program. the democrats, on the other hand, tend to side with ethnic minority groups, in the hopes of getting loyal constituents. so they have decided they want amnesty for illegal aliens, not for policy reasons, but for purely political reasons: to get the hispanic vote. this decision is not based on any ideology, just political pragmatism. ted kennedy is leading the democrats in this opportunistic pandering. this is not to say that the democrats do not genuinely care about the illegal aliens and their plight; however, illegal aliens cannot vote and american workers can, and democrats also care just as much about american workers being undermined by foreign competition. so, for democrats, on policy grounds, it is a real toss-up that could go either way, so the only way to resolve the issue is pragmatism, to do whatever will benefit the party’s chances in future elections. if the issue were more clear, with one side being obviously right and the other being obviously wrong, there might be more incentive for our politicians to decide things on the basis of right and wrong, but, since everything is so muddled, they are instead deciding on the basis of seeking political gain and trying to win elections. so, in the end, what do i think would be the morally right policy? interestingly enough, it is amnesty. we should not create an underclass of temporary workers who have no rights and have to go back to their home countries, as that is not much better than slavery. we ought to put them all on the path to full citizenship. and they ought to be entitled to the same minimum wage, worker safety, etc. protections as everyone else. forcing employers to pay them the same minimum wage ought to decrease the level of capitalist exploitation. anything that allows the illegal immigrants to be paid less or have less rights than other people will only serve to create an environment conducive to exploitation, so there must be no compromise on this issue of pay and benefits, or else it will be a race to the bottom. this way, we can also help the american workers, as a compromise to appease economic nationalists. the only people who would lose out in a deal like that would be the wealthy businessmen, since they would no longer be able to profit off cheap labor in this country. but, hurting corporations does not matter, as long as you do not unfairly reward some while punishing others, in an anti-competitive manner. as long as competition is preserved, capitalism can continue to triumph, because the laws of supply and demand will naturally lead to the nash equilibrium. as for foreign nations, they will need to raise their minimum wages and standards of living in order to prevent their people from all leaving to come here. a rising tide lifts all boats.