Population Control

[WinePusher]

In the Why Is Homosexuality Wrong Thread the debate has become about reproductive issues and responsible family planning.

1) Does anyone on here actually support China's One Child Policy?

2) Is population control an effective means to protect the enviroment? (As some MSNBC commentators think).

3) Do you think the United States has a population size problem?

[ChaosBorders]

I await these studies that show that the influx of illegal immigrants bolster our standard of living and our economy.

I think this is an excellent one. Hopefully the link works.

What are you claiming, exactly? That illegal immigrants help our economy?

Yes and no. I am saying there are economic benefits of them being here, but there are also considerable costs as well. When you measure both, their net effect is not statistically significantly different from zero. In the grand scheme of things, their presence makes very little difference to our country's economic well-being. However, making the effort to seriously get rid of them all would make a huge difference to their own country's well-being (which could come back to haunt us), as well as our own pocket books.

Exactly, so lets close our borders. We wouldn't be wasting so much money on deportation if our borders were sealed.

That is not a very feasible solution. Here's an article explaining why. Though I am concerned by what the effects of further harming Mexico's economy would ultimately be regarding drug violence and the like, I think the most cost-effective way of reducing further illegal immigration is simply enforce the laws we already have regarding employers. If you make hiring illegals too much of a risk and too costly, then jobs will dry up and they won't have a reason to come here.

[Lux]

Though they cost a fair amount by using public services, they also generate significant economic benefits.

This makes no sense.

Actually, it does. Did you know about Sanctuary cities? They are cities inside the USA that have "outlawed" prosecution of illegal immigrants by forbidding police and in some cases companies to inquire about a person's immigration status. And I quote Wikipedia on the why: "Most of these cities claim that the benefit illegal immigrants bring to their city outweigh the costs."

NYC, Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, San Francisco, Miami and Washington DC are some but not all of these cities.

What illegal immigrants do is further corrupt immoral corporations, take away jobs that would go to citizens, and committ crimes.

Really? That's what all illegal immigrants do? I'm not aware of any distinct correlation between immigration status and how likely a person is to commit a crime. I'm certain some of them are criminals, but I also happen to know that many of them are hard working people who just want to feed their families.

What are you claiming, exactly? That illegal immigrants help our economy?

If I understood him correctly, he said that once you weight in the costs and the advantages, the economic damage they do is far from significant (in other words: they don't hurt).

However, the costs of actually getting rid of all of the illegal immigrants would be tens of billions a year.

Exactly, so lets close our borders. We wouldn't be wasting so much money on deportation if our borders were sealed.

The borders have been closed for decades, just not effectively closed. Don't get me wrong, I'm for the USA securing it's borders better (in large part because I think it would be a lethal blow to the mexican drug cartels if they could no longer export cocaine there), but that won't even begin to solve the problem. The number of illegal immigrants in the USA is currently estimated at about 12 million people. They won't go away just because you upgrade border security. In fact, they might just choose to stay because of that.

[ChaosBorders]

Really? That's what all illegal immigrants do? I'm not aware of any distinct correlation between immigration status and how likely a person is to commit a crime. I'm certain some of them are criminals, but I also happen to know that many of them are hard working people who just want to feed their families.

In fairness, there is a distinct correlation between crime and poverty, which most of the illegal immigrants still live in. But again, when you weigh the positive economic benefits they create against the negatives (crime, use of public services, etc.) the net effect is basically zero. Furthermore, the effects on Mexico of throwing them out would be devastating. For every crime you prevented or American job you saved here, you'd likely be starving a few families to death over there. It would not seem to me to be either the humanitarian or utilitarian thing to do. What is more, drug trafficking and violence can be traced primarily to just how crappy Mexico's economy is. Making it even worse runs the serious risk of exacerbating the drug situation, which could ultimately come back to haunt us.

If we were not over-committed militarily as it is, and were fine with just cutting Mexico off from us completely, we could maybe pull it off from a logistical perspective. But there'd still be the issue of how in the world we could possibly justify it from a cost/benefit perspective.

[WinePusher]

I await these studies that show that the influx of illegal immigrants bolster our standard of living and our economy.

I think this is an excellent one. Hopefully the link works.

It works, I read about the first three pages, may be you could present their arguments in your own words. Several Arguments:

1) Theoritical Guesswork is appropriate for University Elitist Economists who are primarily affiliated with the Liberal Spectrum of the political arena, bu tit isn't appropriate for hardworking, average americans who have to make a living. When Christina Romer drew up the 2009 Recovery Package, it seemed that it would work when she and her Stanford economists were looking at it on their chalkboard. But unfortunatly, it failed and the economy is in worse shape than it was before.

2) Those who wish to live in America should have the willingness to assimilate into our culture, we should not have to accomidate their needs if they want to live here. Much of our crime is committed by Illegals, Drug Cartels, and so forth. Our Courts are suffering, our prisons are overflowing and we're wasting alo tof money on deporting these illegals. So, why wouldn't you want to close off the border?

What are you claiming, exactly? That illegal immigrants help our economy?

[quote="ChaosBorders"Yes and no. I am saying there are economic benefits of them being here, but there are also considerable costs as well. When you measure both, their net effect is not statistically significantly different from zero. In the grand scheme of things, their presence makes very little difference to our country's economic well-being. However, making the effort to seriously get rid of them all would make a huge difference to their own country's well-being (which could come back to haunt us), as well as our own pocket books.[/quote]

Which is why we should secure our borders.

Exactly, so lets close our borders. We wouldn't be wasting so much money on deportation if our borders were sealed.

That is not a very feasible solution. Here's an article explaining why. Though I am concerned by what the effects of further harming Mexico's economy would ultimately be regarding drug violence and the like, I think the most cost-effective way of reducing further illegal immigration is simply enforce the laws we already have regarding employers. If you make hiring illegals too much of a risk and too costly, then jobs will dry up and they won't have a reason to come here.

Why shouldn't we seal off the border? There would be legal enter and exist points so that tourists could get into Mexico, and if the borders were sealed there would be no illegals getting jobs thus we wouldn't need to go after employers. Its a win-win situation, our borders define our soverignity as a state, and it we can't secure them we should just erase them.

[ChaosBorders]

It works, I read about the first three pages, may be you could present their arguments in your own words.

The lower cost of labor allows for products to be produced at a lower cost, in effect raising the purchasing power of Americans in areas with immigrants and creating jobs through subsidiary effects. The benefits such as these when compared to the costs of (insert all the problems you have with it) make it so the net effect is not statistically significantly different from zero. They may well have a negative effect, but the effect is so small that spending a fortune on trying to get rid of them is certainly an unwise decision to make.

1) Theoritical Guesswork is appropriate for University Elitist Economists who are primarily affiliated with the Liberal Spectrum of the political arena, bu tit isn't appropriate for hardworking, average americans who have to make a living. When Christina Romer drew up the 2009 Recovery Package, it seemed that it would work when she and her Stanford economists were looking at it on their chalkboard. But unfortunatly, it failed and the economy is in worse shape than it was before.

A) Just because they don't understand economics doesn't make it inappropriate.
B) Just because someone is affiliated with liberals doesn't make them wrong.
C) Most economists agree the stimulus kept us from entering into another great depression. Whether it saved us from one or merely delayed it has yet to be seen. Furthermore, hundreds of billions of the stimulus took the form of tax cuts the economists said wouldn't do anything, but were put in there to try and get republicans on board because it was the type of tax cuts they like. I understand the political reasons, but it was just a stupid thing to do in my opinion. No economic justification for those cuts. So you are half right here, but it's not really the economists' fault.

2) Those who wish to live in America should have the willingness to assimilate into our culture, we should not have to accomidate their needs if they want to live here. Much of our crime is committed by Illegals, Drug Cartels, and so forth. Our Courts are suffering, our prisons are overflowing and we're wasting alo tof money on deporting these illegals.

One way of reducing the overflowing prison population is to decriminalize marijuana. Regarding the courts, I really don't think illegal immigrants should have the same rights to a jury and such that citizens do. Get a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney in a room together, examine the evidence, come to a decision and call it a day.

The prison issue I really am very conflicted about. The most efficient thing to do would be deny them constitutional rights on the grounds of being here illegally and just execute all of the violent ones. But that isn't exactly ethical... Tricky issue. You're right that it's a problem. If it could be solved in an efficient manner, there's a good chance that illegal immigration would actually be an overall positive to the country rather than ultimately neutral.

So, why wouldn't you want to close off the border?

Because the cost of an even slightly effective method of securing our borders would be huge, would likely result in a PR nightmare given the only way to seriously enforce it would be gun down a lot of civilians, and would do nothing about the 12 million people already here except trap them.

Exactly, so lets close our borders. We wouldn't be wasting so much money on deportation if our borders were sealed.

That is not a very feasible solution. Here's an article explaining why. Though I am concerned by what the effects of further harming Mexico's economy would ultimately be regarding drug violence and the like, I think the most cost-effective way of reducing further illegal immigration is simply enforce the laws we already have regarding employers. If you make hiring illegals too much of a risk and too costly, then jobs will dry up and they won't have a reason to come here.

Why shouldn't we seal off the border? There would be legal enter and exist points so that tourists could get into Mexico, and if the borders were sealed there would be no illegals getting jobs thus we wouldn't need to go after employers. Its a win-win situation, our borders define our soverignity as a state, and it we can't secure them we should just erase them.

Did you even look at the article...? It's expensive and probably won't work. The employers are breaking the law too and would be a lot less costly and more efficient to make them follow it than try and keep out millions of people across a border spanning thousands of miles.

[micatala]

I await these studies that show that the influx of illegal immigrants bolster our standard of living and our economy.

I think this is an excellent one. Hopefully the link works.

It works, I read about the first three pages, may be you could present their arguments in your own words. Several Arguments:

1) Theoritical Guesswork is appropriate for University Elitist Economists who are primarily affiliated with the Liberal Spectrum of the political arena, bu tit isn't appropriate for hardworking, average americans who have to make a living. When Christina Romer drew up the 2009 Recovery Package, it seemed that it would work when she and her Stanford economists were looking at it on their chalkboard. But unfortunatly, it failed and the economy is in worse shape than it was before.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy.

Most economists say the stimulus added 1.5 to 3.3 million jobs compared to what would have happened without the stimulus. It shaved at least a point off the unemployment rate.

The stimulus did not fail. Whether it was the most cost effective strategy to address the recession is another matter but it is simply fallacious to say it "failed."

2) Those who wish to live in America should have the willingness to assimilate into our culture, we should not have to accomidate their needs if they want to live here. Much of our crime is committed by Illegals, Drug Cartels, and so forth.

Please document the amount of crime that is commited by illegal aliens.

Our Courts are suffering, our prisons are overflowing and we're wasting alo tof money on deporting these illegals. So, why wouldn't you want to close off the border?

Read the article. Note that a huge number of people who are now here illegally actually entered the country in a legal fashion. Closing the border would not stop them.

[WinePusher]

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy.

Most economists say the stimulus added 1.5 to 3.3 million jobs compared to what would have happened without the stimulus. It shaved at least a point off the unemployment rate.

The stimulus did not fail. Whether it was the most cost effective strategy to address the recession is another matter but it is simply fallacious to say it "failed."

If the goal of the stimulus was to save 1.5 to 3.3 millions jobs and keep unemployment below 15%, then that is what Obama should have said when he was trying to sell it to the public.

Instead, what we got was "unemployment would not rise above 8%" well if that was the intended goal of this "stimulus" then it has failed.

Please document the amount of crime that is commited by illegal aliens.

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?p ... lsandcrime

And the recent killing of a nun in Minnesota by an illegal drunk driver, and the shooting of an arizona rancher by an illegal. All of which could have been prevented had we secured our border and enforced our sovernigty as a nation.

[quote"micatala"]Read the article. Note that a huge number of people who are now here illegally actually entered the country in a legal fashion. Closing the border would not stop them.[/quote]

Ok, if they're here legally then there's no problem. I'm not aganist legal immigration, only the human smugglers and drug trafficers that run across the open border, which would be solved if we close the border.

[Lux]

Ok, if they're here legally then there's no problem. I'm not aganist legal immigration, only the human smugglers and drug trafficers that run across the open border, which would be solved if we close the border.

They are not there legally. A quite common practice among latinamericans (I don't know if others do it as well) that wish to move to the USA is to get a visa, which is more easily acquired than a green card, go into the USA claiming they are there on vacation or business, and then simply overstay their visas.

[micatala]

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy.

Most economists say the stimulus added 1.5 to 3.3 million jobs compared to what would have happened without the stimulus. It shaved at least a point off the unemployment rate.

The stimulus did not fail. Whether it was the most cost effective strategy to address the recession is another matter but it is simply fallacious to say it "failed."

If the goal of the stimulus was to save 1.5 to 3.3 millions jobs and keep unemployment below 15%, then that is what Obama should have said when he was trying to sell it to the public.

Instead, what we got was "unemployment would not rise above 8%" well if that was the intended goal of this "stimulus" then it has failed.

The goal was to keep us from going into a deep depression and to relieve the effects of the recession.


I must have corrected at least a half-dozen people on this forum already on thee 8% canard. Listen carefully so I don't have to do this for you again.



Most every economist in late 2008 and early 2009 under-projected the strength of the recession. The only error, if there was one, on Obama's part with respect to his statement was in treating the conventional wisdom at that time as solid.



Your objection is like saying that the airbags failed because the passenger got a concussion instead of only bruises when the the odometer was later found to be faulty and was reading 30 mph when the car was actually going 50. Sorry, not Obama's fault the odometer was faulty. And the airbags didn't fail either. If the airbags had not been there, the passenger would have been dead instead.

You seem to think everything would have been just fine if we had left the airbags out of the car.

Please document the amount of crime that is commited by illegal aliens.

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?p ... lsandcrime

And the recent killing of a nun in Minnesota by an illegal drunk driver, and the shooting of an arizona rancher by an illegal. All of which could have been prevented had we secured our border and enforced our sovernigty as a nation.

Isolated examples are not documentation of the extent of crime overall try again.


[[Edited to add]]
OK. I had not read the link and stand partially corrected. So illegals do represent a higher proportion of the prison population. This gives us some documentation of the rate of crime among illegals.

It still does not show that immigration law and enforcement are a good way to combat that crime.

I will note that the ratio of 4.54 to 3.1 quoted by FAIR, which is about 1.5, is less than the similar number for blacks.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-01.htm

Blacks are 41 percent of the prison population but only 13% of the population.
41 to 13 is more than three.

You propose to prevent immigrant crime by closing the border. Should we prevent black crime by some policy that addresses black mobility in the country or some other strategy?


On the nun example, it is tragic but irrelevant.

Following your logic, if I can find an example of an illegal immigrant saving a little old lady from being run over by a bus, then illegal immigration has been proven to save lives.

[quote"micatala"]Read the article. Note that a huge number of people who are now here illegally actually entered the country in a legal fashion. Closing the border would not stop them.

Ok, if they're here legally then there's no problem. I'm not aganist legal immigration, only the human smugglers and drug trafficers that run across the open border, which would be solved if we close the border.[/quote]


Read the article!!

Are you willing to have border guards shooting at and killing unarmed civilians trying to cross the border? Are you willing to spend the additional many billions a year required to put in and staff a "Berlin Wall" across 2000 miles of border? Are you willing to refund my tax money when it doesn't work?

I am also against drug smugglers and human traffickers. If we could secure the border in a cost-effective way without huge negative side-effects (like a lot of people killed by our government, I can just imagine how that would go over with the average reasonable person in this country, let alone the rest of the world), then I would be all for that. I just don't see it working.


The criminals who are illegals should be looked at first as criminals, and only secondly as illegals. It's the crime that is the big problem. Using immigration law to prevent crime makes no sense, especially when, at least in this thread, we have no evidence the illegal population has a significantly higher proportion of criminals than a lot of other populations that are legal.

[WinePusher]

The lower cost of labor allows for products to be produced at a lower cost, in effect raising the purchasing power of Americans in areas with immigrants and creating jobs through subsidiary effects. The benefits such as these when compared to the costs of (insert all the problems you have with it) make it so the net effect is not statistically significantly different from zero. They may well have a negative effect, but the effect is so small that spending a fortune on trying to get rid of them is certainly an unwise decision to make.

Several Points:

1) The cost of labor should be relative to the effort needed to create the product. It is simply immoral to hire illegals and make them work horrid hours in horrid conditions for meager wages. Which is why we should crack down on corporation, which refutes your premise
2) I'm for getting rid of the criminals, as I'm sure most people are. But if one is an illegal and has a family and lives a good, law abiding life in America, I think we should give them a path to citizenship and not deport them.

A) Just because they don't understand economics doesn't make it inappropriate.
B) Just because someone is affiliated with liberals doesn't make them wrong.
C) Most economists agree the stimulus kept us from entering into another great depression. Whether it saved us from one or merely delayed it has yet to be seen. Furthermore, hundreds of billions of the stimulus took the form of tax cuts the economists said wouldn't do anything, but were put in there to try and get republicans on board because it was the type of tax cuts they like. I understand the political reasons, but it was just a stupid thing to do in my opinion. No economic justification for those cuts. So you are half right here, but it's not really the economists' fault.

I dealt with this when responding to micatala. As for tax cuts, those "stimulus tax cuts" will be worthless if this administration doesn't extend the Bush tax cuts for all people.

2) Those who wish to live in America should have the willingness to assimilate into our culture, we should not have to accomidate their needs if they want to live here. Much of our crime is committed by Illegals, Drug Cartels, and so forth. Our Courts are suffering, our prisons are overflowing and we're wasting alo tof money on deporting these illegals.

One way of reducing the overflowing prison population is to decriminalize marijuana.

Once it is decriminalized, will it then be promoted?

Regarding the courts, I really don't think illegal immigrants should have the same rights to a jury and such that citizens do. Get a judge, prosecutor and defense attorney in a room together, examine the evidence, come to a decision and call it a day.

Very good, we agree.

So, why wouldn't you want to close off the border?

Because the cost of an even slightly effective method of securing our borders would be huge, would likely result in a PR nightmare given the only way to seriously enforce it would be gun down a lot of civilians, and would do nothing about the 12 million people already here except trap them.

Then why have borders if we aren't going to enforce them. Those lines define us as a nation, and we're one of the only countries that doesn't ruthlessly detain illegals that violate it.

Did you even look at the article...? It's expensive and probably won't work.

Why wouldn't it work, in your own words.

The employers are breaking the law too and would be a lot less costly and more efficient to make them follow it than try and keep out millions of people across a border spanning thousands of miles.

The employers would not be tempted if the illegal cheap labor wasn't here to begin with. Cutting off the source is the best way.