CapitalistImperialistPig

I start with three fundamental principles: 1) We don't want unlimited immigration, 2)We need much of the labor our millions of undocumented immigrants provide, 3)Our policies should be as humane as possible consistent with 1 and 2. Current policy targets the undocumented with terror campaigns but almost always ignores employers.  My policy would reverse this - only the employers of undocumented immigrants would be targeted.   If ICE were to raid, say, a Trump enterprise and found 100 undocumented workers, the workers would be ignored but the employer would be fined on a sliding scale - say $100 for one undocumented, $1000 for each more than ten, and $10,000 for each more than 40.  Higher fines if necessary to suppress illegal employment.  This would be far easier to enforce than current policies targeting individual workers.  There would be no sanctions for the individual workers, though they would likely lose their jobs. Guest worker programs:  Ma...

Hysteria over immigration is hardly new.  The US saw large waves of immigration from 1890 to 1910 and reacted strongly with riots, discrimination and federal action.  Books and pamphlets warned of contamination of the nation by inferior races.  In that case, the "inferior races" everyone was worried about were Italians, Poles, Jews and other East and South Europeans. A book that embodied the spirit of the times was: The Passing of the Great Race , by Madison Grant.  Grant was a highly educated New England patrician, an explorer, naturalist, and a pioneer in attempting to preserve the Bison and other rapidly disappearing fauna of the American West.  After these adventures, he devoted himself to the study of so-called scientific racism, and his book summarized and popularized these notions. His book was rooted in the idea of separate origins of the various races of man, and the notion that there were higher and lower races.  The highest races, he procla...

Rand Paul wants to fix immigration by installing an electric fence along the border – underground – inspired, no doubt, by the ones Ron used to keep him in his yard when he was a lad. Don’t forget to supply all those Mexicans with the little shock collars! The idea of an underground electric fence inspired a certain amount of scorn in the RBC, but hey, what better way to combat the Mexican Drug Underground? All of which reminds me of my important, original, and revolutionary solution to the immigration and border control problem: A twenty mile wide, sea level canal from San Diego to Brownsville. It would require a lot of labor, it’s true – fortunately there is a large supply of willing and able Mexicans willing to work pretty cheap. It would be best if all the work was done with pick, shovel and wheelbarrow. Disposal of all the rock and dirt removed might be a bit of a problem, but we could use some more barrier islands in the Gulf – and maybe a big island off the coast of San Diego. ...