Re: Mark Kleiman Shows Excellent Judgment

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I'd be willing to try your idea to break the commonality of interest between immigrant and employer. Are immigration offenses now subject to mandatory penalties? Is there any way a captured illegal could be offered a lesser penalty in exchange for cooperation? There's where I would start, allowing a little small-scale experimentation. I hate mandatory sentencing of all kinds for just this reason.

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2

That's a great Lincoln quote at the end of Kleiman's post.

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3

I like Kleiman's #3, with the caveat, which I think he endorses, that beyond basic English skills immigrant culture and cultural institutions are enormously useful for everybody. This has never been better stated than in Randolph Bourne's great essay from 1916, Transnational America.

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4

This has never been better stated than in Randolph Bourne's great essay from 1916

Are your initials JT?

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5

Why, yes!, it just so happens they are.

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Are immigration offenses now subject to mandatory penalties? Is there any way a captured illegal could be offered a lesser penalty in exchange for cooperation?

The problem is that the significant penalty is deportation, and there's not much you can do with that other than (a) deport someone (b) not deport them, but retain the right to do so arbitrarily (that is, the status undocumented immigrants are in now) or (c) give them status entitling them not to be deported, i.e., a green card. I don't see how to cut it much finer than that.

And why the new pseud?

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7

I know mandatory sentencing was a response to a mostly wrong perception of uncertainty and leniency on the part of judges. I interned at a prosecutor's office in the mid eighties, and everybody hated it then, but felt cynically that it was coming. It asks a lot, but some kind of (b) would get my support if there were a way out of it for the immigrant, even a sort of under-the-table one that depended on the good will of particular officials.

I'm a fairly indiscrete fellow and I thought I'd make the move before I did any damage, since I'm looking for work and all. The name is one I've thought about for a blog. Do you recognise it?

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8

Nope, but my pop culture knowledge has great huge gaps in it.

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9

I'm a fairly indiscrete fellow

I challenge this assertion with my hatchet.

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10

As I understand it, the act of living in the country "illegally" is a civil, not a criminal, offense. One can break a host of criminal laws coming into the country illegally, such as avoiding customs inspection, but these are hard to prosecute for evidentiary reasons.

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11

Being in the country illegally can earn you a ten-year ban from entry, but that's the sort of penalty that only matters if you were trying to get into the country legally in the first place.

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12

I think a lot of people feel condescended-to on immigration issues. That's why I thought Krugman's column on Monday was so impressive. He started by admitting thaty he, and frankly a lot of liberals, were reflexively pro-immigration because of the sense of our country as a haven for the persecuted and those fleeing for their lives. But he went on to concede that what many ordinary Americans believe, that immigration hurts both public institutions and wages, is substantially true. And that Bush's crap about "jobs Americans won't do" is untrue and vicious. And that the house bill and the guest-worker proposal are both cruel and stupid.

More of that, please, and this time from elected Democrats.

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13

Apparently, LB is smelly.

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Heck, for a link from TAPPED, I don't mind the occasional comment on the fact that LizardBreath, generally, smells like bugs.

(I'd never make it as a Buddhist. I am mildly horrified by how gratifying I find it when I get a link.)

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15

Sure, illegal immigration is a drag on wages. So is the fact that--though I have yet to refuse a raise--I already make more than a billion or two people on this planet. I know everyone in this country wants a higher income (and, supposedly correlative, a higher quality of life), but just how far ahead of the rest of the world should we race before deferring a little gratification and sharing a little rice?

And so ends my anti-populist rant. I shall never hold elective office.

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"I am mildly horrified by how gratifying I find it when I get a link."

Yeah, me too.

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"I already make more than a billion or two people on this planet"

Don't you mean like four or five billion? Because one or two billion wouldn't really be that bad as far as equality goes, unless you're on the very low end of the US pay scale.

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he, and frankly a lot of liberals, were reflexively pro-immigration because of the sense of our country as a haven for the persecuted and those fleeing for their lives

I'm not so much pro-immigration as pro-immigrant. I've lived among Mexican workers most of my life and I've found them to be the most driven, hardest-working people I know, the embodiment of "The American Dream." And they do indeed take on "jobs Americans won't do" because they're willing to endure an unimaginable amount of shit in pursuit of that dream.

I don't like Krugman's argument because it frames the issue poorly. "Immigration" is not the problem; that's nothing more than people's noble desire to improve their lives. The problem is that politicians are too chickenshit to crack down on businesses that prey on desperation.

I did a little investigative journalism years ago into Colorado ski resorts' unbelievably skeezy labor practices. One big resort was busing migrants from the border and literally dumping them in surrounding communities. The workers were told to find housing, apply for assistance with the county and report to the bus stop the next morning.

Every once in a while, the INS would conduct a big raid and round up a few hundred illegals for deportation (the Mexicans, not the illegal Swiss ski instructors, naturally) followed by a flashy press conference with state and local officials. Not once did the hammer come down on the resorts, not even rhetorically. Tourism and campaign cash made that verbotten.

Unless the Dems are ready to take on these kind of issues, all talk of "immigration reform" is meaningless.

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19

Well, I haven't seen the actual numbers here at the Institute of My Own Ass. I'm not rich but I've got a few months worth of modest expenses in the bank. However, if you were to add up all the incomes of everyone I live with and count us as one household, we're pretty darn well off.

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