Thursday, August 27, 2015

The Crime of Illegal Immigration

There are laws that are intended to protect people from one another.  Murder, robbery, assault, theft, rape, for example. This type of law needs to be taken very seriously to maintain a civil society.  We need to do all that we can to prevent their occurrence and punish the wrongdoer.

Then there are laws that are about organizing society.  Telling us where we can or can't park.  How fast we can go on the freeway.  When we can cross the street and when we can't.   They second type of law is not so serious.  Sure we need to enforce them to prevent anarchy.  But in fact if we are honest with ourselves almost all of us break these types of laws from time to time.   We speed so we won't be late to an appointment.  We park illegally because we need to do some quick errand.  Maybe we exaggerate the value of a deduction on our tax return.

Here in the San Francisco Bay area if I go out and run errands I am mixing with immigrants from many countries, some legal, some illegal. They are just people, trying to live their life, raise a family, build a better life for their kids.  Someone speeding is much more of  threat.  Someone double parked on a busy street while they run an errand is more irritating and inconvenient.

Economists who have studied immigration seem to have no doubt immigrants pay far more in taxes than we spend on social benefits they receive from the government.  Immigrants usually do jobs none of us will do because they are hard work and they pay little.  The damage caused by illegal immigration seems to be largely rooted in speculative generalizations. 

It's hard for me to imagine Donald Trump never drives faster than the speed limit, never exaggerates a deduction, never breaks any law whatsoever.  

Brings to mind Jesus's admonition.  Lot of stones are being cast in the immigration debate.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The Donald - The Republican Reward

Oh, the delicious irony.  For decades Republicans have played the us against them game,using illegal immigrants and Gays to stir up resentment and harvest votes.   Along with abortion they use these issues to stir up lots of anger and get themselves elected, despite the fact that when they controlled all the levers of elected government from 2000 to 2006 they invaded Iraq and then blew up the economy.  

So they have pounded on the table about illegal immigrants, even as, year after year, they stymied any congressional efforts to reform the immigration system.  Immigration was evidently too valuable as a problem to allow a solution to happen.

But you can't get many people angry about gays any longer.  So for stirring up emotions it's down to abortion and immigration.  But after the last election, it is apparent to the Republican party bigwigs that continuing to rely on stirring up anti-immigration anger will lead them off a demographic cliff.   National Republicans could become just as irrelevant as California Republicans became after alienating California Hispanics.  So the Republican party is trying to pivot slowly away from disparaging immigrants while still keeping those anti-immigrant voters angry enough to get out and vote for Republicans. 

Then along comes the Donald, heating the pot back to boiling, stealing the anti-immigrant base the party has cultivated for so long and hoped to fool into voting for the party as the lesser of two evils.

It is enormously entertaining political theatre.  If it causes the Republicans to implode and get pounded at the next election all the better.  Then maybe some Republicans could start getting elected who realize that compromise isn't a sin, it's what makes democracy work, and that solving problems is better than exploiting them.