Redstate

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

when it uses its wealth and clout to get freebies from the government, or sidestep laws, or collude.

I want all business of any size to make profits, but to be treated equally, and not get any special benefits fro the Government.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

on that...

When they do it by having the government rob their customers at gunpoint.

What we are talking about are workers that aren't getting benefits and the taxpayers are paying for services. So yes the business gets cheap labor and a profit. The consumer gets to pay for the businesses profit twice.

Sorry yes good deal for them lousy deal for taxpayers.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

This bill is a massive government subsidy to business. If you like this then presumably you love the agricultural subsidies. This bill lowers costs to business and transfers them to the taxpayer.

Aren't capitalists the good guys?

No. Businessmen are not inherently either good or bad. The things they do can be either good or bad. In this case, very bad.

I do think the president is considering the best course of action.

Thats great. Put up a blog making the case for why that is so.

They are the ones who risk everything to build the economy. Their sweat and drive are responsible for jobs, wealth creation and the economic muscle of this country.

I feel strongly capitalists ARE the good guys. We should celebrate their accomplishments and the value they bring to our lives and country.

Are they perfect? No. Do they go to far? Yup, that's is also part of what makes them great. That willingness to push.

I hate to think we see business people as "not inherently either good or bad".

With profiteering by legislation.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

profiteering that is what is going on here and who will pay the middle class will pay. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer did pop out of thin air. I am all for business making money I am not for business getting welfare off of my taxes because that is not truly business now is it?

long work day way tired.

You are entitled to your opinion. But its not one shared by many people.

Are they perfect? No. Do they go to far? Yup ...

You seem to be saying that they are not inherently good. That being so, I don't see why you object to what I said.

I hate to think we see business people as "not inherently either good or bad".

Look, I'm being nice to the poor old businessmen here. I'm not calling them the enemy of the free market system. I'm saying that we need not bow down and worship whatever they do as being inherently saintly.

Now this guy had a harsher opinion;

"The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing…"

That was Milton Friedman. And what he was attacking here is exactly the thing we are seeing in this immigration bill - the desire of certain businessmen for favors from government, combined with the desire of government to give it to them, for the most base of motives.

Do you seriously regard DeMint and Coburn as anti-capitalist and Kennedy and Schumer as the friends of the free market? Please.

I get the argument that big business is behaving badly by supporting the bill. What I dislike is the suggestion that the bill is bad because big business supports it. That's just demagoguery, and left-wing demagoguery at that.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

(I think you were responding to me - a little tough to follow)

But I'm not sure anyone is saying that the bill is bad simply because big business supports it.

I will say that businesses seem to be doing their best to live down to every negative image of them which the left likes to draw. Whatever happens, I think the image of businessmen on the right is going to be tarnished by this.

Of course, the wonderful irony is that here we see businessmen behaving in pretty much the way the left has always warned about, and the left in Congress is supporting them in doing so. For some reason this escapes the eagle eyes of the left wing blogs.

Did you happen to read George Borjas' blog post yesterday about the reported $30 billion benefit from immigration (legal or otherwise) to the economy? He argues that the economic model used to calculate that figure also predicts a $350 billion LOSS in wages. (http://borjas.typepad.com)

Radical open-borders style capitalism is NOT conservatism.

Conservatism values our national culture, heritage, and the institutions that make freedom (and our particular way of life) possible. Capitalism concerns itself with profit and nothing else.

Capitalism is fine as an economic system, but it is no substitute for judeo-christian morality in providing the VALUES that a society needs to sustain itself. In this way it must play a subordinate role in society...values come before profits.

example: A billboard displaying a pornographic sex act and a product to be sold would certainly be an effective means of advertisement, but our moral values preclude this from happening. We infringe on the profit-minded business owners right to sell his product in what would be the most obviously effective way due to societal/social standards. (naked porn stars and/or slutty hotel heiresses tend to catch the eye)

One of the many problems with this asinine amnesty bill is that it is an obvious sop to these big, valueless capitalist coporations and business entities who have no institutional interest in maintaining the cultural values that we as americans (and especially conservatives) hold to be important.

To them it's all about a steady stream of cheap, easily exploited, and perpetually renewable labor streaming across the southern border...not (what most conservatives see) a massive and steady stream of illiterate third worlders that will - due to these great numbers the ravenous, cheap labor loving capitalists desire - never be able to assimilate fully into our society.

It's possible to be an Ayn Rand worshipping Objectivist and love the concept of open borders capitalism, but I think its absolutely impossible to value our culture and heritage and be for this bill - and desire what will be the unavoidable consequences of implementing this radical policy.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security. --Edmund Burke

Blog: TMYN

How about this:

IT. IS. ILLEGAL.

IT. IS. STEALING.

IT. HARMS. LEGAL. CITIZENS.

IT. IS. IMMORAL.

What is wrong with big business? Aren't capitalists the good guys?

No, capitalists aren't necessarily good guys, just like ditch diggers or programmers aren't necessarily good guys. Just because a large group of capitalists support a policy (e.g. lower wages for unskilled workers) doesn't mean it's a good idea.

You're articulating the leftist caricature of of Republicans' economic views, that protecting the interests of capitalists should guide our economic policies. It would be tempting to suspect you of mobying us to see how many would fall for your bait, but considering the significant minority of Republicans who support using immigration to keep wages low (e.g. Bush and some of the comments in this thread), the leftists' caricature of us does have a small kernel of truth in people like you.

Supporting free market captalism is not synonymous with supporting the interests of every capitalist, and in fact contradicts it. An essential part of capitalism is that a lot of capitalists go belly up.

Naturally a lot of capitalists have a self-interest in government policy to protect them from that aspect of capitalism, especially capitalists who have a hard time adapting to high wage prosperity. Capitalists who have a third-world business model, relying on low wages for unskilled labor, naturally want government to use immigration to keep wages low enough for their third-world business model. By shifting their costs to taxpayer subsidies for their low-wage workers and families, those obsolete business are protected from capitalism's capital punishment.

I don't have any problem with the president listening to them on economic issues.

I don't have any problem either with the president listening to them, but he should apply some common sense skepticism when he does. What I do have a problem with is his assumption that those guys' support for depressing low-skill wages with immigration makes it presumptively a good idea.

Recognizing that capitalists generally place their parochial interests above the public interest (just like most interest groups do), and being skeptical of capitalists' suggestions for government policy, is nothing new for conservatives. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was obviously very pro-capitalism (and so am I), but he had no illusions about capitalists:

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order [employers, those who live by profit] ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.
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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

is good. It's really disappointing to me to see so many conservatives adopt the Pat Buchanan view of American business. I've noted on here before that there some of the posters bashing business sound like the AFL-CIO.

I hope no one on RS owns stocks in any American company that stands to benefit from this legislation. If you do, you ought to sell each and every one of them (all high technology companies, anything construction related, anything ag related, anything service related such as hotel chains, restuarants, etc). Many of the most prominent and largest American companies listed on NASDAQ and NYSE support this legislation or in some way will benefit from it.

I look forward to seeing all the restrictionists put their money where their mouth is and sell their stocks. If you're serious, you should have no problem doing this. You would not want to benefit from this sellout of America.

Also, it will create some more buying opportunities for those of us who believe in the free market.

Here is just a partial list of the companies. Should be a busy day tomorrow of Wall Street.

http://www.businessroundtable.org/aboutUs/Memberlist.aspx

The Federal Government should not be in the business of re-distributing wealth. They should not be confiscating wealth from the rich and handing it out to the poor. And it is perhaps even more odious when they confiscate it from the poor to give to the rich.

The governments long toleration of massive illegal immigration and its more recent attempts to legitimize the massive inflows of cheap third world labor in the form of a guestworker program are essentially goverment sponsored wealth redistribution plans which punish the poorest Americans in terms of lost wages and opportunity, and confiscate wealth from the middleclass in the form of taxes to support social programs for this newly imported poverty class and hand a massive cheap labor subsidy to the richest Americans.

I have nothing against business and I hope that American businesses are profitable but it is immoral for the government to promulgate policy that make the poor poorer for the purpose of making the rich richer.

It is government for the elites by the elites. It is very reminiscent of the disgusting system they have in Mexico.

In the 1840's the Whig Party split into Conscience Whigs and Cotton Whigs. Conscience Whigs were anti-slavery and Cotton Whigs were pro-slavery, taking their queues from agri-business interests who merely wanted cheap labor. The pro-slavery, plantation businesses, unintentionally aided by "compromisers" like Henry Clay, extended the practice of slavery by 30 years requiring a bloody civil war to end it.

Nothing wrong with seeking cheap labor is there?

The point is that giving business interests what they want is not always good for the country. Granting amnesty for illegals and setting up a guest worker program is one of those cases. If there were a way to charge back to employers the costs of the cheap immigrant labor they so desire, the labor would no longer be so cheap. This is the dirty little secret of "comprehensive immigration reform". Taxpayers end up footing the massive social service cost of the imported cheap labor, and as a bonus native low wage workers have their wages diluted.

You're also right that the worst offenders are small and medium sized businesses--and almost all of those organizations listed above in support of the bill represent them.

It seems like every time a minimum wage increase is considered, we hear from these groups and people like Rush Limbaugh that small business is the backbone of America and the employer of most Americans. We hear that the burden of a minimum wage increase is too much of a burden for them, and that it will cause unemployment to rise.

All of that may be true, but I fear that small business has been somewhat romanticized on the right. If it is true that small businesses employ the bulk of Americans, then it is also probably true that they employ the bulk of illegals. In the past, every contractor I hired to do work for me employed illegals, and they were quite honest about it. Anytime I hire a contractor now, I ask tough questions about their employees, and I make my position clear: No Illegals. Occasionally, they look at me like some poor sap who has been blindsided in a Michael Moore interview. Sometimes, they admit that they can't guarantee a legal crew. Maybe some of them get the message.

We can sign petitions, call our congresscritters and blast them in the polls 'til the cows come home, but if small businesses are the worst offenders, perhaps they--and their organizations are the ones who need to hear the message the most.

I agree, big or small isn't what correlates with those businesses who think America needs more poor people taking money out the pockets of tax payers. I think it's more that companies that rely on a Third World business model who favor the immigration bill, where a larger pool of low skill workers keeps wages low enough for their business model.

Big or small businesses that are productive enough to pay high wages to a more skilled work force don't get much benefit from this bill, and will be among the taxpayers subsidizing the Third World businesses' low wage employees.

Your position is that the wages for low-skilled jobs should be inflated to compete with those for skilled jobs?

I'm sorry, but do you really think this is a good idea for the prospects of American jobs, period? Maybe you're familiar with what's happening to, for instance, computer programming jobs that used to be done here?

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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...

-John Locke

No, my position is that we shouldn't use immigration policy to depress the wages of low-skill workers, lower than the market wage for their labor would be if the supply of low-skill labor wasn't inflated by millions of illegals.

Given the distribution of demand and supply for various skills, the market wage for skilled workers will generally be higher than for low-skill workers. However there's no moral principle that the goverenment should enforce to keep the market wage of low-skill workers from rising above some particular fraction of high skill wages.

In fact, for certain very unpleasant working conditions, attracting low-skill workers might require offering higher wages than some high-skill workers earn in a more pleasant environment. If that's the way the market works out, I don't see it as the government's job to prevent that outcome by bringing in guest workers.

Maybe you're familiar with what's happening to, for instance, computer programming jobs that used to be done here?

Yes, and my salary is probably a little lower than it would be without the added competition. But I and most other programmers are still doing fine, thank you. Preventing foreign out-sourcing would require convoluted regulations even more inefficient than most other protectionism, and the costs to consumers would far exceed the benefits to the protected class.

A general policy of inflating the supply of low skill labor to keep their wages down is totally different story. Unlike the outsourcing case, where we are letting market efficiency have its generally beneficial way, the flood of low skill immigrants is in opposition to market efficiency. Unlike earlier waves of immigrants, today's low skill immigrants do not pay their own way. They consume more in government services than they pay in taxes. The employer thus gets a taxpayer subsidy for the lower wage that he pays.

Low-skilled work is *going* to get done, pretty much no matter what. A society's gotta have eggplant pickers and trash men - computer programmers and airplane pilots are icing on the cake. So, given that this country is pretty much at full employment right now, if you yank 8-10 million low skilled workers away instantaneously, the "market price" for low-skilled labor is going to rise *dramatically*.

Now, I'm not one of the people who's going to complain all that much about a $7 head of lettuce (I don't eat a lot of lettuce), but the problem is that when the price of low-skilled labor goes to high, one of two things happens: (1) Wages of high-skilled labor go up, or (2) nobody racks up the student loans necessary to get "high skills." I'm guessing you and most people would be fine with (1), except for the fact that when you have too much of (1), the jobs just flat-out disappear to places like India who don't really give a crap what Tom Tancredo and his ideological brethren think. So the end result isn't really that hot for the United States after all.

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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...

-John Locke

Wages are going down for people in the low skill sector. So I don't think we need to worry about the apocalyptic possibility of lettuce increasing by a couple of cents, regardless of what the agricultural industry says.

To a hypothetical possibility in which that industry suddenly lost 8 million workers or so.

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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...

-John Locke

agricultural work. UC Berkely recently showed a robot that could lay down house walls. In japan you have people running cottage industries in their homes with one or two robots.

I guess it boils down to what kind of society you would like us to be. Personally I don't want the Mexicans to be our helots. Having a nation of Tom Swifts or Simon Legrees doesn't seem to be much of a choice.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

You can also hear politicians explaining how the price of milk would go up if we didn't have milk price supports.

OK, you're right that if we "instantaneously" yank 10 million low skill workers, the labor market wouldn't adjust fast enough to avoid a period of serious disruption, but nothing is going to happen that instantaneously.

And yes we agree that a smaller supply of low-skill workers means the price of their labor is higher. But past that, you go off the deep end.

when the price of low-skilled labor goes to high, one of two things happens: (1) Wages of high-skilled labor go up, or (2) nobody racks up the student loans necessary to get "high skills."

Acutally your scenario (1) does not result from increased low-skill wages, except maybe as a consequence of (2) if there's enough of that.

You don't explain why you think that would drive up high skill wages. I've seen some pretty bizarre economic theories from the "jobs Americans won't do" school of thought, so I might unfairly insult you if made an assumption about why you believed so and argued against that.

Overall (with exceptions) low-skill labor is a complement rather than competitor to high-skill labor. So more, i.e. cheaper, low-skill labor increases the value and thus the price of high skill labor. If this was all that was happening, then the top maybe 50% of the income distribution would indeed economically benefit from low-skill immigration - how much we should care what that does to the people in the bottom third or so is a matter of personal opinion.

But since we subsidize something like the bottom 40% of the income distribution, with reduced low-skill wages we end up paying them bigger subsidies when they have lower incomes. And with low-skill immigration, we increase the number of people that we pay those subsidies to.

So bottom line without a flood of low skill immigration, high skill workers pay more for lettuce and nannies, and not much impact on their own wages. They also pay a lot less in subsidies to lower income people, because more those workers earn enough to pay their own way or at least collect smaller subsidies.

As for
(2) nobody racks up the student loans necessary to get "high skills."
I'm sure you know that's impossible; while some number of people will forego acquiring skills if unskilled labor becomes more attractive, it's not a question everybody vs. nobody. I assume your were just using colorful phrasing when you chose the word "nobody", but it's precisely the shifts on the margin that make market equilibriums work. Any time you base your analysis on either everybody does this or everybody does that, your conclusions will be ridiculous.

I'm guessing you and most people would be fine with (1), except for the fact that when you have too much of (1), the jobs just flat-out disappear to places like India

This is precisely what I was talking about above. The jobs "flat-out" disappear because they're too expensive? With each 1% that goes to India (if some really do go), the remaining 1% get a little bit cheaper to keep in the U.S.

I won't try to speculate whether you have some underlying point that is in the realm of reality, but what you actually have said is as impossible as a perpetual motion machine.

and productivity have been declining for decades.

In fairness I would hope wages would decline if productivity goes down. Still, it does put all the incessant talk about what a terrible labor shortage there is into perspective. If wages are any indication, there is no labor shortage in the no skill and low skill sectors. If anything there is a labor surplus, based on the decline in the cost of labor.

(And there does not seem to be much a labor shortage in most of the higher skill fields either, but thats for another day.)

Construction industry wages and productivity have been declining for decades.

In fairness I would hope wages would decline if productivity goes down.

The two go hand in hand, though the causality in this case is the opposite of what your second sentence suggest.

As millions of low-skill illegals inflate the supply of workers that many construction jobs are filled from, that of course lowers the price for that labor. With cheap enough labor, it makes good business sense to hire 10 people to dig a trench with shovels, instead of investing in expensive equipment so one worker could dig the trench in the same time. That shows up in the lower productivity figures, 1/10 of a trench per worker instead of 1 trench per worker.

I think on this basic point we're actually close to agreement, as you say in:

If wages are any indication, there is no labor shortage in the no skill and low skill sectors. If anything there is a labor surplus, based on the decline in the cost of labor.

That addresses the "jobs Americans won't do" argument, about how can our economy function if we don't have those millions of unskilled illegals to do all that work that just has to be done. When the market increases the price of low-skill labor, businesses that now rationally hire low-skill workers at their current cheap wage to do low-productivity work, will subsequently find it economically rational to make productivity increasing investments to accomplish the same amount of work with fewer workers.

That's how markets work, with reduced supply of low skill workers, the increased price will bring supply and demand into a new equilibrium. I understand that's too logical for leftists, but I'm amazed at what a significant minority of Republicans have a hard time understanding such fundamental economics.

what kind of construction. There's been one Helluva lot of federal and other public spending on highways, buildings, etc. in the last decade or so. In much of the country that work is done on union project labor agreements at Davis-Bacon wages, and productivity is very low. In much of the Country, the residential construction boom as been using illegal labor or low-priced labor in competition with illegals and the building technology of half a century or more ago. It always amazes me when I go down South and see projects with labor swarming like ants and everything stick built on-site with hammers and nails. I can't remember the last time I saw a hammer used by anyone but a trim carpenter in the Northwest - anymore, even the trim carpenters hardly use them. I'm a fairly handy DIY'er and I have a full set of air powered nail guns, though mine are the made by slave labor in China stuff, not the good stuff the pros use. Here, a residential site might have three people working; pre-fabbed forms, pumped concrete for the foundations, TJIs for the floor joists, glued and screwed T&G plywood for the floors, prefabbed wall framing, manufactured trusses- house or apartment building is framed and sheathed in two-three days and punch listed in two-three weeks. Just as in agriculture, if you have peon labor, you use the technology of the Dark Ages.

What unites the two sectors is government action; on the one hand, publicly financed labor is overpriced and unproductive, on the other, government immigration policy causes the labor to be underpriced and unproductive.
In Vino Veritas

Who do you reward in society?

Capitalist who risk everything, pour in sweat and blood and toil to build something great that provides society with jobs, wealth and economic muscle OR do we reward people who can't compete with uneducated workers who can't even speak the language?

Not to be too harsh, but if someone has grown up in America and they have only the option to compete with uneducated illegals who can't even speak the language, well, I don't think they should expect BIG MOMMA government to step in a take care of them.

What ever happened to personal responsibility and working you butt off to achieve the American dream? When did the American dream become something you are entitled to because you were lucky enough to be born here? When did it stop being something each of us had to prove worhty of?

Not to be too harsh, but if someone has grown up in America and they have only the option to compete with uneducated illegals who can't even speak the language, well, I don't think they should expect BIG MOMMA government to step in a take care of them.

But you want "BIG MOMMA government to step in a take care of" businesses that need taxpayer subsidies to keep their Third World business model viable. The low-skill immigrants they hire consume more than they earn in wages, with the taxpayers making up the difference. The businesses are thus shifting part of their production costs to the rest of us.

What ever happened to personal responsibility and working you butt off to achieve the American dream?

Try telling that to the parasite businessmen who think they're entitled to a taxpayer bail out, because they don't know how to succeed in business paying the full cost of their labor. I say just let those businesses go under. Part of free market capitalism is that economically unviable businesses fall by the wayside, and it's not government's job to keep them afloat by increasing the supply of taxpayer-subsidized low-wage workers.

death taxes and wealth re-distribution tax schemes and why we need the Kyoto treaty.

but, yeah, whatever.

Sure, the opponents of open borders are motivated by the same principles as those who support welfare, Kyoto, and death taxes. In fact, the connection between the two groups is so manifestly obvious that it doesn't even merit any form of explanation whatsoever!

No matter how hard you try to mouth platitudes fitting your "Conservatives in the Mist" caricature, you're the one who's advocating taxpayer subsidies for people you like.

You haven't made a free markets argument in favor of low skill immigration. Your whole point is that we should use government policy for the express purpose of increasing business profits, while expressing disdain for low wage Americans. Ummm, where was the last place I recall seeing that portrayed as the attitude of Republicans... was it PBS or Daily Kos?

There are people here who sincerely believe that "amnesty" and guest workers are what's best for America. However misguided I may believe they are, their arguments certainly don't fit your Kossak caricature of basing immigration policy on the intent of tilting the income distribution further toward businessmen.

Earlier I wondered if you were laying it on a little thick with your worship of capitalists, but after clicking your sdh link and looking at some of your earlier comments, it's clear you are a moby.

In this and other cases you play the Kossak caricature of Republicans thinking government policy should be to increase business profits and not have any concern for the "working class". In other comments you do the concern-troll routine, talking about how we just have to accept the fact that the war is lost. And of course you bemoan how we've lost our Reagan legacy by questioning people's patriotism and letting Bush go wild on wiretaps.

Nowhere in your concern trolling was there any serious (as opposed to caricature) argument in favor of a Republican/conservative position. OK, we'll have some fun playing with you while you're still around, but taking you seriously is off the table.

Maybe this Moby can go back to DK and make the case for open borders. From what I have seen, there isn't a receptive audience there, either.

I actually replied substantively to this clown before. His wording definitely had "Conservatives in the Mist" indicators, and in the old set up a quick search on his comments would have instantly confirmed that he was a Moby.

But now with our klunky capability for checking earlier comments, I didn't want to waste the time wading through that, so gave him the benefit of the doubt and responded seriously. Oh well, sooner or later the Mobies are exposed, but Redstate's substandard search capability (even Kos has far better) gives the mobies a longer run.

the "Polk Lied" stuff was a joke. Gosh.

No where do I say that the government should make subsidies for business. I do object with saying they are the bad guy.

What I am saying is to reform what is already taking place and been going on. I don't like the idea of 12 million people in this country that we know nothing about.

I also don't like the idea of shutting down businesses that have gotten used to illegal workers. Spend 1 day in southern California and visit businesses from ag to manufacturing to service to anything in between and tell me that the economy here doesn't lean heavily on illegal labor. Kick out that stool and the economy will wobble.

Oh, and don't post what my views on the war are unless you are remotely going to get them right. The way you characterized them is a bunch of bull. I have supported the President all the way & still do.

in this country we know nothing about"

I am so curious to know what about this bill makes you think we will suddenly know all about these 12 and some might say 20 million illegals. This fairy tale of all of these poor hard workers coming out of the "shadows" and signing up with the government to say "hi" I am here and I will pay your 5K and I am so sorry and I will learn english. Give me a break, and those who don't sign up? what shall we do? we won't be able to deport them that would be impossible, right? we won't be able to question their legality, so answer me this what will we do when they don't all come forward, hmm?

Oh, and don't post what my views on the war are unless you are remotely going to get them right. The way you characterized them is a bunch of bull. I have supported the President all the way & still do.

Well, "supporting the President all the way" isn't some kind of gold standard around here, but since you put it that way, how about providing a link to some earlier comment where you do. Sampling your comments, all I saw on the war was classic concern-troll "I hope I'm wrong but..." predictions that America is doomed to defeat in Iraq.

But maybe I missed something. How about you show me what I missed, by providing a link to one of your earlier posts on Iraq where you actually make a serious argument for Bush's policy of fighting to achieve victory in Iraq.

If that's too hard, how about a link to your best comment on any controversy where most Democrats disagree with most Republicans, and you make a serious argument in favor of the Republican position. Most of us Republicans have some issues where we disagree with the majority of Republicans, but that's not like your consistent concern trolling and Kossak caricatures of Republican arguments.

It's a little late for you and probably beyond your abilities, but we like having people present reasoned arguments for the Democratic side here as long as they're up front about it.

So what does our party mean now? We have the bigger grab bag for criminals?

God Almighty.

Buggy whip industries of the world, Unite?

They have a right to petition their government.

Citizens have a right to petition their government. While corporations have been given many of the attributes of personhood, I don't believe that this one has been extended to them.

But thats beside the point, since the issue is not that they are petitioning the government, but that they (along with their friends the unions!) are giving the government lots of money to vote a particular way.

Whats more, the businesess and groups like La Raza were actually invited to sit down and help to write legislation. That is certainly not "petitioning the government".

Petitioning our governemnt is what we do when we call or write our Senators asking to to take a position one way or another.

Finally, get rid of the "Anchor Baby" rule. It's not a law, it's just a rule. Let's memorilize that in the law. "No baby born of an illegal alien is a citizen of the U.S.".

Yea, it's in the Constitution. There's an argument to be made that it doesn't require citizenship for US born offspring of illegals, but I don't see us winning over SCOTUS with that argument. It's not just some made up rule with no basis in law.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

...as the actual floor debate over the 14th Amendment makes quite clear. The intent was not at all to grant birthright citizenship. There is nothing that stops Congress from legislating the end to the practice, and without going through the amendment process; it is given power by Article V of the same Amendment to enact legislation to carry out the intent.

It has not been tried to my knowledge. As to whether or not it would stand judicial review is another story entirely.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security. --Edmund Burke

Blog: TMYN

down a slippery slope. Are you a direct descendant from an original native American Indian? What if they find a great grandmother that's been here illegally for 50 years? We need to leave the constitution as is. Patrol the boarders, enforce the laws, crack down on those that abet illegal aliens, and deport those that don't belong here. If they want to take their kids, fine by me. If not, let them go without them and I can live with my tax dollars picking up the tab.

Are you a direct descendant from an original native American Indian?

Let's carry this overused argumentative fallacy to its "logical" conclusion in which every tribe, clan, or family that has ever colonized an area and set up an outpost of its parent society must move back to the place from which they came. This would, of course, mean that every single soul on earth would have to participate in the grand migration...even "Native Americans."

If anthropologists are correct, we'd all - all of humanity - have to relocate to somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates.

Illegal alien great grandmothers indeed...

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security. --Edmund Burke

Blog: TMYN

Really? What about the child of an illegal alien and a US Citizen?

Right, what about the grandchild of three illegals and a US Citizen? Two and two? Three citizens, one illegal?

Right, now let's just go over great-grandparents... tell you what, Cajun, why don't you just tell us how much good blood will it take to make someone a True American in your eyes?

Moe Lane

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

you're better at argumentation than that. The Constitution says "and subject to the jurisdiction." It was meant to exclude Indians, but it holds for illegals. If one parent is a citizen, that parent is subject to the jurisdiction of the US. If neither is, the baby isn't an American citizen. I don't think anyone is going on a genealogy crusade - well maybe a few crazies and neo-Nazis are - but for the here and now forward, it really is pretty simple.

In Vino Veritas

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States"

The qualification "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" refers to the person born, not to his/her parents. As you say, Indians on reservations were for the purposes of the amendment not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The families of foreign diplomats have diplomatic immunity, so a diplomat's child born in the U.S. isn't subject to our jurisdiction. For most cases though, our legal authority with respect to a newborn child here isn't changed depending on whether 1, 2, or no parents are American citizens.

If I could rewrite the 14th, I wouldn't automatically grant citizenship to an illegal's child born here, but I can't and we have to deal with the Constitution as written.

On my policy preferences within the constraints of the Constitution, we don't have to let illegals stay just because they had a child here, so I would drastically restrict any anchor baby practice of letting them stay. American parents are free to move to Mexico and take their American-born baby with them; I don't see anything cruel about illegals similarly taking their baby home with theme. If the kid has grown up American, that's another story which we would have to deal with.

At the time of the framing, the reservation system didn't exist, Indians were just wherever Indians were and Indian lands were at best ill-defined. Children had no status in terms of citizenship beyond that of their parents. If the parents weren't subject to the juridiction of the US, then neither was the child.

In Vino Veritas

At the time of the framing, the reservation system didn't exist, Indians were just wherever Indians were and Indian lands were at best ill-defined.

At the time of the relevant 14th Amendment, the reservation system most certainly was in long time existence, starting soon after our independence.

Even regarding the territories before the Indians were assigned reservations, everyone knew what "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" meant - if some Indian murdered another, the American legal system (whether state or territorial) would leave it to the Indians to sort it out; i.e. the U.S. didn't assert jurisdiction. If some illegal murders another illegal in the United States, we certainly don't cede jurisdiction over that to anybody.

On the fundamental policy issue I agree with you, but we have to deal with it in the constraints of the Constitution. Even if you think they're wrong, you're not going to find 5 Supreme Court justices in any of our lifetimes that will rule the Constitution allows denying citizenship to U.S. born children of illegals. Adjust your political strategy accordingly.

...the legislation would sail through the court without so much as a speed bump. I've read enough of the actual transcripts of floor debate to know absolutely that the intent was not what we have today. It's been a while since I sat down in the library that day to read it verbatim, but everyone on that floor "knew" that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" meant that one of the parents had to have either been a born citizen or to have formally sworn allegiance to this nation.

"Citizenship by birth" is really an odd contrivance with no sane rationale behind it. To borrow a common thread from the anti-illegal alien play book, if I come home and find that burglars are in my home and a female intruder has delivered a child in my bathtub, would it make any sense for them to have some legal claim for their child being made a member of my family by birth? That's what this practice does. It's asinine.

As a test, we need to encourage lots of illegal aliens to break in and birth babies in a couple of homes in a hurry: one in Crawford and one on Cape Cod.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security. --Edmund Burke

Blog: TMYN

It was the logical question to ask wrt that guy's proposed law. Note, by the way, that he would have been happy to at best delay the kid's citizenship until both parents were legal.

I'd say yell at him, except that I don't believe in necromancy.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

So I only don't get a vote if you get your scheme passed and then figure out how to invalidate one of my ancestors' citizenship.

Alas, further discussion will have to wait for your 1,500 word essay on the history of the United States Constitution, concentrating on

1). The 14th Amendment;
2). US vs. Wong Kim Ark, including the minority opinion opposing it;
3) Plyler v. Doe, and its indirect implications;
and
4) Afroyim v. Rusk, especially its reversal of Perez v. Brownell**.

Send it in and we'll think about turning your account back on.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

*1/32 Scottish Highlander, 1/32 Huron Indian.

**I know that our lawyer colleagues could have a field day with this. Then again, our lawyer colleagues know already where the anchor baby principle came from. IOW, I'm not assigning this because he's disagreeing; I'm assigning this so that he'll be starting from the same place as the rest of us.

Its clear that the original intent and understanding of the 14th was such that it would not grant birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens. From a conservative point of view, that should really be all that matters.

Further meddling and usurpation from the Courts in immigration policy is probably inevitable if any genuinely conservative reform ever passes, and that is yet another reason why we really need a President and Congress that is willing to defy the unconstitutional decisions of the High Court.

I couldn't agree more! It is high time that the legislature and law enforcement (and the lower courts) realized that the Supreme Court is not interpreting law or the Constitution. This is why I have little to no respect for most of the federal judicial system and have less trust and confidence in it than I do in either Congress or the Presidency.

Someone in the Texas state house proposed a bill that would deny citizenship to children of illegals. But the committee chair refused to give it a hearing. He was afraid of violating his oath to uphold the Constitution if he brought up a bill that might be challenged or overruled in federal court! He said on the radio he "didn't care" what the people he represented wanted. He is exactly the type of person I would NEVER vote for.

Sadly, most people will continue to believe the Supreme Court and trust them to be truthful and correct about the Constitution, no matter what the court says. I think people would jump off a bridge if the Supreme Court told them to.

...for my children to become citizens?

Think it through a little more, Cajun.

As a fellow Acadian-American, with all of my ancestry legal in some way or another, allow me to explain:

You were a rude, irritating, insulting ass. I'm so much closer to your position than Moe's -- I can actually tell him what's wrong with his citations -- that I'm practically still nestled against you; and even so, we don't tolerate that kind of awful behavior around here.

Farewell and good riddance.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

I must go cry myself to sleep now. Oh, the pain, the pain...

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

stay far away from that Karen Whatshername person who was here earlier in the week. The thought of the two of you producing progeny is frightening.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Actually Moe Lane is a intellectual coward who can not debate you so he makes a nasty reply and then scurries for the ban button so that he thinks that you can not respond. What a small "man".

Actually this site (Bluey excepted) should be called CommunistState or FacistState or QuislingState or SerfdomSupportingState. So many names that would fit so well.

This site is going to turn so many Americans off (to the extent that very many read it) that if the RNC or the serf running lobby is paying them, they are really being taken for a ride. Maybe they (Bluey excepted) are being paid by DailyKos?

In Vino Veritas

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

you don't want to be part of the "evil cabal" known as capitalism which is ruining the country.

I don't invest in lawn service companies that don't pay taxes, hire illegals, and violate various and sundry laws.

Too high risk.

facilities, stores, warehouses, or any other physical structure. As you know, the construction industry is where many illegals currently work. You do not want to be part of this group and be supportive of the illegal "invasion." Do you?

But when mocking someone, it's generally only stinging to use scare quotes around words they actually used.

It's also probably a good idea not to erect logically ridiculous strawmen, knock them over, then pat yourself on the back for everyone to watch.

Just a thought.

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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!

And if it still makes sense to you, tell me and I will respond.

Thanx for the tip.. ^i^ amy ^i^/