Demosophia

What's Really Behind Crazy Immigration Laws

While I think I agree with Jack's conclusions on Legalizing Illegals over on Peripheral Mind, I'm not sure I agree with all of his reasoning. For instance:

Conversely, the socialist system has a tendency to "lower the bar" in a downward spiral. This is due to the fact that socialism limits competition; when there is no need to compete for limited resources, there is no need to improve. Moreover, one may learn that working harder under the socialist system doesn't provide any better results than giving the minimal effort to get by. Mediocrity is rewarded over industry, discipline, and diligence.

By granting social rights to illegal immigrants, we are sending the message that they are welcome members of our country and society. We are rewarding them for underachievement. I do not imply that all illegal immigrants are underachievers. However, our system of competitive granting of visas is undermined by illegal immigration.

I don't follow. What does being an illegal immigrant have to do with merit? I'm not sure I buy the merit theory anyway, and Hayek wasn't even sure about it. In fact he said specifically that there was no way to guarantee that those who excel in a market system are necessarily deserving. And success has been shown to be a "trifurcated sigmoidal function." That is, it's an initially steepening climb that gradually flattens to an easy plane, but with the danger of a big fall at either the top or the bottom. Success is highly dependent on positive feedback in the early stages of growth. This could simply mean having good parents, or living in an open society with decent resources. This positive feedback can be withheld for lots of reasons having little to do with merit, and if a critical mass isn't reached the function takes a route to catastrophic failure. There's a good argument for mitigating or ameliorating some of the consequences of these failures, which aren't really anyone's "fault," and even Hayek argued that as long as those who mediate actually know the circumstance of those in need there's little problem.

The problem is that too much power in the hands of the state guarantees loss of liberty, in the "Great Society" where people generally don't know the circumstances of others. But again, Hayek had no problem with demogrants to fill that need. And I don't think he'd have had a serious problem with the general concept behind Milton Freidman's "negative income tax" or Nixon's "guaranteed annual income." Note that the "Left" in America resisted these innovations, since they'd have actually worked to largely eliminate the problem that gives their movement a "reason for being."

But none of that has much to do with immigration, anyway. Strictly speaking there are lots of people in other nations more deserving than many native born Americans. The issue is that by deliberately forcing the law into a conundrum or logical inconsistency you undermine the system of justice. You (in Hayek's terms) degrade respect for "rules of just conduct" that are critical to a functioning market society. It's like removing oxygen from the air. You want an example of what happens, look at Nigeria. There's a country strangling itself to death.

I think this principle--the "continuity of the rules of just conduct"--is really what Jack's driving at, but he gets somewhat side-tracked in the merit issue (as I did there, for a minute). For instance, the paragraph below makes a critical argument.

What these proponents fail to explain, is exactly how they plan on enforcing this law. I don't understand how giving driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants will improve safety; as they are already driving anyway illegally, what is to stop them from continuing to do so? When an illegal immigrant is arrested for a traffic violation, they should be deported then and there, for being in the country illegally. The only explanation for why Californians would want to give illegal immigrants licenses is that they don't want to evict them.

I'm not sure I care what their intentions were, though I'm a sociologist so conducting a poll is always interesting. On second thought I guess I do care, because the logical inconsistency of the law may be an indication of a moral/ethical inconsistency. But what bothers me about the law itself is what Jack says in the first sentence. How, indeed, is any criminal justice system supposed to enforce this sort of nonsense, and maintain respect for law?

And I think the other critical issue raised unavoidably, and one reason we tend to see these ridiculous attempts to square the circle by bending it into the shape of a pretzel, is touched upon by one of Jack's commentors, Burt:

The issue is simple but it requires a shedding of hypocrisy for a real solution to be reached. The hypocrisy lies in the dependence and active recruiting of illegals by several industries including the wine industry. If illegals are to be granted no rights then we can no longer turn a blind eye to industries using them to remain profitable. We must also be willing to accept that some of these industries will then not be able to survive the lessened demand for a much higher priced product as a domestic or export item.

What lies at the center of this wild and crazy legal agenda, is a really filthy little secret... that isn't really little, or very secret. Human trafficking, to meet demands and appetites in the US, and other developed countries, is currently conducted on a scale that dwarfs the chattel slavery of the 18th Century, and represents a festering cancerous wound in Western Culture. One day we will pay for it, unless we end it. Italy has recently passed a number of laws that target this illicit "trade" in human misery, but until there's a global network of statutes and precedent that targets the practice it will probably continue. Part of Italy's solution is to grant the victims of human trafficking temporary legal status in order to obtain their testimony at the trial of the traffickers. It's a pretty modest change, but it's having enormous consequences. And make no mistake, this will ultimately impact producers in the US and Western Europe who have looked the other way for years, while reaping the rewards of the trade in humans. These laws in California are like bandaids applied to a tumor. No wonder they look ridiculous.

Posted by Demosophist at November 2, 2003 12:39 AM | TrackBack