Government: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

May 13, 2013

By: Kelly Diamond, Publisher

Xenophobic and discriminatory immigration polices further demonstrate the depths to which government will sink to spy into the lives of Americans.

The latest immigration bill is 800 pages on how to worsen the immigration situation, while using immigration as a diversionary issue to institute yet another spy tool on the average citizen.

I find it rather laughable that the thing that made American great is now a bogeyman of modern day American politics.  Only a few generations ago people flocked to the borders to enter America with nothing but a dream and the clothes on their backs.  My great grandparents epitomized that image!  From Poland and Russia, they came… my grandmother was born on the boat, in fact!  Couldn’t speak a word of English, they were illiterate even in their native language.  Whatever we had here was worth enduring their boat trip across the Atlantic… or perhaps what they were fleeing made it worthwhile? 

Functional Stupidity & Willful Ignorance

It was the turn of the 20^th century, and they had to complete a form and get a quick health exam at the port.  That was it.  No waiting for months and piles of bureaucratic nonsense.  No memorizing the Constitution or the pledge.  No need to speak English!  Just show up, and by golly, while you may wait the entire day in line, you were guaranteed passage… assuming you didn’t have tuberculosis or some other deadly disease.

At what point, exactly, did something so simple turn into this obscene web of protocols we have now?!  I go from one city to another, or from one state to another, never once having to explain or justify myself.  There is no screening process to see if I have a job, have an education, or even if I have a communicable disease!  I’m just allowed right in.   I walk into the Department of Motor Vehicles and get my license transferred over.  I walk into City Hall and get my registration.  All I need is something that proves I have a residence.  But, for some arbitrary reason, if you are coming from somewhere other than a state in the union, the process suddenly becomes onerous.

Employers are willing to offer me a job, landlords are willing to let me rent their space… but then aren’t all proprietors willing to engage in commerce?  Why wouldn’t my employer want good talent?  Why wouldn’t my landlord want to have his vacant apartment occupied?  And yet, they cannot hire or rent out to just anyone.  They have to be members of the USA club (i.e. citizens).  The xenophobic policies of today are not any different than the institutionalized segregation policies of yesteryear.  The trains didn’t want to be segregated.  It was the Wilson administration that imposed that policy.  We had an integrated military prior to Wilson as well; he put an end to that.  State universities were denying admittance to black applicants.  Public schools did the same thing.

What is rather inconsistent is that while the federal government makes hiring an undocumented immigrant or housing one illegal, most states don’t screen their public schools or their driver license applicants for proof of citizenship prior to extending the benefits.  How does that make any sense?  That we would allow immigrants to freely use the roads, parks and schools… without question or scrutiny… but deny them the ability to live somewhere or earn a wage to offset — if not entirely compensate for — the cost?

The most obvious issue nationalist Americans take with immigrants is this imposition on American employment: they would be stealing American jobs.  But jobs are like wealth: they are created.  It’s not a zero sum game.  More immigrants means more demand means more jobs to accommodate said demand.  It makes no sense that there would be the same amount of services offered to a larger market…  Not only does it not make sense, there are no cases of sprawl where regardless of population growth there remained only ONE doctor and ONE general store and ONE gas pump.  Nope.  More people means competition shows up and new shops open to accommodate the growing number of people who need these products and services.

The next issue is that of welfare and social programs.  The argument the left makes against tax cuts is the same argument conservatives make against immigration: they only look at the costs… not the benefits.  So in the case of taxes, without fail, whenever the tax burden was lessened, revenues went up.  Yet, the left only looks at the loss of revenues from cutting the taxes… what they don’t look at is the subsequent gain in revenues in the coming months and years.  Likewise, in the case of immigration, conservatives look at the cost burden of the social programs used by immigrants, but don’t look at what is put back into the system through their economic activities.  Their contributions of state GDPs far exceed what they draw from the largess in roads, parks, schools or emergency services. 

Moreover, Americans put the greatest burden on the social program budgets.  And rather than look for ways to eliminate that… or at the very least alleviate that… our politicians pander to it.  The reality is, our welfare programs are primarily targeted toward the elderly, not the poor.  And the vast majority of immigrants are young.  The money spent annually on Medicare and Social Security is far greater than that of food stamps or welfare checks. 

Right now, immigrants pose one real threat to Americans: competition.  Perhaps they are willing to work for a lower wage?  Perhaps they produce at a better rate and are willing to put in more hours?  Perhaps their work ethic trumps that of their American counterparts?  I don’t know, but at present, an employer who seeks to sponsor foreign nationals as employees through the H-1B program, can only do so after providing proof that effort was made to hire an American for that position first.  Only THEN can they hire outside the US.  There is a cap on how many foreigners can be hired each year.  And if an American is fired or laid off, there has to be ample proof that the person was failing at their job or was a liability to the company in some way.

The legislation being debated (Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act), while it would up the annual quota levels, would likely mandate that foreign employees be paid considerably more than American ones… in an effort to price foreigners out of the market.  Foreigners would effectively have a higher minimum wage than Americans!  Sadly, even as the immigration policies stand now for LEGAL immigrants, the timeline and stipulations are crippling to the families in that they cannot yet buy a home, their spouses cannot work, and they cannot change positions within in the company lest they start the process over from the beginning.  Land of the free?  Free to do what exactly?

Why anyone would still want to come into the United States is well beyond my comprehension since I’m sitting here chomping at the bit to leave!  I wish citizenships were transferable!  I’d offer mine up to the first Paraguayan to respond!  Alas, no.  You can do that with health and golf club memberships… but not national memberships. 

Among other things, this legislation is calling for SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS in new spending in the form of drones, fencing, several thousand new border agents, and another federal agency, tentatively called the “Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research”. 

Immorally Addressing an Imaginary Problem

A very thought provoking argument was made against prohibitive immigration policies.  Let’s say you see a man starving.  If you do not give him food, you allowed him to starve to death… but you did NOT kill him.  Let’s say the same starving man had a means of obtaining food for himself and you actively tried to stop him, and then he starved to death.  Then you did participate in the killing of that man.  Herein lies the distinction between a “Right” and an “Entitlement”.  While I do not believe anyone has a moral claim on anyone else’s actions or property, we all have a right to properly and legitimately access that which we need to survive.  When countries like the USA create policies which literally and purposely obstruct the path of companies and other individuals from engaging in activities that would benefit them in some way, they are complicit in participating in their demise.

Foil-Hat-Tip

What article of mine would be complete without an Eye of Sauron component!?  This one is a doozie!  Naturally, the legislation currently being debated is a hearty EIGHT HUNDRED PAGES long.  (I’ll be taking bets on how many legislators have actually read it… much less understand it!)  It’s just a big enough haystack to bury a needle like… ooooh… I don’t know… a biometric database for all American adults?  You read correctly: a facial or bio-recognition database. 

The legislation mandates the creation of a seemingly unimportant “photo tool” along with a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security.  The database would contain names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.  All of this, supposedly, to curb the hiring of illegal immigrants.  (Read: to keep foreigners from getting a job and being productive.)

Why am I having a hard time believing that our government would pour all this time and effort into simply keeping an immigrant from working?  While my government regularly cuts off its nose to spite its face and fires rounds upon round into its feet, this seems a rather excessive measure to keep people unemployed!

Right now, proponents insist its use would be restricted to only verification for employment.  Really?  Can we count on that the way Social Security cards and numbers were originally meant to track retirement benefits?  My card actually says it’s not meant to be used as a form of identification.  But now, I can’t get electricity without that godforsaken slave number!  And am I really meant to believe that the same federal agency that can toss a privately held safe deposit box without a warrant, photograph or even take its contents, and penalize anyone who would speak of their activities, will ONLY use this for employment verification?

Am I meant to believe that any federal agency would restrict the use of surveillance tools because the “rules” say so?  Does any criminal give consideration to the laws and rules surrounding their actions?  Especially criminals that have no face and no name… but hide behind the fabricated identities of a nebulous agency?

Am I meant to believe that the IRS or the FBI won’t just swing by to borrow a cup of sugar and have a peak at their biometric database? Agencies are already sharing drones!

The fear-mongering surrounding immigrants is rather pathetic considering how this country owes its very existence to them!  The restrictions our immigration policies put on individuals stifles growth and progress because it inherently discourages competition in the work place.  It picks winners and losers, which ultimately makes our government discriminatory in its practices… something they seem to decry when it happens to a fat person, a woman or a person of color… but institutionalize toward people “not from these parts”. 

So the hypocrisy and double standards remain.  And they are propped up and justified by ludicrous claims of protecting Americans’ jobs!  Just like the War on Terror, and the War on Drugs, and the War on Poverty, and the War on Virtual Currencies… all of those policies are meant to protect us.  From what?  Freedom?