Illegal Immigration

See other issues.

The ways people talk about immigration, on the left, on the right, and from the libertarian camp, do not generally reflect the values of The Shtick. Immigration is an important issue. We think that ideally, immigration should be regulated, but it should also be simplified and made more speedy. Eliminating all regulation would be, on the one hand, detrimental to national security, while the current slow and painful system discourages legal immigration and provides impetus for people to immigrate illegally. Currently we regulate and poorly enforce, which is really the worst of both worlds.

While national security is an important reason to regulate immigration, a stronger motivation for our thoughts on immigration is our concern for the welfare of immigrants, particularly for how poor immigration policy encourages human trafficking. The so-called anti-immigration camp seems to be obsessively concerned about jobs, and this is both trite and selfish in comparison with the very real problems of the many thousands of individuals who are being trafficked. This trafficking has very real consequences for us as a nation, but to The Shtick, it seems sufficient to consider the welfare of the individuals being trafficked.

One issue that hinders us, as a nation, from making progress on illegal immigration is our welfare system combined with rampant overregulation. Our impossible system of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor puts us in debt year after year and has puts our nation in a very dangerous position, while our rampant overregulation prevents people from being able to provide for themselves. Consequently, despite having one of the highest standards of living in the world, we are highly dependent on government and corporations, we have little free energy to spend on helping those in need, and are in many cases prohibited from doing so. Every new person that immigrates then has to compete with us for limited government or corporate resources. The result is that we refuse to accept immigrants, and we do a poor job of helping our neighboring countries. Labor groups and fiscal conservatives fight simplifying immigration, while pro-immigrant groups and progressives fight enforcement, and mountains of illegal immigrants come pouring over our leaky border. Many are raped and enslaved on the way. Some are murdered. Many are criminals. The result is a form of immigration that is bad for the immigrant, bad for our country, and bad for our neighboring countries as it promotes crime on both sides of the border.

When it comes to immigration, we don't care about jobs, we think human trafficking and national security are major factors to be taken into consideration, and we think that our national welfare system and overregulation are major hindrances to making progress.