Thomas Sowell on one of the fallacies behind the argument that illegal aliens cannot be deported but must, instead, be given amnesty:
New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg is still pushing the line that there would be economic collapse without illegal immigrants. But, despite the scary picture of 12 million illegals being suddenly deported, the cold fact is that 12 million young Americans in the prime of life were removed from our economy to go into the military during World War II and the economy did not collapse.
These 12 million young men went into the military a lot faster than 12 million illegals can be rounded up and deported.
Yet the American economy boomed, producing an incredible amount of output, half of it going into the military to equip and support our own troops and to supply the British and the Russians with vast amounts of war materiel.
Filed under: Immigration
It’s a false analogy. The economy worked then because Rosie the Riveter took off her apron and went to work. Indeed, everyone pitched in to help the war effort.
Today, of course, Rosie is already hard at work and our splintered society is not about to unite in an effort comparable to World War II. I’m not saying the economy would collapse. I have no idea what would happen. But the analogy is useless. DQ
The economy wouldn’t collapse, what would happen is there would be riots of one kind or another as the economy readajusts and companies fire people. When costs go up, companies fire people, that’s a given.
I’m not in favor of mass deportation. There’s too many problems that would result, from the government deporting people who didn’t deserve to be deported. As complex as INS laws are, a load of people will fall through the cracks one way or another and be deported.
Okay, DQ — as is so often the case when you make a point, I’m forced to concede (gracefully, I hope). I’m actually not in favor of deporting 12 million people either, which I think would be disproportionately costly and disruptive. I am hostile to the notion, though, of amnesty, which rewards people for illegal activity. There’s a solution out there that’s neither amnesty nor deportation. I’m just unclear on what it is.
It’s probably executing all those illegal immigrants that came over here to rape children, and do other crimes. And it probably includes the military going “weapons hot” at the border, and shooting anybody with a vehicle trying to cross.
Once you enforce law and order, people will be more amenable to compassionate responses. Mercy comes from a position of strength, not one of begging. Bush shouldn’t have to beg Fox for the pathetic favor of enforcing his own border.
I have to disagree with DQ since I believe Dr. Sowell’s analogy to be quite apt. Yes, Rosie the Riveter took off her apron and went to work but it wasn’t immediate (i.e. one doesn’t go from preparing meals to building aircraft without a learning curve.) Since we really aren’t discussing rocket scientists here, I would guess that the majority of the jobs would be filled (perhaps by raising the wages?) in a relatively short time. If his numbers are correct (that three quarters of the agriculture workers are not illegal aliens) then it’s not like the jobs can’t be filled since the U.S. is not at 100% employment.
I don’t suggest deporting 12 million illegal aliens; rather, I would like to see serious sanctions placed (and enforced) on employers who hire and continue to employ them. Without jobs, they will self-deport. I have no problem with legal immigrants but I adamantly refuse to support any priority given to 12 million illegal aliens just because we share a common border or based on the false premise that we can’t live without them.
As to BW’s question as to what to do—how about we allow law enforcement officials to turn over any illegal aliens they happen upon in the scope of their duties to immigration at which point they’re deported to their country of origin. For every illegal deported, allow a person legally waiting in line (from countries all over the world—not just Mexico) to legally emigrate with a fee equal to the cost incurred by deporting the illegal. This way, illegally crossing the border is not rewarded and the immigration becomes a fair and equitable distribution to people in all countries who are waiting patiently in line.
I suspect Kevin nails it: we aren’t talking about rocket scientists here.
No, we aren’t. And the sudden loss of 12 million high school dropouts will mean little, if anything noticeable at all, to the economy. We have a sufficiency of high school dropouts, thanks.
Book’s analogy is fine as an analogy. It posits that when 12 million people disappear from the work-force, 12 million others will appear to take their place. In 1941 it happened to be Rosie; we don’t know who it’ll be today, but it’ll be somebody. It doesn’t take a fully-mobilized society to go get a job; all it takes is somebody who wants to save for a house, a car, something to eat, some clothes, a night on the town, etc. Somebody, in other words, who wants a job. I’d bet we have 12 million of them.
Kevin and JJ,
Good for you for coming to Bookworm’s defense. I don’t necessarily disagree with you about the result. I said clearly above that I have no idea what would happen if 12 million illegal aliens suddenly disappeared. I just disagree with the analogy.
Neither of you supported the analogy so much as you distinguished it. You agree there is no ready source of labor such as the homemakers in WWII. You agree there is no war-effort style unity to, for example, cause people to come out of retirement from a sense of duty. But think it doesn’t matter because you are sure there are 12 million Americans out there somewhere who would take these jobs. As my Granddad used to say, “Mebby so.” And maybe not.
In any event, thanks for your input and your ideas on how to deal with the problem.
The wages have to be increased, and this will produce riots and discontent. Americans cannot afford to pick agricultural goods at 1 dollar a day or something like that. It may last only like 1 day, but there’s got to be a retooling period.
A dollard buys a lot in Mexico, it don’t buy a lot in the US.
I think Bookworm-DQ-Kevin is a good example of how solutions are derived. As with military staffs, S2 to S5. A plan is proposed, it gets criticized, the defenders make arguments and counter-arguments, and in the end you have a better proposal than you had before. This is different from a committe, a committe argues their own interests and debates whether to “do things one way or another”. A staff comes up with a plan, and the leader decides whether to do it or not.
When efficiency and mistakes count, as it does in the military, the Staff discussion technique is a very good one. Bookworm’s original analogy has been refined to a more accurate sense of how things should be. Kevin did not reject the parts brought to the table by DQ, Kevin incorporated it into his own arguments. This creates a plan greater than the sum of its parts or individual advocates. This is how teamwork works, and how humanity was able to beat off creatures faster and stronger than us.
I make this point primarily because i’ve seen a lot of Democrats, Leftists, and anti-neocons come onto neo neocon’s blog and talk about how every neo-con is in lock step with every other neo con and is living in a bubble. As they accused neo neocon of living in a bubble, and all her commenters as also living in the same bubble. Obviously that’s a reason why Leftist Revolutionaries always tend to self-destruct. Deviation is either to them, loyalty to the party, or something to be destroyed. It doesn’t have to be like that. People can agree and think the same way, but that does not mean there lacks the strength of hybrid diversity solutions.
I don’t think the Democrats understand that the best way to promote jobs and economic growth is to help the individuals, instead of trying to make things uniform and well oiled. Humans are not machines, they are neither uniform in performance nor maintenance. For some weird reason, the Democrats have somehow collected a lot of people that don’t like recognizing individual differences.
Humans have enough problems without adding artificial ones onto our nature. We are inconsistent by nature, we should make use of that to agree and argue at the same time. There are echo chambers and obviously I don’t like those, but if anyone is guilty of being in an echo chambers, it is those who hate neo-conservatives.