**MANDOS POST**
I notice there’s been a sort of low-key, left-wing argument going on lately about open borders. I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that when it comes to the movement of people, I consider myself an open borders supporter, and by no means consider that an inherently “neoliberal” position as some people claim, depending on your definition of neoliberalism (something that is rarely fully resolved…).
There are a lot of reasons why I take the open borders position for humans — despite being less positive about the flow of goods and capital, to say the least. Some of those are arguable, such as the impact on wages and so forth. But there’s one show-stopper issue for me with the concept of enforced national borders — the enforcement part. Enforcing national borders necessarily requires a concept of deportation. Why? Because until we have a Star Trek force field and magical entry authorization detectors and a flawless, uncorrupt border control system, “unwanted” people will always get in. And then the border only means anything if you can remove those who cross it illegally.
But removing them requires not only a police force given the responsibility of exercising physical violence to control a non-violent crime, it also necessarily requires the entire apparatus of the carceral and surveillance state. For example: Due process must be given in order to deportation power prevent abuses (very common), but this requires preventing the object of deportation from “running to ground” to avoid enforcement of a negative outcome. Which requires jails, courts, and so on, and for nation-states of any size, all these things at quite a large scale. In order to catch border-violating individuals, a surveillance state of great power and detail (indeed, such as now exists and expands) must be implemented. Indeed, if it is not, then the worst wage effects of an undocumented labour class ensue quite logically.
Do I need to explain why a comprehensive carceral and surveillance state is a very bad thing, and indeed, how bad it is?
For this reason, I find it hard to take left-wing critiques of free movement and defenses of borders seriously until they engage with the topic of enforcement and particularly the mechanics of deportation. It is all well and good to say that people shouldn’t have to leave their communities of origin for employment, for important family reasons, or for their own amusement, and here we would all like to see, I hope, a world in which that is the case. It’s another thing to argue for a regime that works to stop people from moving, for whatever reason. And I suspect the overlords of the world are, as a group (if not individually), just fine with either regime, at least depending on the ascendant faction.
StewartM
Wow, Mandos, this is one of the few times I’m actually largely much with you on this, although there is of course a continuum between totally open borders and totally closed ones. I also believe that we blame people who move across borders for the ills that are actually being caused by private capital moving across borders, and the reason that’s so and that immigration hysteria is a staple of Repug politics is that by all means they’re going to divert blame from the Bain Capitals being the reason why people lost their jobs.
Even with money, our system is hypocritical and reeks of privilege. There is a $10,000 limit on any ‘monetary instruments’ that can be taken unreported out of the US, and in fact the the dubious “structuring” laws (which criminalizes taking *less than the limit* if a suspicion can be construed that you’re trying to avoid tripping the $10,000 limit) are in place makes it actually much less than that (I recall a case of $4000 of cash seized when traveling; and the actually average amount of cash seized is in fact something like $8800). The fact that agencies such as the TSA and DEA get to profit form such seizures give them undue self-interest in enforcement.
One solution would be, since the Bank Secrecy Act was passed in 1970, to scale it for inflation. Thus the limit would be over $65,000, and doing this would result in more targeted, and thus better, enforcement against the practices the law was designed to combat. The idea that major drug kingpins and organized crime require people to carry $5000 in cash (pocket change for them) through airports is ludicrous. Ditto for our elites, they can and do move hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars around the world with impunity. This practice is soley directed at the serfs.
Mandos
StewartM: I believe it is possible/reasonably beneficial to have non-punitive border *registration* and monitoring and then access to e.g. public services limited by registration *type*, although I will say I haven’t had a chance to think about how to structure this. My main objection to borders is in the enforcement part, as above: punitive surveillance and deportation.
ejf
I agree with Mandos: a non-punitive registration. Gimme your name with documentation. Where do you plan on going in the US? Plan on living here? Okay, here’s your temporary document. You better show up in X days to continue your status.
This would require a WORKING bureaucracy that handles the paperwork and processes people. And it would document everybody.
bruce wilder
Do I need to explain why a comprehensive carceral and surveillance state is a very bad thing, and indeed, how bad it is?
Given that the state will have capabilities for surveillance and incarceration as long as there is a state, yes, I think you ought to explore the political theory of the “good” state in contrast to your “bad” state. Maybe also throw in as a bonus round, your theory of the good elite overlord.
Any attempt to control anything whatsoever will entail errors (type I and type II at least) and waste. The utopian left is prone to an affection for building the political imagination on denial of shit. There is always shit. Always.
You don’t know what neoliberalism is? Faith in the market god.
The great challenge for all human choice, individual and collective, is the existential one of confronting uncertainty: we do not and cannot know the consequences, and so we act in faith and hope. The right neoliberal form is conservative libertarianism, the glib assertion that we can restrain the state, let the market decide and expect optimal results — a cover story for authoritarian propertarianism in practice, because disabling the state is disabling the public against the private power of capital. The left neoliberal form is a technocratic, complex state that nevertheless serves capital.
This is the hard part of political theory.
Mallam
There’s virtually no evidence that “illegal immigration” harms wages, so we don’t need to cede this part of their argument anyway. The answer isn’t to demonize the worker who comes here, it’s to organize with them to take on the corporate bastards and bring them to their knees. Some good old class warfare.
Just recently we are already seeing it:
Somali workers in Minnesota force Amazon to negotiate
Immigrants revitalize dying communities. The Rust Belt needs these people to come and raise their standard of living. By continuing to boot people out, we are giving capital more power over us that it has the power to just “leave”. And leave it has, as these rural small areas are at their mercy.
steven augustine
“And I suspect the overlords of the world are, as a group (if not individually), just fine with either regime…”
PostWar Serfs in North America and Europe had gotten entirely too cocky (believing in their own intrinsic worth as humans and workers!) in the post-FDR, postWar period. However much NAFTA began to fix that in North America (as “austerity” did in Europe), TFIC (the fuckers in charge) decided, impatiently, to speed up the lowering of Serfy standards/ expectations in The West by officially blending Serfs with sub-Serfs (aka refugees), after 9/11, while, at the same time, deriving splendidly divisive psycho-political results from the image of sub-Serfs “invading” various “homelands”. BHO’s whole “amnesty” routine, in the US, was really just an extension of NAFTA. Merkel’s “generous” initial embrace of projectile immigration was done with one of her many arms being twisted behind her back… while the local chapter of the CIA and/or Industrialists hissed in her ear.
So, in Germany, I’ve felt a palpable chill run through the once-sort-of-hip-and-welcoming burgher-Xs since the end of the groovy multi-kulti raves of the 1990s… 9/11 and the subsequent refugee-waves slammed a door on all that. Germans are walking around with the tabloid-inspired belief that the country is tarnished, now, and smells worse and is noticeably louder and rapey: which is bullshit, of course. My Wife and I like to go on long walks around Berlin and one of our running gags is “Gee, where are all the refugees?” Shit around here looks pretty much the same as ever. The smelly beggars are overwhelmingly German and the Skinheads are still the bulk of the latent menace to be avoided. I’ll watch a YouTube video that screams “Kottbusser Tor in Berlin is a no-go zone!” and stroll casually through the very area the same day: nope. Quite pleasant (except for the puke-splatters from Spanish tourists)…
A while back, Angie M. gave this famous speech about Turks “not integrating”… to which I retorted, to every acquaintance who cited that riff: “Shouldn’t German Proles integrate first…?”
The Overlords (TFIC) and their Kapos *love* the refugees, all posturing rhetoric aside… or, that is, they don’t really feel any differently about refugees than they do about the native Serfs they are using the sub-Serfy refugees as a cudgel against. Ditto Trump: he couldn’t care less whether his maid is “native” or Ur-native. It’s all a game that always, sadly, works.
PS Re: “austerity”: one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a newspaper was the time, c. 2008, I read (in the Daily Mail?): “Even the Queen is being forced to tighten her belt!” Surely they meant “loosen”. I mean, unless we’re trading with Mars/ Pluto, the global economy is a closed system: the whole thing can’t be “depressed” at a time! A billion big losers means a thousand huge winners. That’s how the shit works.
Willy
It’s been said that global warming will negatively hit poorest nations most. Since the PTB, that corporate-government hegemony, operates far more sociopathically selfishly and far less responsibly on behalf of the common citizen… fun times ahead for the common citizen if borders are opened up.
A surveillance state will happen regardless unless a surveillance state is kept in check, somehow.
Herman
Philip Cafaro has written what I consider to be the best left-wing argument against mass immigration and open borders.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo19211770.html
Here is an article by Cafaro that presents a shortened version of the larger argument that he makes in his book. The argument focuses on two broad categories: the labor/economics issue and the environmental issue.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Progressive-Case-for/151195
As far as enforcement, I agree that deportation and more security/a wall is a ham-fisted and likely useless way of dealing with the immigration problem. To a certain extent I think Trump’s policy is a show for his hardcore base that just wants to see immigrants treated badly. Again, Cafaro lays out his biggest “tools” in dealing with immigration and they don’t involve draconian security arrangements.
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/philip-cafaro-on-immigration-and-population/
Sadly, you almost never see Cafaro or any other non-conservative critics of open borders like Michael Lind on any of the big national news networks or cable channels or even on popular podcasts or YouTube channels. The left-wing case against mass immigration has been drowned out so there is only the open borders left and the populist right in the public consciousness today.
I think there are two reasons for this. One is that many people on the left genuinely want to fight racism and help immigrants and think that international solidarity requires supporting open borders. The other is that there is a class aspect to the left’s support for mass immigration and open borders. Many left-wingers are members of the affluent professional/managerial class and they need cheap immigrant labor to sustain their lifestyle. For example, inexpensive nannies and maids are used to support dual professional incomes. Somebody has to watch the kids and clean the house while both parents work their stressful, high-powered jobs.
We are back to an upstairs/downstairs society with a large, foreign-born servant class and this is increasingly reflected in politics. Right-wing parties are increasingly alliances between some sectors of the economic elite and downscale natives of the majority ethnicity. Left-wing parties are increasingly coalitions of some sectors of the economic elite with members of ethnic minorities and recent immigrants. This is why identity politics is so prominent. It represents the new electoral strategies of the major parties under neoliberalism. What is missing is a movement in favor of the broad mass of the national population. I think such a movement will have to come about on a national basis which is where I fundamentally disagree with Mandos and others.
Willy
And speaking of robotics, A.I, automation… still wanna bring in uncontrolled numbers of ‘workers’? I think we’d be talking about that many more desperate people who need to be surveilled.
Mandos
You are arguing something banal: that if there is a state, the state will control something, and in controlling things, the state can make mistakes or do something unfair. Who disagreed with that?
Was this supposed to be a reason to cease making distinctions of degree and kind? Immigration enforcement in most places that have it involves something very similar to the War on Drugs, as opposed to mailing someone an incorrect tax assessment. And your answer is…”Oh the state is imperfect, it jails people unfairly, give me your political theory.”
Really?
How is this the “hard part”? This is a motivated analysis that merely repeats leftist epithets (not all of them are wrong, of course).
I divide up the ideological pie a little differently when it comes to neoliberalism — and yes, it’s an ambiguous term often used loosely as an epithet for something someone thinks is insufficiently left-wing. But I have been reading self-described neoliberals and their critics on the internet for a long time, and I would find the common denominator here: it is a skepticism of conscious collective decision-making over material allocation applied as a dogmatic attempt to avoid implementing such decision-making systems. That is, there are reasons to be careful about the design of such systems, but the neoliberal seeks to avoid doing so at all if possible.
The market is simply the most obvious and popular way to develop “automatic/non-conscious” collective decision-making systems, but neoliberals as a whole are willing to consider other more exotic mechanisms of non-conscious “self-organization.”
Neoliberalism is distinct from “conservative libertarianism” for an important reasons: the libertarian starts not from skepticism about conscious allocation, but rather from the moralization of property as the extension of the integrity of the human self. In this view, your land is a part of you in the same sense as your leg is, you should be able to do what you want with the parts of your body including sell them, but the state controlling what you do with your land is morally equivalent to it amputating your leg. The market is the means to make such transactions voluntary and therefore morally legitimate.
Neoliberals do not moralize property in this way, but instead claim concern for the general welfare. Neoliberals admit the concept of the market failure, meaning in effect, visible/obvious situations in which the market/automatic mechanism does not serve the general welfare usually due to insufficient information among the participants. Left-wing neoliberals seek out market failures and design ways to neutralize them through regulation. Right-wing neoliberals are suspicious that the act of deliberately seeking out market failures is just an open door for submitting the market once more to collective conscious decision-making systems/central planning.
In the context of borders, yes, many neoliberals tend to support the free movement of people. Many right-wing libertarians, however, do not support open borders, because of the argument that under present circumstances, they represent a threat to the inalienability of property.
This argument is fought on different grounds from where economic leftists may argue about the merits or problems of open borders. But all deportations systems are cruel, and they must be cruel for the reasons I described above — is your argument that the cruelty of deportation is just something we have to accept?
Mandos
Mallam: as you might have guessed, I mostly agree with you, but I wanted to take the issue of economic benefit “off the table” as it were. Even if the argument about labour supply and worker wages went through, it’s still the case that you need a many-tentacled apparatus with deeply corrosive social effects in order to enforce immigration law in real life.
Mandos
The core problem in this wish is the mechanics of how “such movements come about on a national basis”. I don’t see any path to this that does not fall into the hands of elite-supported ethnic nationalism. In an age of environmental crises affecting systems that don’t care about our concept of the bordered nation-state, in an age of mass global communication, the only viable path is international.
Mallam
Yes, even if their arguments were correct, it would still be something we should oppose. We are already seeing Trump give orders to civilian police to send them to the border:
A DHS memo obtained by POLITICO asks several other Cabinet departments to send civilian police to the U.S.-Mexico border to stop migrant “caravans.”
This is what it means to “enforce the border” in real life. “Reduce the population” sounds a lot different when you have to tailor it with “murder the undesirables”.
In any case, large parts of the South have been voting down votes to establish unions at their shops. These people aren’t just jumping up and down in support of pro-worker attitudes, but those Somali immigrants in Minnesota are ready for worker power. Who are your real allies, really?
Herman
@Mandos,
Civic nationalism is not the same as ethnic nationalism and it doesn’t have to be elite-sponsored. The elite press attacked Bernie Sanders for supposedly hating the world’s poor and claimed that his followers were misogynistic bros in 2016 all because Sanders criticized globalization, free trade and open borders, which he correctly called a Koch brothers idea. Is Sanders an ethnic nationalist?
Also, the problem with global governance and politics is the democracy deficit that seems inevitable at such a scale. How would you avoid the development of global, technocratic elite rule? We have already seen this problem with regard to the EU and other supranational organizations and the problems would be even worse at the global level.
Cooperation between nations is a good thing but national sovereignty and national democracy must be defended and politicians ultimately owe their loyalty to the people that elect them not to some “global community” that is usually just a smokescreen for elite interests.
As for the environment, I don’t see how mass immigration and the related population growth are good for the environment. Philip Cafaro discusses the environmental issues related to immigration in the works I linked to above. More immigration means more urban sprawl, more consumption of resources, more consumerism and the overtaxing of already heavily burdened public resources. I don’t understand how environmentalists can also be for mass immigration and open borders.
Repeated Meme
With the bottom 99% of the world holding as much wealth as the top 1% it’s hard to imagine a world state looking anything remotely like a functioning democracy.
Ten Bears
The air we breathe, the thin layer of potentially toxic gasses we live in enveloping the only ball of rock we know of we can live on does not recognize the boundaries of nation/states.
For what it’s worth, Mexicans were runnin’ cattle and sawing logs in Central and Eastern Oregon for over two hundred years before the white-trash showed up and ruined the place.
Willy
Be easier to just say that supply and demand cease to exist when it comes to unrestricted immigration. Or that black market economies always resolve any stresses on infrastructure. My fave was that the Iraq war didn’t pay for itself because we weren’t clapping loudly enough (translated from the original technocratic sphincterspeak). But that is of course, outside the scope of this discussion.
John Poynton
There are plenty of temperate, fertile ares in the world that are depopulating and where open new overspill towns can be created and supported in a civilized manner, albeit at some expense. Refugees and economic migrants can then be flown out there immediately on arrival or discovery and either make a living in the town’s own micro-economy or leave of their own accord. If they reappear at your border they are simply recycled back again and, of course, there is no need to distinguish between them.
Just as free market economies are geographically unstable so an open world would be even more unstable. The human body needs its cell structure to give it strength, and likewise so does the international community need nation states. The instability can be both political and economic. If one state succumbs to corruption others can continue to shine like a beacon for freedom and democracy. And as we have discovered in the UK, there is no room for potentially 10 billion people here. You have to draw he line somewhere, so it might as well be at a point that allows a tolerable lifestyle without atmospheric pollution, exhausted water tables, intolerable traffic jams, housing crises etc.etc.
Mandos
I’m not entirely sure how the environmentalist argument against human migration goes through from a global perspective. It seems to be predicated on the prevented migrants agreeing to remain poor in their own countries, and the enforcement being environmentally cost-free.
Previous over-eager Malthusianism is a contributing factor to the difficulty in getting environmentalist voices getting taken seriously by the public. As I’ve said before, I don’t dispute that in the very big picture, Malthus is necessarily right — there is a carrying capacity limit, and exceeding it has consequences. Unfortunately, attempts to predict when that carrying capacity will be reached and the consequences of doing so have never worked out well (they tend to predict the path but not the outcome) — and where Malthusian events might have taken place, often the fulfillment of the prophecy was deliberately ushered along. I used to read a lot of “Peak Oil/Energy” blogs and have learned to avoid “peakism” in general — regardless of whether there is a theoretical peak or not.
What I see of Cafaro’s prescriptions of non-coercive immigration reduction seem mostly to be common-sense development goals. I absolutely agree that foreign policy should be directed at reducing the reasons why people might feel they have to move. I am extremely doubtful that people will stop moving to the extent Cafaro wants without force.
Mandos
Also, I am increasingly skeptical of the functional difference between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, partly because of up-close experience. Perhaps this might be a blog post during Ian’s current medical absence, we shall see.
ponderer
There is no need to have a draconian security system to manage immigration, nor to “deport” people. The illegal immigration problem could be solved easily by prosecuting employers who use the system to their advantage. That we have such an arbitrage system should remove any argument about its impact on wages or the benefits for the “natives.” Open borders or closed may be used for advantage against a given population. That’s a population of immigrants or natives. Sending “pioneers” into an area so that it may later be incorporated into a territory was quite popular at the nations founding as the Native Americans found out to their disadvantage. In the 30’s natives, who happened to appear Mexican, were deported to Mexico a place that they may had never been for generations so that someone else could steal their land.
The only people who like “immigration” are those who are not negatively affected by it .. or who benefit from it. If you want open borders, make sure people aren’t suffering for it. It’s that easy. Then you won’t have any opposition. Guess that might make for harder work to get some voting demographic though.
S Brennan
“I am increasingly skeptical of the functional difference between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism”…because calling somebody a racist is so much easier than making an argument for doubling a nation’s population at a logarithmic rate.
https://www.census-charts.com/Population/images/pop-us-1790-2000.png
Not that today’s “liberals” care, but the US land area that is arable, [which is a good approximation for land that is habitable without cheap petroleum], has been in steady decline since 1965. According to the World bank statistics it’s gone from 19.7 to 16.6% since the 1960’s.
And I add, the officers at the World Bank are very much in favor of massive immigration, the numbers are probably much worse. When you look at a land map of the US and a map of population, be sure to note that the lumpy concentrations of the western half of the country are almost entirely a factor of terrain [think transportation costs, roads, fuel] and water resources. Indeed, that many areas are habitable at all is due to the enormous sums of money and ecological damage expended during the FDR years [circa 1932-78].
The current population, which has doubled since my birth, is already depleting, on a permanent basis, the natural resources of this country. How the current generation of Americans can bequeath another doubling of the population onto our decedents just so that the well to do can have labor living on unsustainable wages is unconscionable.
The battle over cheap-labor-massive-immigration is no different morally than that of 19th century slavery, those who seek a restoration of slavery, [in all but name], even use the same arguments. Really they do, yes they do, just watch them say that cheap labor, [slavery, in all but name], is necessary because it is beneficial…to uhm…the slaves…er…ah…cheap labor.
nihil obstet
Thirty years ago I was in a Chamber of Commerce meeting for small businesses. One of the members who owned and ran a nursery was complaining about the difficulties of dealing with her employees. Another suggested that she sign on to one of the services running busses from Mexico with Hispanic labor, since she’d get hard-working employees who wouldn’t complain and wouldn’t expect a lot of money. The rest of us laughed the suggestion into shamed silence. The times have changed. Now, no one laughs or considers it shameful to bus in cheap labor. And we’ve gone from an area where most people had never encountered a Spanish-speaking laborer to one where most construction, landscaping, and cleaning crews are exclusively Hispanic. When I was getting my house painted, the general contractor asked if I had objections to a Hispanic crew. I didn’t know whether the question meant, “Are you prejudiced against Mexicans?” or “Do you object to undocumented labor undercutting native workers?”
Federal labor standards (Davis-Bacon) originated in the New Deal when the government commissioned public infrastructure and contractors would run busses from low-paying areas (mainly the South) to high-wage areas, undercutting the stabilizing of employment and incomes in the high-wage areas. If we all remember, Congress considered exempting New Orleans from Davis-Bacon after Katrina, so that workers from Texas(!) could be brought in for hurricane recovery work.
Free flow of labor is like open shop. Right-to-work laws are bad for workers. We need very badly actively to enforce labor laws. Currently, wage theft is rampant, overtime laws are ignored, employers routinely skip unemployment, insurance, and payroll taxes, and safety is ignored. We should stop all this. I’m generally opposed to incarceration, but a spell of eating at the federal table might do wonders for some managers’ and employers’ outlooks.
Meanwhile, we need to distinguish between the violation of human rights in keeping refugees out and acceptable policies regarding who and how we all have access to resources.
Plenue
@nihil lobster
I was going to say something similar. The way Mandos just dismisses the economic argument out of hand is completely dishonest. It isn’t ‘arguable’. If it doesn’t outright take jobs, it suppresses wages. Employers love illegal immigrants. They get hard working people they can exploit for less than the legally mandated minimum wage. This isn’t an opinion; I’ve seen it happen. Not just seen it, I’ve worked with these illegals. They literally showed up on a school bus.
Employers should be punished, not the migrants.
Also, Mandos, who pray tell are these ‘left neoliberals’ who believe in fixing market failures with regulation? Because all I see from Dems is deregulation.
Mandos
Not everything is about the USA. European “technocrats” regularly construct regulatory bureaucracies as an alternative to industrial policy. The motivation to avoid industrial policy is the “neoliberal” part. The obsession with deregulation is much more pronounced in the USA of course.
Mandos
By the way, I did not dismiss it “out of hand”. I acknowledged it specifically when I said,
Instead, I was forestalling arguments that free labour movement, outside of the deliberate creation of a precarious class of undocumented labourers in combination with fiscal austerity, is wage-suppressing. I agree with Mallam that there is no necessary reason why this need be so.
Instead, people seem to think that I am in favour of letting employers get away with paying undocumented workers less than legal residents. As I said right at the beginning of the thread, I am in favour of simply documenting everyone, and then enforcing labour law, including minimum wage, unionization, the works.
If we’re all agreed that we can somehow do without deportation and border blockades, then I suppose there is nothing to argue about. Forgive me for the strange inkling that the objection is more than about enforcing labour law and preventing flooding of the labour market.
Willy
Instead of migra chasing immigrants around it’d be union reps?
This needs verification, but I believe there were once thousands of meat processing plants in the USA full of skilled union butchers. Automation has whittled that down to a few dozen plants manned by mostly undocumenteds, owned by four companies. That’s one helluva lobby concentration.
S Brennan
I find the use of racist argumentation even when cloaked in innuendo a poor substitute for factual argumentation.
“Forgive me for the strange inkling that the objection is more than about enforcing labour law and preventing flooding of the labour market.”
Mandos and his racist straw men arguments…sheesh.
As I stated above; it’s about population and resources. I have said this many times before, [of which Mandos is in studied ignorance], if those who want massive immigration would leave in equal numbers I’d be fine with the whole proposal. Just leave Mandos and give a Mexican your spot and I’d be happy with the trade.
From the recent Mexican immigrants I have worked with [they had their papers], they would be happy if the border was closed. And in driving across Mexico, over half of the Mexicans I met, volunteered, without prompting, their support of Trump, which, at the time, surprised me. But in discussing it with those that I met later in my travels, emigration to the USA postpones the day of reckoning…when Mexico is forced to reform it’s overly corrupt social system. Mexico, as residents will tell you, [including the rest of Latin America] are not poor counties, just poorly run, massive emigration maintains the subjectification…which suits masters of both plantations.
Those who support massive immigration to the USA not only screw-up the USA, but also the emigres home countries, not that they care, virtue signalling while supporting corporate greed is very profitable position to take.
As for the argument that if we only did immigration the “Mandos way” it wouldn’t be so bad for working class, the fact is, historically, massive immigration has impoverished the working class each time it has been used by the ruling classes to re-institute a form of wage slavery. Yes, slavery; in all but name. The idea that Mandos ideal way would, in any small measure, be implemented is delusional thinking.
Mandos
Not necessarily “race” in the conventional sense, but as someone mentioned up above, a political theory. A particular political theory of social solidarity and community.
I’m not going to deny that I see it and object to it, and I don’t take “population and resources” arguments at face value, no matter how “common sense” it would seem.
But we can agree that we don’t need deportation? Do we agree on that at least? Is there consensus on that issue?
Mandos
I was, uh, hoping that there wouldn’t be any “chasing” of immigrants as such.
Mandos
I mean, this is all very strange. All I said in my post above is that, well, even if you believe there to be a harmful economic effects for workers in immigration as such, there’s the question of implementation of immigration control. Right now it involves deportation and other punitive measures, which involves a certain kind of state operated at a certain kind of scale, and one that hasn’t been altogether good, for workers or anyone else.
In response, I kinda got an honest answer, couched in a very indirect appeal to “political theory” from Bruce, which seemed to amount to shrugging that the state is going to hunt people anyway, and sometimes it hunts the wrong people, but whatchagonnado.
But I got a more interesting answer from other people, affirming that they think that immigration as such is bad for workers (okay), but they’d rather reduce immigration without a migration-punitive state — in the sense that they would rather reduce the reasons to migrate, in positive terms of making it more attractive to stay home. OK, I’m totally on board with that. I’m totally on board with the state enforcing labour laws.
But this doesn’t seem to be enough? Hmm…
S Brennan
Well Mandos;
According to your original post, [and unprompted further comments], anybody who disagrees with your position is disingenuous, a liar, a fraud, a racist and other ad hominems to numerous to mention. Given that level of argumentation, why would you care whether anybody agrees with any of your points…except as a means as self aggrandizement?
As I said above; virtue signalling, while supporting corporate greed is a very profitable position to take….enjoy. But hey, don’t ask me to condone ANY of your efforts towards the re-institution of wage slavery.
Willy
there’s the question of implementation of immigration control
It’s a question? I thought it was determined here long ago that Rule Of Law is pretty much a ruse meant to keep us wee folks from impeding the “freedom and liberty” of the powers that be. Ian’s posts and the commentary all seem to point in that direction.
Trumps border control methodology seems to be for show. I believe fewer are still being deported than were under Obama. But maybe there’s a psychological aspect to Trump’s cruelty that will be more ‘cost effective’ than Obama’s quiet deportations were.
Plenue
@Willy
Do you mean more effective at keeping migrants away? Because people had already been risking things such as the evocatively named ‘Train of Death’ for years before Trump came along. I’m not convinced just making the border harder and more unpleasant is going to change much.
Jason
@Mandos
I’m actually seeing a lot of this around lately.
The claim is made that employing ‘illegal immigrants’ suppresses native working class wages. The solution for this is to start targeting employers who hire ‘illegal immigrants’ with fines and imprisonment. I do not think I’m misrepresenting the position here.
There’s a couple of things here that I find very confusing, though especially since this argument is being made from the left (the real left, not the dems – I’m not American so I forget to make this distinction):
– So if I’m following the logic correctly, the idea is to make it impossible for anyone who enters the country ‘illegally’ to get a job.
– if the availability of immigrant labour suppresses native wages, then why is that? Well (if we take this to be true), I think an argument can be made that that immigrants are willing to work for lower wages and not complain due to their vulnerable status (i.e. by the very fact of their status as ‘illegal’).
– So the hope is, then, that through this policy the US would try and prevent any illegal immigration by hoping that immigrants make the independent decision to not try and enter the country due to this new policy that would make it impossible for them to find a job
– If people decide to come anyway, then, they are now in a position which makes them just as vulnerable as before, but also pushes them to work in even more unregulated and black-market labour markets
– not only that, but again, and as Mandos has pointed out, if we are in a position to fine and imprison employers and business owners, why not fine and imprison them for their constant flouting of labour law (as you mentioned) instead of specifically for hiring ‘illegal immigrants’.
– this doesn’t even touch on the imperial activities of various states (war, election fixing, etc) and supra state institutions (IMF, World Bank and so on)
Ultimately, I think it’s the bizarre focus of these leftists on ‘illegal immigrants’ themselves as the cause of the immiseration of the native working class when there are clearly many other factors at work here.
So far the only reason I can think of for the popularity of the position is the fact that it would be easier to push this policy to try and alleviate the suffering of the native working class rather than one which would strengthen labour protections overall. It’d be easier to sell policies punishing employers and business owners if they were being punished for hiring immigrants than it would trying to sell policies punishing employers and business owners for harming working people.
Which bring us to the the discussion around civic and ethnic nationalism – is civic nationalism all that different from ethnic nationalism if it involves either a) closing the border to anyone from outside the native nationality or b) making it so difficult for people of other nationalities to live inside the country that they don’t bother even trying to go? The ultimate harm is the same, is it not? One set of people is given value as beings worth protecting while another set of people is devalued (the native working class is worth saving while other working classes aren’t).
nihil obstet
I don’t know a leftie whose response to “labor laws are not being enforced” is “the problem is illegal immigration”. The post is about immigration, and therefore the responses are.
Mandos
This post is about immigration, precisely because people (the infamous Nagle article, several items on NC, various left-wing politicians) have questioned dominant left-wing attitudes towards immigration on grounds of a claimed decisive role in diluting labour standards. I assume that this means that people want labour mobility to be reduced. I wrote this post, suggesting that most immigration systems use disincentivization approaches (deportation, etc) that cause various collateral damage. I wanted to know how immigration-skeptical leftists respond to that collateral damage.
To be fair, I read some people saying that they would not use those punitive measures to discourage immigration. I find that answer mostly satisfactory. But then comes the question of how one actually reduces immigration, if one is not going to use deportation and border violence. So some people suggest that actually, we need to restrict the ability of employers to take advantage of the cheaper labour.
Well, there are a couple of ways to do that. One of them is punishing management for hiring undocumented/foreign labour, as such. The other way is to enforce fair wages, protect union organizing and so on. If you believe in the latter, and are satisfied with the outcome of enforcing labour standards, then the whole discussion is moot.
Is the whole discussion moot? By the passionate objections I receive from some commenters, I inferred that it was indeed a non-moot discussion. Which suggests to me that for some people, enforcing labour standards is not enough…
ponderer
@Jason
The claim is made that employing ‘illegal immigrants’ suppresses native working class wages. The solution for this is to start targeting employers who hire ‘illegal immigrants’ with fines and imprisonment.
Yes, that’s correct at least as far as my argument. There seem to be some larger points, very important ones that you are missing though. The current system is harmful to both the illegal immigrants and the native populace. It’s only good for people who need loads of cheap labor. I’m not one of those people. I have known people, even private citizens, who would show up at a site with a pickup truck, take a load of illegals back to their house to do yard work and construction and then not pay once they got their labor. Those are the only people benefiting from the system as it exists. There is no “devaluing people” in stopping that and there is no assumption that any other labor laws should not be enforced. Arresting people, deporting people is not necessary. If you or anyone want to argue that’s incorrect, that illegal immigrants benefit by being illegal, then please do.
Mandos’s problem, as far as i can tell, is that there is a large chunk of the country who don’t want immigrants especially illegal ones. It’s entirely rational, the US elites have used immigration against one population or another since the countries founding. He stated his main issue was the deportation aspect and it was fairly simple to address. Of course that’s not the true objection as you illustrate.
I think the real issue you and Mandos have is that there is a border at all or any protection for natives. You don’t want to say it because you know it would be so unpopular, especially with the suffering we have right here in the US. Everything else is just pretext and misdirection. This statement is what cinched it.
>One set of people is given value as beings worth protecting while another set of people is devalued (the native working class is worth saving while other working classes aren’t).
So you acknowledge that the native working class is not being saved i.e. under stress. Further. you think its wrong to prevent outside populations to take up residence and resources from native populations… even so little that they are “discouraged” to migrate. You do realize that’s the same argument used by every colonialist, ever right? Don’t you see the repugnance in that?
One person can not help another unless they can take care of themselves. There is nothing immoral/unethical about helping the members of one’s country before those outside just like there’s no need to feel guilt about giving money to your sick parents /siblings versus some large faceless “charity” with private jets and lavish “fundraising” events. Neo-liberal strawmen notwithstanding. Such immigration ideas do find support in places like Israel or South Africa from what I hear.
Willy
If one believes that government should be involved in (the stabilization of) economies, then why shouldn’t immigration/emigration be one of the primary variables considered? Consider this statement:
There’s virtually no evidence that “illegal immigration” harms wages, so we don’t need to cede this part of their argument anyway.
Sounds like libertarian / bleeding heart liberal magical thinking. Was the study sample one immigrant or a hundred million? Was the country studied Canada or Somalia? In magical worlds there are no economic sweet spots or tipping points. Only binary truths/falsehoods. Comeon people.
Mandos
It sounds like you’re accusing me and Jason (and others, I suppose) of concealing ideological motivations, which is something I had not expected, because I said right at the outset that I am an open borders leftist, which I am at least in principle, so there really wasn’t anything to “cinch”, was there? I made it clear at the beginning that I was engaging with the main argument against open borders that I recognize as a potentially good one, which is the effect on worker well-being, particularly economically.
I don’t know what other “protection” you refer to — I am “on board” with protection for labour. Not because it is “native”, but because it is labour and the majority of humanity. What “native” might have to do with this protection, especially in the descendant-of-settler American context which gets assumed around here, I have no problem publicly abjuring, and have done so many times on this blog. Openly. Nothing to “cinch”. But maybe you’re not a regular reader, or at least not regular enough to be reading me.
It’s hardly a new left-wing position to question the value of nation-state borders. For most of its history, the bordered nation-state has been a bourgeois project. Only for a brief period was social democracy/New Dealism able to save it from its own worst tendencies. Left-wing attempts at defending it are to me, attempts at defending that version of social democracy as the Rightful End of History.
It is to me even more repugnant to compare the voluntary movement of humans to colonialism, a violent, organized military project of imperial powers for the benefit of countries far away from where colonialism was actually practiced. I see no repugnance in saying that if someone from the Yucatan peninsula wants or needs to make their way to Oregon, they should be able to.
Not sure what Israel or South Africa have to do with anything here. “Countryman” is an ontologically much weaker relationship concept than “family member”, for that matter.
nihil obstet
As attracted as I am to the idea of the withering away of the state, I’m not sure how we would provide common benefits (roads, schools, a legal system, and the like) without one right now, so I’m concerned with the issue of governance. I’m committed to democracy. I don’t think we should have significant numbers of people without the civil rights to participate in governance. Guest worker programs, for example, are loathsome for their use of labor without a say in the society. Would the Yucatan native be able to vote in Oregon? Could TransCanada pay migrant voters to spend a few months in North Dakota to get the Keystone Pipeline approved?
If our friends from Yucatan plan to spend part of the year in Oregon to make money in a relatively high-wage area while their families remain in a low cost area, how much will they support Oregon schools?
How should we treat the newly arrived who continue practices that we have problems with? Most recently, in Michigan, there was the case of female genital mutilation, and the areas of gender rights, marriage, domestic violence, and child abuse are areas of dispute. Do we imprison the recently arrived, rather than deporting them? Can other countries ship their problem citizens to us, and if so, what should we do with them? Remember what an issue this was with the Mariel boatlift?
Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no such thing as society”. I think there is. We’re not just individuals flowing back and forth as we choose, independent of others. For many things our society is all of humankind, but for building much of how we actually live, we need to join with our comrades. We need labor unions with members, not just individuals deciding whether they’ll work for the pay offered. We need neighborhoods where residents prefer quality of life, not just a potential highway corridor. The left fought tooth and nail against NAFTA because it did not include labor or environmental agreements, and the result of NAFTA has been devastating to labor and the environment. The largest unit of (putative) democratic decision making is the nation state. Until I understand better how we get to the withering away of the state, I think I must join with fellow citizens to build a better society.
Mandos
Yes, but then we return to the original question. What are you willing to do to preserve that particular notion of society? Right at the beginning of the discussion Bruce seemed to admit that, in fact, an acceptance of some amount of arbitrary, perhaps accidental cruelty is necessary to make it work. If so, the question becomes, how to limit that so that it doesn’t corrode the very institutions that are supposed to make the bordered society work?
nihil obstet
As I’ve stated above, I’d enforce labor laws in the U.S. In fact, I’d strengthen them. I’d revise trade agreements to include strong, enforceable labor and environmental laws. I’d quit dropping humanitarian bombs all over the world. I’d maintain active border security, but very weak internal enforcement. If an undocumented alien becomes a valuable citizen, no one hunts her out, but in a case where he breaks social norms, there’s a simple “just the law” solution to ship him home.
You’ve explained the enforcement problem with legal deportation, but have dodged the problems with open borders with a wave of an above-it-all hand announcing that solutions aren’t realistic.
Mallam
Keep in mind that Obama’s deportation machine also largely focused on”criminals”, especially in his second term. It’s still hell and produces human rights violations. Stopping the dropping of humanitarian bombs is largely good; what about when a dictator guns people down in the street, causing people to flee and said dictator being the source of the humanitarian disaster rather than the freedom bombs? Overthrowing, say, Maduro would not be in anyone’s best interest, particularly since the military is just as bad and more people would flee, yet it remains true that his policies have caused mass exodus of people, and Venezuela’s neighbors aren’t going to tolerate it for the indefinite future. Your plans of “do nothing” aren’t going to win friends when Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru are the countries that must deal with the fallout, and “enforcing the border” largely means throwing out the people who make it here.
ponderer
I made it clear at the beginning that I was engaging with the main argument against open borders that I recognize as a potentially good one, which is the effect on worker well-being, particularly economically.
There is a vast difference between open borders and no borders. Just like there is a difference between “open borders” and illegal immigration. Saying you support Open borders sounds much better than saying you are for removing the ability of the nation state to determine who crosses her boundaries. There’s a common ruse with the neoliberal “Left” that purports to be about empowering the working people, while at the same time neutering their economic power. The Illegal immigration “problem” has been part of that for a long time. In fact illegal immigrants are the the solution, and rising wages the problem. The song and dance we’ve had for the last 30 years or more is kabuki. Either you are the kind of leftist that has deluded yourself into thinking deportations aren’t a feature of the system, or you’re using the suffering of others to stoke this red vs blue kabuki for votes as the majority of Democrats do. I guess from your earlier writings I assume the later and not the former.
Regardless, as long as the people coming here in large numbers are undocumented, the elite will continue to benefit. That’s why we’ll never have so called “open borders” for labor at any rate. It’s pretty open for anything else. If you really wanted to win over the deplorable’s you would advocate enforcing laws against the employers and better the lives of people here. As wages started to rise you could call for more immigration. When we actually had more jobs than workers.
It is to me even more repugnant to compare the voluntary movement of humans to colonialism, a violent, organized military project of imperial powers for the benefit of countries far away from where colonialism was actually practiced. I see no repugnance in saying that if someone from the Yucatan peninsula wants or needs to make their way to Oregon, they should be able to.
That’s because you don’t care about anyone in Oregon or the Yucatan. Otherwise you wouldn’t send the most desperate of people to a place with 4% unemployement. That’s people looking for work that can’t find it. A record low, but for the people living in Oregon enough that you might consider asking their opinion before you start busing people in. Where will they live, where will they work? I guess you’ll have the people of Oregon take care of all that. Generous people those Oregonians.
If I didn’t want to change anything here and I wanted to prevent voluntary (that’s a laugh) migrants, the obvious answer would be to keep the CIA from royally screwing with those countries. An isolationist position most likely. I notice there is nothing in your agenda for discouraging “voluntary” migrations to escape starvation, enslavement, or deathsquads. Nor for helping the communities where they will be sent. To me it sounds like a plan that’s not intended to work, merely whip up some emotions.
It was the elites that benefited from colonialism. If the elites didn’t benefit, it would never have happened in the first place. Elites don’t care about nations any more, so I wouldn’t expect your new colonies to have the same form. The same power dynamics are in play though. Disrupt a society and amass money and power from the fallout. There aren’t any more land masses to conquer but they can still move people around what’s already here to get much the same effect. Disaster capitalism with man made disasters. Environment, war, famine, immigration, all just tools in the toolbox. Eventually we’ll probably be migrating to Canada, at least until they take that vote to join the Union. Nice people with clean water, just wish it was a bit warmer..
ponderer
Apparently, I can’t use quotes very well. Nation-states are an entirely different topic and necessary. Your use of victim to determine the crime undermines your ability to remove biases. Picking a first world country and a third world country and using that to determine that open borders must be good isn’t wise, its manipulative. It might go along with identity politics and left dogma but that doesn’t make it rational and comprehensive. It seeks to help some at the expense of others, but worse will break our social contracts within our (national) tribe. When 1/5 of children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives, it’s hard to argue for bringing in more people. A refusal to acknowledge the rest of our tribe in the US is why Donald Trump is POTUS (and Brexit, ad naseum). As much as you may like that, you will like the next guy even less. Even if you truly believe we are all one people, kumby ya, and all that you should have noticed that in the last 30 years the immigration issue has only gotten worse (and more profitable). No-one has any interest in making it less painful for the migrants anymore than they do for the native people here. If you don’t care about Oregonians, why should they care about you. You’d prefer to help people from half a world away than next door hows that working out?
Altandmain
I disagree with the majority here. Naked Capiitalism summarizes my arguments well:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/11/leftist-useful-idiots-continue-war-wages-via-mass-immigration-australia.html
Low skill immigration without a corresponding increase in aggregate demand is a transfer of bargaining power from labour to capital. That’s great if you are a capitalist and terrible if you are a labourer.
For that reason, I support tightly controlled borders and very strict controls on immigration. Skilled immigration is good for the economy, but not unskilled that worsens inequality.