ICE has recently targeted a mushroom farm in Chester County, PA and arrested a number of immigrants. They apparently did all of this without a warrant and without targeting anyone specifically. Since this is Rollo’s neck of the woods, he wrote a blog post yesterday criticizing ICE. Someone left a comment that Slappy and Rollo thought was worth spending an episode on going through and rebutting it line by line.
Links
Blog post containing the comment that is the topic of the episode
Philly.com article about the ICE raid on the Chester County, PA mushroom farm
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Hey, Rollo and Slappy. Enjoyed your podcast!
I’m still amazed how many arguments for prohibition list problems created by prohibition itself. Several of the issues mentioned in the post – they don’t learn English, they don’t (directly) pay property taxes, they don’t naturalize – are a consequence of the very immigration laws he probably supports. (The arguments against drugs, prostitution, and other nonviolent, consensual ‘crimes’ are equally obtuse.)
For example, illegal immigrants are largely ineligible to ever naturalize. It’s immensely difficult to own property as an illegal immigrant. It’s challenging to learn a language as an adult under normal circumstances, but the US government actively disincentivizes it. Without legal status, they don’t have a firmly rooted stake in American society. They can be deported at any time and they have very little job mobility as a function of being black-market workers. The jobs they tend to be eligible for do not require English language proficiency. Why would an undocumented immigrant bother investing the time and resources into learning a language when it’s unlikely there will ever be rewards? As you both pointed out in the podcast, this immigrant’s priorities are extremely rational: work as much as possible to send money back home to family and friends who need it and acquire enough English to function in society and the labor market.
Of course, I suspect the rebuttal would be “but they shouldn’t be here at all.” I obviously disagree, but why be angry at them for failing to go full native, then? The laws in place restrict them from becoming citizens or owning property, and discourage them from learning English or assimilating. They’re behaving exactly as the system designed. These ‘problems’ shouldn’t be marks against illegal immigrants; if anything they’re reasons why the immigration laws are unworkable and counterproductive. (Not to mention inhumane violations of individual rights.)
Ironically, because of immigration laws, they are often stuck here once they do illegally immigrate. They illegally immigrate because, like all people, they respond to market pressures. There’s a demand for their labor (regardless of what some members of the community want) and the wage pressure is powerful. Open borders or more open borders would allow them to work for a while and return home if they have no interest in permanently settling and assimilating in the US – which was a common immigration pattern pre-1920s.
Thanks for the comment, Adriana! Agreed on all points!
People like to romanticize past immigration too, especially with the assimilation argument. But do they not realize that the Chinese, Italian, or German sections of their cities came as a result of ethnic groups living very closely together and interacting mostly with each other? The arguments of today are the same arguments that were used against the immigrants of the past who apparently “built this country.”