Congress has to do that, the executive branch can't. To the extent that the executive branch is streamlining the existing immigration system, they're being derided as amnesty-offering traitors by the xenophobic know-nothings that want Berlin Wall 2.0.
No, that's how a dictatorship works, not a parliamentary democracy. The prime minister/head of state may set policy, but it's still subject to an up/down vote in the parliament. In all cases I can think of, a prime minister can't unilaterally make such drastic changes without (parliamentary) referendum.
The U.S.'s federated system just makes it more explicit what's going on.
The above isn't meant as a comment - it was a question that was answered by an edit in the grandparent, but I then carelessly edited this instead of deleting it. By the time I noticed the error the edit/delete window had closed.
You might want to reconsider broadly slurring a bunch of your fellow citizens as "know-nothings" while writing a comment seemingly ignorant of the fact that the Berlin Wall was designed mostly to keep people in.
Actually, probably unintentionally, Know-Nothings isn't a bad term. The Know-Nothings were an anti-immigrant political party in the 1840's and 50's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
Indeed so. They were named as such not because they didn't know anything, but because of their habit of saying 'I know nothing' if questioned about their political activities. Immigration is kind of my specialty knowledge domain, actually :-)
As for the Berlin Wall crack in the grandparent, of course I know the Berlin Wall was meant to keep people in. That doesn't stop people who want to militarize the border with Mexico from explicitly holding it up as a model. Read the comments on any Wall Street Journal story about immigration and you can be pretty sure of seeing it cited approvingly within a few pages.
Actually not, because their commenting system uses flash so you can't search for/link to individual comments. As you can see from a simple Google search, though, I am far from the first to make the comparison: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=...
All the examples on the first page of google (except maybe for the youtube and facebook links - didn't bother reading those) consist of proponents of increased Mexican immigration stupidly comparing a proposed border fence to the Berlin wall.
However, I'll admit that I've also seen proponents of secure borders making Berlin wall comparisons under one circumstance. Often proponents of increased Mexican immigration claim a secure border is impossible to construct, and the Berlin or Korean DMZ is brought up by their opponents to prove they are incorrect.
We just had a candidate that flamed out in the race for the GOP nomination speak with approval of an electrified fence. I have never claimed this to be the majority position on the right (it isn't; about 40% of GOPers support restriction ist policies), but if you think immigration restrictionists aren't in love with the idea of walling off the border you're in denial.
I never disputed that many people want to secure the border. I disputed that "people who want to militarize the border with Mexico [...] explicitly hold[...] it [the Berlin wall] up as a model."
Per your own comment, you are ignoring some sources, including those which present counterexamples. In any case, I suggest you back up from this indivudal tree and take a look at the whole wood.
That is a really bad comparison. I suspect that you misused the word Apartheid because of its emotional connetation (which circumvents any rational reasoning that a non-emotional argument might entail).
Apartheid was concerned with the area people lived in the same country (in this area it might be seen as unjust - since people had citizenship to the country. Then again, SA is a country that should not have existed in the first place - the only ties that bind South Africans together is that they were all subject to British colonialism and their mutual dislike for each other).
In any case, the Apartheid regime tried (very successfully) to prevent illegal immigration from neigbouring countries (since for some strange reason South Africa was the only industrialized country). This was done with fairly great success. The motivation for this was twofold: to prevent insurgents from infiltrating the country and protect the jobs of black people (the white minority government was fearful of black unemployment - for this reason unemployment of black people were far less than 10% then and regularly 30-50% after '94).
To come back to my point - after '94 illegal immigration significantly increased. There are several reasons for this, e.g. The military was no longer responsible for enforcing the border (which fell to the police), liberal policies wrt immigration, Mugabe's experiments in Zimbabe, etc...
Post '94 there were two patterns of migration - skilled people left the country (e.g. to Usa, Canada, aus and new zealand), and unskilled people immigrated to South africa (mostly from other African countries). The size of the illegal immigrant population is difficult to estimate, but probably 10% of the population.
What was the result of this 'free' immigration?
Higher unemployment for the poorest of South Africans, increase in crime (with a large part of crime done by unemployed illegal immigrants) and then of course the fairly recent xenophobic killings(which saw a return of the brutal necklacing killings). I think it would be justified to say that illegal immigration is the biggest threat to stability in SA today.
TL;DR: South Africa should be used as an example of why immigration control is absolutely necessary. illegal immigration threatens the poorest of the poor (those struggling to find employment), leads to higher crime and threatens societal stability.
"Apartheid was concerned with the area people lived in the same country (in this area it might be seen as unjust - since people had citizenship to the country."
I use the term Apartheid advisedly. I do not regard place of birth a legitimate discriminator any more than I do race.
As for the "poorest of the poor", they live in poor countries. Again, I do not see the relatively poor of wealthy countries as being more worthy than the absolutely poor of poor countries. There are huge gains to be had in economic growth and human rights from free migration.
> However, it is a far from perfect analogue. Bryan Caplan cites evidence that immigrants to the U.S. commit crimes at a far lower rate than U.S. citizens.
So? This is expected! It shows the success of current immigration policies. The current policy is to only let the best of the best into the country (i.e. Those without criminal records and who has at least a degree in a technical field/ or doctor).
The blog post makes no argument that th crime rate of immigrants would still be lower if this barrier and selection would be removed (it would not!).
Furthemore, look at the South African example in this area - illegal immigrants (without work, etc...) turn to crime. Zimbabweans and Mozambiqucans esp. In violent crime. Many Nigerians ar involved in drug crime and other crimessuch as prostitution and human trafficing. Not pretty.
I strongly suspect that if South Africa enforced its border, Mugabe would have been overthrown.
But currently, most of the Zimbabweans that would be responsible for a coup de ta in Zimbabwe (18-40 year old males), are doing manual labour in South Africa.
The current policy is to only let the best of the best into the country (i.e. Those without criminal records and who has at least a degree in a technical field/ or doctor).
That is most certainly not current US immigration policy, which explicitly provides priority for family connections. Technical qualifications are a secondary factor and a modest advantage only for employer-applied visas. The vast bulk of visa applications are family-based.
The blog post makes no argument that th crime rate of immigrants would still be lower if this barrier and selection would be removed (it would not!).
[citation needed]
Usage of the word Apartheid in your link is bogus! The word Apartheid is only used in order to evoke white guilt.
Oh FFS. I have no guilt about being white but if you're going to argue that apartheid was in any sense a fair system then you're welcome to it.
> That is most certainly not current US immigration policy, which explicitly provides priority for family connections.
That is true. But the person who broughthif family over, how did he get here? Because he is skilled and already at the top of his field! So, a skilled person bringing over his family or an American whi brings over his foreign wife is already at the top of society.
I myself looked at immigration (chiefly yo USA, Ireland and Britain) - almost impossible for me to do if I didn't have an advanced degree.
> [citation needed]
You are willing to believe an unfounded assertian of the nlog post, yet evidence of countries with more liberal policies you ignore?
I stated the example of South Africa with an open border. In many Nordic countries with a liberal immigration policy, crime by immigrants is much higher (finland, sweden, etc...).
> i have no guilt about being white...
Yet the premise of article is that the world is divided into rich white people and poor black/asian people and the reason for that is "International Apartheid".
So according o the article, if a person supports rational immigration policies, he is a racist who supports global apartheid.
Perhaps you did not comphrehend the article or you feel the same - hence no need for white guilt since you support open borders.
> if you are going to argue...
I am not arguing that Apartheid was a fair system (it was not). Yet the world is a lot more nuanced than good/bad black/white.
South Africa is an extremely complex country (11 national languages, four capital cities, traditional leadeship, two Europen populations, massive inequality between black and white, rich black and poor black, inequality between urban and rural, more people on welfare (13 million) than tax payers (<5 million), probably more illegal immigrants than white people, more HIV+ people than tax payers, etc...). An incredibly complex (and interesting) country that you describe in terms of a black white world view.
Usage of the word Apartheid in your link is bogus! The word Apartheid is only used in order to evoke white guilt.
It is argued that because of Apartheid, blacks were poorer (even if blavk poverty increased significantly after '94, that is not the point.) The point is that the stereotype is that in South Africa black poverty is due to white people.
Your article implicitly makes the same claim. Here is the quote:
> Like the world, it was about 15% white, the rest African and Asian. Like the world, the whites were segregated from the non-whites by law (of course the West does have some blacks and Asians, but it segregates the vast majority of them). The whites lived in prosperity, the blacks in poverty,
So here is the question: how can whites still be (implicitly) blamed for African poverty? Most african countries have been sovereign for more than half a century. Many of them have been sovereign for as long as history (or only had short periods of colonial rule) - e.g. Swaziland, lesotho, ethopia.
The crude (and wrong) comparison ignores issues of culture, historical development patterns, traditional power stucture, etc...
Agreed, but that would likely cost more than $2Billion in terms of legislators' time elapsed and hot air expelled. Although I do believe the supply of hot air is near infinite.
