you might imagine us as a career civil servant who worked with the problem daily for years, and knew exactly how we got to where we are, and that tribal approaches have been tried and failed before.
Bizarro's impatience is the same as yours - most of the things you say are simply not as clear as you think, and being shown that is very frustrating, isn't it?
Eg, on the one hand, you advocate significantly increased enforcement, without realizing that we are already harsher than you would be, and even Spock would not be as liberal as you.
What frustrates both of you is that shouting at the problem doesn't change it. And in fact, the reason we don't already do more is that we may already be close to the point of diminishing returns. Certainly most of the remedies I hear proposed have already been tried, or are pretty clearly cures worse than the disease.
Here's an article about the question of imigration considered from the POV of population growth.
how much does it matter to the environment where the water & oxygen using, methane & carbon dioxide producing human is located?
Well, if they are indigneous personnel living in the Brazilian rain forest, they probably don't put a whole lot of pressure on the environment.
If they are in India, they may burn a whole lot of wood, fossil fuels, etc. Althoough they don't come close to the per capita American usage, their usage is increasing, and it's not as efficient as Americans. The solution to increasing 3rd world resources use seems to be lower THEIR population growth or resource usage, ie, keep them in their place. It doesn't take a whole lot of empathy to understand why this might not go over well in Mumbai. IOW, you may have to nuke them.
But if they come to the USA, then are they converted into American consumption standards? Well? You know, get a couple SUVs, eat all those methane producing cattle?
Perhaps. But maybe the most immediate problem is in fact the American consumption standard. It usually takes an illegal family a decade or 2 to get to the SUV consuming stage.
Now, we are firm believers in "what's mine is mine". However, we are also astute enough to realize that we may be wasting our breath pushing a double standard. We may have to defend it at the point of a gun, and you have to remember that guns are damned expensive. Nukes are messy, and so it's probably a good idea to learn to swing a machete, too.
The way that illegals are really to blame, is that they are codependents, and facilitators. By working for such low wages (whether in the US or abroad) they facilitate the American consumption standard. That is the way they are to blame. Knowing Americans cannot control their behavior, they should not be doing this. They are culpable, and should be punished, wherever they are.
I would guess the Audobons are not so much consciously xenophobic as myopic. Probably a little stupid too.
Population is a red herring in immigration simply because the critical issues are not national, but international.
But you knew that.
Spock, nice answer but your response slid from a discussion of population pressures on the US caused by immigration to a more general consideration of resource depletion worldwide, and the concomitant environmental degredation it causes.
Hey, while you're at it, you might mention that the chinese faciltate this quite a bit, perhapd more so that illegals in the Us, as chinese wage levels are even lower than that of US-based illegals and that the US-PRC balance of trade and balance of payments continues to increase to the detriment of the US.
BTW, this is meant in jest, but given the wage differentials between the PRC and Mexico, when do we start to see PRC types attempting to emmigrant illegally to Mexico?
2nd BTW, who has more guns than the US if it ever came to that pass?
population pressure are you/Audobon concerned about - your burg only, ie, the trash in your 'ville, or the fluid contamination, global warming, etc?
If they are concerned mostly about their burg only, then by all means, we should exclude and deport as many people as possible. I was thinking they might recognize that the weather and broader issues that generally does not respect borders, are the more critical environmental issues.
And if you hadn't noticed, there's no copyright on the name Audobon. Anybody can use the name for any motive, but God knows people would never disguise a political motive, or be stupidly ignorant of the effect of their political work.
IMHO, population is a red herring when it comes to immigration policy. Both are very important issues, but not directly connected except as noted. It would be understandable if people wanted to save the environment by shutting down the USA (even if we would have to recommend they be committed to medication) but to blame the illegals, as we have noted, depends on the assumption that we will assimilate them to our consumption habits which we are unable to control.
Naw, I have a much better argument about illegals. Most of them are really homely little folks, and not at all like us.
Yes, the chinese facilitate our consumption, and they also have more guns. However, they don't have the computers, nukes, etc necessary to control guns that are even more expensive. However, those little fuckers are REALLY dangerous, because unlike the Mexicans, they do math, and someday they will git us, for sure. Mexicans are just their point men.
I keep telling you, we have no choice but start nuking these people, the sooner the better. We can trick all the cute babes into coming into the USA 1st, by issuing GPI (gene pool improvement) visas and holding Miss World contests, with about a million winners...
using air & water meant for Americans.
Little fuckers sit on oil they don't use, then they have the chutzpah to sneak across the border and into our bedrooms at night, and play hypnotic tapes forcing us to buy SUVs, and eat quarter pounders until we're so fucking obese that we can't get into anything smaller than a SUV.
Little brown fuckers.
1) A starving person consumes less than a well-fed affluent one;
2) Therefore, we need to keep them in a place where they can starve and therefore consume less.
You think the anyone in the third world would like this argument? When I put it like this, do you think anybody should? Granted the US has to become more efficient in its consumption, but efficiency is not the problem.
The one part of the argument that has some merit is the point that hispanic women may have more children in the US than if they had stayed in Mexico. I'd like to ask how that is determined? The article doesn't do more than passing mention of it, and it was a very important point. Is this because, perhaps, the population control education is much better in 3rd world Mexico than the proud US superpower?
If they would have more children in the US, it would violate one of the maxims of population control: that the wealthier people get, the better they control their births. It seems that population control experts are suddenly finding exceptions to this rule with Hispanics. I have to say, giving it passing mention is like a physics article just mentioning a discovery that gravitation applies to every object in the universe except apples. It makes me skeptical.
I have to point out in refuting this that there are a few inherent problems with population control measures that have just recently become apparent. Most important for any nation: you get demographic gaps, shortages of people in the most productive age groups. They end up having to pull the weight of the older population.
One reason why Hispanics are being hired for menial, unskilled labor is that there are few Anglo-Americans in the age group that can do the labor effectively. Yes, they drive down the wages for that labor, and then generally make the jobs unattractive to the few Anglo-American youths. The reason: economic racism.
The second problem is, you don't have the native labor available to "defend" your borders from immigrants. So, you could see the results.
Hence, overpopulation is proving that it is inherently unsolvable by the nation-state system. Population is an international problem. Any solution imposed by one state will necessarily be racist and facist.
Economic racism? Stop you're killing me.
It amazes me how it's been almost a revealed truth that excess population contributes to poverty. And that the US is the world's most ravenously wasteful consumer. So as the illegals acculturate [we hope] they adopt all these awful US habits and magnify this problem within the US as well as it's international impact given the outsized share of resources that the US consumes and wastes.
But all common sense goes by the board when the magic word of racism is invoked?
Were even the decadent Romans this oblivious circa 300 CE as the visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandal, Franks, Lombards, and the rest pored into the Empire with negative effect? Nah, they decided the answers was to try to hookwink the civilization-deficient tribesmen into defending the Roman Empire. That sure worked out realy well for the Men of Tiber, as Attila and the Huns had some ideas of their own. Oh, well.
Economic racism: the judgment that you could expect to pay people less because they are a part of an ethnic minority. The truth of this was shown in our nation's history with slavery. And if you could keep that minority as a separate caste-- as was done with Jim Crow, you could expect to always pay them menial wages.
If it kills you, before you die, come up with a refutation besides scoffing with verbal ping-pong balls. It is definitely a part of our socio-economic behavior.
It's something that you call racism the "magic word." Great verbage. Now tell me why it doesn't fit for what I describe?
Your second paragraph is true. Good. It doesn't contradict and it's not excluding **anything** that I wrote. You call the US habits "awful." It is implied there that they should be changed. I'll confess, I live with a Mexican immigrant as a roommate. She is very proud of the fact that she does her laundry by hand. I've begun to do so too. Maybe part of the solution to our "awful" habits is not to close our doors, or try to?
Ironically, we agree on the 4th paragraph as well. However, the Romans definitely thought the Barbarians were a threat. The problem was, they suffered the same population dearth that we do. In other words, their empire wasn't self-supporting from internal population. They didn't have the able bodied teen and 20- year-olds to stop the influx. Moreover, they needed people in that age group for soldiers. Hence, they began to use the barbarians that way, and they always used them as slaves-- a separate racial caste.
We're talking around each other. You really had no answers to what I said, but you brought up other points that didn't refute anything. Shut the doors? We can't, Xiao. It's impossible. Look at the map of Rome, at it's demographics. Look at our map, at our demographics now. All we could really do is aggravate them and antagonize them.
We could try to be more imaginative about it than the Romans were. I say that the US and it's best ideals of universal rights shouldn't be a matter of race. Starting and educating babies from scratch is much harder than absorbing immigrants. By proportion of the population, the growth now is actually quite a bit slower than it was in the 50s.
I say that the corolation of poverty with population is true more as an aggravation than anything. All experiments in it point to the fact that once crowding gets to a certain point if the population is well fed, reproduction falls.
My point, which you did nothing to address or refute, was that because of what I've cited with the inherent problems of national population control, the actual trouble can only be addressed internationally.
Bring up other points if you wish, but please, if you feel you don't agree and you must refute it, don't just scoff because I chose to address it morally, refute it, please.
I'm thinking differential power relaionships. Your example of slavery can be explained purely as a consequence of the fact that slaveholders had power over their slaves and the ability to compel whatever behaviors the slaveholders desired. In pernt of fact, it could be agued that racism was an after the fact justification for these activities. This seems to have been the case in the colonies in British North America.
When slaveholder and slave belong to the same ethnic group, how do you explain it? In pernt of another fact, this has been the dominant pattern in the history of man -- both slaveholders and slave belonging to the same ethnic/racial group.
Address it morally? When I want morality I'll resume my long-abandoded churchgoing habits. [And I see nothing specially moral in your analyses -- but there is a commendable brotherhood of man sense in all your musings, for which I congradlate and commend you. Even though it don't seem partcularly relevant to the topic at hand]. You have to get over yourself. C'mon, like most of us on this Board, I sense that you are totally in love with your own ideas and what you take to be their breathtaking originality and irrefutability [spelling?]. Even if I'm coming off the wrong end of this argument [which I DON'T believe for a moment] I'm still getting a ton of physic [spelling?] income from the pleasure I derive at the unintended humor I encounter on this and a few other selected topics. Or am I scoffing here? Or batting around verbal ping pong balls?
Can't shut the doors? Perhaps not everywhere, and perhaps not permanently, but your POV strikes me as a self-destructive counsel of despair. Hey, it's a start. And a journey of a 100 miles... Hey, the police can't apprehend ALL criminals, but you'l still call them if you have the misfortune to be mugged, burguled, assualted, swindled or the like, won't you?
You state that "...the US and it's best ideals of universal rights should not be a matter of race." I agree with you TOTALLY, but you are dragging this in as a straw man at this point. Several weeks ago you made the same assertion. I'm still curious how unfettered and unregulated immigration into the US can/is be inferred from a belief in univeral rights. Gee, doesn't this country have a right to enact and to enforce laws, sensible or otherwise, difficult or otherwise, regulating who can enter this country, under what circumstances, for what purposes, and for how long? Nothing I've asserted contradicts this. But for some reason you choose to believe that my contention that the unlucky and numerous wretched refuse from teeming shores who desire entry and assimilation into the US natonal experience have the decency to follow the regulations, many and varied, set up for just that purpose, is a violation of universal rights? If this is racism, if this is a violation of universal rights, then you have stripped those words of any and all effective meaning. Your verbal shamelessness here seems to be beyond limit and measurement.
Racism. Yeah, like anti-semitism and xenophobia and sexism, and communism 50 years ago, a word designed to stop all arguments in their tracks and cast the adherents of those arguments into the farthest darkness [oops!! unconscious racist construction -- equating dark with a negative avalue. See what I mean?].
Zin, you're obviously an inteligent man, so I wonder how you come to espouse some of these positions? Your rommate must be quite a knockout. !Que buena suerta a ti!
Zin, WHEN can we expect you to post re the need for Mexico to address the ongoing US complaints about Mexican nationals violating US immigration laws. That's some int'l action you can advocate, but I'm not waiting with bated breath for that post.
-- Modified on 5/14/2006 11:34:01 AM
1) On racism related to slavery:
"When slaveholder and slave belong to the same ethnic group, how do you explain it? In
pernt of another fact, this has been the dominant pattern in the history of man -- both
slaveholders and slave belonging to the same ethnic/racial group."
Because ethnic/racial group was perceived differently then than it is now. The Romans
definitely thought the Celts were different, as the Greeks thought that Barbarians (which is
a Greek word) were a form of animal. Same thing with the English and the Irish. People weren't very mobile then. The perception of "race" as it refers to difference, was much narrower. In the ancient days, humanitarians (animal rights activists?) thought that slavery was a way to prevent mass slaughter. Unfortunately, they had a point.
The roots of racism go back to our evolution. I'll reiterate, human beings have are adapted to band into tribes and kill or at least dominate the other tribes. How do they recognize other tribes? Physical differences, difference in language... For all hunter-gatherer tribes that have been studied, they had separate words for people of their tribe and everyone else. The word for everyone else was inevitable of a lower order than for one's own tribe. The word for one's tribe meant "human" and the word for everybody else either meant "animal" or "alien." This thinking was why cannibal tribes felt free to be cannibals-- no one outside their tribe was human.
-----------------------------
2)Racism justifying slavery after the fact:
"I'm thinking differential power relaionships. Your example of slavery can be explained
purely as a consequence of the fact that slaveholders had power over their slaves and the
ability to compel whatever behaviors the slaveholders desired. In pernt of fact, it could
be agued that racism was an after the fact justification for these activities. This seems
to have been the case in the colonies in British North America."
Your right, slavery arises not only from racial differences. Other human drives come into play. There is always a psychology to move the slave to a lower status, though it doesn't have to be racial.
However, in the American south, it was politically and economically convenient to consider Africans to be a slave caste. After people began to read about the rights of man, and pondered "all men are created equal" as a serious political idea, it began to conflict with the institution of slavery that the South was dependent on. So, racism became politically formalized then. Africans were slaves because they weren't really fully human.
Not that Western Europeans ever considered them really equal, there was just no political discussion of it before; it had never been that important.
After the Civil War, racism became a cult of vengeance and defiance of Southern defeat, which then became institutionalized. The South dug in its heels and absolutely refused to treat blacks as equals. In lynchings, they made a show of dehumanizing blacks.
-----------------------
3) Confusion over a moral term:
"Address it morally? When I want morality I'll resume my long-abandoded churchgoing habits. [And I see nothing specially moral in your analyses -- but there is a commendable brotherhood of man sense in all your musings, for which I congradlate and commend you. Even though it don't seem partcularly relevant to the topic at hand]. "
Thank you. Now, I thought you were scoffing at the term "racism" due to it's "magic." I presumed that meant it evoked too much of a moralistic mindset and not much practical "common sense." Maybe it's a matter of the words getting in the way. In what other sense is the word "racism" magic, please? I'll say I thought you were complaining because I was using a morally ladden word. The flourish you used to complain ("magic word") missed the point, hence, I said you were lobbing verbal ping-pong balls at it.
I find some things to be racist, therefore I work against them. Racism in this current world is like jealousy in the hobby. It is deadly... leading potentially to failed states.
-----------------------
and civilization started with the genius who figured out that oral sex was not only more fun, but also that repeat engagements required that you not actually bite anything off....
Then they screwed up and tried to replace oral sex with bread and wine...
Pardon my heresy.
4) Me, self destructive and defeatist?
"Can't shut the doors? Perhaps not everywhere, and perhaps not permanently, but your POV strikes me as a self-destructive counsel of despair. Hey, it's a start. And a journey of a 100 miles... Hey, the police can't apprehend ALL criminals, but you'l still call them if you have the misfortune to be mugged, burguled, assualted, swindled or the like, won't you?"
Despair and defeatism? You must first enlighten me: what do you think should be won here? Why do my ideas of simplifying the immigration process, prosecuting employers who exploit illegal labor, and putting immigrants in a special tax pool, why do those inspire despair for you? Maybe it doesn't inspire you because there is not a lot to win-- some national policies are just like that. It's not a moral equivalent of war or anything like that.
However, as I think about it, I am revising my view about the tax pool.
If the points I made about Rome having a similar population dearth caused you to despair, Rome survived **from** immigration and/or conquest for hundreds of years. If the comparison suggests a Gotterdamerung for the US, I suppose that sounds like despair, but I hope it informs you of this: nation-states are mortal. I don't say that out of despair, that is a fact. Human beings and all our creations are mortal; the earth itself is mortal.
Dust in the wind, man. All we are is dust in the wind. Like sands through the hourglass...ya know?
And no, I'm not recommending a way of hastening the death of the US, even if I say we should look at history and discover that this problem is not unique-- even in our own recent history.
A journey of 100 miles starts with figuring out the right way. Otherwise, you then have a journey of 200 miles.
No, police can't apprehend all criminals, but mind you, those are **real** criminals, so apprehending them in any number is important. I find their crimes to be more substantial than say, putting "USA" down as part of their return address.
Sometimes policy has to conform to behavior rather than vice-versa. I don't believe racism was designed to stop all arguments in their tracks. That's not the way I use it. I believe more broadly that tribalism, unlike communism, is a strong part of our evolved behavior. I believe in being alert to all of its symptoms, including racism. The phenomenon of the "failed state" should strike horror into every national leader. Yugoslavia was a modern state riven to pieces by awakened ethnic tribalism. Rwanda, Darfur-- people have their heads in the sand about the implications of this for national survival.
-----------------
5) Misunderstanding my use of "universal rights."
"You state that '...the US and it's best ideals of universal rights should not be a matter of race.' I agree with you TOTALLY, but you are dragging this in as a straw man at this point. Several weeks ago you made the same assertion. I'm still curious how unfettered and unregulated immigration into the US can/is be inferred from a belief in univeral rights."
You miss my point. First, I don't argue for unfettered immigration, or even a guest worker program, per se. I believe the process must be simplified enough, and we have to figure out how to handle it within the personnel and funds we have available. We definitely cannot be effective about it when we're running record deficits and have so much personnel tied down in Iraq.
When I referred to universal rights in that previous thread, I was referring to stories that I had heard of immigrants being put into prisons waiting for their cases to be processed, in some cases being detained for years. I was also addressing the attitude that mere presence in the US being considered a crime-- the attitude that any immigrant is a criminal just for being here-- when processing and documenting immigrants is too totally slow in the computer age. I believe a criminal is much more than someone who doesn't have bonafide credentials. Also, that medicine and/or education should be denied to immigrants. Those were the issues I was referring to there. I was talking about humane treatment of immigrants, and how we should apply rights to anyone who comes into reach of our sovereignty. However, I was vague about that.
In this thread, I was referring to something else. That being American is not an ethnic group. It's really a mindset. We shouldn't worry if the ethnicity of the US is browner than it was-- as long as they absorb into their culture the cause of universal rights, the US has won. However, if our country becomes their enemy... and they see us as too hypocritical to emulate...
-------------
Lastly:
I have to wind this up. This thread was originally about whether those arguments were racist, xenophobic. You seem to have rejected everything else I had said to support this. It was racist. I don't expect arguments over global population, birth and death rates, and global supportability to be revised to apply to migrations. I called that racist because I found that revision to be downright false. Why can't the Audobon Society turn racist? What is it about liking birds that leads to less bigotry to other people? I'll ask you: in the 1930s and 40s, was medical science racist? Definitely in Nazi Germany, it turned to that. Environmentalists have never given an opinion on racial migrations before. It doesn't mean that it can't alter previous arguments to try to support awakening racism.
You skipped my entire argument to call a foul because I said I saw racism hidden in that.
Mexico should obviously do more to stop people fleeing from it. However, I will add, it is more serious that their people feel that it's worthwhile to stay. That's far harder to do. I believe it's closer to failed state status than the US.
if the program is racist, calling it so ain't gonna change the advocates' minds. And I'm not so sure I get the economic racist thing, either.
Racism is just a particularly type of stupidity, ie, attributing qualities to a group that are not objectively verifiable.
IMHO, it's usually better to point out the verifiable stupidity than put a moral label on it. Telling a person they aren't a good church-goer doesn't often change minds, and if it does, it's probably for the wrong reason.
Yes, I agree that X has (perhaps unconsciously) started down the dumbass road of making allegations that ridiculously attribute particular issues to wetbacks that are pretty obviously not so.
about property rights; and in a chaotic world, they have to be defended or lost.
What he's despairing about is (a) that he has to either talk to or shoot at people who want to come illegally to help him with his work, and (b) he may not have the manpower or productivity to do that. (Actually, we are sort of flattered by people who want to help us, even when we have to turn them away.)
It's making him sad to think that the solution may be to mate with a fecund, hot Latina, and set your children to defending your territory. That would be partnership, or acceptance of a human condition.
True, your children may grow up wearing zoot suits and driving lowriders. Show me a parent whose children don't piss them off one way or another, and I will show you an unfulfilled parent. At least it's not tattoos, and at least they won't have some heathen name like Garcia. (OK, Catholics. Still heathen.)
Of course, another solution would be mating with a fecund, hot honkiette, like maybe Famke Jannsen - oops, she's a furriner too, but enough fucking should solve that problem, maybe we will forget it. Are her children any less likely to piss you off? I'm not betting. Fucking leftist socialist dutchmen grow their hair, do drugs and whore around, you know?
But despair is universal. Universally tiring, too.
"..depair is universal. Universally tiring, too."
As is feigned, posturing [?] cynical man-of-the world insousiance. [Spock, I imagine you living in some uber-affluent gated community, totally detached from reality, hurling your email thunderbols down upon this Board, while you flatter yourself with images of Zues-like omniscence [spelling?].]
I can sympathise with Bizarro's impatience with you.
Citizenship is ultimately about property rights? Learned that little tidbit in Marx 101? Spock, remember, and this Board stands as a testament to it,the truism that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Acually, I'm quite fond of all children. It's when they become adults that my opinion changes. But here I sense a straw man, or at least verbal sleigh-of-hand, being brought into play.
Sigh.
Spock, a little consustency here -- make the argument that condemns the Israelis for building a wall across THEIR vulnerable border. I'm patient and I'll wait on you.
don't you?
(1) Citizenship IS a property right. In fact, the nature of nationality is status, and has more in common with property law than tort or criminal law, which focuses on specific actions fixed in time.
Now. We aren't saying anything about "a little knowledge", but there's more than a few people who think we have more than a little knowledge. So we suggest you discuss that idea with somebody who has a couple decades experience in nationality law, and is bright enough to be published, and ask, is status - nationality or other - a property right?
And collectively, yes, it has to be defended. HOW best to defend it is the issue.
(2) Palestinian walls have nothing to do with US walls. That's Palestine, this is not. We are of the opinion that both are economic judgments based on the local circumstances. We agree with the US Border Patrol, that walls are useful in some circumstances, barriers in others, and electronic surveillance is best in others. Surely yoou have forgotten that all the bombers entered legally, and more terrorists have come thru Canada than Mexico.
Our experience leads us to beleive that defense in depth is very important - again, consistent with Border Patrol views. Programs need to address intercepting illegals within the USA, and deterring them from crossing - both social and enforcement programs.
BUT all of this needs to be prioritized, and some things, like strengthening levees in hurricane zones, may very well be a larger priority.
DO NOT let me take your daily entertainment from you - there is surely some filthy little wetback somewhere speaking Spanish at the 3rd grade level, and prisons are full of Mexican assholes. If that's what entertains you. We seriously doubt any of these fellows are any worse than Charlie Manson or Timmy McVeigh, but then, those boys ARE natives....
We prefer to keep our excitement for other issues. This issue bores the shit right out of us.
PS: you might also imagine us as a frugal public defender who lives in a funky neighborhood, and doesn't need that much money because of learning as a youngster to be quite happy with C-rats and jeeps. In any case, imagination is not admissible evidence.
-- Modified on 5/13/2006 8:59:56 PM
so, what about the lumpenproliteriate [spelling?]w/o property? Are they not citizens? Or second-class citizens? {Yes, i know, this isn't what you mean].
And hey, what about this? If citizenship is a property right, then your complacent attitudes toward illegal immigration serves to lessen the value of being a US citizen. So are you not in fact decreasing the value of US citizenship for the native-born and the legally naturalized? And in some quarters might this be hought of as an "unlawful taking"?
Like your namesake, you seem to be pure intellect and nothing else. Do you realy believe the things you post?
How about for every undocumented type, we swap a McVeigh or a Manson to the Mexicans? That way you've got one less strawman to prop up?
Hey, and for a guy who "seems" to "feign" so much sympathy for the Mexicans and other undcumenteds, your language re them in this post... Is this a Sarcasm/irony alert? Well, i'm still wondering if there's more than one Spock posting. But it's a perfec example of what i mean by entertainment value. And somewhat educational too!
Good luck with the public defender work. Very estimable. Do you try harder for your non-indigenous clients than you do for your native-born clients? Just a thought.
Legally, citizenship is a property right in the same way as a liquidated contract right, ie, an intangible vested interest.
If you want to talk about the economics of it, it's an indivisible partnership in the nation (and its economy) subject to the legal system.
What's really reducing the value of that property interest is partners who insist on going on wild goose chases - like chasing Mexicans instead of terrorists. The Mexicans want to build your house; the terrorists want to blow it up. Some people can't figure out the difference. Dunces like that are a liability to the partnership, don't you think?
you might imagine us as a career civil servant who worked with the problem daily for years, and knew exactly how we got to where we are, and that tribal approaches have been tried and failed before.
Bizarro's impatience is the same as yours - most of the things you say are simply not as clear as you think, and being shown that is very frustrating, isn't it?
Eg, on the one hand, you advocate significantly increased enforcement, without realizing that we are already harsher than you would be, and even Spock would not be as liberal as you.
What frustrates both of you is that shouting at the problem doesn't change it. And in fact, the reason we don't already do more is that we may already be close to the point of diminishing returns. Certainly most of the remedies I hear proposed have already been tried, or are pretty clearly cures worse than the disease.
concerned with those environmental issues that stay within the USA? You know, non-migratory species that do not leave American jurisdiction?
If so, it seems that their concern is pretty much limited to American parks. Which is OK, though limited.
If their concern is really that limited, then why are they talking about immigration? Who is going to fund the parks, the boomer generation and their few offspring?
Spock hears the call to inseminate promising females, and indoctrinate them in The American Way: well, maybe we can skip the quarter pounders and SUVs.