Comments Elsewhere

toolpusher: “I still don’t see why the US has an obligation to take care of Mexico’s poor at the expense of our nationals in the bottom two quintiles.”

Nobody in the US has any obligation to take care of Mexico’s poor, whether at the expense of American nationals or not. We’re not talking about whether it’s a good idea to give away tax money to poor people. We’re talking about whether it’s a good idea to attack innocent people for coming here to live peacefully and do work.

“I am really trying hard not to get personal, but I strongly suspect that you do not live in any part of the US with a major illegal alien population.”

I don’t at the moment (I’ve lived in Michigan for the past couple years), but I happen to have been born in San Antonio and spent much of my life in Texas (as well as a short stint in California and about seven years in Florida). I have family in San Antonio, Dallas, and Corpus, among other places. Now what? What has any of this got to do with whether or not it’s justified to attack people for coming here to work?

“The people coming now are not the people coming 30 years ago — they are far more poorly educated,”

Shooting them will not improve their educational opportunities.

“in many cases they don’t like the US and are only here for the money,”

Good for them. I don’t like the US either, and I’m only here for the money, too.

“they don’t want their kids to become Americans,”

Who cares? If they don’t want their kids to become Americans, let them move back with their kids when they’re ready to.

“they want Texas to be more like Mexico because they like it more,”

Most people try to make the place that they live more like places that they like. If it’s too much for you, there are plenty of communities in Idaho where land is cheap.

“they will not hire US nationals (they will not even hire assimilated Mexicans)”

Most Mexican immigrants are not in any position to make hiring decisions at all. As for those that are, well, who said they had any obligation to hire Americans? Not doing so may be foolish, but I’m fairly tolerant of foolishness when I have the option to take my business and my talents elsewhere.

None of this, incidentally, goes at all to show that Mexican immigrants are a net economic burden, or even a net burden on the government budget. (Economic research by Julian Simon and George Borjas has shown that they are neither.)

And none of it has anything to do with whether or not it’s justified to shoot people for coming here to work.