Comments Elsewhere

“If we assume that an accurate top-down approach to the net benefit question is intractable, that the results largely hinge on biases and subjective considerations of benefit vs. cost, then I think that this should become a question settled by vote.”

You’re no longer talking about people deciding what to do with their own property. You are talking about a gang made up of the majority of people telling individual people in the minority what they can and cannot do with their own property. The land that I’m living on is my land, not yours and not the government’s.

aleph0: “It seems pretty clear to me that the simplest way to deal with illegal immigration is to crack down on employers.”

Awesome! So we can all go through even more government-inflicted red tape in the process of getting a job! This is sure to improve our economic well-being.

barlow: “That unskilled immigrants pay taxes is largely immaterial, because they pay so little. How much in taxes do you think someone making $7 an hour is paying?”

Quite a bit, actually. If you don’t think that low-income workers pay a hell of a lot of money in taxes it can only be because you are ignoring the (regressive) FICA tax and the (regressive) state and local taxes that nearly all of us pay.

But in any case, what has this got to do with immigration? The problems that you are citing, even where they are genuine, are problems common to all low-income workers, as a result of the tax structure that the government inflicts on us. If that’s a reason to forcibly exclude low-income immigrants, why isn’t it a reason to forcibly expel all low-income workers? If it isn’t a reason to expel all low-income workers, then why aren’t you working on reforming tax law rather than making immigration law even more draconian?