Roxanne,

Given that Ron Paul is currently running in the Republican primary, whom will he defeat if he wins the race?

Seems to me the answer is: Other Republicans.

Do you think that any of his current opponents are preferable to Paul as candidates for the presidency?

tas: “But Roxanne, that would mean blaming a corporation for something negative.”

I object to the idea that hiring undocumented workers is “something negative.” One of the most common reasons that people immigrate is in order to find more lucrative work, and it’s a good thing, not a bad thing, if they are able to find it. (This is why talking about “demand side” policies makes me queasy: what “reducing demand” means is making it so that people who need jobs are less able to find them.)

Of course, some companies that hire undocumented workers are abusive and exploitative: the threat of La Migra makes both legal and social recourses largely unavailable to undocumented workers; and that makes it easy for predatory employers to pay them starvation wages, cheat them, put them in unsafe situations, etc. That’s wrong, and employers who do it should be blamed and punished. But it’s wrong because abuse and exploitation of anybody is wrong; the only connection between this and immigration status is the artificial connection forged by government intimidation and punishment of undocumented immigrants. Given that that’s the only connection, the logical response is not to force employers to discriminate against undocumented immigrants in hiring; the logical response is to call off the immigration cops and stop treating undocumented workers as outlaws.

Rox: “The purpose of this post was to point out that legislation in this area is almost always focused on the supply side.”

Well, sure, and I’m all for wide-ranging debate that’s not constrained by the operational assumptions of sadistic nativist blowhards. What I’m questioning mostly has to do with the terms on which the suggested broader debate is being conducted. A lot of discourse about immigration tends to assume that immigration or immigrants pose some kind of special problem that demands a special solution. A lot of it also tends to assume that undocumented immigrant workers are a problem that needs to be analyzed and solved (whether the problem is blamed on the workers themselves or on their employers). I think that both of these assumptions should be challenged.

Rox: Did I suggest new legal measures to punish anyone?

I don’t know; I’m asking some questions because I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you suggest that “immigration reform” focus on the “demand side.”

Do you think that the government should (by whatever means) be actively trying to stop, or at least discourage, employers from hiring undocumented workers? If so, why should they be doing that, rather than simply removing the legal intimidation that prevents undocumented workers from taking and leaving jobs on an equal footing with citizens and documented immigrants? If not, then what kind of “demand side” policies did you have in mind?

upyernoz: they’re related because employer who hire illegals regularly break wage and hour rules. another employee would get a lawyer and go straight to the DOL, but an illegal is usually too afraid of being deported to do anything like that.

Roxanne: Because documented workers have the law on their side (when it comes to the minimum wage, anyway) and undocumented workers do not. Hence, the special connection.

So why not just remove the threat of deportation, instead of devising new legal meaures to punish people just for giving undocumented immigrants a job?

Roxanne, but there are already laws against paying under minimum wage. If you think those should be enforced more rigorously, fine, but how does that have any special connection with “immigration reform”?

Further, why is immigration a “problem” that we need to find the “root causes” for? The only fundamental problem I see here is that peaceful people want to move to the United States (because they have thought about it and decided that their lives would be better if they did so), and a bunch of nativist bullies are for using physical violence to stop them.

Are you suggesting that people who give undocumented immigrants jobs should be punished, instead of the undocumented immigrants?

If so, why are you suggesting that? I mean, I agree that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be punished. But why should employers be punished for hiring them?

Well, the maddening thing about the bombing in Pakistan is how perfectly happy the grinning hyenas of the War Party are to come out for so obviously disproportionate to the supposed gain. 18 innocent people were massacred in an attack that could have, in the very best case, by the government’s own claim, killed 4 top leaders. It’s one thing to claim that you can morally massacre, say, a half million civilians in firebombing and nuclear terrorism in order to save millions from death in an apocalyptic amphibious assault; I think that’s actually the height of immorality, but it’s an understandable vice. But it’s hard to explain what would make somebody think it’s OK to slaughter 18 innocents in order to get at most 4 of the guilty without simply resorting to the terms of madness and unhinged bloodlust.

This turkey is fake.

Michael: “Iraq is fucked and I don’t know how to unfuck it. The occupation has been a disaster. If the United States left now there would be a three-way civil war.”

The best that we can do is leave now. Maybe there will be a three-way civil war and maybe there won’t; there’s no good way for us to know. But that would only count as reason against pulling out immediately if you thought that continuing occupation by American soldiers is going to make that situation better rather than worse.

I mean, could you tell that girl that the occupation is doing more good than harm?

thehim: “For the U.S. to have been successful in a situation like Iraq, we would have had to make huge strides, even before the invasion, to build up that trust.”

For the U.S. to have been “successful” in a situation like Iraq, we would have needed not to slaughter thousands of civilians, even if G.W. had not lied through his teeth, even if he strictly adhered to the truth and spent months on a P.R. campaign. It’s not like the CIA installed a trap-door underneath Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party commanders that would have let us “go in” to Iraq without killing people left and right. Modern total warfare may have victors, but it has no “successes.”

I find it fascinating that the Catholic Church, at least in this official document, entirely avoids using the word “Protestant” to describe, well, Protestants.

Well, the “separated Churches and Communities” Unitatis Redintegratio aren’t just Protestants; they’re also talking about the Eastern Orthodox churches, to take one important example.