The general observation regarding SS might be true, but the tax impact (more specifically the outlays by state and local governments) could be curtailed with the departure of illegal immigrants. Whether this would happen or not (due to other political considerations and the inertia of entrenched bureaucracy) is highly questionable in my mind. Additionally, it would not take the departure of illegal immigrants to cause this effect. Instead the state and local governments could just refuse some of the more discretionary public services to illegals (healthcare, education, etc.) Again, I’m not sure the unintended social consequences would be worth it, but in the coming deflationary recession we may see a level of self-deportation that makes any calls for intervention mute at this time.

A positive outcome regarding the domestic farming impacts might be the development of the required technology to harvest produce currently harvested by hand. After all, the elimination of slavery certainly did not sound the death knell for the domestic cotton and tobacco industries.

-Crime would be reduced somewhat, as Illegals commit crime at rates greater than the rest of the population.

-Legitimacy of the government would increase, as the government would be serious about enforcement of its own laws.

-America’s claim to its Southwestern States would be buttressed.

The economy would be whitemarket, with consequent dividends to be paid because companies will no longer have to hedge against prospects of immigration raids.

-Human traffic would be reduced.

I am appalled by apologists and illegal immigration advocates who think it is perfectly acceptable for us to accommodate 20 million people who have no business or right to be in our country.

America was built with native born citizens and LEGAL immigrants. The millions of illegals here are costing the American taxpayer over $100 billion every year on health care and other services including education, law enforcement, welfare and housing. It is in the best interest of America, her citizens and LEGAL immigrants to reject illegal immigration and force the illegals to depart. Honoring America’s values don’t include embracing illegal immigration, in fact, honoring America’s values involves honoring the rule of law.

We have allowed ourselves to become a fractured society, with citizens who have to obey the law and illegal aliens who don’t. Anyone with even a modicum of logic can see that this is anarchy. I embrace legal immigration as we have the right and duty as a sovereign nation to decide whom we let in and whom we keep out and illegal immigration voids both of those precepts.

Smitten Eagle. I hope your remark on “US Claims on its Southwest would be butressed” is in jest. There is no U.S. claim on the Southwest. We, in fact, exercise sovereignty there. The fact that many of its citizens prefer to speak Spanish (or Navajo, or Hopi, etc) at home does not make them any less American. Excepting the perfected idiot class, which can be found among any group, the great majority of Mexican-Americans are Americans first, and proud descendants of Mexico second. Culturally, we would be a much poorer country without them.

A couple of thoughts: – San Diego, yes. Miami, not so much. (Most of those kids are Cubans who are legal refugees, not illegal immigrants… though the Haitians would definitely disappear.) – I’m not sure whether illegal immigrants really pay into social security. Doesn’t their salary kind of necessarily have to be under the table? – Farming would become less efficient and third world farmers would benefit at the expense of American farmers, thus destroying our agricultural sector and leaving us with basically nothing but a service sector. – The gestapo raids necessary to get rid of existing illegal immigrants would probably eat up what few civil liberties Americans have left.

Most Americans in our day and age have only a vague idea about where their food comes from and how it gets to the supermarket, where 99% of them purchase it and have never seen empty shelves. They could not tell you the growing period for Iceberg lettuce or the best cut of meat from a hog or even the best way to fertilize and treat crops. It also is the case that they do not realize that the domestic supply of labor the past 30 years in low skilled Ag has only been possible because of illegal immigrants.

Look at the low birth rates for Americans – even in rural areas. Why do you think so many small farms went belly up in the 80’s? It’s largely because of the lack of labor which forced farmers to turn to loans for technologies to help harvest crops. We used to have a farm in rural Alabama and in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and most of the 70’s you could find plenty of hands at harvest time. however the generational gap caught up – the smaller families that people started to have in the 60’s meant fewer workers. Gradually when age hobbled my grandparents and the lure of better jobs pulled other family away from the region we just let the land go fallow. We couldn’t even find someone to lease the land such was the difficulty of finding hands to tend the land.

There are two things I can point to which highlight the extreme reliance we have upon illegals in this country. I’m sure most are aware of the relative abundance of organic and boutique foods even in today’s largest supermarkets. This growth in small farms and the ability of large farms to produce this has happened in unison with the virtual explosion of illegals into this country the past 15 years. The other is the many circumstances of unsafe food – such as the spinach scare last summer. I don’t think it is much of a coincidence that it also happened not long after the government started to increase it’s presence on the border by having National Guard troops there. I met the owner of one of the farms involved with the spinach scare and he frankly confessed that they were had a hard time ensuring quality because of the squeeze on illegals that this had placed. Need I point to similar outbreaks in the meat packing and cattle industry that have happened in this time frame?

Only 50% of ilegals are Mexican, the rest are largely Hispanic but about 10-15% Asian and European. Not only would the Ag industry wither, forcing us to depend on foreign countries for our food much like we do oil, small businesses would be doomed because they, too, would be up against a labor shortage once the farmer’s fields emptied out. You’d be hard pressed to find a restaurant in this country which hasn’t had at some time a Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Central, or South American fella washin’ the dishes, if not cooking the food.

lirelou-

I was not speaking in jest.

And yes, we do exercise sovereignty in the American SW to the extent that we refuse to exercise our own laws.

We exercise sovereignty there to the extent that drug cartel cross the border with impunity:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/mexican_cartels_and_fallout_phoenix

We exercise sovereignty there to the extent that political correctness allows.

The view from my nest shows a southern American border in the early, gradual stages of dissolution, and the demographic pressures on that dissolving border will not favor the United States. As borders dissolve, and states lose their legitimacy, cultural factors take precidence. Much of the SW is already culturally Mexican. You cannot cross the US-Mexican border and see areas of Mexico that are culturally American. Cultural, and demographic pressures therefore favor Mexico.

A counterexample from history is Texas: What was Mexican territory was facing cultural and demographic pressures from the United States. US citizens moved there, and refused to abide by Mexican law. With enough US-born population living there, all it took was a small war to midwife Texas to independence, and then to admission to the Union. The same thing is happening now, except Mexico has favorable demographic pressures now. (I am not saying that this will lead to war, by the way. Interstate war is now passe.)

“...Manifest Destiny and smallpox …”

Ha. Good one.

And muskets and tomahawks and Bowie knives in the hands of our land-hungry Scots-Irish backcountry folk.

They cleared out Indians as just one more species of pestiferous fauna.

Not sure they were all “legal” immigrants, since they usually went wherever they wanted without regard to international treaties, or treaties with the Indian tribes.

Taking over the continent was not a pretty process. But some well-armed community was going to do it, so I am glad it was ours.

Alacazaba: “Not only would the Ag industry wither, forcing us to depend on foreign countries for our food much like we do oil,”

Can’t control the border. Can’t drill for oil. Soon you will pay 10 dollars for gas and you will need armed escorts to walk the streets. All because we can’t and will just wither away. This and more will most definetely come about. And the only conclusion is, as history has proven, will be for the government to go into dictator mode. This whole service industry promotion thing amuses me. Who you going to service? The government employee’s? Ha.

America the land of ‘Can Do’ and ‘Ingenuity’ Ha.

There is no England anymore. There is no America anymore. Life is GRAND!

As far as the notion that capital will replace labor in, that’s a bit over the top. In order for this to happen, the rate of innovation will have to far, far exceed the demand for labor as there are currently many, many processes in the Ag industry which cannot be done by any machine or supplanted by any technology. This rate of change would have to be at least equal to that which have in the computer world where the rate of change in CPU speed far exceeds the demand for new systems, making virtually any PC processor dependent unit grossly out of date within the space of two years. In other words, the amount of new techniques, new machinery as well as new technology needed to render inefficient enough of the labor force in the Ag world every two years so as to eliminate not only 70% of the Ag labor pool which is currently illegal but close to 100% of it within a reasonable time frame such as 10 years, for example, is of such an exponential curve that it would be unheralded in any industry at any point in history.

Given that there is currently no other large industry that experiences a rate of change on par with the IT world, it does not seem likely that capital investment will supplant the need for labor any time soon in Ag industries. If such an event were to happen, however, you would find that the increase in investment and growth of Ag related businesses would in itself create a drain on legal Ag labor. Legal workers would be drawn to the higher paying jobs and career futures that a dynamic era of Ag innovation would cause, again furthering reliance on illegal labor for the jobs that remained.

Reducing the supply of labor illegals currently provide in this country would have long term effects on the Ag business, even given the unlikely possibility that capital investment could alleviate significantly the demand for labor. Access to capital usually means access to credit, so to offset these costs of running huge industrial outfits, Ag producers would be more dependent upon futures markets to ensure they can make their loan payments. When you speak of marginal farms, given the inherent risk that even the largest farms may face in any season, unless nearly all farms are owned or backed up by the government, any of them could become marginal in a even a season given the right mix of debt from investment in capital and low crop yields or even excess production in world markets. They would have to be very responsive to trends in food prices and food production levels just to stay ahead of fluctuating futures commodity prices, all in order to satisfy their loan agreements. The problem is then that not every crop will sell for the same amount year after year. What got a lot of money one season may not get the next, so if you have just invested millions of dollars in the latest machine used to harvest a particular fruit which previously had been a very valuable crop but now trades for pennies, you could find yourself in a whole lot of financial hurt very quickly.

As I am sure any student of economic history can attest, government involvement in any business – especially a time critical business – is hardly a recipe for efficiency and success. For an industry to remain robust, policies which promote self sufficiency are best. Once farmers are beholden to the vagaries of political discourse, the market warping relationship of Ag business and big government would become even more extreme than we see with many growers and Ag companies now. Who you supported last election becomes more important than what you’ve got growing in your fields. A flexible, available labor pool is the only true hedge that someone in the Ag business has. Restrict that and you will see the futures price of all Ag commodities surge, surging while the farms are failing because they cannot produce because of their labor shortage, creating the perfect opportunity for foreign producers to edge out their domestic competitors.

alacazaba,

The vagaries of which you speak are not only political, but the vagaries of the market place as well. No business or industry can what the price of their good or service will be the following year, they can only make certain assumptions and remain adaptive. The hypothetical I was responding to was if all illegals were somehow forced out of the country tomorrow, then “something” will have to replace that lost labor. That “something” can be one of two things, labor or capital. Capital will be more cost efficient than labor in this new paradigm. Capital will replace labor (maybe it will not 100% labor for capital replacement, but capital will move into agriculture.)

Regards,
TDL

Wow. Savage has his moments, but he’s definitely nativist, and often in a bad way. (Note, I’m not saying all nativism is bad, but some of what he does is.) THe whole language, culture, borders routine is a bad form of it. When you look at the potpurri that is the US since it’s founding you find a handful of ideas that need to remain constant. You don’t need the whole Scots-Irish thing. Just a handful of ideas that transcend culture, and language.

He and Buchanon are very much opposed to immigration, and not just illegal. They see it as the over-run of America, the Vandals and Goths crossing into Roman lands before the sacking. But the US has gone thru, what three of these periods without falling? (The mass immigration of the 1800s, turn of the century from 19th to 20th, and one in the 1960s). So, I think the man is an alarmist, and only mildly silly. The nation didn’t fall then because the national character bounded by a handful of ideas was maintained while the culture changed dramatically(farmer to industry at turn of century, all those Scots-Irish coming over in the 19th). it won’t fall if that handful are maintained even if the culture changes, which it has many times in this country.

And, hey, i used to be part of the Paul Revere Society, but then I woke up.

Obama’s an idiot in my book. His anti-trade, socialism-lite plans make me gag. But, if the options are hang with Obama or Savage, I’ll pick Obama. He’s an empty suit you can alter while Savage is a demagouge you can’t. (ANd if you think I was quoting Obama on the ‘transition to other jobs’ thing, you’d better go back and look at a couple of McCain speeches up in Michigan.)

ry: I am sad that you say that in the end you would support Obama and I will tell you why. Your comment is flawed in this sence: You gag at Obama’s socialist policy points but would vote for him because he could be altered and manipulated. His advisors are those that he picks as president. So the saying…”If you want to know someone, look at who he hangs out with” applies. You may think you have room to sway him this way or that way but his administration is still going to go into deeper socialistic idealogy direction. So you negate your own objection to socialism because you will get it anyways. But in your eyes as you think obama won’t get his exact dream of his idea of socialism he will most certainly make gains in that direction with your support. Since this is true in the case of obama it is also true in looking at the ideals of savage or a more conservative dirrection. The idea that savage’s end result appears hardline to you so you give up. To think that savage could actually achieve ‘his’ end result is also implausable. Life is in the struggle of the direction you choose and glory comes from the side effects along the way because who actualy attains that same picture they saw when they started there persuit.

I’m not sure that I can say that I am still new at surfing the internet. Maybe a year and half now. And I am not an academic. I have come to conclusion that it is amazing that some of these pundits make the decision to get out of bed. But I do not say this to diss people. But in reflection on the atmosphere of how people want the gov. to make policy and who they vote for. And the end result of all these goofballs in our so called leadership positions for the so called people.

I’m gonna have to look up demagouge.

In any event. 20 yrs ago McCain would of been called a democrat and Obama a communist…