Double Down: Illegal Aliens and Crime
For too long now I have heard that illegal immigrants are not criminals and that they have come to America only to work. Not really. Whether or not they want to work, they have already committed a crime by illegally entering the United States. I am still naive enough to think that national sovereignty should mean something. Whether or not they want to work, they also come here to have babies. The birthrate for illegal-alien mothers is more than double that for native-born American women, and higher even than the birthrate for legal immigrants. Moreover, the only-want-to-work argument ignores the enormous costs to U.S. taxpayers that come with illegal aliens, especially for medical care and for schooling and other services we provide for their children, American born or not. These costs are helping to sink the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District in a sea of debt.
As if this isn’t bad enough, many illegal immigrants come here precisely because they are criminals and they find America a target-rich environment. This is particularly true of Mexican criminals, who make a practice of committing crimes in the United States, slipping back into Mexico, and then, rested and equipped with new identities, returning here. I have seen Mexicans deported for their third or fourth time, and each time, the same criminal has a new name. Since this continues to occur with alarming frequency, I am forced to conclude that our southern border remains porous and that our federal officials are not serious about border enforcement.
My own Ventura County in Southern California suffers from the depredations of such illegal aliens daily. Our local newspaper, the Star, prints a weekly feature, “Most Wanted of Ventura County,” which includes photos, names, crimes, and full descriptions of the six most-wanted miscreants each week. Week in and week out, four or five of the six, and occasionally six of the six, are Hispanic. Not infrequently, a note will say, “Thought to have fled to Mexico.” There are other clues to their illegal-alien status. Their first names are rendered in Spanish rather than in English: There is Timoteo instead of Timothy, Gerardo instead of Gerard, Antonio instead of Anthony, Guillermo instead of William, Rogelio instead of Roger, Diego instead of James. The old-time Mexican-American families in California usually give their children Anglo names. Then, too, many of the miscreants have aliases. Gerardo Rodrigo Lopez is also Rodrigo Ramirez Velasco. An entirely different criminal, Gerardo Garcia Granados, is also Gerardo Rodrigo Lopez. You figure it out. Law enforcement can’t.
Late in March, Jose Antonio Medina Arreguin, called the King of Heroin by Mexican authorities, was arrested in the state of Michoacán. For at least the last three or four years he had smuggled an average of 440 pounds of heroin each month into California, earning his organization a monthly gross of $12 million. His distribution center was Oxnard, which is Ventura County’s largest and most Hispanic city. One third or more—some say it may be closer to one half—of Oxnard residents are illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens. Oxnard’s crime dwarfs that of every other town in Ventura County. With a population of 180,000, Oxnard usually has 25 or more murders per year. Some 20 miles to the east in Ventura County, Thousand Oaks, with a population of 130,000, largely white and native born, usually has no murders in any given year, although it occasionally sees one or two. Other crime categories reveal similarly striking disparities between the two cities.
Arreguin, or Don Pepe as he was known, found Oxnard ideal for his operations. His gangsters could blend in with the population, move about quite openly, and supply black-tar heroin and methamphetamines to a network of dealers from San Diego to San Jose. Oxnard police and Ventura County sheriff’s deputies learned of the operation in 2007 and formed the Ventura County Combined Agency Team. Wiretaps and surveillance led to the first break in 2008 with the arrest of dozens of street dealers and of Don Pepe’s drug lords in California—Salvador Alvarez, Julio Ramirez, Jr., and Julio Ramirez, Sr.—and the seizure of 28 pounds of methamphetamines and 131 pounds of heroin. The amount of heroin seized was unprecedented in Ventura County, and yet it represents only a small portion of what Arreguin’s organization distributed throughout California each month.
Despite intercepting and taping the phone conversations between Arreguin and the Ramirezes, authorities knew Arreguin only as Don Pepe. They eventually determined that he spent most of his time in Michoacán but that the heroin came from poppies grown farther south in the state of Guerrero. The bulk of the heroin was transported to Tijuana and then smuggled across the border in concealed compartments in cars to the distribution center in Oxnard. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration presented the evidence gathered by the Ventura County Combined Agency Team to Mexican authorities, and the latter began their own investigation. After two years of work they finally identified Don Pepe as Arreguin and arrested him in Michoacán’s fourth-largest city, Apatzingán. Transported to Mexico City, Don Pepe was paraded in front of reporters, while heavily armed police officers, their faces covered with knit masks and their chests with body armor, stood guard. Arreguin was clearly a big catch.
Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten is now trying to have Arreguin extradited to Ventura County for trial on various drug-trafficking charges. It could take a year or more to get Arreguin extradited. He may never be. Thus far, Mexican authorities have not revealed whether Don Pepe is a principal figure in La Familia, the powerful drug cartel that dominates Michoacán and has killed hundreds of rival drug traffickers, police, and soldiers. Considering the size of his operation, it would seem that he must have had at least a working relationship with the cartel. I suspect either that serious obstacles will arise to his extradition or that he will not live to be extradited. If he does arrive safe and sound here in Ventura County, his trial will be a sensation.
District Attorney Totten was elated at the success of the Combined Agency Team, saying, “It is the first time that local law enforcement has investigated and prosecuted a drug trafficking organization of this nature that is operating deep within the country of Mexico.” Totten’s language is a bit paradoxical. Thus far Ventura authorities have only prosecuted the portion of Arreguin’s drug-trafficking organization that was operating well within the country of the United States. We haven’t penetrated deep into Mexico; Mexican criminals have penetrated deep into the United States. These Mexican gangsters seem to come and go across our border with impunity and live openly among other illegal aliens—those who come here “only to work”—in our towns and cities. Why should such conditions prevail?
Until the last few years, most counties made no attempt to determine the immigration status of inmates in their jails. Ventura County was a pioneer in the effort to determine status but only because of the work of the congressman who represents a good portion of the county, Elton Gallegly. More than a decade ago he created a program that assigned federal immigration agents to the Ventura County jail. At that time only two agents worked the jail and usually for no more than two days per week. The agents were able to interview only a portion of the suspected illegal aliens who are arrested and jailed daily. Twenty or thirty were identified each day, but others passed through the system undetected. “There are many that we miss,” admitted agent David Wales in July 2006. He said that agents prioritized their interviews, starting with those suspected illegal aliens accused of the most heinous crimes. “There’s nothing that is 100 percent, but we work very hard to keep those folks from getting back on the street.”
Late in 2008 Gallegly’s program was improved by the Secure Communities Initiative, which allows county jails to compare inmates’ fingerprints with FBI criminal records and with immigration records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. The fingerprints housed in the database include only those of people who have had contact with the department. Nonetheless, since implementation of the Secure Communities Initiative, 18,000 inmates, charged with such Level I crimes as murder, kidnapping, and rape, have been identified as illegal aliens. Thus far, 4,000 of them have been deported. Another 25,000 illegal aliens charged with lesser crimes such as burglary have been deported—but that is only a fraction of those incarcerated. Just how many illegal aliens are in our county jails—not prisons—is a matter of speculation, but the figure is conservatively put at more than 100,000.
It is well and good that thousands of illegal aliens who have committed crimes such as murder or rape or burglary have been apprehended and deported, but why did we not stop them at our border in the first place?
Deportation gives the impression that the federal government is finally taking some real action. However, as long as the border remains porous, the illegal-alien felons simply return at their own discretion. For a time I kept a file that eventually ran into the hundreds on local illegal aliens who had been deported multiple times after committing serious felonies. There is now a new crime: committing a felony after previously being deported. It seems unlikely the new law will have much of an effect. Recently, Jose Uriel Zamora was arrested in Santa Paula, once upon a time a quaint Ventura County town that has seen its illegal-alien and gang population multiply severalfold over the last three decades. Zamora was charged with weapons violations, street terrorism, animal cruelty (mistreatment of pit bulls), and committing felonies after previously being deported. I expect to see Zamora tried, convicted, and deported. I also expect to see him back in Santa Paula or some other once-quaint California town before too many years have passed.
One Oxnard resident who was deported and came back to murder (allegedly) is Maximo Tamayo-Flores. A routine traffic stop led to Flores’s undoing. When a police officer approached the small pickup truck Flores was driving, a woman jumped out screaming. Flores roared off but crashed a short distance away and was arrested after a struggle. Speaking in Spanish, the woman claimed that Flores had murdered her husband, Raymond Quintero Rodriguez, and dumped his body over the side of the Pacific Coast Highway north of Ventura. The body was subsequently found on a rocky slope between the PCH and the surf. Flores was immediately charged with assault on a police officer and evading arrest. He was later charged with felony illegal entry into the United States, an offense applied to those who have been deported and have illegally reentered. It is expected that he will also soon be charged with the murder of Rodriguez.
Over the last 30 years I’ve followed hundreds of similar cases involving illegal aliens in Ventura County—and Ventura County is a relative paradise when compared with Los Angeles County. None of this has to be. We could deport not only all criminal illegal aliens but all illegal aliens if only we had the political will. That we don’t at least deport all illegal aliens who have doubled down by committing crimes—in addition to illegal entry—is especially galling.
For those who like to pretend that the problem with mass deportation of illegal aliens is not a matter of political will but of logistics, there is a precedent that stands their argument on its head. By the time that Dwight Eisenhower arrived in the White House in 1953, the numbers of illegal aliens from Mexico had climbed to some two million. Nearly all resided in three states: California, Arizona, and Texas. U.S. citizens in those states complained that illegal aliens undercut wages, committed crimes, caused a general deterioration of American communities, and had children who overcrowded local schools and burdened entire school districts. American businessmen and corporate farmers—with a good number of congressmen such as Sen. Lyndon Johnson in their pockets—argued that the labor provided by the illegal aliens was desperately needed. The argument was as fallacious then as it is now. There was no shortage of labor if the wages were good. In the Rio Grande Valley, for example, where most farm laborers were illegal aliens, wages were half of what American-born farm laborers earned in the rest of Texas. Employers of illegal aliens, then as now, were making out like bandits, while U.S. citizens were paying for it.
Early in 1954, President Eisenhower appointed retired Lt. Gen. Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing, who had commanded the 11th Airborne Division during World War II and was a West Point classmate of Ike’s, as the new commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Jumpin’ Joe, whose decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross and three Silver Stars, immediately formulated a plan for the apprehension and deportation of illegal aliens, naming it Operation Wetback. On D-day, June 17, 1954, some 750 INS agents began a sweep through Arizona and California. Within a month, Jumpin’ Joe’s boys had taken some 50,000 illegal aliens into custody, and an estimated half-million more, fearing arrest, had fled south of the border on their own.
During July, Swing sent his boys into Texas. By September they had 80,000 illegal aliens from the Lone Star state in custody. The INS estimated that another 500,000 to 700,000 illegal aliens left Texas voluntarily. There was a powerful incentive to do so. Those taken into custody were not simply dumped at the border but were put on buses and trains and escorted deep into Mexico, or on ships bound for Vera Cruz. Jumpin’ Joe kept his agents in the field to the end of the year, averaging 1,000 apprehensions per day. By 1955 nearly all illegal aliens had been repatriated, and for the rest of the decade, illegal border crossings were rare. The chief of the Border Patrol from 1960-73, Donald Coppock, said when interviewed in 2007 that, if Ike and Jumpin’ Joe were in charge of immigration enforcement today, they would rid the country of illegal aliens “in a minute.” He’s right.
This article first appeared in the June 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
"Whether or not they want to work, they have already committed a crime by illegally entering the United States."
Maybe I use a simplistic definition of crime, but there is no act of aggression against another person here.
It is perhaps a civil violation at most, but a crime? The act of movement is not criminal.
Try going illegally into any other country in the world and see whether you have committed a crime.
Excellent article.
Well said! I particularly like the part about the "logistical" problem deportation supposedly presents. Mr. McGrath has successfully shown that the problem here is really one of will: the elites and their corporate cronies have absolutely no desire to solve something they don't even see as a problem; in fact it's not a problem; it's a huge asset.
The act of movement is not criminal unless it was White Europeans and Americans during the 17th-19th centuries.
I'm not sure Ike and Jumpin Joe could buck the political and money interests who benefit by unfettered illegals. Governor Rick Perry of Texas is a prime example of one who is owned by the farm, construction, food service industries, and his own political ambitions. Thus he opposes any measures to deter and deport illegals.
Where there is a will there is a way. No will in this country.
"It is perhaps a civil violation at most, but a crime? The act of movement is not criminal."
Spare us the libertarian morality Mr. Sanjay.
Daniel Maxwell @7:
Libertarian morality? An oxymoronic contradiction in terms if I've ever heard one.
The real issue us the changes in American civilization caused by mass illegal immigration. Illegal aliens may cause an increase in crime, but this can always be met with enhanced police methods--the prison-industrial complex always needs more fodder. The real point is that America is being transformed culturally by the collapse of the frontiers. Of course, one can argue that this is the intent: certainly multiculturalism provides the ideological justification for these changes. Traditional American culture is to be replaced by a globalized order, with a patina of liberal rationalizations.
It's also interesting how the federal government can employ massive police and military efforts to suppress drug trafficking and drug use both within and without the USA. Yet at the same time, illegal immigration gets a free ride, more or less. The federal government is challenging the constitutionality of Arizona's immigration law; the same federal government which supports asset forfeiture, no-knock raids, roving wiretaps, and SWAT teams on all fronts of the drug war.
Another example of anarcho-tyranny, perhaps?
Mr. K Smith, I enjoy going legally to most countries in the world, because it is easy and gives more than enough peace of mind to me and everybody else involved.
That's because airports are places with potential for danger, and all caution is necessary. But otherwise, Europeans have no problem seeing other Europeans move in between their nations by land. Although even airport caution is simple and minimal in European nations, while American airports are some of the most paranoid places where even American passengers sometimes end up treated badly.
Now Daniel, before we accuse each other of partisan agendas, how does a man avoid looking fatuous to another man? One of those ways is to not be alarmist. So far, assigning a Mexican's movement as a dangerous situation perhaps falls just short of alarmism. But then - "Whether or not they want to work, they also come here to have babies." GOD FORBID!
Anyway, here's a funny fact - this very article itself admits that illegal aliens will obey the law. Whaddyaknow?! "The INS estimated that another 500,000 to 700,000 illegal aliens left Texas voluntarily", it says. The very threat of having to enter any kind of minor or major confrontation with authorities makes people want to avoid it! The same thing happened in Arizona when the mere announcement of the new law had thousands leaving, as a recent Associated Press article revealed.
All I feel is that people are entitled to a peace of mind, whether it's a matter of seatbelts on intra-city roads, security checks at airports, and yes, unauthorized movement. The whole point of government WAS peace of mind, so that we can get on with everything else. Peace of mind, Daniel. Don't you like peace of mind? I like peace of mind.
I liked the country the way it was before we had the 'peace of mind' of 'unauthorized movement'. But it is apparent from your reply that you dont even try to understand the point.
Thomas Fleming is right about most libertarians. They always end up agreeing the globalist agenda, but find free market ways to justify it. Let's all hold hands as we march into the Brave New World where we're all individuals divorced from our past and countries are nothing but geographic accidents.
A very good article by Dr. McGrath. Even better was his recent New American survey of Joseph Swing and how Operation Wetback worked in the 1950s.
Mr. Maxwell, I am not an expert on libertarianism, but I know enough about it to be quite sure that free markets or globalism are not in their agenda overtly or subconciously.
Strawmen, Mr. Maxwell.
It comes down to this. There are already laws on immigration. And they are being enforced. And they are having results.
If a few official actions in Texas result in entire towns worth of immigrants packing up and leaving on their own, what's the problem?
What was still there that causes worry?
If Mexican parents in Arizona will even pull their children out of day care centers and schools in order to run back to Mexico before the law is even implemented - do you still think there is an immigration problem? (see: http://www.creators.com/liberal/marc-dion/whaddaya-know-illegal-immigrants-will-obey-the-law.html)
As for crime, you can hardly say there isn't anything done about it. Your nation has one of the most pervasive, well-equipped police force ever seen in the world, the kind that does several SWAT raids every week on even the likes of Lovell Mixon.
Just because lawmakers are impotent doesn't mean law enforcement is.
Globalist agenda? I think you only forgot Illuminati and Knights Templar as additional arguments. Perhaps throw in a few Lizardmen and black helicopters there, and now you have unbreakable arguments which I can never refute.
#10. "I enjoy legally going to most countries in the world...."
?????? Yes, but what country do you belong to and are willing to defend, at the peril of your life if necessary. In my long observation, to approach an issue in terms of personal benefit, is the hallmark of libertarianism (and other leftists also, in a different way).
You have raised an interesting thing there.
See, I am always looking for new perspectives, new understandings, and new facts, and I am always willing to change a position if I knew better. Which is why I visit places like Chronicles, where a lot of bold contrarian positions are held.
But I am not a nationalist, although that has very little to do with the fact that I took interest in classical liberalism.
India is not a real country. It's a geographic region defined by former British colonial territory. I don't identify with people who don't speak the same language, who don't have the same culture, and who don't have the same ethnic history. So for me, that ends up being most of India. As someone currently living in northwest India, I feel I am much closer to Pakistanis than Tamils, Telegus, and others, although still not much. Even so, I was born on the eastern side, close to Bangladesh, as a part Oraon, part Lhasan. So quite simply, I was not born Hindu, and I was not born as a descendant of Aryans like many northwest Indians are - and alien differences in manners come up quite often, like certain phrases which are only used in my household and not others.
When I went to Bangalore, I felt like a foreigner, and barely got by at all, except among those who'd speak English.
In this respect, I grew up feeling that defining issues in terms of nationalism is oversimplifying. You never chose the country in which you were born, and those who formed its governments and borders a few decades ago did it without your consent. The leaders of the Republic of India often claim a common goal and a common purpose in policies just because they think we have a common history, but we don't, and less so those many of us who are not Hindus. And I don't care for their goals and purposes, because it has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with what I as a group or a community ever needed. I am not some Randian individualist, but that still doesn't mean I consent to whatever arbitrary purposes someone else claims to represent on my behalf. Just the same, I never really opposed the presence here of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh merely on the basis of borders drawn only 40 years ago.
Obviously, matters are different in the American context, but I feel illegal immigration is an overblown distraction issue in Western nations.
In Western countries, legal immigration from the Third World is as big of a problem as, if not a bigger problem than, illegal immigration:
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/070731_nd.htm
..
Mr Sanjay probably doesn't live in the United States, at least not in any of the states sharing a porous border with Mexico, which explains his nescience. Yes indeed, God Forbid if illegals come to this country to work, and especially to have babies. Damn the judicial twisting of the 14th amendment. I will have peace of mind when my government actually defends our shores and leaves all else alone.
I am not a nationalist either, but I like to think I am a patriot.
History has a place for men unwilling or unable to defend their land and families---the dustbin.
Prateek Sanjay: "I feel illegal immigration is an overblown distraction issue in Western nations."
I suppose when one is not a child of the West, he isn't as concerned about the West's demographic demise via Third World immigration.
There is no such thing as the demise of the West. In any shape or form. It never happened, nor will happen.
Look at any random Western nation. Say...Netherlands. The Dutch are well-to-do and happy now. They were well-to-do and happy 100 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 200 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 400 years ago.
As opposed to, say, Russia. Russia was "emerging" in Tsarist days. It was "emerging" in Soviet days. It has been "emerging" in the post-Soviet days.
Truth is that the geographic advantage of Western nations in their proximity and mobility has made a huge difference since the days when galleys could harbour around the waters of the Italian and Greek peninsulas and bring ideas, people, and inventions as rapidly possible. It's very circular - high civilization comes up faster in places of high civilization.
The United States sent a man to the moon and decoded the human genome, and now twelve million Mexicans will take that away? Could it happen?
Well, it's telling that Mexico never sent anyone to the moon or decoded any genomes, despite being established for as long as the US. Also, when the moon was landed upon, the country was less than 1% Hispanic. I don't mean to denigrate Mexico...I think Mexicans should have some pride in their country and stay there. It's merely that if we find such aspects of national greatness like moon landings important, we should probably discourage mass developing-world immigration.
"Mr. Maxwell, I am not an expert on libertarianism, but I know enough about it to be quite sure that free markets or globalism are not in their agenda overtly or subconciously."
No, but they always end up supporting their agenda, even if that isnt their stated goal.
"Globalist agenda? I think you only forgot Illuminati and Knights Templar as additional arguments. Perhaps throw in a few Lizardmen and black helicopters there, and now you have unbreakable arguments which I can never refute."
Did I say that? Now whos attacking a strawman. Globalists = the international cartel of bankers and big business, in cooperation with big government. They are almost interchangeable by nation. Dont think they exist? Open your eyes, they most certainly do. But you've come on here as an apologist for Goldman-Sachs so I dont know what to expect from you.
@21 Comment by Prateek Sanjay
"There is no such thing as the demise of the West. In any shape or form. It never happened, nor will happen."
I would be careful making obviously indefensible statements like this. No country, culture, or empire can ever be assured escape from some kind of demise. The West has been in decline for a while now, especially culturally, and now demographically.
We no longer produce great art (well, not in the same quantity), adhere to the great moral teachings of Christianity or even classical thought, much of our government is corrupt and getting worse, and to top it all off, our economies are standing on stilts.
"Look at any random Western nation. Say…Netherlands. The Dutch are well-to-do and happy now. They were well-to-do and happy 100 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 200 years ago. They were well-to-do and happy 400 years ago."
You are ignoring the present and the future. Just because I was rich yesterday, does not mean I will be rich tomorrow. I may be more likely to retain my wealth in the future, but that is a very thin argument.
Also, I think you may be projecting your own attitudes about nationhood, community, and culture into a context (The West) that is extremely different from that which engendered them. Just be aware that, unlike India, most cultures in the west have sovereignty over the geographical area they inhabit. Thus, their attitudes are different because their situations, problems, and duties are different.
I think the problem is complicated, because it is very difficult to determine the necessary conditions for successful establishment and prosperity of a species, a tribe, or a culture. A few tribes of European extraction were very successful in settling the United States. I understand the most successful pioneer cultures (for instance the Scotch-Irish) were developed in relatively sparsely populated areas that were rapidly gaining population and becoming more contentious. Hence they became adept at developing the undeveloped, and using violence first, and last.
These skills were very useful in expropriating the native tribes and making the land their own. However, these skills are not so useful anymore. Now it appears the pioneer tribes and cultures are withering. Birth rates are lower, incidence of dysfunctional features is higher. They are no longer "thrifty".
Where I come from, the Intermountain West, it reminds me of a stand of Larch (Tamarack) that have grown old. After a fire, on good sites, the Larch will quickly repopulate the area. They are fast growing, fire resistant, and long lived. They will produce a stand, in combination with other seral species, of very tall and straight timber.
But they are shade intolerant. The seedlings will not thrive in the shade of their parents. They struggle and die. They are crowded out by the offspring of the shade tolerant shrubs, trees, and weeds. After say, three hundred years the only Larch remaining are the fire scarred relics; still towering but surrounded by crowd loving, aggressive species. They will not dominate again until a catastrophic fire or other stand replacing event occurs.
Mr. Sanjay reminds me of a couple of questions. How many Americans would wish to migrate to India, and attempt to live in conditions perhaps an order of magnitude more crowded than conditions in the average American urban area? Second, why are Americans so resistant to relearning the skills of living well on a very meager allowance? How can they expect to compete in a world where the resources of land and its products become ever more scarce, or more expensive?
@21. it is in fact the opposite. They support something they call separatism. Libertarianism is not about personal benifits (selfishness) either. This is a very common misconception. It is about how to counter the ever encroaching and ever expanding forms of democraticism. I will agree that most of their narratives leave a lot to be desired, but everyone is searching for answers and noone has a coherent anti-statist program yet, not even the paleos.
"How can they expect to compete in a world where the resources of land and its products become ever more scarce, or more expensive?"
Because it won't happen. Only 5% of American land is urbanized.
This too happens in a country with the largest urban sprawls ever known. The figure is *lower* for Third World countries, which pack in far more people in smaller space, since they have less financial resources to expand housing, transportation, and other utilities.
To give you the whole image, ancient Rome was the population of Michigan in an area one-tenth the size of Detroit (source: Sowell, Applied Economics). Overpopulation is defined as a ratio of people to a particular resource. This is a tautology - if people are poor and lack resources, they will always be "overpopulated". They are not poor, because they are crowded in; they are crowded in, because they are poor.
Resources are not getting more scarce or expensive. Real prices of copper remained the same across several decades, even with ever increasing demand. As for oil, it will never run out in our grandchildren's lifetimes. Scarcity of other resources means that scarcity of natural resources is even further limited by the inability to use them. To justify the high costs of oil exploration, drilling, and actual operations, nobody undertakes any of those things until prices start rising very high. And when they do start, a single oil well would have only 20% of its capacity used, and it would still take two decades to pay off the investment.
What we six billion humans do is gulp very little, and when we really really need more, we have to make tremendous effort to dig a little more and a gulp very little of it. The total known reserves in 1930 were a small fraction of total known reserves in 1940, which were a small fraction of what they were in 1950, and so on.
Mr. Sanjay, I am speaking of the rising value of real estate relative to median income in this country, due to increasing population and structural economic changes. True, great advances in technology have driven down the real price of some commodities, but at heavy cost to some of the traditional resource based communities in my area.
Increases in personal productivity limit the number of individuals necessary to provide the needed products from farming, ranching, logging, mining, etc. The level of investment to get started has also increased significantly. These were traditional industries for many of the European peoples that settled the Intermountain West. Not to say you can't make it here because many still do, but the necessary skill sets may be challenging to acquire. State and federal subsidies have become fairly important.
The point is that things change and many people get left behind. Sure for some individuals and some tribes the goods get cheaper and life gets better. It would appear that life is better in Arizona for many illegals, or they wouldn't be there. But for many other people, their economic situation is not changing for the better. They cannot afford to pay rent, let alone buy a home. And it isn't always an easy task to convince them that they are to blame for their failure.
Sowell, an expert on the housing market, seems to indicate that the rising housing prices are a result of artificial scarcity being created by local laws on housing.
Giving low interest rate loans to people to acquire expensive housing only drove prices further. Immigration has nothing to do with it, and I doubt it can greatly aggravate a problem that would exist just as much without immigration.
No real solution to it, since you can't defeat hundreds of local laws, just the way you can't defeat the hundreds of local government Enclosure Acts in England that drove thousands of English people into poverty. It's the general cruelty of human behaviour that can turn even municipal authorities and city halls into terrifying oppressors - as many in British towns can attest.
"I don’t identify with people who don’t speak the same language, who don’t have the same culture, and who don’t have the same ethnic history."
and
"You never chose the country in which you were born, and those who formed its governments and borders a few decades ago did it without your consent."
Mr. Sanjay - I continue to be astonished by some of the things you write here. I never chose the family into which I was born, but I will always come to the defense of every last kinsman that I have, even if I do not always agree with them. I also didn't choose to be an American, but I am one and will always defend America against all of its enemies (both foreign and domestic). America was not founded yesterday. It has been around long enough to have its own substantial history and its own unique culture. That is why the patriots that frequent this site are opposed to both illegal and excessive legal immigration. We do not identify with most recent immigrants because they do not identify with us. It's that simple. We are called bigots, racists, nativists, and nationalists, but the truth is that we are Americans. Too many of the people living in America are not Americans and we want them out.
There's the irony of the whole thing: If homogenous culture is grounds for one common nation, then it can also be grounds for not believing in one common nation.
Those two things are not one and the same, are they?
So either a man can accept all those within his geographic boundaries as American and stick to it, or consider one definition of American culture, and work on excluding all the Italians, Poles, Russian Jews, and other latecomers by some means (maybe draw new boundaries around New Jersey and New York), but a man can't have it both ways.
Let's go back to this idea. If you were among the many German ethnics living in the Czech nation after WW1, would you cite culture as the grounds to start rebelling and breaking the law along with the rest to become a separate nation, or would you be a proud Czech patriot and condemn others for not being patriotic?
Beyond all this talk of nationalism and ethnicity (which are never the same), it comes back to what Isaiah Berlin said: "Reluctant tolerance is the only solution".
"“Reluctant tolerance is the only solution”."
Says who? Why, another imported foreigner like Berlin, who can lecture people whats best for the natives in their own country.
"Let’s go back to this idea. If you were among the many German ethnics living in the Czech nation after WW1, would you cite culture as the grounds to start rebelling and breaking the law along with the rest to become a separate nation, or would you be a proud Czech patriot and condemn others for not being patriotic?"
I know this wasnt directed at me, but honestly I would either do 1) what the Sudeten Germans did do, hope for a pan-Germanism revival 2) move to Germany proper
This thread demonstrates two of the terminal cancers of popular American patriotism. 1) The false religious belief that America has a divine mission to export freedom and democracy (the shining city on a hill) to every individual on the face of the earth or what is the same thing, to allow every individual on the face of the earth to come to America and experience the divine virtues of individual freedom and democracy. 2) Patria, language, customs, history, cult, blood and soil don't have a damn thing to do with it.
When any ideal, notion, hair-brained idea and/or assertion is equal to every other, then truth is denied and lying becomes the strong mans means of restoring order to the chaos which such a meaningless culture always creates. The Tea Party mantra,"Less Government and More War" is an example of such lunacy.