As MF says, the moment you put welfare, suddenly you end up wanting to restrict people's freedoms. In any case, being inelegible for welfare is a lot kinder than having quotas of how many people can come in, absurd legal fees, the unpredictability of lotteries, and all of that.
Obamacare is basically the worst of both worlds.
That is incorrect. Before the Hart-Celler act in 1965, immigration was restricted to European countries with a quota system based on national origin. We even had health checks and required residency of up to 14 years before citizenship was granted (changed to 5 years with the Naturalization Law of 1802). Up until the 1960's, America was about 90% white, so 1800's to early 1900's immigration law has very little to do with "what it is" today.
It seems there was a law passed in the 20's that originated this, reversal/change in 65. The original law had no quotas for latin american or bilateral countries or professionals.
This would imply that it wasnt the raise of welfare what caused the increased restrictions of immigration, historically.
I should devote more time to studying the american history of immigration to support claims like the one I said.
Yeah, the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924 introduced the quota system. However, laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 responded demographic changes well before a formal quota system. And, of course, citizenship was restricted to free white people of good character, until the Naturalization Act of 1870 and the 14th amendment in 1868. So, without a welfare system or possibility of citizenship there was little incentive for non-whites to try to come to America.
> This would imply that it wasn't the [rise] of welfare what caused the increased restrictions of immigration
It certainly wasn't only welfare. We had immigration and citizenship laws well before the start of a welfare system in the 1930's. For example, early Chinese immigration was driven by low-skill railway construction and mining jobs. So their exclusion was because they drove down wages and were culturally incompatible.
I would say that immigration law has become significantly more complicated as it is opened up to as many people as possible. However, I don't think it gets more restrictive than "free white people of good character"... If that rule were applied today, less than a tenth of the world population would be eligible.
Repelling 14th amendment would have had interesting consequences as well (like creating a self-reproducing 2nd class citizen population) so control of the borders seems to be the most rational and practical solution.
I'm pretty sure that the children of non-citizens would just be deported along with their parents.
1. https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2017/OIG-...
Are we unable to, or do we choose not to? It's not like we're lacking in transportation infrastructure or the ability to track who is or is not a citizen. In most cases we wouldn't even need to physically remove them. Just preventing non-citizens from working or collecting welfare should cause self-deportation.
> they do not even track visa overstays ATM
Is there some technical reason that prevents them from doing that, or is it just political opposition?
I'd imagine, in a hypothetical timeline where the 14th amendment could be repelled, the political balance is very different from the current one and the laws enabling the current situation could be changed just as well. However in the real world even the 14th repeal is highly unlikely.
The Fed has the final say on every matter. Read the supremacy clause (article 6, clause 2, in the constitution). States that say "weed is legal" are only "getting away" with that because enforcement of the federal law on that matter is unpopular and probably a waste of time. It's a similar case with "sanctuary cities", although ICE is starting to operate in those.
Beyond just technical authority granted by the constitution, you have to remember that the Fed controls around a third of state budgets through various forms of federal aid, meaning they can withhold funding... See Kate's Law for an example of that.
Not on every matter but the matter which is purview of the Fed. I.e. on the matters, which the Constitution gives to the Fed. It's been stretched quite far through the commerce clause but at the end the Fed's interior power is limited by design.
Practically it does not matter since the Fed has to rely on the states to enforce the law. So even with the immigration, which is in purview of Fed, we have 10s of millions of illegals (the exact number is not even known, think about it for a second) still in the country because states prevent the enforcement.
>Beyond just technical authority granted by the constitution, you have to remember that the Fed controls around a third of state budgets through various forms of federal aid, meaning they can withhold funding... See Kate's Law for an example of that.
Exactly. See if it will ever pass. And if it passed - see a multi-decade legal battle waged by states to kill it in courts.
The only practical solution I see is to shift welfare to the state level. Then the states will become interested not only in the quantity but also the quality of their population. Though the states are going to fight it even harder than the direct immigration enforcement IMHO.
Yeah, and there's no limit on how far it can be stretched. States only have control over what the Fed isn't already in charge of.
> Practically it does not matter since the Fed has to rely on the states to enforce the law.
What? ICE and Homeland Security are federal programs. Cooperation with local authorities is great, but state authorities aren't the ones removing people from the country.
> Exactly. See if it will ever pass.
I don't know enough to say what states can do to demand funding through the court system, but it passed in the House.
> The only practical solution I see is to shift welfare to the state level.
I'm sure that would be a good start, since those costs would be reflected in, and limited by, state-level taxes. However, that alone doesn't deal with people hiring illegals and the impact that has on the wages of citizens, or crime by illegals. At some point, enforcement is required.
I am quite aware of this.
>Cooperation with local authorities is great, but state authorities aren't the ones removing people from the country.
Sure. Imagine you are an officer of ICE. You sit in the nice office in the federal building in LA. How does your day go by? You deport people? Which people? They are not exactly lining up to your doors to get deported, are they? So you need to find them somehow, bring them to court, get a judgment and then find them again and remove them from the country. This is the police work and you are not equipped to do it. You don't have beat cops, you don't get information from various agencies illegals use (from schools to social services, all under state control despite spending federal money). You were supposed to get referrals from the local law enforcement. You are not getting any. You act on tips and bust 1000 people a quarter in a city, which likely has several million illegals.
>I don't know enough to say what states can do to demand funding through the court system, but it passed in the House.
If only passing the House had been enough to make a law...
> At some point, enforcement is required.
Sure, but then states would actually help enforcement instead of impeding it as they are doing now.
In the 1800's and early 1900's, immigration was open
A foreigner cannot live in the united states today, health check or not, without some monetary or time commitment to a specific set of people.
It's not about finite vs infinite, it's about the notion that currently "the good social infrastructure" in the first world can cover a small portion of the global population, doesn't have much excess capacity, and is obviously not sufficient to provide a comparable level of life/service/whatever to everyone in the world. Dividing it equally would mean a regression to the global average which is unacceptably low compared to first world standards, so the first world would never accept this.
We need to do this, everything else is nationalism
Unf. I don't think your calculations sum up
And yes: It's called "costs of living" and you ignore it (to be higher in the west") and then you blame them (for your own wishful ignorance)
Where do you live?