Shit, I'm still trying to figure out why the people here who hate their country (mostly the entire left wing of this country) just don't pack up their fucking shit and immigrate to the countries they want to turn us into.
Oh no... those countries are poor and they would have no tit from which to suck. This transformation... this "wealth distribution" only works until the makers have been bled dry. After that, we'll be the same as Cuba and nobody will care about becoming an illegal alien.
Right, and Libertarians believe that welfare is not the role of the federal government. In fact, Libertarians believe in ending welfare entirely and letting charity fill it's place. If you couple that with the immigration aspect, illegals would get nothing for coming here, and there would be no wealth "sucked from the US citizenry".
We're not dead wrong, you just are looking through a very nearsighted view. You can't piecemeal libertarian approach. It is an overall philosophy that is usually interdependent on it's own principles. In the aforementioned illegal immigration issues, if you got the government out of the welfare business, privatized education, and required everyone to pay for their own medical care, illegals wouldn't find it all that attractive to come here. All the countries you mention that are tough on illegal immigration don't have giant walls on their border. It's just that illegals can't get the benefits they can when they come here. Solve the welfare issue, solve education and medical treatment, and you solve the immigration issue.
Let me see if I understand you. If we don't give them any benefits, they won't want to come. But what about jobs? What if we penalize big companies for hiring illegals? What if those jobs are given to people here (US citizens) who are on welfare (assuming they are capable and just freeloading)? Are you saying if those issues were resolved, we could leave the borders open, and actually get back to legal immigration for those who wish to leave their home country? Hmmmm.....
What about "jobs"? Those utilizing illegals for labor say, "Americans don't want to do those jobs". I say BS! Deport the illegals and, tell the "I don't wanna do that" crowd "take those jobs and earn a paycheck... you're getting NOTHING from the government from now on". A little hunger is a great motivator.
Exactly my point. If one can work, but has opted for food stamps and welfare instead, one can certainly do those jobs. I enjoyed very few of the jobs I had in my pre-navy years, but I did them. They didn't pay well, but I paid my bills. One of those jobs was de-tasseling corn under the hot mid-west summer sun. It doesn't get much worse than that...trust me. I've also pitch-forked watermelons onto a moving trailer and have thrown hay bales with a hook. Those were more of the worst, followed by many, many restaurant jobs. All that said, you can see why I have no soft spot for cry babies who don't want to work or think they are above a certain type of work. On the other hand, if the benefits weren't so damn good for some of those on them....
Here, again, I would point to another law that should not be in place to solve the work issue: Minimum wage. Remove minimum wage and let market conditions decide wages. The reason companies hire illegals is because they can pay them below minimum wage. Remove that silly law and the market determines what someone will work for. If I could hire a US national for the same price as an illegal, why would I hire an illegal at all? If you think US nationals would not take the jobs, then I refer you again to the Libertarian argument on how there should be no government welfare. Then, as Scat says, hunger and out of work motivates people to work these jobs.
Well, that raises another issue, which is that Libertarians have a tendency to embrace pie in the sky solutions that are just not going to happen. It's like when they asked Ron Paul at a debate what he would do with someone who showed up at the ER with a serious condition and no insurance or money. Toss them out on the curb to die is the principled answer, but that isn;t goign to happen. Depend on private charity sounds good, and it is the way we did it for a long time, but at some point that doesn't cut it either. I fully agree that a prerequisite to open bordes or labor mobility is to dismantle the welfare state or at least make it inaccessible for illegal, but we are moving in the opposite direction. As I believe Milton Friedman said, you can't have open borders and a welfare state. Get back to me on the border issue when you have fixed welfare, but I' not holding my breath. The othr thing that annoys me is people, often Libertarians, talking about the border being "militarized", meaning I guess having some actual security there. They claim it prevents illegals from moving back nd forth freely, so they just stay here. Whatever the merits of that claim, it is totaly preposterous in a post-9/11 wworld to suggest we shouldn;t watch our borders carefully and do everythng possible to secure them.