I know health care reform is the hot topic of the day, but as Orlando was working on our plumbing while Carlos and Jesus were doing the yard work, and having passed a couple of hispanic guys unloading a truck by the Italian restaurant down the street, I was thinking about immigration, illegal and otherwise.
(Though before I dive into it, allow me to point you to digby's thoughts on the topic of the Stupak amendment to the health care bill, and some replies on same.)
And my thought was, can't the G.O.P. do simple math?
("Obviously not," I hear you cry. Yes, you're right: they think cutting taxes will increase government revenue; they think giving ACORN a few million dollars will bankrupt us, but fighting trillion dollar wars won't; etc. Bear with me anyway.)
If figures are right, there are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
That's a lot of people. I mean, a lot a lot. It'sbasically the entirety of the L.A. metro area. I mean, it's a lot.
So let's assume that you can snap your fingers and gather all those people up with no effort at all. None. SNAP! 11 million people appear, ready to be deported. Now what?
Where are you going to put them? Empty all of L.A. and house them there? Put them in a corner of Texas or New Mexico where they can wait to be processed? Better be a damn big corner. And what would you do with them? Hand them shovels and seeds and tell them, "Good luck! You're number 2, 459,345--we should get to you by August of 2011; better start tilling and sowing!" and hope it doesn't turn into an environmental disaster?
But let's say you figure it out. You won't; but let's say you do. ("We'll make them stay right where we find them while we process them, then when we're ready we'll do the finger-snapping thing! Yeah! That's the ticket!") So now you have 11 million people handy. How are you going to get them home? Bus? Let's do a little math:
A typical school bus--you know, the yellow kind without air conditioning or seat belts--seats between 75-90 folks. Let's go with 100, just to be conservative. If you want to transport 11 million people to Mexico, you're talking about 110,000 school bus trips. How much diesel fuel is that going to take? How many bus drivers? How many hours of travel?
Or put them on a train. The CalTrain double-decker "baby bullet" trains seat about 150 folks per car. For 11 million people, that works out to around 74,000 cars. I've seen multi-locomotive trains hauling 75-100 cars on ocassion--not often--so that would work out to 740 100-car train, full-loaded.
(And we haven't even considered issues such as luggage, children, sanitation for longer trips, the processing speed of the U.S. and Mexican governments, and other related issues.)
Bear in mind that the government couldn't even get ice to New Orleans after a single hurricane while you contemplate the above--and remember too that New Orleans had only about a third of a million folks in it. So your problem is to move the entire population of New Orleans 33 times from wherever they are to Mexico. I'm not too sanguine about the possibility, personally.
This is just the simple math of logistics, too. I'm not an expert in this stuff--I'm sure it's way more complicated. And if the simple math shows it to be this bad, what's the more complicated situation going to look like? (Answer: Ugly as hell.)
Not to mention what would happen when all the Orlandos, Carloses, Jesuses, and all the other folks who work the jobs nobody else wants to do (Picking strawberries? Cleaning out office buildings? Laying sewer pipe?) up an leave, all 11 million of them. Imagine all of New York City--not just the adults, but the whole friggin' city--plus the whole of Newark, Nassau county, and most of Connecticut just pulling up stakes and leaving. I mean, seriously: think about it. Don't think it wouldn't have some kind of massive effect for everyone else? What happens to the Northeast power grid? The trains? The airports? Imagine New York City being blacked out, but forever, instead of a few hours. It's mind-boggling.
So it's clear: Republicans can't do simple math. Remind me again why they are ever put in charge?
Updated: More examples of bad Republican math. I rest my case.
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O'Really?
aliquot
Dave Cullen
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The GOP idiots thought they could lead their moronic adherents around by the nose, but they've already lost control of the mob. As ever, the Republican Party is its own worst enemy.
Jeanette: I think we all get used to looking at issues in a complex and convoluted way. Sometimes it helps to reduce it down. For me, at least.
John: I'm only talking about the people who are already here. And as the son of a Navy guy who had depth charges dropped on his haid by Soviet destroyers, I'm plenty appalled at our Veteran's policies, too. Which is why I contribute to a number of Veteran support organizations.
John: given the issues I outline here, what is your suggestion?
i'm not a republican or a democrat or a liberal or a conservative. it's not the immigrant part that causes me concern, but the illegal part. why can't we make it easier for these people to come in? of course our standard of living will decline, but overall the hemisphere's will improve.
the real shame is that the one big advantage we have here is that people want to come here; to study, to work, to live. china will never have that. we should make it very easy for the smartest of them to study and live here. otherwise they will eat our lunch.
i live in beijing and georgia. i just visited a friend in guangzhou; his apartment development has 200,000 people living in it. much nicer than my brother the college professor in ny can afford, more bmws, lexus, mercedes than i've ever seen. this phenomenon is much bigger than petty political rantings and has huge implications for ourselves and our children. our current political parties seem so diverted by this type of small vision squabbles that they can't see where things are going. the recent year is such a disaster; both parties seem incapable of doing more than stealing our children's future and spending our parents savings by borrowing and inflating us into a deeper and deeper hole. the east is just working, watching and waiting.
Stellaa: Hey, may be. Certainly the Bush folks were thinking about invading Iraq waaaay before they had even a faint excuse to do so. Because of the oil? Because of the connections to Haliburton? Because Saddam put out a contract on Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. is a vindictive jerk? Who knows?
Placebostudman: Certainly you're right in that a lot of Republicans use this issue in a cynical fashion, and don't really give a rip about "illegal immigration" or "border control" or "undocumented workers" or whatnot. Since the Nixon era, Republicans have spent a lot of effort in fanning the irrational fear of "the other" to help themselves get elected, be "the other" black, hispanic, gay, or what have you.
(and, Mr. Lammi, it's interesting to see that the last time we had high unemployment it was under Ronald Reagan's watch. No big surprise. The Repubs like to keep us angry at someone else for job loss while they keep the tax breaks intact for corporate outsourcing and destroy labor's rights to unionize.)
During Katrena, 1200 buses sat unused in New Orleans. Assume those buses carried 70 people per trip, and each bus made one trip to and back from Mexico from Los Angeles, Tuscon, San Antionio, etc. per day. 11 million illegal immigrants could be deported in 130 days.
That's just the unused buses in New Orleans.
USD 30K would give a family of six a good start back in Mexico/Central America. Heck, I know more than a few Murkins who would would jump at the chance to get nearly a year's worth of disability in one lump sum.
$6B direct infusion into the Mexican economy would probably do a lot more good than the billions we're spending to bribe their 12 ruling families now.
Course *keeping* everyone there might become an issue....
Not advocating this necessarily, just stating the facts. Personally, I think that the US should either open its borders or else enforce its immigration laws equally.
Health care that would cover all Americans and allow people to get timely help for small problems is too expensive! But we have no problems making you pay for two wars, which, in the long run will benefit bum fuck nobody!
For all their faults, I'll stick witih the Democrats.
Secondly, the solution is so simple it boggles the mind that no one else can see it.
You start an American Foreign Legion. Any illegal immigrant found is rounded up and autodrafted into it. Then you send all of them to wars we just make up and pull out of our ass. (Like the last few,) and you fund this with money from the bits and pieces of the 'wall' that we tear down between us and Mexico. Additonal funding could also be gained by firing all of the border guards.
Let them come I say, we'll have the world licked in no time!
Loved this, Douglas. R
Another point--why is there an assumption that all these people are Mexican? Believe it or not, there's a whole world out there. If it's just a US-Mexico problem, well, Mexico is kind of an unstable state, sort of like Texas but more interesting. Why don't you just join up with them, make everyone legal, and all you middle-class whiners can buy up Mexican property while they're up here ruthlessly picking your lettuce and tending your gardens?
Don't try it with Canada though. We'll just keep sending you our comedians and right-wing blowhards, and you left-of-American-centre-ists can just keep pretending you're moving here when it gets bad enough there...
To state the obvious: there is a split in the Republican party over immigration, and very few Republican politicians advocate rounding up all illegal immigrants for immediate deportation. The Bush administration, for example, was looking for an amnesty for illegal immigrants (as provided earlier by the Republican Ronald Reagan). The Republican Congress effectively split with the Bush administration over the issue.
Amongst those Congressmen pushing for stronger controls, the idea is not to find and immediately deport all immigrants - that is conceded to be a logistical problem (Republicans can do that much math). Rather, the idea is to reduce further illegal immigration and/or reduce the amount of illegals immigrants in the country currently. This can be by making it difficult to find work or receive services, thus encouraging people to leave 'voluntarily' over time - so you don't need a fleet of buses.
Put another way, Republicans like to attack liberal government programs on the grounds that liberals don't understand the government can't solve enormous problems. This distorts the liberal positions that a) sometimes the government can get a lot done, and b) something is better than nothing. This post makes the same mistake. It would be tough to exile 11 million people overnight, but it's a lot easier to 'incentivize' a few million to leave gradually.
To sum up: Republicans may be wrong on immigration and pursuing the wrong goals, but it's silly to say they are innumerate.
However, the Republican party is not currently being run by rational, thoughtful people and, in fact, I am most definitely hearing the "deport them all!" line from well-know Republicans. Tom Tancredo is an obvious example, but there are certainly plenty more. The Sarah Palin wing of the party is in charge, with all that that implies.
As to whether they're innumerate, I submit that a party that continues to insist on "tax cuts uber alles," even in the face of nearly three decades of contrary evidence--not to mention the plain, common-sense idea that decreasing taxes would decrease, rather than increase, government revenue--is a party that does indeed have trouble with simple math.
I don't purport to have the solution but this all got me thinking:
(1) There is no other contiguous land border like US/Mexico in terms of the wealth difference (perceived and real). It's sui generis, you can't make comparisons. I.e., they are going to come.
(2) In 1985 a group of right-wingers decided to form a think tank, called it the Center for Immigration Studies and began peddling the repackage and wholly uninspired idea that people cost money. You do. I do. They do. Run a population rate against a past or projected liquidated budget and you get a cost: Did you know that an illegal immigrant costs the state X million in fire department coverage? Guess what, so do you. That number is not and cannot be reduced to actual cost. Police/fire departments, hospitals, and schools are not allowed to track “illegal” status as a demographic or even ask. There is no real way to run the numbers—at least no report I have seen.
(3) Virtually all second generation Latino's speak English. Two thirds of third generation Latinos speak only English. Language shift studies show that Latinos completely assimilate within two generations.
(4) U.S., unlike Europe and Japan, has a stable growing population and work force. Immigrant communities historically tend to have more children.
(5) Immigration is an economic, perhaps social issue. The dialogue, however, has been hijacked and forced into the moral sphere. People are interviewed on CNN and asked whether they would break the law and enter another country if they were poor. People routinely say, "no, there is no excuse for breaking the law. It's wrong." It's "wrong." It's immoral. It's obvious that once the dialogue gets stuck on morality we may have a nice philosophical discussion on the rights of man vis a vis a state that isn't even your own, but we aren't going to address any issues.
(6) Undocumented workers pay taxes. Rent goes to landlords who pay property taxes, they pay sales tax, others have taxes withheld on fake social security numbers and stay with the treasury--based on income, they'd be owed refunds.
(7) Our "border" policy has nothing to do with the border. INS is in the cities, in the burbs, everywhere but the border. A border policy that isn't about the border is a failure and waste of time by definition. It is the Dept. of Labor's problem, not the Homeland Security.
(8) If we want a border policy then work with Mexico to create a joint policy--yes the US will probably have to advance the cost, but we are spending it raiding textile factories just to get a handful of people. To keep people honest, the policy will have to include provisions allowing for more legal crossings, whether for a day, a month a year. People won't hide if they don't have to and then you'll get your taxes.
(9) Yes, if the border is open, though regulated, there might be more immigration, more commingling, and maybe a few more people in the elevator talking smack in Spanish about you. There will also be more predictability, more legality, more control, less death, crime, xenophobia, blaming and suspicion. We'll all have the chance to just get on with it and stop belaboring the fact that people are going to cross. More people would go back home, go back and forth, if they knew they could do so legally. The migrant workforce wouldn't "steal" jobs, it would ebb and flow with the economy.
(10) Coyote's make young pretty girls with no money work off their fare for being run across the border by being sex slaves for months, years. According to one Salvadoran woman interviewed for Los Angeles Magazine, she thanks god she is ugly, or she would still be in that house. (She came up, on foot, by bus, stealing rides on trains because people think you can come here and make 40K a year. She sells tamales by MacArthur Park and on a good day makes 30-40 dollars. She has to pay 25 of it to the Salvatruchas (13th Street Gang) in order to keep her vending spot. Sometimes she loses money. When she has left over food she throws it away. It would "kill" her to think she made someone sick. She can't complain to the police because she thinks they will deport her.) If she just had a one year work visa…..
(11) Construction has been hit very hard by the recession. The unemployment impact on Latinos, given their high employment in that sector, has been disproportionate to the rest of the population--documented or undocumented. I.e., just as all people cost money, we are all in it together.
(12) As of 2004, 15% of the marines and navy are Latino, the kids or kids of kids of these immigrants.
And yeah, I am long winded. Sorry. Rated. -e
Then Baby Doc Duvalier fell from power -- the question became would the Haitians go back home? Someone from the Miami Herald crunched some numbers & discovered that -- who knew -- Dade County's economy would really be screwed if the Haitians left. People fretted about that for about a month, but then noticed that the Haitians generally weren't returning to Haiti (or at least not staying), so they were, as Jane Austen once noted "returned to all the pleasure of their original dislike..."
Never noting if our Corrupt/Pandering/Lawless politicians had abide by our Constitution and enforced our Laws there would not be 12 millions to deport. Even worse, there is not 12 million but between 20 and 30 million but the government prefers to lie and down play the number! ( Same as the 1986 Amnesty was more than double the government estimate, so will this one be) At any rate deportation would save billions in the long run over what they will cost this Nation in welfare in the coming years. Every person with less that a high school education cost a average of 55 thousand over their life time, so apply that times the 12 million plus all their relatives & their relatives in a never ending chain & deportation would be a great bargain and save trillions in the coming years! But deportations is not necessary, just close our borders and enforcing our Laws with E-Verify. Fine companies, imprison executives and cut out the welfare they will self deport. No jobs, No Welfare equals no Illegal Aliens!
One cannot be political correct and admit that Illegal Aliens are an large part of the problems in this Nation.
Their negative impact extends to every area from Sub-par loans & defaults, Underground economy, Massive document fraud, Lower standard of living, Crime, Overflowing prisons , Bankrupted hospitals, Failing schools, Property Taxes, Insurance costs, Environment, Culture, Welfare costs, Welfare fraud, SS fraud, Voter fraud, Disrespect for our laws & country, our Constitution against invasion and even Balance of payments occurring from oil and other imports to support the 20 to 30 million illegal aliens in this country!
One has to only look at Calif. which is basically mostly an Spanish speaking, Bankrupt state that cannot afford to provide Welfare, Schooling, Medical, Prison cells etc. for millions of MS-13 Gang bangers, Drug dealers, Rapist and other assorted Criminals and uneducated, Prolific breeding, third world rejects from Mexico!
In a very few years it will be impossible to see where Mexico ends and Calif. begins as both will be an third world cesspool!
Failure to secure our borders and reward the Invading horde for their invasion and their relatives in an never ending chain with American Citizenship is nothing less than committing National Suicide & will assure our future is an over populated Spanish speaking third world Nation that is an Cesspool of Corruption, Crime, Poverty and Misery modeled on Mexico!