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> Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U

> Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U.S. each year. I think this is the biggest problem. I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. "Securing the border" does not have to mean "lock all those dirty Mexicans out." It can just mean "let's make sure we know who is coming and going." I do recognize that the process can be problematic and could use an overhaul... but anytime anyone even mentions any type of reform, they just get shouted down. Because... racist!

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. The problem is that requiring them to do it legally is requiring many to not do it at all because those who do care if you can do it have made the laws so burdensome. >If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. If you see people paying someone money to take them on a very dangerous journey instead of going through your legal process, you should know the legal process is broken.
- jack-r-abbit 11y ago
  As I said in the last part of my statement.
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  I don't think this logic stands up. Does the presence of widespread illegal activity automatically imply that said illegal activity has the moral high ground? Is it impossible to acknowledge that sometimes, people will have conflicts, but that one has the right to decide how they'll be resolved, and the other doesn't?
  - davidw 11y ago
    It may not have the moral high ground, but you'd better design your systems to deal with it, rather than pretend that it's possible to stop it. Also, people moving to seek a better life for themselves and their children is pretty core to the existence of the US, so I would posit that it's a moral thing to do if people aren't breaking any other laws. By making legal immigration easier, you keep people on the side of the law and less tempted to break other laws, since, hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.
    - dropit_sphere 11y ago
      > but you'd better design your systems to deal with it, rather than pretend that it's possible to stop it. Ah, but see, no one cares what I think when designing systems. I'm just another programmer, you know? The systems I get to design are things like: my career, my marriage, how I raise my kids. And the sensible adaptations of my systems to unbounded immigration are: improve my lot, possibly at the expense of society's (making a bigger pie doesn't make sense if that simply attracts more pie eaters), prize relative status over absolute wealth (for the same reason), carry a gun, decrease my investment in society and retain options for moving abroad (same reason), and work hard to afford expensive real estate near "good schools" to send my children to elite colleges---elite you understand, not good enough, because with enough people, good enough, isn't. And this is all antisocial behavior, and I don't really like it, and perhaps I will find a way to refrain from most of it and die in my bed in Oakland after ten years of philanthropy, surrounded by not only my multilingual grandchildren who, by dint of the virtues of hard work, collaboration, and generosity that I've taught, have managed to find their places in society, but also the neighborhood youths that I've mentored, Gran Torino style. That is the outcome I would be urged to pursue, and the one I personally find most fulfilling. But: perhaps my neighbor Steve the auto mechanic is not so insufferably capable as I am, and feels betrayed by his country. What Steve feels is his due is loyalty, which means: discrimination. If loyalty to a company means that you stay there when you perhaps get a better offer from another, loyalty to a citizenry means that you favor its interests over some other body of people. And I do not get the sense that proponents of mass immigration favor the interests of the citizenry over migrants. I am happily ensconced at my well-paying tech job, so I will be OK---but what about Steve? What does he tell his kids when a Mexican (by pure chance---it could have been white, but this time, it wasn't) kid bullies them at school? Does he feel a moral obligation to consider the other child's interests? Is he likely to have a calm chat with the other child's parents? What I am saying is: "You need to design your systems to deal with it" is equivalent to saying, "Fuck you," and while the moral and civilized response to "Fuck you" is "Have a nice day, sir," there are many who will not be able to afford that answer. Instead, they'll say "Fuck you." And (without the insulting meaning I ascribed to it earlier) you need to design your systems to deal with that.
- a3n 11y ago
  One solution to that is to have semi-open borders. Let almost anyone cross legally, without having to go through the burdensome routes we have now. When you go "crossing light," you're just "here" without any official ties or rights other than normal constitutional rights extended to anyone in the country. This would be essentially the same group of people who are here illegally, and they're going to come anyway; the difference is that we'd know they're here, they have no disincentive to go back (because they can safely cross again), and they didn't risk their lives and fund coyotes and other predator criminals. We'd still have people here illegally, because some won't qualify even for crossing light, and some come here expressly for criminal purposes. But this seems like an improvement.
  - davidw 11y ago
    > We'd still have people here illegally, because some won't qualify even for crossing light, and some come here expressly for criminal purposes. But this seems like an improvement. It'd probably be far easier to catch them and point them out - no one much would likely feel sorry for them, and they'd likely stand out even among their own communities.
    - a3n 11y ago
      And, legal casual residents would not be reluctant to call the police, because they won't fear deportation. It's in everyone's interest that when someone sees a crime, they report it, but right now there are a lot of observed crimes that go unreported because of this fear.
WildUtah 11y ago
Of course. And every time you leave your house, you should file a plan with the government so that bureaucrats can evaluate whether your travel plans are justified. The state needs documentation of your comings and goings. If you find yourself going down the road without a proper plan, you should know that you're doing something wrong. And a proper plan is one the government has approved as valuable and that justifies all the time and effort the government puts into evaluating plans.
- jack-r-abbit 11y ago
  I didn't say we needed to track people as they move about the interior of the country. That would be ridiculous. But it is not too much to ask that we know who is coming and going across the border. When I leave the country my passport is scanned. They know I have left. They know when I return. Think of it this way. You have a door on your house. When people come over, they knock on the door and you let them in at your discretion. You know who is in your house. But once in, you don't have to follow them all over as they use the bathroom or get a glass of water. You have certain amount of trust that they won't slip away and try on all your underwear. However, if they do, you probably would ask them to leave and might not open the door for them next time.
- MrZongle2 11y ago
  You should put a radio-tacking collar on that straw man. There's a big, obvious difference between tracking the crossing of individuals across sovereign borders and monitoring/regulating the travel of individuals within a country. Ensuring that Carlos the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX is not the same as setting up a Stasi-like organization.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    What actually is the practical difference between ensuring that Carlos the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX and ensuring that John Q. American the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX? Clearly, there is a de facto difference in how we currently treat the two. But you seem to be arguing that there is a deep fundamental difference in kind that informs that policy. What is it?
mikeash 11y ago
You think they don't know they're doing it wrong? Of course they know they're doing it wrong. They do it anyway because they think it's worth it to them. I'm curious about your statement that "I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it." I understand the first part, but why do the two countries need to know about it? If the country they're entering has decided it would be OK for people to enter without telling them, what would be wrong with that? And why should the country they're leaving from have to know anything?
- jack-r-abbit 11y ago
  I'm not exactly sure who gets the info every time my passport gets scanned but I would imagine both the country I'm leaving and the country I'm entering know about it. I've never been out of country for more than a few weeks at a time (and never was it to move there) but I find it hard to believe that moving to a different country would be less strict than just visiting for a couple weeks.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Right, that's often how they do it, but you seemed to be saying that this was something that should always be done. Maybe I misunderstood. As for how countries actually do it, there are a lot of borders out there where you can legally cross without telling anybody, like the borders in the Schengen area (possibly excluding France at the moment, not sure what's going on with that) or the border between the UK and Ireland. Certainly, tracking is the norm, but it's not universal.
    - jack-r-abbit 11y ago
      I see how that came across differently than I meant. And I actually don't really care what the other country does. If they don't care to know when people are coming and going that is between them and their people. One time (maybe 20 years ago) I was driving around the German countryside and accidentally drove into Austria. There was no indication that I had done so (at least none that I had seen). I was surprised how easy it was to do it by accident.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. The problem is that requiring them to do it legally is requiring many to not do it at all because those who do care if you can do it have made the laws so burdensome. >If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. If you see people paying someone money to take them on a very dangerous journey instead of going through your legal process, you should know the legal process is broken.

jack-r-abbit 11y ago
As I said in the last part of my statement.
dropit_sphere 11y ago
I don't think this logic stands up. Does the presence of widespread illegal activity automatically imply that said illegal activity has the moral high ground? Is it impossible to acknowledge that sometimes, people will have conflicts, but that one has the right to decide how they'll be resolved, and the other doesn't?
- davidw 11y ago
  It may not have the moral high ground, but you'd better design your systems to deal with it, rather than pretend that it's possible to stop it. Also, people moving to seek a better life for themselves and their children is pretty core to the existence of the US, so I would posit that it's a moral thing to do if people aren't breaking any other laws. By making legal immigration easier, you keep people on the side of the law and less tempted to break other laws, since, hey, in for a penny, in for a pound.
  - dropit_sphere 11y ago
    > but you'd better design your systems to deal with it, rather than pretend that it's possible to stop it. Ah, but see, no one cares what I think when designing systems. I'm just another programmer, you know? The systems I get to design are things like: my career, my marriage, how I raise my kids. And the sensible adaptations of my systems to unbounded immigration are: improve my lot, possibly at the expense of society's (making a bigger pie doesn't make sense if that simply attracts more pie eaters), prize relative status over absolute wealth (for the same reason), carry a gun, decrease my investment in society and retain options for moving abroad (same reason), and work hard to afford expensive real estate near "good schools" to send my children to elite colleges---elite you understand, not good enough, because with enough people, good enough, isn't. And this is all antisocial behavior, and I don't really like it, and perhaps I will find a way to refrain from most of it and die in my bed in Oakland after ten years of philanthropy, surrounded by not only my multilingual grandchildren who, by dint of the virtues of hard work, collaboration, and generosity that I've taught, have managed to find their places in society, but also the neighborhood youths that I've mentored, Gran Torino style. That is the outcome I would be urged to pursue, and the one I personally find most fulfilling. But: perhaps my neighbor Steve the auto mechanic is not so insufferably capable as I am, and feels betrayed by his country. What Steve feels is his due is loyalty, which means: discrimination. If loyalty to a company means that you stay there when you perhaps get a better offer from another, loyalty to a citizenry means that you favor its interests over some other body of people. And I do not get the sense that proponents of mass immigration favor the interests of the citizenry over migrants. I am happily ensconced at my well-paying tech job, so I will be OK---but what about Steve? What does he tell his kids when a Mexican (by pure chance---it could have been white, but this time, it wasn't) kid bullies them at school? Does he feel a moral obligation to consider the other child's interests? Is he likely to have a calm chat with the other child's parents? What I am saying is: "You need to design your systems to deal with it" is equivalent to saying, "Fuck you," and while the moral and civilized response to "Fuck you" is "Have a nice day, sir," there are many who will not be able to afford that answer. Instead, they'll say "Fuck you." And (without the insulting meaning I ascribed to it earlier) you need to design your systems to deal with that.
a3n 11y ago
One solution to that is to have semi-open borders. Let almost anyone cross legally, without having to go through the burdensome routes we have now. When you go "crossing light," you're just "here" without any official ties or rights other than normal constitutional rights extended to anyone in the country. This would be essentially the same group of people who are here illegally, and they're going to come anyway; the difference is that we'd know they're here, they have no disincentive to go back (because they can safely cross again), and they didn't risk their lives and fund coyotes and other predator criminals. We'd still have people here illegally, because some won't qualify even for crossing light, and some come here expressly for criminal purposes. But this seems like an improvement.
- davidw 11y ago
  > We'd still have people here illegally, because some won't qualify even for crossing light, and some come here expressly for criminal purposes. But this seems like an improvement. It'd probably be far easier to catch them and point them out - no one much would likely feel sorry for them, and they'd likely stand out even among their own communities.
  - a3n 11y ago
    And, legal casual residents would not be reluctant to call the police, because they won't fear deportation. It's in everyone's interest that when someone sees a crime, they report it, but right now there are a lot of observed crimes that go unreported because of this fear.

WildUtah 11y ago

Of course. And every time you leave your house, you should file a plan with the government so that bureaucrats can evaluate whether your travel plans are justified. The state needs documentation of your comings and goings. If you find yourself going down the road without a proper plan, you should know that you're doing something wrong. And a proper plan is one the government has approved as valuable and that justifies all the time and effort the government puts into evaluating plans.

jack-r-abbit 11y ago
I didn't say we needed to track people as they move about the interior of the country. That would be ridiculous. But it is not too much to ask that we know who is coming and going across the border. When I leave the country my passport is scanned. They know I have left. They know when I return. Think of it this way. You have a door on your house. When people come over, they knock on the door and you let them in at your discretion. You know who is in your house. But once in, you don't have to follow them all over as they use the bathroom or get a glass of water. You have certain amount of trust that they won't slip away and try on all your underwear. However, if they do, you probably would ask them to leave and might not open the door for them next time.
MrZongle2 11y ago
You should put a radio-tacking collar on that straw man. There's a big, obvious difference between tracking the crossing of individuals across sovereign borders and monitoring/regulating the travel of individuals within a country. Ensuring that Carlos the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX is not the same as setting up a Stasi-like organization.
- mikeash 11y ago
  What actually is the practical difference between ensuring that Carlos the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX and ensuring that John Q. American the Jackal doesn't fly into LAX? Clearly, there is a de facto difference in how we currently treat the two. But you seem to be arguing that there is a deep fundamental difference in kind that informs that policy. What is it?

mikeash 11y ago

You think they don't know they're doing it wrong? Of course they know they're doing it wrong. They do it anyway because they think it's worth it to them. I'm curious about your statement that "I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it." I understand the first part, but why do the two countries need to know about it? If the country they're entering has decided it would be OK for people to enter without telling them, what would be wrong with that? And why should the country they're leaving from have to know anything?

jack-r-abbit 11y ago
I'm not exactly sure who gets the info every time my passport gets scanned but I would imagine both the country I'm leaving and the country I'm entering know about it. I've never been out of country for more than a few weeks at a time (and never was it to move there) but I find it hard to believe that moving to a different country would be less strict than just visiting for a couple weeks.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Right, that's often how they do it, but you seemed to be saying that this was something that should always be done. Maybe I misunderstood. As for how countries actually do it, there are a lot of borders out there where you can legally cross without telling anybody, like the borders in the Schengen area (possibly excluding France at the moment, not sure what's going on with that) or the border between the UK and Ireland. Certainly, tracking is the norm, but it's not universal.
  - jack-r-abbit 11y ago
    I see how that came across differently than I meant. And I actually don't really care what the other country does. If they don't care to know when people are coming and going that is between them and their people. One time (maybe 20 years ago) I was driving around the German countryside and accidentally drove into Austria. There was no indication that I had done so (at least none that I had seen). I was surprised how easy it was to do it by accident.