Immigration Issues

Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe asks this question:

Why should it be illegal for any person to come to the United States, assuming his intentions are peaceful and he is not likely to become a public charge or health risk?

Obviously the question makes some large assumptions, but I think it is a very good, sensible starting point on immigration from both a practical and philosophical perspective. It would force people to reveal their true beliefs, and, hopefully, force them to acknowledge their significantly biased, if not false, premises.

This is pure conjecture, but, as I have alluded to a few times in earlier posts, I think national borders are an obsolete concept that probably do more harm than good.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the The Wall Street Journal does something I have heard no one in the mainstream press do when talking about immigration; talk about the drug trade. And not only does she talk about it, but she does it very well. A snippet:

It’s tempting to couch the organized crime problem as an issue of sovereignty (i.e., Mexicans are invading!) but that ignores the role of the demand for drugs. The solution has to start with acknowledging that drug trafficking through Arizona—a key concern of citizens of that state—is the product of a complex set of federal policy failures.

You simply cannot talk about immigration and not mention The War on Drugs. Yet to mention drug prohibition today seems to be taboo, or those whom you speak with seem to cast you as a nut or a joke. I find this to be very unfortunate and a hinderance towards progress.

(HT: Cafe Hayek for both links)

Do You Support This?

I'm having trouble posting this video, so I'm just going to drop the link here.

WARNING: Content is graphic and disturbing.

The backstory on the video is the police were late on executing a warrant on a man suspected of holding "dealer-sized amounts" of marijuana. They found a misdemeanor amount, as well as some paraphernalia.

When we hear about instances like this, as I did when Radley Balko first reported on it, most of us tend to shrug our shoulders. We think it's stupid or unfortunate or the inevitable result of human error. And then we go about our day.

But when we see it, when we hear it, when we practically experience it ourselves, that is when we feel something else, something far more powerful, moving, and in this case, frightening, than just words on paper. After watching the video, did you not feel the horror of the seven-year old daughter? The fear and anguish of the mother? The shock, sorrow and humiliation of the father?

This, simply put, is domestic terrorism.

Do you support it? If so, why?

Commentary from others: Megan McArdle, Von from Obsidian Wings, Andrew Sullivan and Radley Balko.

(HT: Megan McArdle)

Decriminalization of Drugs Going Mainstream?

I caught the end of Charlie Rose on Bloomberg earlier this evening, and I found the final three minutes very interesting. The topic was the State of Latin America and the panel was the Chair of NYU's Latin America History Department, the Dean of International Studies at Columbia, a policy wonk for a think tank devoted to Latin American studies, and a former high-ranking Costa Rican official (I apologize for not remembering names or details 100% accurately).

As was to be expected, there was disagreement among these men on a litany of topics. Yet when Rose brought up "non-State players", as I believe he so aptly put it, there was universal agreement among the panel that the War on Drugs was an absolute failure, needed to be amended, if not shut down, and that it was the single most devastating policy Washington, D.C. had enacted on Latin America in the past forty years.

Obviously such things won't happen for many years, if they happen at all. But it is encouraging to see such well-respected intellectuals of various ideologies and backgrounds all taking this position.

Sobering Fact of the Day

Via the Cato Institute's Ian Vasquez:

Though the deaths are the first in which Mexican drug cartels appear to have so brazenly targeted and killed individuals linked to the U.S. government, illicit drug trade violence has killed some 18,000 people in Mexico since President Calderon came to power in December 2006—more than three times the number of American military personnel deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

Delusional

Mario Rizzo is amazed (somewhat) at how the American political system continues to ignore reality. His three issues:

1. The War on Drugs

2. The War on Terror

3. The Bankruptcy of the Welfare State

Anyone familiar with the work and philosophy of banking giant John Allison knows the first tenet of his philosophy is approaching everything from a realistic standpoint. Rizzo's examples are case and point how not to do that, and consequently cause massive collateral damage.

Unnecessary and Sad

Tim Lynch on the recent murder of four Tacoma, Washington police officers and what it (may) reveal about our criminal justice and prison system.

I would, however, caution against a blanket condemnation of pardons, as well as any hasty move to simply abolish parole. The American criminal-justice system is thoroughly swamped. Right now there are more than 7 million people under criminal-justice “supervision.” About 2.5 million are behind bars, and about 4.5 million are on probation or parole. This system is greatly overburdened by non-violent drug offenders. Conditions vary by jurisdiction, but in general there is no prison space left. So it is unrealistic for us to say, “If a prisoner violates parole, send him back to jail immediately!”...

The best way to curb violent crime is to lock up violent criminals. Sounds like a no-brainer but our system is swamped with drug offenders. Problems fester while the pols try to deflect criticism away from themselves.

Our Shameful Federal Government

Via Reason, John McWhorter points out the folly and destructive nature of The War on Drugs. A snippet:

The simple fact is that if there were no profit to be made in selling drugs on the street, no one would bother. For all of the “root causes” reasons so many young black and Latino men turn to this trade instead of seeking legal work, if there were no War on Drugs, they would seek other solutions to the obstacles that face them. And whatever those were, they would involve less murder, fewer crossfire injuries and killings of the kind that have likely ruined Ms. Vasquez’ life at 15, fewer men in prison for long periods, and fewer of their children growing up fatherless and on their way to repeating their father’s mistakes.

What's holding back millions of poor young Americans (black, white, Latino, male, female, whatever) is not lack of healthcare or tax-cuts for the rich or other important but ultimately red herring issues, but is The War on Drugs combined with a disastrous federal school system (no child gets left behind if every child gets left behind!).

You can demonize Wall Street and insurance companies and Bernie Madoff and whatever super-rich entity is the populist flavor of the month, but if you ever want to make a real difference for the most disadvanted in our country, start with the mafia that our federal government has mutated into.

Mary O'Grady on the Mexican War on Drugs

Here's The Wall Street Journal's Mary O'Grady on Mexico's War on Drugs and the country's decision to decriminalize minute possessions. A key point:

Mr. Calderón's new policy is unlikely to solve anything... The reason is simple: Prohibition and demand make otherwise worthless weeds valuable. Where they really get valuable is in crossing the U.S. border. If U.S. demand is robust, then producers, traffickers and retailers get rich by satisfying it... trafficking will remain illegal, and to get their products past law enforcement the criminals will still have an enormous incentive to bribe or to kill. Decriminalization will not take the money out of the business and therefore will not reduce corruption, cartel intimidation aimed at democratic-government authority, or the terror heaped on local populations by drug lords.

To understand the War on Drugs, this point needs to driven home. The value of an illegal drug, like any good, does not stem from what one party believe it is worth. It is determined by what all the other players in the marketplace think it is worth. But with drugs and other illegal products, you get highly distorted prices for one main reason (there are of course many others, but this one, in my estimation, is key).

That is the lack of application of The Rule of Law. Without The Rule of Law, anything goes. Contracts cannot be enforced and private property has no relevant meaning, so the actors in the market do not have a stable or predictable environment to engage in. This is then intensified by the extremely harsh penalties that are applied to those caught dealing in this illicit affair. Consequently, the incentives to commit violent crimes to accomplish ones goals increase dramatically (why negotiate with another party when one can just kill them? If one get caught doing either the penalties are both so bad there is little difference).

Combined with high inelastic demand, the result, as we have seen for four decades now, is quite disastrous. The true problem is the illegality of the transaction and the idea that demand can simply be stemmed by government policy. This is beyond naive. People enjoy getting high. It's a reality of life that we all should get used to (and enjoy).

Hillary Clinton said back in March "Our [American] insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade." On a very simple, face-value level she is correct; if no one wanted to get high, then drugs would not be a commodity in demand and there would be no violence surrounding it. But what Mrs. Clinton is clearly implying is that demand is the main cause for the violence that surrounds the drug trade. This is wrong. Foreign beer, foreign cars and foreign accounting services are all highly demanded goods or services, but none are plagued by the violence that follows the drug trade around like a shadow. Why is that?

Prohibition breeds crime because no matter what majorities, politicians and special-interest groups may want, demand for certain goods and services will always exist. So instead of driving these industries into the hands of violent criminals, we should instead accept them as a part of our modern-day culture and facilitate their legal and open transactions peacefully.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/25/clinton-mexico-trip-agend_n_178983.html