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seawaspA lot of my recent posts are either "holy shit this sucks" or "jesus, how do people not understand this stuff?". I figure I might as well offer some outlines of what *I* would try to do if I was handed "UNLIMITED POWER" the way Trump seems to think he has to address current issues.
So let's look at the problem of "the border and illegal immigrants".
There appear to be two major types of illicit border crossings. One type is "people looking for a job who can't get into the country legally, but who often end up working here anyway because a lot of our companies will use their cheap labor". The other is "we're bringing drugs across the border, often disguised as members of the latter groups".
Both of these groups tend to avoid the legitimate entry points because, well, the drug-mules know we've gotten pretty good at finding the drugs no matter where you hide them in your car, bike, backpack, or whatever, and the people looking for jobs illegally can't go through the legal portals.
This has several negative effects. The otherwise-innocent jobseeking types are often crossing in dangerous locations -- after all, the safer and easier to access ones are often where the legitimate entry points are, and are also much easier for Border Patrol people to watch. So you have large numbers of people crossing at locations that either belong to citizens who object -- understandably -- to random, unknown people passing through their territory, not just from basic principle but because the citizen has no way to actually tell "Jose Job Seeker" from "Luis Drug-Runner", and even if they could, that doesn't stop Jose, being kinda desperate, from damaging parts of the property on the way through, deliberately or by accident, OR that are relatively desolate and inherently dangerous (very cold to very hot, no safe water sources, no food, sometimes even hazardous terrain or wildlife).
The result here is -- a lot of people in danger, often dying or being injured, confrontations between residents and illegal crossers (which can turn very ugly on both sides)
The drug-running (or other criminal elements) may coordinate better, but that means that if they are encountered by residents the danger is even higher for the residents.
To patrol this area, of course, requires increasing amounts of manpower and of equipment -- drones, dogs, vehicles, etc.
If the job-seekers DON'T reach their goals, then you have large amounts of work that doesn't get done. If they DO reach their goals, you have large numbers of people who are here illegally, and who therefore are denied protections under the law from various forms of exploitation and injury.
If drug traffic isn't stopped, it produces well-known continuing problems of addiction (which the sufferer often can't seek help for due to the laws involved), increased crime both by the providers and the users, increased death and injury, etc.
The solution to these problems is a multifaceted one, but put simply, is as follows:
1) Legalize all currently illegal drugs and allow them to be sold legitimately. This is not a trivial thing to do, unfortunately, because over the last multiple decades we've made The War on Drugs an almost worldwide project, involving actual negotiated treaties and international law that essentially ASSUMES that these laws are required everywhere -- partly due to our pressure. Removing that pressure and reversing course on it is not easy. HOWEVER, it's absolutely necessary to take this step, as the PROBLEM of drug-smuggling is the same problem as that of prohibition gangs. Make the stuff legally available and affordable, and remove the legal issue of seeking help for the rproblem, and most of the major issues go away. You don't have to worry about people smuggling narcotics if they can't make a profit smuggling them.
2) Remove the barriers to entry. The idea of needing a "passport" is actually a relatively new invention; a century ago, in the 1920s, all you had to do was GET here and have enough of a basic facility with the language to get by. There's been no actual change in human beings that suddenly requires them to get particular papers or tattoos or whatever. People should be able to go where the hell they want to. Are there people we don't want here? Sure, but we can find them more easily if they come in openly, OR if "coming in sneakily" is a much rarer event. If they commit crimes, well, we've already GOT a justice system for arresting people for doing things.
Note that this is the way it works internally already -- even though the States are technically separate legal entities, no one asks me a question when I drive from here through three states en route to Chicago. Aside from a sign saying "Welcome to Pennsylvania" or whatever, I can't even tell when I leave one state and arrive in the next. Why shouldn't I be able to do the same going from here to Mexico, or Canada? The whole business is idiotic. Let people move around as they want.
(There's still a role for Customs and such -- for instance, we want to make sure you're not bringing in invasive species, or taking such out of our country and bringing them elsewhere, and so on, but that's separate from whether individual people should be able to move from one point to another)
3) Provide easy documentation for temporary workers. Someone says they're coming here to do work, let them. "Non-citizen seasonal worker" is an easy paper to provide, and allows them to go get the jobs they're willing to do while making it legally legitimate -- and allowing them basic protections under law. They may be being exploited from the point of view of American citizens, but it won't be an exploitation that sits outside of the law and can't be addressed. To fix the current state of affairs will take time -- and it will be easier to change if it's more VISIBLE.
The combination of these would mean that there would be VERY LITTLE INCENTIVE for people to try to cross the border illegally, and that crossing the border itself would no longer involve much of a production for individuals. All of a sudden, there's no border problem, and there's no problem with lillegal entries... because there's no such thing any more.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-20 12:33 am (UTC)Because Mexicans and Canadians are dying from your guns, and we want to at least keep out the known gun runners.
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Date: 2025-04-20 03:10 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2025-04-20 01:21 am (UTC)Well, I'd focus on the urgent need to control climate change so we don't saw off the branch we're all standing on. The people in power are playing with chainsaws. >_<
>>There appear to be two major types of illicit border crossings. One type is "people looking for a job who can't get into the country legally, but who often end up working here anyway because a lot of our companies will use their cheap labor". The other is "we're bringing drugs across the border, often disguised as members of the latter groups". <<
I'll add the very large group of "people fleeing for their lives from various things" who often can't get past the gatekeepers and, not wanting to die, cross on their own or pay a coyote to transport them. America, like most other modern countries, doesn't want even the political refugees they're obligated to help, let alone the climate refugees who have no legal recourse.
>> 1) Legalize all currently illegal drugs and allow them to be sold legitimately. <<
Very astute. American managed to repeal Prohibition. It's difficult, not quite impossible.
>> 2) Remove the barriers to entry. <<
Sensible.
>> 3) Provide easy documentation for temporary workers.<<
I would expand this. Reason being, people who flee to another country and actually make it there tend to be very competent and valuable. The less adept tend not to make it out of danger. So don't waste that human potential.
Can they work? If so, get them a job. If not, find out why not and try to help them along -- maybe they need therapy first, maybe they need American credentials for what they used to do at home, etc.
Make a list of the top 10 or so fields with a drastic shortage of workers. Offer free training to anyone who wants one of those jobs. Lots of immigrants and refugees will take any job they can get, so many of them would love that opportunity; gaps get filled; everyone wins!
Also, make sure they have access to a place to live, health care, and other needs. Do they speak English fluently? If not, provide classes in that. Do everything possible to knit them into society. Studies show that immigrants create jobs, which is good for everyone, and they'll become taxpayers. Again, everyone wins.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-04-21 12:27 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-04-22 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-20 06:39 pm (UTC)In short, HELL YES to all these proposals.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-21 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-21 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-21 05:23 pm (UTC)I'd add to this that one really big wrinkle to the immigration wrangle is that it isn't - and has never been - purely a domestic issue. It's a situation in which many of the variables are international in origin, and thereby one that we can't truly "solve" purely by our own efforts on the domestic front.
Put simply, the reason that so many people in other parts of the world want to come to the USA is that we've created (at least the perception of) being the one best nation in the world for people looking for better living conditions and less oppressive government. Or at least we had that image before Trump took office again, but we'll get back there in a minute.
As long as that image holds, we're always going to have a lot of people from all over the world trying to relocate here because we're the Land Of Opportunity[tm]. By ourselves, we can't "fix" that situation; we don't have enough available resources to make the whole rest of the world as nice a place to live as we are. Nor, at least in the short term, do we have sufficient resources and/or sufficient political will on our own to absorb the sheer number of people who are already coming in, let alone the numbers we're likely to attract if we throw the doors all the way open. From a population density standpoint, the US is probably just not, in the long term, big enough to take in the percentage of the planet's population that would like to live here.
There are, arguably, two major ways to address this. One, which we've been pursuing to varying degrees since the end of WWII, is to do what we can to bring the rest of the world up to our economic and political standards. That's not a short-term project, and we're a long way yet from achieving that goal.
The other approach, which Trump has arguably been pursuing vigorously since taking office again, is far simpler.: He's doing his best to make the US a less attractive destination for outsiders, by making life here look as frustrating, expensive, and unattractive as possible, so as to dissuade non-citizens from showing up on our doorstep (and encourage as many current residents as possible to go live elsewhere and thereby become somebody else's problem).
In the short run, I agree that more open borders and saner drug policy are good ideas. But at the end of the day, there's a population-distribution component to this discussion that I think may outweigh the impulse for us to become the world's single viable destination for the oppressed.
no subject
Date: 2025-04-25 09:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-25 09:05 am (UTC)I don't think people in the US (and Europe too) understand how hard it is for those of us in many countries to get to the US. I've recently done visa applications for the UK and EU, and is a tedious, onerous process, involving dozens of documents, a heap of money, and 3 to 5 weeks.