Borders

[Res Ipsa]

I live in a state called Washington. It has three neighbors and four borders. Two of my neighbors are states called Idaho and Oregon. They are separated from Washington by a border.

Those two borders are open borders. I don’t need to ask permission to cross into Idaho or Oregon. I don’t have to stop my car and answer questions from an Idaho law enforcement offer before I enter Idaho.

And nobody thinks that it’s weird or strange or scary that I can go to Idaho any time I want. As long as I obey Idaho’s laws while I’m there, I can do what I want, say what I want — even move there permanently.

People come to my state from all the other states. If they break laws while they are here, we prosecute them just as we would against anyone who lives here.

People like me, who were born in my state, are a minority in Washington. Most people moved here from other states. From time to time we get Californians with a bunch of money who want to make us like California or their vision of what California should look like. But we just go vote on stuff instead of demanding that our government control which Californians can come in and which stay out.

In fact, people who live in other states or who move here from other states commit crime — even brutal murders. But I’ve never heard anyone say “We shouldn’t have let that murderer come to Washington.” That would be weird.

Another border we have is one the north, with Canada. That border is most definitely not open. I know, because I have to sit in long lines and get permission from an armed person in a uniform before I can cross into Canada. And I have to let that armed person search my car and my pockets and even my phone if he asks. And I if I have certain stuff in my car or in my pockets, the armed guy can just take it.

And I have to sit in longer lines and answer more questions when I cross back into the United States, even though I am a citizen of the United States. And the armed guy can search my stuff and take things, too. Even things I’m legally allowed to have in Washington, which is where I’m trying to go to. Like, I have to get permission from the armed person in a uniform just to come home.

Once, when my mom was crossing the border from Canada, a bunch of armed people in uniforms came running out with their hands on their guns and barking orders at her. She was there for a while. Another time, my brother said a word while waiting in line to get home that he shouldn’t have said, and the folks with the guns took a long time searching every inch of his car. So, nothing like the open border with Idaho.

If I really wanted, it would be pretty easy to cross into Canada without permission if I wanted to. That border crosses a big range of mountains with tons of places to cross.

The fourth border doesn’t really have a neighbor unless you count thousands of miles of open ocean. I guess you could say that the world is my next door neighbor across that border. It isn’t open either. I know because when I take a ferry from Washington to British Columbia, I have to talk to another armed person in a uniform and show him all the stuff I have with me if he asks. But I’ve also been lots of places along my border with the world and not seen anyone looking for people crossing the border without permission. There aren’t a bunch of buildings with a bunch of folks in uniforms patrolling the beach or the rocks or whatever.

I’ve heard folks talk about closed borders. When I hear that, I think about West Berlin. My father in law was stationed in Germany for a while and has hilarious stories about folks in the service driving from Germany to West Berlin through East Germany and the way the East German police would try to trick them into breaking the law so they could throw them in jail. But, if US soldiers could cross the border into East Germany, was it actually closed? And despite the walls and barbed wire and all the soldiers, people still managed to cross that border without permission.

I crossed one “closed” border once, between Finland and the USSR. I was with a busload of other US citizens. Our crossing was held up because, although we were warned not to, someone tried to smuggle a bunch of Bibles into the country. While we were waiting, I walked a few steps behind the bus to look up the actual boundary. It was a really broad swath of trees with large towers at regular intervals as far as I could see. I’d never seen anything like it. My view was cut short when I was ordered back to the bus by a big man with a very big gun.

Still, the border wasn’t closed. They let us in.

Talking about “open” and “closed” borders when discussing US border policy is idiotic. We have neither. No R politician is going to close a border because it is not financially feasible. No D wants open borders — the kind Washington has with Idaho. That’s some flavor of Libertarian. The entire issue is how much money are we willing to spend and how brutal are we willing to be in regulating the flow of people across our borders?

The amount of illegal immigration varies over time with the strength of the US economy. Human migration is analogous to market forces. People move in large part from places with too much supply of or too little demand for labor. And they move towards places where there are available jobs. And, just like market forces, trying to do anything that directly opposes those forces is difficult, if not futile. Hermetically sealing our borders is likely impossible. Getting anywhere close would cost more than any US taxpayer would be willing to pay.

Some of the current immigration arguments are just wrong headed. Take fentanyl. Fentanyl is not smuggled into the US on the backs of random peopke walking miles though savage desert continues. That would be the stupidest business model ever. Fentanyl is smuggled in vehicles that cross at regular border crossings in vehicles mainly driven by US citizens. It’s not an immigration problem at all. It’s a drug problem.

There was just a bust at a very sophisticated fentanyl production and distribution facility. In Canada. One location is right across the border from me in Surrey BC.

We’ve wasted billions and billions of dollars on a war on drugs largely based on restricting supply. It’s been a failure. Some years back, heroin was smuggled mostly across Florida’s water borders. The feds conducted a huge operation to interdict all of that smuggling. You could have called it sealing the border. All it did was push the smuggling to the land border with Mexico, which is what we see today.

Restricting the supply of fentanyl in the US raises its price. The higher the price, the more profitable it becomes. The more we reduce fentanyl smuggling across the border, the more we make other ways of smuggling it into the US more profitable. Tighten the screws on Mexico, and the flow will shift back to Florida. Or Montana. Or any coastal state. Heck, raise the price enough, and we’ll be overrun with home made fentanyl — essentially importing organized crime and gangs into the US.

in my opinion, Fentanyl is being used to create a moral panic over immigration that will drive voters to vote for Trump. There are solutions, none of which have to do with how we treat asylum seekers or migrant laborers.

Another argument is not just wrong headed — it’s morally despicable. It’s the politicization of horrible personal tragedy by political demagogues. It is trivially easy to claim, after a tragedy, that person X who did bad thing Y should never have been allowed here in the first place. That’s because we have a bunch of information after the fact.

Before the tragedy, it’s all levels of risk. The government doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight. What is the risk to the average person in America of being murdered by a person who is here illegally? How much would it cost to reduce that risk by, say, half. And, finally, could that money be spent to reduce the risks of murder by anyone more effectively?

If the rate of murders by illegal aliens is lower than the rate of murder by US citizens, why would we spend billions of dollars trying to seal the borders instead of on crime prevention aimed at US citizens?

I have zero problem with not having an open border with other nations, in contrast with the open borders we have between states. I have no problem regulating who is allowed to come to the US and for what reasons. But that policy should be driven by facts and data and not emotion and tribalism.

[Moksha]

Isn't it better to be safe than sorry with those Canadians and their desire to annex Blaine Washington in order to import Squeaky Weasel Beer and Nanaimo bars?

[dantana]

Well crafted as usual, Res. As I've mentioned to you in the past I grew up in the Chehalis Washington. area. Class of 77. Back in the old days when a person could cross up into Canadia with nothing more than a - where you folk heading - from the gatekeeper. Back when if one had their license suspended in Washington. you just go to Oregon and get a differant one. I did that.

As to the topic, sub-topic. At age 16 I hired onto a house framing crew. Back then, up there (I'm in the Eugene area now) zero out of ten trades crews were Latino. Now, here and there, I'd say eight out of ten crews are Latino. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I do not know. It is not in my skill set to figure out. What I do know is, back then, the nature of framers and other intensive energy output trades is flaky and unreliable. Have the Latinos taken all the trades jobs from the natives? Absolutely not. If one wants to be a tradesmen right now, show up and work hard. That's it

Right now I have three different subs do work for me. Roofing, concrete flat work and interior hard surfaces. All Latino. All reliable, friendly and with quality of craftsmanship.

[Gadianton]

The amount of illegal immigration varies over time with the strength of the US economy. Human migration is analogous to market forces.

What people don't understand and they never will unless they've ever either done some serious proactive research that most people aren't inclined to do -- including me -- or they have been involved in the immigration process somehow reactively (like me) whether for the US or any other country; is that immigration is a near impossible problem to solve.

You are absolutely right about the above and this:

Talking about “open” and “closed” borders when discussing US border policy is idiotic. We have neither. No R politician is going to close a border because it is not financially feasible

As if no illegal immigrants have ever worked for Donald Trump's hotels. Donald Trump has no incentive to stop illegal immigration, and he won't. What he'll do is cause chaos in both illegal immigration and legal immigration, and the chaos gives the impression to his supporters that he's doing something. All the while the chaos screws over peoples lives for no reason, not achieving any goals aside from optics.

I finally asked my right-wing friend the other day about his wife's parents (his wife is more hard core Trump than he is). From what he's said in the past, they (the parents) are barely English speakers, and as I've now learned, their parents came here to work strawberry fields in California. It's almost guaranteed that they weren't legal, and he's not sure if both parents were born here or not. And so, if Trump and Vance have it their way, the parents in their sixties could be deported in a Trump presidency. Worse, even if they were born here, they're barely English speaking Hispanics -- can they prove they were born here? Can ICE make the arrest and then demand proof that they may not have the ability to get? Immigration works totally differently than the normal law does in terms of "innocent until proven guilty" and there are no juries involved in court cases. Given it's a numbers game and they are older, it's unlikely that they would be affected, and they'd probably win in court if it went that far (unless Trump judges start showing up in spades) but in the vision being sold to the grandchild who is voting Trump with self-righteousness, they very well could be.

Most immigrants are poor and seeking opportunities that don't exist for them in their own country. There will never be a legal immigration pathway for them. They are undocumented and unbanked in their own country. Legal immigration is mainly a game of technicalities that are all about documentation and boxes being checked in the right way. People with birth certificates, bank accounts, high school diplomas, and speak English aren't looking for jobs picking strawberries by the thousands. The United States has historically turned a blind eye to illegal immigration as a way to solve the supply and demand problem, because there is no way to to accomplish bringing low-skill workers here legally in the quantities demanded. Trump's proposals from last time about civics tests and things like that are absurd, as few would come to change bedding in his hotels who would meet the documentation bar plus the extra education bar.

It's also easier to perform the optics by screwing over people who are somewhere in the legal process (as a recent Canpakes post showed), either on technicalities or a sudden game-changing executive order, because it's easier to parse a database then hunt down people without documentation.

[ajax18]

I thought you were arguing that Trump only wanted to campaign on closing the border. That's why he killed the bill that supposedly would have enforced the border. Now you're arguing that Trump the fascist and his brown shirt racists will enforce the border if they win the election. It kind of proves that Democrats latest argument was exactly what they were accusing Trump of, just a lie to get elected. When Democrats are elected the border is wide open and working American taxpayers will once again be hemorrhaging cash and thrown deeper into national debt to provide impoverished illegal immigrants with what their US employers will not.

If we were a free market, the border could be open. But we're not. We're a welfare state. Combine this with open borders and we get debt, taxes, and inflation as we have for the last three years. If we could make immigration merit based, it could help American citizens. But the left doesn't want to help American citizens. They're more concerned with making sure that the entire world has the opportunity to immigrate to America right now without having to wait so they can vote Democrat right now. Who cares if it makes housing unaffordable to most Americans, especially if they voted for Trump. Big business needs cheap labor and third world young single mothers and their aging parents all need welfare and medicaid since they can't work. That's not free market capitalism. It's subsidizing big business with middle class tax dollars to fund immigrants to undercut their wages.

[Res Ipsa]

I thought you were arguing that Trump only wanted to campaign on closing the border. That's why he killed the bill that supposedly would have enforced the border. Now you're arguing that Trump the fascist and his brown shirt racists will enforce the border if they win the election. It kind of proves that Democrats latest argument was exactly what they were accusing Trump of, just a lie to get elected. When elected the border will be wide open and working American taxpayers will once again be hemorrhaging cash and thrown deeper into national debt to provide impoverished illegal immigrants with what their employers will not.

If we were a free market, the border could be open. But we're not. We're a welfare state. Combine this with open borders and we get debt, taxes, and inflation as we have for the last three years. If we could make immigration merit based, it could help American citizens. But the left doesn't want to help American citizens. They're more concerned that the entire world has the opportunity to immigrate to America right now without having to wait so they can vote Democrat right now. Who cares if it makes housing unaffordable to most Americans, especially if the voted for Trump. Big business needs cheap labor and young single mothers and their aging parents all need welfare and medicaid since they can't work. That's not free market capitalism. It's subsidizing big business with middle class tax dollars to fund immigrants to undercut their wages.

Just keep repeating those big lies, Ajax.

[huckelberry]

I thought you were arguing that Trump only wanted to campaign on closing the border. That's why he killed the bill that supposedly would have enforced the border. Now you're arguing that Trump the fascist and his brown shirt racists will enforce the border if they win the election. It kind of proves that Democrats latest argument was exactly what they were accusing Trump of, just a lie to get elected. When elected the border will be wide open and working American taxpayers will once again be hemorrhaging cash and thrown deeper into national debt to provide impoverished illegal immigrants with what their employers will not.

If we were a free market, the border could be open. But we're not. We're a welfare state. Combine this with open borders and we get debt, taxes, and inflation as we have for the last three years. If we could make immigration merit based, it could help American citizens. But the left doesn't want to help American citizens. They're more concerned that the entire world has the opportunity to immigrate to America right now without having to wait so they can vote Democrat right now. Who cares if it makes housing unaffordable to most Americans, especially if the voted for Trump. Big business needs cheap labor and young single mothers and their aging parents all need welfare and medicaid since they can't work. That's not free market capitalism. It's subsidizing big business with middle class tax dollars to fund immigrants to undercut their wages.

Just keep repeating those big lies, Ajax.

Res Ipsa, it is sort of funny how Ajax comments have absolutely no connection to what you said. It is as if a string was pulled and the prerecorded propaganda came out.

I thought your comments were interesting and pretty sharp. I hope you don't mind if I post something which is a bit of a tangent. I found myself contemplating your comment about the ease of finding places unguarded to enter from Canada.There are many miles of remote mountains with the Cascades and the Paysaten wilderness. Who would be guarding the Paysaten? But on second thought crossing there is well over fifty miles of hiking seriously rough mountain country to get to a US road. The eastern half of the state has border with Canada in mild mountains with back country roads wandering much nearer the border. The forests are thinner without westside thickets. It would be easy to find many ways to cross.

But I have a little story about peoples fears and imaginations about boarder crossing. Some years back a friend in Wenatchee related a little story about people there. The town has number people in patriot type militias and they want to guard. A story and urgent report went around that an invasion was in process coming south through the Paysaten. It might have involved the United Nations or some similar nefarious enemy organization. People loaded their guns into their pickup and headed north to set up armed picket lines at road end points. Local sheriffs were eventually able to convince them no invasion was coming and with no enemy making an appearance the affair slowly ended without incident.

I found myself thinking that for an invasion route the Paysatin in comparison would make the Ardennes look like a four lane highway and a welcome sign. Peoples fears and imagination about boarder are not limited by mundane practicality.

[Res Ipsa]

Thanks, Huck. It was a good tangent.