Why does this not come as a surprise?
A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants…The Golden State Fence Company’s work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.
For the record, I think it is every nation’s absolute right to limit immigration. I think the US should open its legal borders a little wider, while clamping down much more rigorously on illegal entrants (starting with going after the companies that employ them). I’m not entirely happy with my conclusion because I know it necessarily leads to a great deal of economic suffering for millions of people, but it’s the least worst option I can see. By contrast I think the UK should largely close its borders, not because immigrants are bad but because we’re just about full. We should use immigration quotas to keep our population at around 60 million, which feels adequate for an island the size of Minnesota.
(HT: Daring Fireball)
2 Comments
I’m pretty torn about this issue. I believe that limiting immigration is generally a necessary thing for the same reasons you cite that Britain should close its borders: when people exceed their current ecological carrying capacity, they generally move to take over where they haven’t, which is not a sustainable activity. But how do we get that to work? Societies that have built fences around themselves are societies that historically have not had much of a future. The fence-building activities were but a spasm near a general collapse on the historical horizon for them in pretty near every case.
It is rather like the ‘War on Drugs’ – there are clearly one or two things that can be done to improve things, but just as clearly they won’t fix the entire problem and it’s not obvious what will. Wouldn’t it be great if I could now say “Fortunately I’ve worked out that…” Ah well.