Greece’s trap

You wonder why the southern Eurpean countries signed up to the Dublin regulation – it must have been obvious who was then going to have to deal with all the asylum claims.

Or to be clearer, not set up *only* to limit asylum claims in northern Europe .. but done so in the full knowledge that the changes would put most of the burden on southern Europe

We must also remember that the EU burden-sharing measures include the provisions whereby member states accept refugees from another member state, if that member state receives a particularly large influx of actual refugees.

The problem here is that most migrants trying to cross borders into Greece and other Southern member states are not bona fide refugees but coming for better life and economic opportunities. They can, and should be deported to their countries of origin after a fair and impartial hearing to determine their refugee status. The problem is that Greece, Italy and Spain are incapable of doing this.

And personally, I do not have very much compassion for people who die while trying to break our law. If they want a residence permit, that can be obtained in the nearest embassy of a Schengen member state. Accepting the entry of people who come illegally into EU is terribly unegalitarian, as it benefits mostly young and healthy males, not those in the greatest need of protection.

So the EU’s response to migrants’ jurisdiction-shopping is reverse jurisdiction-shopping.

Refugee processing is one of those areas where centrality rather than subsidiarity is the obvious way to go; but there are no votes in it. Maybe if the EU hands out lots of cash to Greece, à la Australia–Nauru.

niamh,

I completely agree with you: even a person who crosses borders without authorisation has all basic rights, including social and economic rights, that the constitutions of our various countries give to every person. The right for permanent residence is not one of these. Still, a migrant has the right for shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc, as long as they are in our jurisdiction. Thus, for example, I do not condone the Greek maltreatment of asylum-seekers.

Second, if a person is not given legal residence in a member state, the state has an obligation to deport him/her. It is unconscionable to leave a person on the street without the benefits of the legal residence. If no funds exist for repatriation (by force, if necessary), the state must grant residence permit. Tertium non datur.

On the whole, I also agree with you on the point that we must have a flexible legal immigration policy. But anyhow, it is clear that the situation on the Mediterranean will continue as such for decades. There is no way we can afford to give legal permanent residence for every Asian and African who wishes to live here. It would mean increasing the population of the EU to ca. 700-900 million people.

Short circuit

Step back a bit, and I think you could rephrase the dilemma presented here as the concern that Europe’s racist immigration policy might just result in the rise to power of a racist party in Greece. If racists weren’t already in power in Europe, would it have this problem?

The actual conflict here seems to be between nice polite racists and ugly in-your-face racists. Sounds like the intraparty fight among Republicans here in the States. Spoiler alert — the in-your-face crowd wins.

Racism is about treating people differently on the basis of race. Europe has a non-racist immigration policy. A white Brazilian (for example) doesn’t get fast-tracked while his black compatriots are kicked out.

Mao Cheng Ji,

Mr. Tomkins does have at least half a point. In many EU member states, the immigration policy does have ethnic preferences, but these are nationalist, not racist policies. Most typically, children and grand children of former emigrants get a simplified procedure for a residence permit. In addition, some nations grant or have granted the members of their dominant ethnicity a simplified entry to the country. (E.g. Germany grants Russian Germans a right-of-return, Finland gives a similar benefit for persons with “Finnish” nationality in their internal passports.)

The idea that Europes immigration policies can exist in a vacuum, unaffected by historic racism, domestic political concerns, implicit assumptions about non Western countries etc seems unlikely..that doesn’t mean they are necessarily ‘racist’, but they certainly are affected by racism to some degree

“Greece should bail, default, go back on its own currency, and start picking up the pieces. Including closing its borders to further immigrants if that’s what it takes.”

And then we can kick Greek immigrants out of the rest of the EU!

The only thing you’re missing here is evidence, for the potential numbers migrating, estimated growth and the affect on domestic wages

Here’s some: 26% of North Africans wanted to migrate permanently to another country in 2010 (ie before the Arab Spring started). Of those, 20% wanted to go to France, 8% to Italy and 6% to Spain. So the number migrating to Europe, if its borders were opened, is about 18% of the total population of the region – roughly 36 million people from North Africa alone. Ten million of them would end up in France.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/147344/one-four-north-africa-desired-migrate-unrest.aspx

17% of them wanted to go to Saudi Arabia! which sort of makes me feel that they haven’t thought the process through very hard. Yes, I’d love to be a poor Maghrebi migrant in Saudi Arabia. I’m sure I’d be treated just fine.

I don’t recognize a difference among nationalism, ethnicism and racism in the matter of restrictive immigration policies. No doubt nationalism has other dimensions, such as the question of democratic self-governance vs rule by foreign elites, where it is often non-pathological. But when we keep damn furriners out because they aren’t as good as us, and we don’t trust them to be fellow citizens, that’s just racism, and going along with calling it nationalistic feeling or somesuch euphemism, is simply being nice and polite to racists.

A non-racist immigration policy would consist of no immigration policy. That’s the immigration policy regime under which all of my immigrant forebears entered the US. There’s quite enough private racism, nationalism and ethnicism, not to mention the practical difficulties a stanger would experience even if everyone in the host nation bent over backwards to extend the hand of friendship, to form a sufficient barrier to any nation being overrun with immigrants. We don’t need official, public policy, barriers to keep immigration within reasonable bounds.

We now accept as natural and inevitable that a nation have some sort of immigration policy, but for a nation to have an industrial policy is some sort of offense against the free market natural order of things. Money, foreign or not, must categorically be free to flow where it will and wreak whatever good or ill upon us it wishes, but the flow of human beings must absolutely be micromanaged by the authorities. There is but one god, Capital, and we humans are merely its humble slaves.

Lurker simply presupposes that states have the moral right to exclude would be migrants but provides no argument whatsoever for this right to exclude. Without such an argument, drivel about caring for compatriots more than foreigners doesn’t establish anything. Moreover, claims about the millions of people who would move if given the chance are merely evidence free assertions (what people say in opinion surveys counts for nothing). I’d add that the distinction between ethnically-driven and racist policies is an utterly bogus one. I’m getting a strong whiff of racist troll here.

I’d add that when someone says in the face of 18,567 deaths that “I do not have very much compassion for people who die while trying to break our law”, my belief that I’m probably dealing with a racist troll is reinforced.

“Moreover, claims about the millions of people who would move if given the chance are merely evidence free assertions (what people say in opinion surveys counts for nothing).”

Okay but where is the evidence that they would stay put? As the one calling for a radical change, the elimination of a nation state’s right to control its borders, should you be the one who has to provide evidence?

@14 Lurker writes:

“The question is not about the race, it is about money and the standard of living. There are about 1 billion people in Africa, and a further one billion people in Middle East and Southern Asia. If given a chance, perhaps 300-400 million of them would move to European Union, which has some 500 million inhabitants.
This would not lead to a corresponding relative growth of the economy, so it would result in the weakening of the median standard of living. Most importantly, it would dramatically lower the income level of the poorest Europeans. Because I symphatize much more with my compatriots than foreigners, I cannot support unrestricted immigration.
Second, I would say that the weak immigration enforcement regimes present in Southern member states are the strongest driving force for human smuggling. These countries have vibrant labour market for the paperless, and repatriation is not automatic by any means. Cracking down on the paperless labour and their employers (e.g. Spanish farmers) would dramatically decrease the rate of human smuggling into the Union, but it is not in the interests of the moneyed classes of these member states.”

Transformed slightly by Gov. Perry and Sheriff Arpai:

“The question is not about the race, it is about money and the standard of living. There are about 100 million people in Mexico, and a further 100 million people in Central America. If given a chance, perhaps 20-30 million of them would move to Texas, which has some 30 million inhabitants.

This would not lead to a corresponding relative growth of the economy, so it would result in the weakening of the median standard of living. Most importantly, it would dramatically lower the income level of the poorest Texans. Because I symphatize much more with my compatriots than foreigners, I cannot support unrestricted immigration.

Second, I would say that the weak immigration enforcement regimes present in California are the strongest driving force for human smuggling. That state has vibrant labour market for the paperless, and repatriation is not automatic by any means. Cracking down on the paperless labour and their employers (e.g. Lettuce farmers) would dramatically decrease the rate of human smuggling into the U.S., but it is not in the interests of the moneyed classes of these member states.”

Sure reads a lot more racist when you say it like that….

“Because I like, as a social democrat, the welfare state, I support immigration only when it is necessary for the national economy”

But you’ve not offered any definition of “necessary for the national economy” or evidence for a specific amount of immigration to meet that definition

“Mr. Tomkins, whose forebears entered the US during a time of free immigration, forgets very nicely that such free immigration resulted in great distress for the immigrants, and allowed the capitalists to suppress the wages to and below the sustenance level”

Was there really ‘free’ immigration?
And was it really immigration that allowed capitalists ‘suppress the wages to and below the sustenance level’?
Large scale immigration also coincides with the development and maintenance of the welfare state, the rise of unions etc why is it only responsible for negative social consequences ? (perhaps Mexican immigration is repsonsible for Obamacare?!)

This:

“forgets very nicely that such free immigration resulted in great distress for the immigrants”

Is some high quality concern trolling

But you’ve not offered any definition of “necessary for the national economy” or evidence for a specific amount of immigration to meet that definition
I would define it: “necessary for the national economy” means that no unemployed citizen or legal resident with the necessary qualifications applied for the job, when the job opening was published in major newspaper, with a wage offer corresponding the median wage for the job. Or a similar, formal determination of the unavailability of work force by a competent domestic authority, after consulting the labour unions of the industry in question.

And I would join Mr. Mao in his observation. The comments of Mr. Tomkins makes are such that come easily from a member of a dominant culture, such as the US main stream. You can be sure that no amount of immigration can wipe out your way of life. As a citizen of a much smaller nation, I am acutely aware of the fact that our numbers are much more easily diluted by migration, and my small native language endangered.

“As a citizen of a much smaller nation, I am acutely aware of the fact that our numbers are much more easily diluted by migration, and my small native language endangered.”

I come from a nation of 4 million which had open borders with Eastern Europe during a decade long boom, and yet we survived! and when the economy fell apart people left! (including the locals.. )

“I would define it: “necessary for the national economy” means that no unemployed citizen or legal resident with the necessary qualifications applied for the job, when the job opening was published in major newspaper, with a wage offer corresponding the median wage for the job. Or a similar, formal determination of the unavailability of work force by a competent domestic authority, after consulting the labour unions of the industry in question.”

I want to subscribe to your newsletter.

Eastern European countries are comperatively rich and get EU subsidies. The poorest two still have no unlimited access to the German labour market.

Chris Bertram @25: “Lurker simply presupposes that states have the moral right to exclude would be migrants but provides no argument whatsoever for this right to exclude.”

Well now, that’s a profound and subtle argument you’re moving into.

A thoroughgoing anarchist would say: states have no right to exclude would-be immigrants, because states have no right to do anything at all. I suspect you and I would both disagree with that.

If we are agreed that states do have a right to forbid some things (and I’m not sure what the difference between “right” and “moral right” is here), then the question becomes: is forbidding (some kinds of) immigration one of the things states have a right to do?

Here I would distinguish between having a right to do something, and being wise to do it. I do not doubt that Congress had a right to enact the 18th Amendment, but in my opinion it was very foolish to do so.

To take it further: a state may have a right to do something to which I am passionately opposed. The states of Virginia and Scotland had a right to make slavery legal, Henry V’s Parliament had a right to enact that heretics be burned alive in public.

If you argue they had no such rights (or moral rights), you are in effect saying “states have a right to make laws I approve of, but no right to make laws I do not approve of”. That is all very well if Chris Bertram is universally acknowledged as infallibly correct: which may not be the case.

So when it comes to states excluding immigrants, I think you have to make the argument, not that they have no rights to do so, but that it is in your opinion foolish or wicked of them to do so. We have not seen your arguments: I am open to persuasion.

“Policy will come to resemble Lurker’s views whether we like it or not.”

Really? What country is doing this:
“I would define it: “necessary for the national economy” means that no unemployed citizen or legal resident with the necessary qualifications applied for the job, when the job opening was published in major newspaper, with a wage offer corresponding the median wage for the job. Or a similar, formal determination of the unavailability of work force by a competent domestic authority, after consulting the labour unions of the industry in question.”

“Arizona?”
*Not sure if serious….

..which is to say, I am serious. Lurkers position is the equivelant of no immigration. Which is fine, but then that reality has to be owned (taking into consideration you wont get the benefits of immigration, ehivh are substantial )

Glen, 26
“Ever tried living in a foreign country? As an indigent, bringing with you little or no money, and trying to just get by, forget about thriving, in a country where you don’t know the language and culture well, if at all? Think it wouldn’t be even harder if you were the sort of person most in need of economic opportunity, someone with little education? If you came from a culture in which people tend to rely on extended family, and you have to leave that extended family back in the home country?

What do the official, public policy, barriers to immigration have that even compares to those barriers as disincentives? The whole debate about “immigration policy” is not required by real world exigencies. A Europe or a US with no official barriers would vary little from the present day situation in terms of total numbers who immigrate, because they would still be “protected” by non-official barriers. ”

The official, public policy barrier to immigration to the EU is that you have to risk drowning on a ramshackle boat in the Mediterranean to reach Europe, and then once in Europe your asylum request will be denied and they will deport you anyway. You don’t think that’s a big deterrent?

The official U.S. policy, for Mexicans and Central Americans, is that you must risk dying in the Arizona desert, which is probably safer than the Mediterranean. After that you may not claim asylum but you can just stay undocumented and work as a farmworker or a maid. There are a few restrictions: you cannot get a better job, you cannot get public benefits, including education, and if you’re raped you’re not allowed to call the police. So the barriers are perhaps lighter than in Europe but still significant.

As for learning the language, that is an issue, and if you’re migrating from Papua New Guinea to Iceland maybe it’s a dealbreaker. However, most immigrants travel to a country (and city, and neighborhood) where many of their countrymen are already present precisely to solve this problem. The ones already there are adapted to varying degrees and can guide the newcomers, translate for them, and often employ them. That’s why so many Arabs go to Detroit, Somalis go to Maine, and Armenians go to Glendale. Mexicans have more options: there are cities spread across the southwestern U.S. that primarily speak Spanish. Plus there’s a lot of employers who don’t mind having unskilled laborers who don’t speak their language, because they can hire supervisors who speak both languages (probably an earlier immigrant).

So basically I think the legal barriers are a very big factor. There are some countries that just flatly decide they don’t want immigrants (like Japan), and they’re very successful at achieving that. Of course those tend to be countries where the cultural/racism barriers are strong as well, so it’s hard to separate the two.

I am not sure I’m familiar with this “south”. Based on the evidence provided, we know:
1) It is inhabited by people with European names (“us”).
2) 97% of the population was killed by pillaging.
3) The pillagers came from the “north”.
4) The northerners scalped the southerners.
5) I (“you”) am a northerner.

I am guessing that the south is the Viking settlement in Vinland, and the northmen are Skraelings. I’m not sure if I’m technically a Skraeling, but I am native to North America so close enough. Please relay my apologies to your Viking countrymen.

Cracking down on the paperless labour and their employers (e.g. Spanish farmers) would dramatically decrease the rate of human smuggling into the Union, but it is not in the interests of the moneyed classes of these member states

I think getting Spanish (or Italian, or Greek) landowners to obey the law as an abstract value is probably so unrealistic as to belong in the dragon thread. Revolution in Germany is more realistic; it happened after all.

Marthe Raymond@ 50: ” . . . He may just know what he’s talking about.”

If we are talking about growth, I am sure he does. His betrayal of the indigenous you are always going on about by selling use rights to their land to oil, mineral, and timber interests is almost certain to boost Ecuador’s growth rates.

William: I resent your snide tone–indigenous about whom I am always going on about. Smells pretty racist to this indigenous woman.

I am well aware of the indigenous issues in Ecuador, having spent a fair amount of time there previous to Correa’s presidency. In the particular case that you mentioned, I believe he was and is trying for a Third Way and avoid the ecological disaster that the gringo Big Oil refuses to disburse funds they were ordered to disburse to clean up the mess in Amazonas. Considering we are talking about big billions of bucks, the government could obviously go a long way towards conciliatory dialogue with the various indigenous groups and organizations, which BTW are in no measure hopmogenous, if he had those big bucks in hand.

Would “you talk about so frequently” be OK? Would that “smell racist”? Help me out here.

On second thought, never mind.

Gringo? Really?

I am commenting on your use of the word Gringo. Not really appropriate for this blog I would think.

@MPAVictoria:

I get your point about the use of the term “gringo”. But the fact is, in many places it is not used as a pejorative. In Peru, at least, where I am familiar with the usage, it is used in a manner similar to the use of yanqui to mean a white north american. There is a slight difference, though– a non-white person from the north could be a yanqui but not a gringo.

William, racism has been institutionalized in the US since before it was the US–it was the entire justification for invasion, colonization and genocide. It is the driving rationalization for savage capitalism, for pillaging the south for its resources–and I mean the south of this planet. It is reflected in the assmption that if you look and act white, you are superior to non-whites. The fact that I identify myself as an indigenous person means that white folks immediately treat me snidely and with disparagement–despite my PhD received more than 40 years ago and my long run as an educator, poet, playwright, film critic, that I am fluent in several languages and have travelled a big part of the planet. The catch is: I look white. But in a forum such as this, folks assume all the physical stereotypes of an indigenous person apply to me and they try to do the gringo dance on my head.

You did it, and I appreciate your having apologized.

Now, as to your comment about indigenous folks not having been assimilated into the nation states that control their resources, a 19th century plan that was tantamount to cultural genocide–thank god that failed. Indigenous people do not want to be assimilated. They want to live on their ancestral lands–what is left of them– in peace and control their own resources, before they are all ripped off by Canadian mining companies, Big Oil, and so forth. A wonderful Peruvian writer, Manuel Scorza, wrote a group of 5 novels about the struggles of indigenous people in the sierra who tried to control their land and water that was constantly being ripped off by foreign mining companies. I don’t know if they are available in English. José María Arguedas wrote several novels on the same topic before he became so depressed that he committed suicide. I know where the anger and frustration of an indigenist can lead. Even if one tries to manage it through the creative process.

And my Spanish is mediocre (pero estoy aprendiendo) but I will check out the works you mention. I have copy/ pasted into iPad Pages. Thnx.

@ 66, William Berry 04.25.13 at 3:13 am (@Marthe Raymond):

“It is just that no one will engage you when you talk that way.”

Apparently, William, you’ve just disproved your own statement, for your #66 is as impassioned and frank as they come. Perhaps we all need a little push & shove to speak honestly and from the heart. And your exchange with Marthe is a case in point: it couldn’t be better.

I am surprised Lurker hasn’t gotten more pushback for his claim that immigration is bound to undermine the European welfare state.

Chris Bertram a while back posted here explicitly asking for assessments of the economic costs of immigration, and as I remember that thread basically came up blank. So far as I can tell, the assessments of the economic impact of immigration range from the wildly optimistic (triple world GDP by opening all the borders!) to the more sober, but still fundamentally positive. I’ve been following this debate for a while, and I think this post (which someone else linked to upthread as well) summarizes what I’ve seen pretty well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/29/five-things-economists-know-about-immigration/

Basiscally, everyone agrees that immigration increases aggregate growth, and real wages for most native workers as well. There is controversy over whether there is a small negative effect on real wages near the bottom of the income distribution. This, in my opinion, is a serious issue, and one that any sensible discussion on immigration needs to address, but hardly a doomsday scenario for the welfare state. And, in fact, in the European context the “tax-and-transfer” solution seems perfectly appropriate to me, and less susceptible to the theory of politics critique. After all, in contrast to the US, in much of Europe the principle of paying relatively high taxes to support relatively generous transfers and good public services is already entrenched.

As for Greece, until relatively recently the impact of immigration was clearly positive. I have seen first-hand how immigration (from Eastern Europe) helped revitalize parts of the countryside that were rapidly declining. For decades, young people would leave the countryside to move to the cities to study and get better paid jobs. These people used to never be replaced, until young families from Eastern Europe started moving in, in the ’90s.

The biggest threat to the welfare state in Europe right now is disastrous macroeconomic policy leading to prolonged recession, and in the worst hit countries rapid emigration, which worsens the demographic picture. Immigration is not the issue.

The biggest threat to the welfare state in Europe right now is disastrous macroeconomic policy leading to prolonged recession, and in the worst hit countries rapid emigration, which worsens the demographic picture. Immigration is not the issue.

This is true. Edward Hugh was and is hideously (and profitably) wrong about the European economy, but he did spot very early on that Spain had seen its demographics go into reverse thanks to immigrants, and that this could unwind, fast, in the event of a recession.

Here’s some more on Frontex and their role in Greece for anyone interested:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/09/21/eu-s-dirty-hands-0

“Roger, thanks for reinforcing an occasional real interchange on this site, which is usually only a dialogue of deaf people and a circle jerk of nostalgia for the good ole days of white privilege when non-whites were not “uppity”.

The comment by the OP about “civilized discourse” is a blatant throwback to those days–when all means were fair to “civilize the heathens”. Of course most of the planet considers that whites were and are the barbarians, given their proclivity for genocide, but nostalgia isn’t about what was real.

This thread makes obvious that the ugly racism which you folks try to cover up is very much alive and is at the basis of your “civilized discourse” on immigration.”

Man… I don’t even know.

“MPA: Apparently you gringos are so habituated to having to have the last word that you will try to do so, even when those words are not even yours!”

Yes.

MPA: Another poster explained the use of the term gringo to you last night on this thread in post 67.

It is exactly as he described it. White people from the US are called gringos here in Latin America–where I have lived for 20 years. There is nothing perjorative about it, as it is common usage not only in conversation on the street, but in journalistic articles, legislative debates, and so forth. You are taking offense where none was meant–especially since my initial use of the term referred to white-owned multinational oil companies.

Stop whining. And stop trying to bully me. Your behavior to me, especially in view of the fact that a white poster explained the innocuous usage of the term gringo to you, is racist bullying. You are calling for me to be banned because I present views that are uncomfortable for you as a white person. You are being offensive, and you mean to be.

I am resting my case here. Please refrain from further uncited use of my posts.

Lurker@14: “If given a chance, perhaps 300-400 million [Africans and Asians] would move to European Union, which has some 500 million inhabitants.”

How is this possible? Why is this so? It is hard being a refugee—why would so many people want to be refugees?

Where did this number come from?

Watson:

I live in Mexico, but I am not Mexican, so I fail to identify with your assumptions about my gods. Cortés (note correct spelling) was no avenging angel for indigenous people, but simply put together a coalition of groups who were enemies of the Aztecas. His goal was to enrich the coffers of Spain.

2. I have a bit of Irish in my heritage, actually, so I am well aware that there are indigenous whites. My people come from Canada, and an Irishman who had immigrated got into the mix. I am also aware that the practice of scalping was brought to this hemisphere by the English after road-testing it in several campaigns against the Irish.

Niamh:…though there are many more things that could be said about skill composition, the challenges of integration of people from widely different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and the ways in which people can acquire citizenship.</i.

As for the challenges of integration, I suppose one could find lots of things to say about them, but being myself an economic immigrant (though a white-collar one) to Australia—a country where 26% of the population was born elsewhere, and 46% has at least one parent born elsewhere—I doubt that they fundamentally change the picture. Far from being patchworks of disaffected ethnic enclaves at war with each other, Australian cities routinely rank among the most desirable places to live in the world.

I believe for a spell Australia actually paid its immigrants. Or did I just dream that? Seems to me that’s how a lot of Lebanese people ended up there.

Of course they could have come to Mexico like the family of the World’s Richest Man, Carlos Slim (Saleem)….

Every time a new member joins the European union, politicians in Germany, the UK etc. claim that this will result in millions of people moving to their country. The actual numbers of migrants are invariably much lower than the scaremongering numbers thus suggested.

Not invariably. A big reason this discussion is happening in the UK is that the accession of the central European states to the EU led to a hell of a lot more Polish and Czech immigration to the UK than anyone had expected – half a million or more.

You also fail to realize that white people can also be indigenous: think of Scotland and the English conquest, as necessary for the freedom of the people of Scotland from the lairds as painful as it was.

Christ, Watson, read a history book or something. This is just embarrassing to watch. “The English conquest”. “Freedom from the lairds”. God give me strength.

thanks for reinforcing an occasional real interchange on this site, which is usually only a dialogue of deaf people and a circle jerk of nostalgia for the good ole days of white privilege when non-whites were not “uppity”.

One wonders why she keeps coming back.

” Arguing that complete removal of immigration controls would not result in increased immigration”

No one, certainly not the OP, has argued that

“Not invariably. A big reason this discussion is happening in the UK is that the accession of the central European states to the EU led to a hell of a lot more Polish and Czech immigration to the UK than anyone had expected – half a million or more.”

One of the reasons there was so much Polish Czech etc immigration to Ireland and Britain (iirc) is that we, along with Sweden I think, were the only countries to allow unrestricted immigration from the accession states for the first 5 years. If there was a truly global commitment to open borders, (or a truly Europen one with the accession states), then this wouldnt be such an issue, theoretically

Eastern Europe has millions of poor Roma, who as EU citizens have legal access to the rest of the EU.

How many millions? I’m having a hard job getting as far as 2.

“Everyone in the world who wants to live and work in the UK – and who has the cash to get here – is already here?”

Also, what is surprising to me, in these ‘immigration as a human right’ threads, is that the argument about ‘the cash to get here’ is even presented. If the ‘immigration is a human right’ side wants to be consistent, surely they should include in their demands buying a plane ticket for everyone who wants to emigrate, every time he/she decides they want to. Otherwise, what, is this just for the benefit of the middle-classes?

..which is also somewhat contradictory to the argument that immigration doesnt have a substantial downward affect on wages

Ah I get you, yeah fair enough

So, provide them with a place to stay, and a decent income. Otherwise you’re like those anti-abortion people, who believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth…

Well, yeah folks:

Immigration is a problem. It causes inconveniences. It is a result of colonialism. Mexico, for example, has had two revolutions and is still a colony–of the US and Spain. Mexicans are the largest group of immigrants–documemted and ndocmented–in the US.

Yes, there is a connection.

Immigration means the chickens have decided to roost at your home because your colonialization destroyed theirs. And you have chickenfeed–less than before, perhaps, but more than the zero chickenfeed that they have.

This ain’t rocket science, folks.

Mao: you didn’t ask me that question, but I am going to point out that billions have been spent to ship food to areas where hunger dominates. The most cynical have simply dropped it from helicopters so they can watch the “ants” scramble for it.

Unless you plan to fully adopt the millions of hungry folks in Africa, which means providing food, clothing, shelter, health services and education until–when?–you should forget that plan.

Why? Because if the agricultural infrastructure to produce adequate alimentation is not there, and you don’t plan to develop it, the outcome is obvious.

That plane ticket’s cost might well prove to be pretty attractive–if you actually think things through.

Meanwhile, who is giving odds on the immigration reform passing in the US since the Boston/Chechenia Blowout?

@114 (Mao)
At the moment it more like ‘we can’t have nice things so why should the [insert bigoted epithet] get any?’. The True Finns, for example, are in favour of helping refugees where they are right now AND cutting development aid to nothing.
No generosity or solidarity to be seen. The Lurker (the original one) seems to want to preserve a welfare state for Our People, never mind the rest, but that is not going to happen either, if present trends continue.

Markos Valaris @94: no, it’s not a matter of avoiding a reductio ad absurdum. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. I’ll try again.

CB states that states have no right to ban or restrict immigration across their borders.

I reply that denying states’ rights is not a helpful argument. Consider (my first example) Prohibition in the US. I maintain, and I think most of CT would agree, that this was a foolish, counterproductive, deeply harmful and unworkable project. Nevertheless, it does not follow that Congress had no right to enact the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act; and anybody who in 1919 had argued that they had no such right would have had a very hard time of it. Congress, in short, had the indisputable right to do what I, and many others, think was very wrong.

If you disagree, I would be very interested to know why.

Extend this to more extreme cases: slavery in Virginia, burning heretics in England. I think the same argument applies. If by some act of magnificent necromancy you could converse with an antebellum Virginian, or an early fifteenth-century English Catholic, I don’t think it would be any use arguing that their legislatures had no right to do what they in fact did. Arguing that what they did was wrong, now that’s another matter.

So to return to immigration controls: it is futile to say that states have no right to impose them. Saying that they are foolish, counterproductive, deeply harmful and unworkable: those are meaningful arguments, but have to be made quite separately from high-sounding declarations that states have no such rights.

Unless, of course, you sink to the level of declaring that states have no right to make laws I do not agree with.

@ 115, marthe raymond 04.26.13 at 4:18 pm

“Unless you plan to fully adopt the millions of hungry folks in Africa, which means providing food, clothing, shelter, health services and education until–when?–you should forget that plan.

Why? Because if the agricultural infrastructure to produce adequate alimentation is not there, and you don’t plan to develop it, the outcome is obvious.”

QFT

The first order of business must be to restore those nations to to the state of agricultural self-sufficiency.

In this connection, you might like the work of James Scott, as per this interview, for instance: “James Scott on Agriculture as Politics, the Dangers of Standardization and Not Being Governed.” He draws an intricate connection between agricultural sustainability and radical politics.

It’s also interesting that the most ambitious political reforms ever attempted were always land/agricultural reforms at bottom (or at the center), from the Gracchi brothers to Julius Caesar, not to mention the peasant revolts throughout the European history or land reforms following (as well as providing impetus for) the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

And it’s no different , I suppose, with South/Latin American countries that, once checked the imperialist aggression, undertook major agrarian reforms as a sure path to restoring social justice.

(The link to James Scott I owe to another CT poster, on “Socialism without a Map,” I believe.)

Roger: Imperialist agression has never really been checked in Latin America. Only last week the Horsefaced Hawk, John Kerry, referred to Latin America as the US’ back patio–which immediately provoked indignant responses on the part of Evo Morales of Bolivia as well as the foreign minister of Venezuela–among others. Yesterday Horseface the Lesser, Roberta Jacobson, changed the term to “strategic zone”–still, of course, with the possessive our.

Agrarian reform is very close to my heart–two of my heroes being Kropotkin and Emiliano Zapata–and ten years ago at this time I had just returned from Venezuela after participating in a roundtable discussion taking the measure of what had been the advances to date of Venezuela’s agrarian reform. Over the next year I gave several conferences in the region on the topic, “Agrarian Reform: Indispensable or Useless?” which examined reforms initiated in the 60s in Cuba and Peru, in the early 70s in Chile, in the 80s in Nicaragua as well the one then being undertaken by Venezuela.

The common thread of failed agrarian reforms is lack of institutional continuity–which means that a government of the left undertakes an agrarian reform with some appearance of success, only to be booted from power by a US-backed coup in the style of Pinochet/Kissinger or by, in the case of Nicaragua, a mercenary war finally pinned up by a travesty of elections. The new government, de facto or not, immediately sets about dismantling any institutions and laws that affected the oligarchy’s privileges during the previous x number of years–land given to campesinos reverts to the hands of the wealthier latifundistas and the landless campesinos immigrate to the large cities to live in the slums.

The only exception to this scenario has been Cuba–not because imperialist agression was ever checked, but because it had institutional continuity long enough to carry out the reform, and because the government to date has not been overthrown.

Mexico is a complicated story of another sort–where with typical Mexican political cynicism, since 1940 the agrarian reform was institutionalized–with its own Secretary and so forth–with the explicit mandate to never initiate any sort of agrarian reform. Indigenous and other campesinos have been fighting for decades to get the land back that was ripped off from them under the guise of agrarian reform and either given outright or rented to multinational Big Seed or Big Mining–an agrarian reform in reverse, in fact. Zapata has been spinning in his tiny tomb in the base of his multimeter statue in the Revolution Park in my town during those same decades.

In the majority of African countries the same institutional discontinuity has prevailed, and therefore instead of agricultural infrastructure having improved there, the slums in the big cities have gotten bigger. Africa is especially vulnerable to climactic instability as well–although here in Mexico extended droughts over the past 15 to 20 years have created conditions of extreme alimentary instability as well. And since it is large Big Seed and Big Intermediary that profit mightily from those conditions, food prices have skyrocketed here over the past 5 years–which makes it very tough for those folks living on tiny parcels of land with no access to irrigation to feed themselves either from the mercados or from growing their own basic foodstuffs.

Their response to that situation can be seen in the tennis shoe footprints in the desert between Sasabe, Sonora and Tucson, Arizona.

A big reason this discussion is happening in the UK is that the accession of the central European states to the EU led to a hell of a lot more Polish and Czech immigration to the UK than anyone had expected – half a million or more.

Aaaaand ….? Finally the UK got plumbers who know what they’re doing .

(The skill level of these and other tradesmen in the UK is appaling.)

Stephen:

First, let’s agree that “I have a right to do X” just means “I do not have a duty not to do X”. Now suppose that you and I are not members of any common political order. And suppose that we happen to meet, and I happen to be more powerful than you—I have guns, let’s say, and you don’t. Suppose that I proceed to take away your property and enslave you. Have I thereby wronged you? I don’t just mean, have I harmed you—I mean, have I done wrong by you, have I violated a duty I had towards you?

If yes, then it follows that I did not have a right to do what I did. And I do not think that it would make any difference if we stipulate that I was acting on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia. If so, then it follows that the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have a right to practice slavery either.

If, on the other hand, you think that I would not wrong you by enslaving you, then you are probably not willing to accept that there exist any rights that are not granted by a pre-existing political authority. If so, then indeed it would be pretty hard to apply rights-talk to states themselves. Is this your view?

Chris Bertram@126: apologies, I may have misunderstood you. You wrote that “Lurker simply presupposes that states have the moral right to exclude would be migrants but provides no argument whatsoever for this right to exclude”. I assumed, apparently wrongly, that you meant to argue that there were no such arguments.

I am glad that is not in fact your position, for (as I have shown) it is not defensible.

“I am glad that is not in fact your position, for (as I have shown) it is not defensible.”

I’m not sure where you did that, certainly not in this comments thread, and it is harder to establish that states do have such a moral right than you suppose. The examples you give all involve states imposing laws on their own citizens, rather than on outsiders. If you are genuinely interested in thinking about this issue (which I doubt) then Debating the Ethics of Immigration, by Wellman and Cole (Wellman for the right to exclude, Cole against) would be a good place to start reading.

Markos: ” Suppose that I proceed to take away your property and enslave you. Have I thereby wronged you? I don’t just mean, have I harmed you—I mean, have I done wrong by you, have I violated a duty I had towards you? ”

You’re operating within purely liberal, individualistic terms, but most people don’t. A lot of people view the world as a place where where nations, classes, races, income categories, etc, struggle and compete against each other. In this paradigm, individuals harming each other sometimes means zilch; simply not in the scope. A vast majority of people do accept some version of this, and so purely individualistic approach is unlikely to convince anybody. That’s why, you see, other commenters here keep suggesting that mass immigration is not likely to harm the host nation, or the poor in the host nation. That’s a very important part.

Markos Valaris@132
You seem to think I am advocating slavery, which I am not. If you remember, I started by saying I am passionately opposed to it.

What I am arguing is that it makes no sense to say that a state has no right to do something, simply because I (and others who are likeminded) think it should not do it. In short: a state may have the right, in the sense that most people at the time agree it has the right, to do what I think wrong. With regard to slavery, antebellum Virginians thought they had the right to impose it; at the time of American independence, all the US thought they had that right; now, everyone thinks they were wrong. With regard to immigration controls, almost everyone now thinks states have the right to impose them. Possibly at some future date, people may think otherwise. I don’t think it makes sense to base arguments on time-dependent rights. Arguing that some law is harmful, now, that’s a different matter.