[Peace] [Peace-discuss] Urbana Sanctuary City Ordinance passed.

[Carl G. Estabrook]

I think Mort is quite right - “the humanitarian impulse seems admirable, but the reasoning seems nonexistent, flawed."

You don’t have to be too cynical to see it as another identity-politics twisting of liberal concern into a support for neoliberal capitalism, of the sort that the Democrats have been peddling.

'Because who’s for illegal immigration? … as far as I know the only people who are openly for illegal immigration are neoliberal economists.

'First of all, neoliberal economists are completely for open borders, in so far as that’s possible. Friedman said years ago that, “You can’t have a welfare state and open borders,” but of course the point of that was “open the borders, because that’ll kill the welfare state.” There’s a good paper you can get off the web by Gordon Hanson, commissioned by whoever runs Foreign Affairs, and the argument is that illegal immigration is better than legal immigration, because illegal immigration is extremely responsive to market conditions.

'So it’s quite striking that you have all this protesting against illegal immigration, and especially at a time when it’s down. So why are people so upset about it? They are upset about it not because it has gotten worse, it hasn’t, but because they somehow recognize that one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of ne plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires. I mean that’s why for years — even though it’s a kind of contradiction in terms — as a policy it’s worked well. The Bush administration did everything it could to talk against illegal immigration but leave it alone and I’m sure the Obama administration would do the same thing…’ [Walter Benn Michaels, Jacobin, January 2011]  

Why don’t we turn our energies to getting our Congressional representatives to 

(1) pass a reasonable amnesty plan; and 

(2) revoke neoliberal trade pacts like NAFTA that promote illegal immigration from countries ravaged by the Democrats’ neoliberalism.

—CGE

> On Dec 20, 2016, at 11:17 AM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> The humanitarian impulse seems admirable, but the reasoning seems nonexistent, flawed. If one advocates open borders, then there wouldn’t be an immigration problem. But if one wants to control immigration, i.e., laws to enforce it, then those laws will be enforced, and one will have people subject to deportation if they violate the laws. I see no way to get around that. 
> As for those already here, illegally, you can invoke amnesty, or courts to consider each case—a virtual unfeasibility— but then you have the future to contend with. 
> 
> —mkb
> 
>> On Dec 19, 2016, at 9:21 PM, Karen Aram via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>> 
>> It passed, with only one in dissent. The House was packed again, with over 200 people in attendance. 
>> 
>> Thank you to Professor Frances Boyle, Brian Dolinar, Geovanny Vega and all those who made it happen. 
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