I’m getting more and more irritated by the angsting and hand-wringing and oh-dear-me approach by the liberal establishment to the so-called “refugee” crisis in Europe. Today’s heart-wrenching photographs of a drowned three-year-old refugee are being used to whip up emotional responses to the crisis – but that’s only going to make it worse. We can’t respond to a crisis with emotions. We’ve got to deal with its reality.
The problem with refugees in Europe is, fundamentally, the same problem that we have with illegal aliens in the USA. The “refugees” have already escaped the horrors of war in Syria, or Iraq, or Eritrea, or wherever. They’ve gotten out of the combat zone. What they’re now doing is traveling through many other countries in search, not of safety, but of economic improvement. They aren’t so much refugees from crisis as they are economic migrants looking for a better way of life.
They see the ‘entitlement society’ of Europe or the USA, with its no-strings-attached benefits, as an economic Nirvana. They can arrive in a strange country and be given housing at public expense, an allowance on which to live that in many cases exceeds the wages or salaries they were able to earn in their home countries, free education for their children, publicly-funded health care . . . the list goes on and on. That’s why these “refugees” aren’t stopping in the first safe country they come to. They want more than safety. They want money.
I can’t blame them for that, of course. If I were in their shoes, I’d want precisely the same thing. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies to them as much as it does to me or anyone else, and they’re bound and determined to fill that hierarchy as best they can. Unfortunately, to do so they have to rely on the citizens and taxpayers of other countries to provide it for them. They can’t or won’t do so themselves in the countries where they’re living or where they’ve found safety, so they’re moving to where they can get it. The fact that in doing so, they’re imposing an impossible burden – financial, social, cultural and in other ways – on the countries to which they’re moving is something about which they care not at all.
Illegal aliens from South America who are currently flocking to the USA are doing precisely the same thing. They don’t care that they’re imposing all sorts of burdens on this country. They want money, possessions, security – things they can’t get where they are, but they can get here, because the US government hands them out freely through welfare and entitlement programs. They’ll finagle those things out of us one way or another, as long as we allow them to do so – something in which the present Administration is shamefully culpable. Consider:
- Immigrant families, particularly illegals, are far more likely to use welfare or entitlement programs than others.
- Up to 1 in every 10 births in the USA is a so-called ‘anchor baby’, born to illegal alien parents.
- Medicaid is paying out over $2 billion a year in emergency medical care for illegal aliens (even though they’re not legally entitled to it).
The list of costs to the US taxpayer is endless . . . just like the list of costs to European taxpayers of illegal aliens in their countries.
I see only one solution to this “refugee” or illegal alien flood. It’s in four parts, and applies not only to the USA but to every nation facing this problem.
- Secure the borders. Make it hard to sneak in, and punish violators harshly, including confiscation of all of their assets before expulsion. In particular, there should be no path to legal residence and/or citizenship for illegal aliens. That last is not negotiable. If they start their residence in a country by violating that country’s laws, then by definition they won’t make good law-abiding residents or citizens – so don’t give them that opportunity at all.
- Provide aid that encourages and helps people who want to find safety and security, and make a better life for themselves, to do so where they are rather than be forced to find somewhere else. That means putting boots on the ground and helping real people, rather than funneling aid money through governments where most of it can be siphoned off by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.
- If your economy needs cheap labor that its citizens can’t provide, offer a guest worker system that’s functional, simple and effective. You want to pick crops here for better money than you can earn at home? Sure . . . but you get a six-month visa to do so and you go home when it expires. If you comply with its conditions, you get offered another one next year. If you don’t comply and try to stay illegally, or you commit any crime while you’re here, you’re never allowed back.
- Only those who are legal permanent residents – not guest workers on temporary visas – and who’ve paid taxes in a country for five years (and I mean paid into the State’s coffers, not gotten tax ‘refunds’ that more than cancel out what they paid in) are eligible to share in the welfare, entitlement programs, etc. Been here less than five years? No way. Been here ten years, but paid taxes for less than five years? Fuggetaboutit. Not a permanent resident? No. Nix. Nada.
Does anyone else have a better idea? If so, please share it in Comments.
Peter
You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. Good list so far. I'd add: Keep it simple. Make the laws just that: simple, robust, and *enforce those laws.*
Also, if you've a skill we want, i.e. petroleum engineering, high mathematics, or the like, offer inducements to become a citizen. Carrot and stick, reward those who follow the rules, punish those who don't.
Do it within four years. Year one, layout the plan. Year two, begin implementation. Year three work out bugs. Hopefully by year four, it should be working smoothly.
To your points
#1 I generally agree with this but border security is going to have to be highly visible, highly physical (a great wall not a fence) and very possibly backed with force. Also it means real reforms on birth tourism and in a host of other areas.
#2 We don't have the money for white man's burden and with the level of amoral familism and corruption in those nations its a waste of time and money Those nations have to find a way to help themselves and that means changing the way they do things. If they can't, well not our problem. In the end dealing with hollow states like Mexico will require force anyway, the incentives to push their problems onto us are too high and as such, unless their rulers are punished with sanctions or something, they won't stop.
#3 No one needs cheap labor under any circumstances. Ever. If a business can't adapt its model to market wages, they don't deserve to exist. Also we have millions if inner city people who need jobs, we can hire them. Maybe if there is work, that will provide an incentive to learn.
#4 I'm fine with that. I'd suggest that we allow very few more immigrants anyway. We are far better sending people away than accepting new ones.
All of that aside, I think its folly to assume that elections can actually accomplish even the easiest of these goals. The ruling class wants cheap labor, welfare clients, more religious converts, more power for their race or whatever and mostly hates working and middle class Whites, all and non Cuck-Conservatives as well. Its not in their interest to do any of this.
In the end though I suspect its going to come to either the US goes full 3rd world (and remember we haven't been maintaining the infrastructure its D- now) national fracture or somebody willing to do nasty stuff takes charge probably by force
Still to parphrase as Churchill said "Its better to Jaw Jaw than to War War." and Trump might surprise everyone. Its worth a try since the alternatives are so awful.
The problem has some downstream issues that no one thinks about- many illegals pay into social security using a false SSN with their employers' complicity. Figure that tens of thousands of workers are funneled this way just through food service and landscaping. Issuing new SSN's to illegals alters that equation considerably. Prior to now, there was never a mechanism for illegals to tap into SS. Now they will have that ability. While a net drain on healthcare and welfare, illegals were a nice cash bonus for SS.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, my wife was an illegal, and earned her green card the hard way, by marrying me. Her perspective, after 9 years of working cash jobs or under a fake SSN, is that illegals have never taken a single job from a citizen. Rather, it is citizens who look to cheat on their taxes, who look for illegals to GIVE jobs, in order to shaft the IRS. And she's got a point. All we had to do was enact Safe Communities legislation with instant online SSN verification, coupled with allowing municipal employees to levy crushing fines, say $10,000 a day, for hiring illegals.
It isn't the immigrant rights groups who pay for lobbyists to campaign against Safe Communities legislation. It's the restaurant owners, unskilled trades and service industry groups. If you want to identify the root cause, you need a mirror.
Basically a good list I think.
But I would have a few changes.
1. Make an allowance for real crisis.
The situation here in Europe is because:
a)There is a real, nasty and brutal civil war in Syria, that makes the people there not feeling threatened but being threatened. Their lives really are in danger.
b)The countries where they hit Europe first, like Greece or Hungary, are in no position to take them in. It is not that it is uncomfortable there for them. They literally can't survive there at this time (no food, no housing, no medical support).
So there has to be a mechanism that in case of real need can circumvent the bureaucratic process.
2. There has to be a real way to get legal immigration (a self renewing working visa as long as one has work and follows the law, with a grace period of 1 or 2 month if the job is lost to find a new one and the option of citizenship). And this way has to be open for everyone not being a criminal.
3. Absolutely no Anchor Baby. If a child is born to illegal Immigrants it is itself an illegal. There should be a process where these kids can opt to become citizens, if they have grown up in the country in question, but this option does not enable their illegal family to stay. For this the kid has to be either of an age where s/he can be emancipated or has to have a legal family to take him/her in.
MadMcAl why should the West help Syria? They wouldn't help us.
Its a despotic hellhole no matter who is in charge anyway and while I can see the urge to help fellow Christians we have no way to sort sheep from goats or Muslim liars from actual Christian refugees and have our own problems.
Would this mean many people including children die. Yes and its sad but a healthy society takes care of its own.
And note the US already has about 40 million on SNAP (food aid) we have our own problems too.
Can't add anything to what has already been said…
A.B. Prosper
Well, that is your opinion, and you are entitled to it (one of the few entitlements I wholeheartedly support).
The thing is, we are better then that. If we as Christians (or enlightened atheists raised in the ethics created by Christianity) are not willing to help, what makes us different from the barbarians, the unenlightened, the people who created said hellholes?
Don't get me wrong, I don't condone economic refugees. If they want to live in the first world they have first to accept the rules of the first world. Or of course begin to tidy up their own backyard and create the opportunities.
But people who through no fault of their own are in desperate need for sanctuary I think every human being has the duty to help.
And anybody who shirks this duty may be not a bad person, but a Christian he or she ain't.
Often enough these "real" refugees tend to show gratitude for the help given.
They try to at least not make waves.
I agree – this open border policy will be a source of major conflicts in the future. I cannot believe the Europeans (and U.S.) have not noticed how many immigrants have become such a thorn in their side.
So, Peter, want to run for President?
Reducing incentives, CHECK.
Make it harder to get in, CHECK.
Make it faster and easier to send them back, CHECK.
What is left out is punishing any who try to evade our system. This is to give a very visible incentive to not even try it.
1. Every immigrant, legal or otherwise gets biometric data collected.
2. If you are ever caught here illegally, there is a lifetime no possibility of ever being allowed to come here legally again. EVER.
3. If you are caught here illegally, as an adult, and are in good health, you are beaten with a cane before being shipped back. There should always be a penalty. Keeping someone in brief detention is NOT a penalty.
4. For second offense, you get a tattoo on your face showing your status as illegal to make it harder to ever enter the country again.
5. If you enter the country as part of a violent criminal gang, you get the death penalty. There is no point sending you back and no point feeding them in our jail system. Appeals if heard within less than a year. No appeals based on anti-death penalty or racist arguments are permitted, only appeals based on errors in facts.
There are no Americans inside those Asian/African/South Americans just yearning to come out and experience freedom. They are still so busy wrapped up in figuring out how they are going to wake up alive tomorrow that they have no time for politics.
Stop all foreign aid. Stop all economic assistance. Stop all NGO welfare. Where have I heard that before? Oh, right! From one of your fellow ex-pats – http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/924795/posts
IF (and a big if at that) they want to better their lives then they can do it where they live and supposedly after all the dust settles the world will be a better place.
Which, I guess, means we can supply arms to those wanting to make things better. Not Liberator pistols to use to kill sentries to take their rifles to kill more oppressors to take their arms, but lend-lease enough to finish a war. Of course, that would mean they would have to form a coherent quasi-government much along the lines of what e had here before turning our revolution from treason into a victory for democracy.
"But skid," Peter says, "what about the suffering that innocent people will experience if we do all that?" To which skid responds, "Peter, tell me which is worse, the slavery we have put them in or the chance to make their country a better place?"
stay safe.
Refugees? Hardly. It's a muslim invasion. Let the other muslim countries take the so-called refugees in.
Either that, or feed them to the alligators in the bayous of southern Louisiana!
Rusty
Just for the USA, I came up with a humorous way to incentivize Mexico into securing its own border.
Announce that, beginning in 90 days, all illegal aliens (for those who don't like that phrase, substitute 'foreign invaders') will start being rounded up and deported as part of 'Operation Wetback 2.' (Go check the internet for info on the original.) Add in the following proviso: For every illegal alien found after that time, we will relocate our southern border south by one inch.
McChuck I like it. However that would mean we'd end up owing malodorous Matamoros and several other pieces of undesirable urban real estate tot eh South.
That would be more trouble than its worth 😉
And MadMcAl charity starts at home.
Now don't get me wrong I think I'd be OK with a temporary resettlement of Christian refugees so long as they and their children , including ones born here were returned within a few years.
However it probably won't be stable in any reasonable time and they won't go unless forced so its far better to say "Sorry no not welcome" even though its cruel and probably Unchristian
I find it most curious that under liberal progressive pseudo economics they can simultaneously believe that the pie is fixed such that every wealthy person gained that wealth at the expense of a poor person, yet somehow the government pocketbook to finance welfare programs is endlessly deep and shall never run out.
I hear that illegal immigration has fallen off somewhat due primarily to the economic downturn we seem to be under in spite of what our glorious leader tells us. Unfortunately, that only restricts those who would come here to find honest work. The ones committed to a life of crime protected by residence in a sanctuary city and those looking to grift off the government teat do not seem to have slacked in the least.
At Big Hospital in My Town's outpatient clinic I heard "Hameez Coyeenz". That was me, James Collins.
@ MadMcAl
I am all for helping others, but I am very much against the government taxing me heavily to give money to others.
"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"
there is too much 'giving' and not enough 'learning' going on.
I am actually spending a considerable amount of my income helping individuals who are in dire straits due to health problems, so it's not that I'm at all opposed to helping people, but it's better for the giver and recipient of the help to have it be face to face, not an anonymous check from the government.
the recipient needs to realize that they are taking resources that the giver could have made use of.
@David Lang & A.B. Prosper
What speaks against having the refugees work for their living? They get basic housing, basic food, basic schooling and a grace period of 2-3 month.
After that, if they have not found a job on their own (and pay taxes and what ever) they are put to work.
The infrastructure crumbles?
Let them rebuild the streets.
They still get housing, food and schooling. But they work for it.
So the communities or countries giving them sanctuary can defray the costs.
But they are still safe.