Posted on 08/15/2005 11:07:26 PM PDT by AZ_Cowboy
Immigration has joined the long list of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English. At the heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we "need" immigrants -- legal or illegal -- to do work that Americans won't do.
What we "need" depends on what it costs and what we are willing to pay. If I were a billionaire, I might "need" my own private jet. But I can remember a time when my family didn't even "need" electricity.
Leaving prices out of the picture is probably the source of more fallacies in economics than any other single misconception. At current wages for low-level jobs and current levels of welfare, there are indeed many jobs that Americans will not take.
The fact that immigrants -- and especially illegal immigrants -- will take those jobs is the very reason the wage levels will not rise enough to attract Americans.
This is not rocket science. It is elementary supply and demand. Yet we continue to hear about the "need" for immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do -- even though these are all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal immigration became a way of life.
There is more to this issue than economics. The same mindless substitution of rhetoric for thinking that prevails on economic issues also prevails on other aspects of immigration.
Bombings in London, Madrid and the 9/11 terrorist attacks here are all part of the high price being paid today for decades of importing human time bombs from the Arab world. That in turn has been the fruit of an unwillingness to filter out people according to the countries they come from.
That squeamishness is still with us today, as shown by all the hand-wringing about "profiling" Middle Eastern airline passengers.
No doubt most Middle Eastern airline passengers are not carrying any weapons or any bombs -- and wouldn't be, even if there were no airport security to go through. But it is also true that most of the time you will not be harmed by playing Russian roulette.
Europeans and Americans have for decades been playing Russian roulette with their loose immigration policies. The intelligentsia have told us that it would be wrong, and even racist, to set limits based on where the immigrants come from.
There are thousands of Americans who might still be alive if we had banned immigration from Saudi Arabia -- and perhaps that might be more important than the rhetoric of the intelligentsia.
In that rhetoric, all differences between peoples are magically transformed into mere "stereotypes" and "perceptions."
This blithely ignores hard data showing, for example, that people who come here from some countries are ten times more likely to go on welfare as people from some other countries.
The media and the intelligentsia love to say that most immigrants, from whatever group, are good people. But what "most" people from a given country are like is irrelevant.
If 85 percent of group A are fine people and 95 percent of group B are fine people, that means you are going to be importing three times as many undesirables when you let in people from Group A.
Citizen-of-the-world types are resistant to the idea of tightening our borders, and especially resistant to the idea of making a distinction between people from different countries. But the real problem is not their self-righteous fetishes but the fact that they have intimidated so many other people into silence.
In the current climate of political correctness it is taboo even to mention facts that go against the rosy picture of immigrants -- for example, the fact that Russia and Nigeria are always listed among the most corrupt countries on earth, and that Russian and Nigerian immigrants in the United States have already established patterns of crime well known to law enforcement but kept from the public by the mainstream media.
Self-preservation used to be called the first law of nature. But today self-preservation has been superseded by a need to preserve the prevailing rhetoric and visions. Immigration is just one of the things we can no longer discuss rationally as a result.
Excellent article.
Ping
Another Black intellectual tyrant.
I love reading Thomas Sowell. I hope that man lives another 100 healthy years.
BTTT
Thomas Sowell points out how Americans are mentally paralyzed by "political correctness" when they need to wake up, disregard what the zombies say and act to preserve themselves.
That was my take on it.
Masterful!
There is no one like him. He has measured large in my life.
His way with words is a subject for study. I give my school kids his essays as examples of cogent thinking and organzation.
He is always in my prayers.
Well, they're not my students, just my kids.... Still, I credit Sowell with the sturdy conservative thinking they all display. They all managed to hold their own through several years in the liberal indoctrination factories we call Universities, God bless 'em.
Sweet. God Love Him, huh?! T.Sowell is brighter than 98.6% of all the people on the planet. Give or take a little, I suppose.
BTW: Nice Tagline. There aint too many things in the whole wide world better for the planet than killing a bad muslim dead.
Find the muslim f!!cks in your hood here:
Thoma Sowell lives in the real world, unlike Walter Williams who is a free market, free trade loony toon.
This needs a bttt. I suppose the OBL/traitor lobby could lable us all commonsensists now, but I don't care.
Not everyone should be an American, not just anyone belongs here.
I can add nothing to the wisdom of Mr. Sowell.
Thomas Sowell, like Walter Williams, is a strong supporter of free trade. He just understands, like most advocates of free trade, that free trade and illegal immigration are two separate issues.
The grand fallacy of those who oppose free trade is that low-wage countries take jobs away from high-wage countries. While that is true for some particular jobs in some particular cases, it is another half-truth that is more misleading than an outright lie.
Facts are blithely ignored by those who simply assume that low-wage countries have an advantage in international trade. But high-wage countries have been exporting to low-wage countries for centuries. The vast majority of foreign investments by American companies are in high-wage countries, despite great outcries about how multinational corporations are "exploiting" Third World workers.
John Hawkins: Can you explain why protectionist tariffs on let's say steel or textiles actually end up costing America more jobs than they save?
Thomas Sowell: The number of jobs in the steel is exceeded many times over in industries making steel products, from automobiles to oil rigs, refrigerators, locomotives, etc., etc. Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.
More Sowell:
Outsourcing and saving Jobs
Immigration has joined the long list of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English.At the heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we "need" immigrants -- legal or illegal -- to do work that Americans won't do.
==============================
He begins with his trademark whine about being a victim of political correctness and then simply spends the next few paragraphs repeating the oft refuted myth that illegal immigrants are working for wages so low that Americans would rather be on welfare.
He then changes subjects to terrorism and tries to make one of the dumbest points that has been posted on FR in a long time; that all we have to do to prevent terrorism in the U.S. is to not allow people from Saudi Arabia to immigrate here. He doesn't even know the difference between an immigrant and a temporary visitor.
Are people no longer being taught in schools how to critically read, or is Sowell intentionally trying to build a mailing list of people who will respond to fundraising solicitations solely on emotions.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
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