Posted on 02/17/2006 3:59:05 AM PST by Klickitat
The Second Mexican War By Lawrence Auster FrontPageMagazine.com | February 17, 2006
The Mexican invasion of the United States began decades ago as a spontaneous migration of ordinary Mexicans into the U.S. seeking economic opportunities. It has morphed into a campaign to occupy and gain power over our country—a project encouraged, abetted, and organized by the Mexican state and supported by the leading elements of Mexican society.
It is, in other words, war. War does not have to consist of armed conflict. War can consist of any hostile course of action undertaken by one country to weaken, harm, and dominate another country. Mexico is waging war on the U.S. through mass immigration illegal and legal, through the assertion of Mexican national claims over the U.S., and through the subversion of its laws and sovereignty, all having the common end of bringing the southwestern part of the U.S. under the control of the expanding Mexican nation, and of increasing Mexico's political and cultural influence over the U.S. as a whole.
Cultural imperialism
We experience Mexico’s assault on our country incrementally—as a series of mini crises, each of which calls forth some new change in policy. Because it has been with us so long and has become part of the cultural and political air we breathe, it is hard for us to see the deep logic behind our immigration “problem.” Focusing on border incursions, guest workers, changes of government in Mexico City, and other such transient events—all of them framed by the media’s obfuscation of whether or not illegal immigration’s costs outweigh its benefits and the maudlin script of “immigrant’s rights”—we don’t get the Big Picture: that Mexico is promoting and carrying out an attack on the United States and in so doing the Mexican government is representing the desires of the Mexican people.
What are these desires?
(1) Political revanchism—to regain control of the territories Mexico lost to the U.S. in 1848, thus avenging themselves for the humiliations they feel they have suffered at our hands for the last century and a half;
(2) Cultural imperialism—to expand the Mexican culture and the Spanish language into North America; and especially
(3) Economic parasitism—to maintain and increase the flow of billions of dollars that Mexicans in the U.S. send back to their relatives at home every year, a major factor keeping the chronically troubled Mexican economy afloat and the corrupt Mexican political system cocooned in its status quo.
These motives are shared by the Mexican masses and the elites. According to a Zogby poll in 2002, 58 percent of the Mexican people believed the U.S. Southwest belongs to Mexico, and 57 percent believed that Mexicans have the right to enter the United States without U.S. permission. Only small minorities disagreed with these propositions.
For Mexico's opinion shapers, it is simply a truism that the great northern migration is a reconquista of lands belonging to Mexico, the righting of a great historic wrong. "A peaceful mass of people … carries out slowly and patiently an unstoppable invasion, the most important in human history" [emphasis added], wrote columnist Carlos Loret de Mola for Mexico City's Excelsior newspaper in 1982.
You cannot give me a similar example of such a large migratory wave by an ant-like multitude, stubborn, unarmed, and carried on in the face of the most powerful and best-armed nation on earth.... [The migrant invasion] seems to be slowly returning [the southwestern United States] to the jurisdiction of Mexico without the firing of a single shot, nor requiring the least diplomatic action, by means of a steady, spontaneous, and uninterrupted occupation.
Similarly, the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska told the Venezuelan journal El Imparcial on July 3rd, 2001:
The people of the poor, the lice-ridden and the cucarachas are advancing in the United States, a country that wants to speak Spanish because 33.4 million Hispanics impose their culture...Mexico is recovering the territories ceded to the United States with migratory tactics...[This phenomenon] fills me with jubilation, because the Hispanics can have a growing force between Patagonia and Alaska.
The Mexicans, as Poniatowska sees it, have changed from resentful losers—which was the way Octavio Paz saw them in his famous 1960 study, The Labyrinth of Solitude—into winners. What accounts for this change? Their expansion northward into the U.S., as the vanguard of a Hispanic conquest of all of North America—cultural imperialism and national vengeance combined in one great volkish movement.
Politicians echo the same aggressive sentiments. At an International Congress of the Spanish Language in Spain in October 2000, Vicente Fox, soon to become president of Mexico with the support of U.S.conservatives, spoke of the "millions of Mexicans in the United States, who in cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami or San Francisco, inject the vitality of the Spanish language and of their cultural expression.... To continue speaking Spanish in the United States is to hacer patria"—to do one's patriotic duty.
Fox was thus describing Mexican immigrants in the U.S., not as people who had left Mexico and still had some sentimental connections there, as all immigrants do, but as carriers of the national mission of the Mexican nation into and inside the United States.
At the same conference, the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes said: "In the face of the silent reconquista of the United States [emphasis added], we confront a new linguistic phenomenon," by which he meant that Spanish was conquering English just as it conquered the Aztec language centuries ago. According to El Siglo, Fuentes received "an intense ovation."
Government statements and policies
The Mexican invasion thus represents the ultimate self-realization of the Mexican people as they move onto a larger part of the world stage—namely the United States—than they have ever occupied before. But the migration, and the imperialism that celebrates it, do not in themselves constitute war. What makes illegal immigration war is the Mexican government's statements and actions about it, particularly with regard to the extraterritorial nature of the Mexican nation and its claims on the U.S. For years, Mexican presidents have routinely spoken of a Mexican nation that extends beyond that country's northern border into American territory. President Ernesto Zedillo told a 1994 convention of the radical-left Mexican-American lobbying group, the National Council of La Raza, "You are Mexicans too, you just live in the United States." One of Fox's cabinet officers, Juan Hernandez, has declared: "The Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States." These are not off-the-cuff statements, but formal state policy. As Heather Mac Donald writes in her important article in the Fall 2005 City Journal:
Mexico's five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the "Mexican nation extends beyond ... its border"—into the United States. Accordingly, the government would "strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and the teaching of the history, values, and traditions of our country."
Such solidarity not only keeps Mexican-Americans sending remittances back to the home country, it makes them willing instruments of the Mexican government. Fox's national security adviser proposed the mobilization of Mexican-Americans as a tool of Mexican foreign policy, as reported by Allan Wall. The head of the Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad said: "We are betting that the Mexican American population in the United States ... will think Mexico first."
The Fifth Column
Once the Mexican people have been defined as a nation that transcends the physical borders of the Republic of Mexico, and once Mexican-Americans are defined as "Mexicans" who are to be represented by the Mexican government, claims of "Mexican" sovereignty and rights can be made on their behalf against the country in which they reside. One such claim is to deny the authority of American law over them. Thus President Zedillo in 1997 denounced attempts by the United States to enforce its immigration laws, insisting that "we will not tolerate foreign forces dictating laws to Mexicans." [Italics added.] The "Mexicans" he was referring to were, of course, residents and citizens of the U.S., living under U.S. law. By saying that U.S. law does not apply to them, Zedillo was denying America’s sovereign power over its own territory. He was saying something others among the Mexican elite believe: that wherever Mexicans live (particularly the U.S. Southwest, which many Mexicans see as rightfully theirs) the Mexican nation has legitimate national interests, and therefore the normal operation of U.S. law on Mexicans living in the U.S. constitutes an "intolerable" attack on Mexican rights, which in turn justifies further Mexican aggression against America in the form of illegal border crossings, interference in the enforcement of U.S. laws, and just plain government to government obnoxiousness.
Employing this irredentist logic, President Fox refuses to call undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. "illegals," telling radio host Sean Hannity in March 2002: "They are not illegals. They are people that come there to work, to look for a better opportunity." It is not syllogistic reasoning to note that if people who have entered the U.S. illegally are not doing something illegal, then U.S. law itself has no legitimacy, at least over Mexican-Americans, and any operation of U.S. law upon them is aggression against the Mexican people.
Once we understand the cultural and national expansiveness that drives the Mexicans, the rest of their behavior falls into place. Consider Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda's non-negotiable demands—"It's the whole enchilada or nothing"—that he issued in a speech in Phoenix, Arizona in 2001. America, said Castañeda (as recounted by Allan Wall), "had to legalize all Mexican illegal aliens, loosen its already lax border enforcement, establish a guest worker program (during an economic downturn) and exempt Mexican immigrants from U.S. visa quotas!" He also demanded that Mexicans living in the U.S. receive health care and in-state college tuition. As Castañeda summed it up in Tijuana a few days later, "We must obtain the greatest number of rights for the greatest number of Mexicans [i.e. in the U.S.] in the shortest time possible." What this adds up to, comments Wall, is basically "the complete surrender of U.S. sovereignty over immigration policy." And why not? As Castañeda had written in The Atlantic in 1995: "Some Americans ... dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it."
Hitler pursued Anschluss, the joining together of the Germans in Austria with the Germans in Germany leading to the official annexation of Austria to Germany. The softer Mexican equivalent of this concept is acercamiento. The word means closer or warmer relations, yet it is also used in the sense of getting Mexican-Americans to act as a unified bloc to advance Mexico's political interests inside the U.S., particularly to help increase immigration and weaken U.S. immigration law. Using this epitome of “soft power,” the Mexican government is using the Mexican U.S. population, including its radical elements, as a fifth column.
As reported in the November 23, 2002 Houston Post:
Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said his country would begin a "bottom-up campaign" to win U.S. public support for a proposal to legalize 3.5 million undocumented Mexican workers in the United States. Castañeda said Mexican officials will begin rallying unions, churches, universities and Mexican communities.... [Castañeda said:] "We are already giving instructions to our consulates that they begin propagating militant activities—if you will—in their communities."
La Voz de Aztlan, the radical Mexican-American group that seeks to end U.S. "occupation" of the Southwest and form a new Mexican nation there, writes at its website:
One great hope that came out of the Zapatista March was that generated by the "alliance" that was forged by some of us in the Chicano/Mexicano Delegation and our brothers and sisters in Mexico. The delegation met with officials of the Partido Revolucionario Democratico (PRD) in Mexico City and discussed strategies that will increase our influence in the United States and further our collective efforts of "acercamiento."
Mexico's violations of our laws and sovereignty
How does Mexico carry out the strategy outlined above, pursuing its war by other means?
The Mexican government publishes a comic book-style booklet, Guía del Migrante Mexicano (Guide for the Mexican Migrant), on how to transgress the U.S. border safely ("Crossing the river can be very risky, especially if you cross alone and at night ... Heavy clothing grows heavier when wet and this makes it difficult to swim or float") and avoid detection once in the U.S.
As Heather Mac Donald puts it, Mexico backs up these written instructions with real-world resources for the collective assault on the border. An elite law enforcement team called Grupo Beta protects illegal migrants as they sneak into the U.S. from corrupt Mexican officials and criminals—essentially pitting two types of Mexican lawlessness against each other. Grupo Beta currently maintains aid stations for Mexicans crossing the desert. In April 2005, it worked with Mexican federal and Sonoran state police to help steer illegal aliens away from Arizona border spots patrolled by Minutemen border enforcement volunteers—demagogically denounced by President Vicente Fox as “migrant-hunting groups.”
While the Mexican government sends police to protect illegal border crossers against criminals, rogue Mexican soldiers protecting drug smugglers have threatened U.S. Border Patrol agents, even to the extent of engaging in shootouts. As reported in the Washington Times in January 2006. Rep. Tom Tancredo says the activities of these renegade Mexican troops in support of drug traffickers amount to a "war" along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he has urged President George W. Bush to deploy troops there.
Meanwhile, sheriffs from Hudspeth County, Texas testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations this month at a hearing titled "Armed and Dangerous: Confronting the Problem of Border Incursions." They spoke of a dramatic increase in alien and drug smuggling. "The U.S./Mexico border is the weakest link and our national security is only as good as our weakest link," said one sheriff. "Our border is under siege." We need to understand that whether the Mexican government is behind the border incursions or is merely unable (or unwilling) to stop them, it ultimately doesn't matter. As I said at the beginning, the Mexican war on America is supported by all segments of the Mexican society, even, apparently, the criminals. The situation is thus analogous to Muslim razzias or raids—irregular attacks short of outright invasion—used to soften a target country in anticipation of full scale military conquest. The outlaws and smugglers and the renegade soldiers may not be official agents of the Mexican government, yet they are serving its purposes by sowing mayhem along our southern border and demoralizing our population.
A major role in Mexico's revanchist war against America is played by the Mexican consulates in the U.S., reports Heather Mac Donald. Now numbering 47 and increasing rapidly, they serve as the focal point of Mexico's fifth column. While Mexico’s foreign ministry distributes the Guía del Migrante Mexicano inside Mexico, Mexican consulates, unbelievably, distribute the guide to Mexican illegals inside the U.S.
After the U.S. became more concerned about illegal immigration after the 9/11 attack, the Mexican consulates were ordered to promote the matricula consular—a card that simply identifies the holder as a Mexican—as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept the matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits.
The consulates freely hand out the matricula to anyone who asks, they do not seek proof that the person is legally in the U.S. Summing up the role of the consulates, Mac Donald writes:
Disseminating information about how to evade a host country’s laws is not typical consular activity. Consulates exist to promote the commercial interests of their nations abroad and to help nationals if they have lost passports, gotten robbed, or fallen ill. If a national gets arrested, consular officials may visit him in jail, to ensure that his treatment meets minimum human rights standards. Consuls aren’t supposed to connive in breaking a host country’s laws or intervene in its internal affairs.
As an example of the latter, the Mexican consulates automatically denounce, as "biased," virtually all law enforcement activities against Mexican illegals inside the U.S. The Mexican authorities tolerate deportations of illegals if U.S. officials arrest them at the border and promptly send them back to the other side—whence they can try again the next day. But once an illegal is inside the U.S. and away from the border, he gains untouchable status in the eyes of Mexican consuls, and any U.S. law enforcement activity against him is seen as an abuse of his rights.
The Mexican consulates actively campaign in U.S. elections on matters affecting illegal aliens. In November 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 200, which reaffirmed existing state law that requires proof of citizenship in order to vote and to receive welfare benefits. The Mexican consul general in Phoenix sent out press releases urging Hispanics to vote against it. After the law passed, Mexico’s foreign minister threatened to bring suit in international tribunals for this supposedly egregious human rights violation, and the Phoenix consulate supported the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s federal lawsuit against the proposition.
The consulates also help spread Mexican culture. We are not speaking here of the traditional activity in which embassies and consulates represent their country's culture in a friendly and educational way to the host country—we are speaking of consulates acting as agents of the Mexican state's imperialistic agenda. Each of Mexico’s consulates in the U.S. has a mandate to introduce Mexican textbooks (that's Mexican textbooks) into U.S. schools with significant Hispanic populations. The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles bestowed nearly 100,000 textbooks on 1,500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year alone.
It has also been proposed that Mexicans in the U.S. vote in Mexican elections in designated electoral districts in the United States. Under this proposal, California, for example, might have seats in the Mexican Congress, specifically representing Mexicans residing in that state. The governing PRI party of President Fox has opposed this idea, not out of respect for U.S. sovereignty, but out of fear that most Mexicans in the U.S. would vote against the PRI. Meanwhile, another of Mexico's three major parties, the leftist PRD, urges the designation of the entire U.S. as the sixth Mexican electoral district.
The follies of the victors
Throughout this article, I have spoken of Mexico’s revanchist campaign against the U.S. as though the Mexicans were carrying it out completely against our will. As we are bitterly aware, this is not at all the case. Something has happened in America over the last 40 years that has not only opened us to the Mexican invasion, but has even invited it. From the refusal of many American cities to cooperate with the INS, to President Bush’s celebration of Mexican illegal aliens as the carriers of family values, to the Democratic Party's insistence that all Mexican illegals in the U.S. be given instant amnesty and U.S. citizenship, it seems that America itself wants the Mexicans to invade and gain power in our country. Since we (or rather, some of us) have invited the Mexican invasion, does this mean we (or rather the rest of us) have no right oppose it?
In the first chapter of his history of the Second World War, entitled "The Follies of the Victors," Winston Churchill wrote that the triumphant Western allies after the First World War made two mistakes, which in combination were fatal. First, they gave the defeated Germans the motive for revenge, by imposing terribly harsh penalties on them, and second—insanely—they gave them the opportunity for revenge, by failing to enforce the surrender terms when Hitler began to violate them in the 1930s. Yet the fact that the victors' inexcusable follies enabled Germany to initiate a devastating war against Europe did not change the fact that Germany had initiated the war and had to be beaten. In the same way, by wresting vast territories from Mexico in 1848 we gave the Mexicans the motive for revenge, and then, 120 years later, we insanely gave them the opportunity, by letting Mexicans immigrate en masse into the very lands we had taken from their ancestors, and also by adopting a view of ourselves as a guilty nation deserving of being overrun by cultural aliens.
We gave them the opportunity, they took it, and now it is they who are dictating terms to us.
To quote again from Jorge Castañeda's 1995 Atlantic article:
Some Americans—undoubtedly more than before—dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it, and the consequences of trying to stop immigration would also certainly be more pernicious than any conceivable advantage. The United States should count its blessings: it has dodged instability on its borders since the Mexican Revolution, now nearly a century ago. The warnings from Mexico are loud and clear; this time it might be a good idea to heed them.
Because the U.S. has been silent and passive, Castañeda, in the manner of all bullies and conquistadors, tells us to heed Mexico. The time is long since passed to reverse this drama, and make Mexico heed the United States.
Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at his weblog, View from the Right.
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So, it's the old apologists' argument again? Accept SNAFU just because it's SOP.
Revolutionary theories? More like plain-old horse sense. Just asking that the laws of our country and our Constitution be upheld. Pretty darned conservative, I'd say.
I'm sure I won't be testifying at any congressional hearings, so-forth. Don't really expect to get rich (although I'm glad I live in a society where I could pursue that aim if that's all I cared about). I'm just a plain-old citizen who's fed up with our laws not being enforced. So I'll vote my conscience come election time just like everyone else.
I did enjoy the debate. You argued your point well.
Cheers
Not just that, but it takes a good argument to penetrate through.
The author points out that the illegal immigration is not simply one of job seeking, but a nationalist movement, something perhaps your above mentioned conservatives didn't put much stock in.
With both gangsters and the Mexican military backing illegals across the border, it's more truely apparent that this is an assault on sovereignty.
http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/unscharter.htm
I'm with you Robo
World War 3 anyone?
The Mexican invasion of the United States began decades ago as a spontaneous migration of ordinary Mexicans into the U.S. seeking economic opportunities. It has morphed into a campaign to occupy and gain power over our country—a project encouraged, abetted, and organized by the Mexican state and supported by the leading elements of Mexican society.
Are they both Legal? Do they belong to a Terrorist organization? Do either advocate the overthrow of the Country, or demand that their "territory" be returned?
Can you tell the difference? Because I have a certain document that suggests you are clueless...note entry numbers 2,4, and 5!
| The Al Qaeda Training Manual discovered in the UK: ------ "TWELFTH LESSON: ESPIONAGE " Information needed through covert means: Information needed to be gathered through covert means is of only two types: First: Information about government personnel, officers, important personalities, and all matters related to those (residence,work place, times of leaving and returning, wives and children, places visited) Second: Information about strategic buildings, important establishments, and military bases. Examples are important ministries such as those of Defense and Internal Security, airports, seaports, land border points, embassies, and radio and TV stations. --- Candidates for Recruitment Are: 1. Smugglers 2. Those seeking political asylum 3. Adventurers 4. Workers at coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels 5. People in need 6. Employees at borders, airports, and seaports http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html |
Meaning I'm with you on this and it took a motivated culture to build this country. ;)
Looks like you smoked out one more quisling.
Meaning some employers would rather not pay market-clearing wages. Funny how the free market suddenly ceases to operate when the wide open border is threatened.
If supply expands to meet a rise in demand, supply is elastic. If demand contracts to meet a fall in supply it is elastic.
If, in either case, supply or demand doesn't change, it is called inelastic. The domestic labor supply is an example of inelasticity. It doesn't expand to meet a rise in demand(higher wages). For several reasons.
First, it takes many years to produce a new worker.
Second, the birth rate has been depressed for 30-40 years.
Third, the labor supply is aging, so there are fewer and fewer workers to do the hard and dirty work.
Fourth, the labor supply is better educated and they don't have to do the hard and dirty. Additionally there are fewer and fewer educational drop-outs to do the hard and dirty .
So in this situation, a rising demand for domestic labor(higher wages) will not create and expanded supply.
First, Mohammed is not recruiting Lupe.
Second, you have posted some irrelevant document that lists recruitment candidates but leaves out the most significant candidate for recruitment.
Did you ever hear of Padilla?
Seriously, I'm positive that members of congress will be interested in how inflation is good.
Quisling: a synonym for traitor, someone who collaborates with the invaders of his country.
"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.
"Seriously, I'm positive that members of congress will be interested in how inflation is good." - That is your stated position, re: housing prices. I only stated that real-estate inflation is inevitable. We're just having a discussion, here. It's a bit off-topic, anyways. The real discussion here is border security.
Since you brought it back up, I'll go ahead and further explain my economic position.
SOME inflation is a necessary by-product for economic growth.
Greenspan and others hold the position that deflation is bad. It seems a small amount of inflation is actually one of the best indicators of a healthy economy. The logic is sound. A small amount of inflation means that demand is slightly ahead of supply, which triggers growth. If demand gets too far ahead of supply, then inflation ramps out of control leading to devaluation of the dollar. If supply exceeds demand, that leads to deflation. Deflation triggers recession.
We have consistently had annual real-estate inflation rates in the double-digits for a number of years. This is a boon to real-estate speculators. Buying and selling houses doesn't net any GDP, though. Long-term housing inflation leads to the devaluation of other markets, and stagnant growth in other sectors. We lose our industry and manufacturing capability due to deflationary pressures, and lack of investment capital. Short-term, we can simply import cheap goods from other countries. That only makes things worse by increasing overseas investment at the expense of domestic capital investment and R&D.
We want a net flow of capital coming into our country, not the other way around. A net outflow of capital results in building other nations' economies' at the expense of our own. Foreign capital investment in America is good. Foreign ownership of our land and businesses is bad. Providing our enemies with the means to wage military, social, or economic warfare upon us is foolish IMHO.
Long-term, it's a snowball-effect, leading to 3rd world conditions; i.e.-lower percentage of home-ownership, and shrinking wages vs. inflation,(the latter happened last year, the former will follow unless the trend is halted). At some point, the flow of capital out of the country will become severe enough that we will no longer be able to efficiently utilize our available workforce. That leads to losses in productivity. That leads to economic failure.
That's what we'll get if housing price increases keep outstripping wage-growth at current rates. IMHO, we're only a little off-course, here. Slowing population growth slightly via enforcing our immigration laws would help without the necessity for raising interest-rates. In a sustainable economy, real-estate prices should grow at about the same rate as population, when adjusted for inflation. Housing prices grow a little more slowly, consumer-goods prices grow a little more quickly. Same net-inflation, but with very different results.
OK - I'm done with the economic arguement. If I haven't gotten through, yet, it's probably not gonna happen.
Back to the original border problem:
1)Encourages criminal behavior
2)Has led to radical cultural changes
3)Raises our vulnerability to terrorist attack
4)Artificially inflates housing, and deflates wages for American citizens
5)Inflates medical costs due to non-paid care
6)Has contributed to the unchecked growth of an unassimilated sub-nation of foreign-nationals within our borders, with no allegiance to our country
which:
7)Has led to increased government spending on entitlements 8)Has increased civic costs due to the necessity for bilingual services
9)Causes decreasing educational ROI (accomodation of ESL students)
10)Creates the potential for social unrest and political destabilization
11)Enables the flow of contraband into our country
12)Encourages the growth of criminal gangs
13)Enables armed incursions upon our sovereign soil
14)Forces citizens to assimilate to a foreign culture, rather than vice-versa
15)Has increased pressure on law-enforcement agencies
16)Has destroyed the fabric of American communities
17)Violates our constitution by not providing defense from invasion (two states have formally declared a state-of-emergency)
You have made some impression on me. I agree that a mass-deportation would be reactionary rather than conservative. I've not changed my mind that the border needs to be defended first.
Offering amnesty without closing the border will simply encourage MOTS illegal immigration. We need to close the border first and stop the tidal wave. We can then document those who are here, and issue visas. We can gradually assimilate the ones who are already here, let the markets normalize more slowly and give businesses more time to adjust.
"Semantics only. Prices have risen faster than consumer goods, so one could theoretically exchange their shelter for more consumables. Housing prices relative to income and relative to the value of the dollar have gone up. They have, therefore, inflated."
The argument is not about semantics. You are misusing the word inflation. Inflation pertains to the value of a currency. The only argument you could make about real estate and inflation is that inflation has led to the rising values. Your factual statement that real-estate values have gone up relative to the value of the dollar proves that the increase in real estate values is not the result of inflation.
"Increases in real estate values increase the overall wealth of Americans."
"Wrong again. (If I had a nickel for every time someone spouted this dogma...) If you buy a house for $30K and sell it for $100K, you have a theoretical profit. But if it would still cost you the entire $100K to replace the house you just sold, you haven't generated any wealth. There is no net gain. It's a financial shell-game."
You are quite condescending for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the role real estate plays in the economy or the definition of wealth. Cash is not the only form of wealth. In fact, most of the world’s wealth is not cash. Real estate is a form of wealth. If people’s real estate goes up in value, then their wealth increases in the form of equity in that real estate. They can then refinance or take out a second mortgage in order to transfer that equity into cash. They do not need to sell the real estate in order to benefit from the increased value.
I will use a modified version of your example as an example. A home is purchased for $30K. Thirty years later that $30K mortgage is paid off. I will make a conservative estimate based on the general appreciation of homes in desirable areas on the east and west coasts and estimate the home is now worth $400K. The owner can now borrow $80K from the bank at a relatively low interest rate because of the favorable LTV ratio. The owner can take that $80K and use it as a down payment on another $400K home for their child, or a vacation home, or an investment home, or they can do home improvements; or they could invest in a new business; or they could just buy products they want or need. All of these things benefit the owner because they have more buying power and more options. (If you factor in inflation over the past 30 years in America, the $80K loan would be equivalent to a $20K loan 30 years ago; This means the new loan is more affordable than the first loan, and the owner is 30 years older so he or she probably has more resources to pay the new mortgage)
The economy is thus stimulated and strengthened by the increased supply of cash that is provided by the appreciation of real estate values. If people own property in an exceptionally hot market like south Florida or Vegas, then their buying power also becomes increased in some other regions’ real estate markets where the appreciation has not been as rapid.
"Everyone who owns real estate benefits."
"Depends on whether or not you'd like to exchange your shelter for consumables. If so, then yes. If not, then no (see above paragraph for explanation). I would amend this to say 'ONLY those who own real estate benefit'. And generally ONLY those who own a piece of property other than their primary residence. For a prospective home-buyer, the inflated market is not a benefit."
The paragraphs above address these false assertions.
"If you think housing is expensive now you would not be pleased with the values if we didn't have the cheap labor to build the houses."
"This would apply only to new housing as there is no labor cost tied-up in an existing residence. Only a very small portion of new housing cost is determined by wages. The lion's share of the cost of a new house is land, raw materials, cost-of-sales, utilities, and developer profits."
New homes account for about 20% of the homes bought and sold in the US. The price of new homes has a direct influence on the price of existing homes. If building costs go up, new home production comes down. This decreases the supply and increases the values. I am a real estate investor so I can tell you firsthand that you are greatly mistaken when you broadly state “only a very small portion of new housing cost is determined by (labor) wages.” The fact is that it depends greatly on the particular situation. Large portions of the developer’s costs can be caught up in legal fees in an area with tough zoning and environmental laws. A majority of the costs could be in purchasing the land for new homes built in prime locations. The cost of labor always plays a significant role in the cost of new housing. More expensive laborers build more expensive houses. Usually more expensive laborers build a higher quality houses. If you had your way more expensive laborers would build average quality homes that immigrants are building at a fraction of the price.
"I can only speak from anecdotal experience on this where I live. 15 years ago, about 95% of home construction labor was performed by American citizens. Now 75% is done by illegal aliens. Prices have still gone through the roof. Cheap labor has not offset the inflationary pressure of increased demand due to population gains, and scarcity of resources regarding real-estate (they're just not making much land these days)."
Values would be up even more without the cheap labor because homebuilding would not be nearly as profitable, therefore builders would have fewer profits and less capital to invest in building more homes. This would increase the housing shortage and values. Then we really would have inflation.
"Isloationist economic policies are the recipe for another depression."
"Economic policies did not cause the Great Depression. That was caused by the combination of an over-valued stock market and poor agricultural practices. There was NO labor shortage during the depression."
First of all, I stated they are the recipe for another depression. I never stated that they caused the first depression, although they did play a role. Your oversimplification of the depression sounds like it was yanked out of some old textbook. Many factors lead to the event. You are the first person I’ve ever seen argue that the depression was not caused by economic policies.
Nice try, but elasticity isn't the issue, since the last time anyone looked in America there aren't assigned jobs and the labor force is free to move to where the money is.
Now, let me explain it in simpler terms so that you will have better understanding: Turn your page to "market clearing wages". Bid up wages and surprise, surprise, you get more people willing to do the work.
But then, those who have been making money by using illegals don't want to pay market wages. They prefer to insist that they deserve to have their labor force subsidized by the taxpaying public. Somehow they shouldn't be subject to the economic forces everyone else is, such as going out of business if they aren't competitive.
You have overlooked what may have been the largest factor of the Great Depression. Stock market panics and agricultural problems had occurred plenty of times before this. What made the Depression different was a collapse in the American banking system that began around 1930. 30% of the American money supply evaporated as small banks failed throughout the country. This was a deflationary event without parallel, and made the American recession far greater than that of the rest of the developed world.
Your problem ie that you try to make illegals something extradinary. They are simply more imported labor. Something to take up the slack while Congress hashes out the conflict over permenant versus temporary.
BTW, your phrase, "don't want to pay market wages, indicates that you are mixed up. The wages that illegals are paid, are market driven. OTOH, wages to guest workers are set by the govt, a prevailing wage. This is why so many H2A and H2B guest workers go awol, they can make more money as an illegal.
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