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Originally Posted by smc
. . . Borders exist primarily for economic purposes. They have always been made by the rich and powerful, who traditionally have created borders to establish areas of control for markets and taxation as a means of avoiding competition or at least giving themselves an arena over which they have some means of control other than the "anarchy" of simple supply and demand. Corporations move across borders at will, whether physically or virtually.The borders, though, are primarily used to control buying and selling by us, regular people, and to manipulate the pool of workers.
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That's actually a good point. And people scoff at my desire to see the "New World Order" come to fruition . . .
In all seriousness, when people speak of a global economy, it really means something. Corporations ignore borders, and rightly so. Nationalism and patriotism are a hold-over from the past, which should blur more and more as time goes by. The economic unification of Europe seems to be working out pretty well, and I believe is just another step in the on-going unification of the world as a whole. Go back through history and you'll see movement towards that goal for as long as people have been writing.
After all, in the end, it's really about allocation of resources. Cooperative effort benefits the species, and, in fact, it seems that our brains are hard-wired for precisely that goal. Once the population reaches a certain threshold, we will be FORCED to consolidate under one controlling mechanism (whatever that might be) to support and sustain said population. I think the Agricultural Revolution is a good example of this principle in action, causing the creation of city-states and jump-starting the centralization of populations.
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The U.S. economy depends on a large pool of immigrant workers, especially to fill the lowest-paid jobs. One way to keep the wages low for immigrant workers is to marginalize them to the greatest degree possible. If you create borders and harsh conditions for crossing those borders -- terror, difficulty, susceptibility to arrest and deportation -- these workers are highly unlikely to stand up for themselves against the very exploitation that the rest of us would never accept. Then the politicians try to scapegoat them: they are the ones taking our jobs and costing us so much that we can't afford good social services, when in fact our jobs are being taken to low-paying countries by corporations, without government interference (because for them, the borders essentially don't exist) and the money for social services are being spent, well, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's notable that an immigrant crossing into the United States "illegally" in the hope of making a better life -- and that is the very reason most people do so -- will be detained by the authorities if caught and, before deportation, be offered a path to citizenship by joining the Armed Forces and going to Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you need any more indication of whose interests borders serve than that, which happens each and every day?
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I served in the military myself, and live in Arizona. While it's my opinion that the average Joe in this country is both apathetic and ignorant (sorry, but we're dumber as a whole than we have been since before WWII), I myself am somewhat conflicted. I'm the progeny of immigrants, after all, a first-generation American, so I tend to have a very hard-nosed attitude towards people who bypass the system.
Having said that, to ignore the vast numbers of illegals is simply silly. White Elephant in the living room anyone? Building a wall is also silly, and historically speaking, has never worked. Look to the Great Wall for an example. Chest-beating rhetoric and brandished weapons only compound the problem, without addressing the underlying issue.
I don't see any way to REALLY solve the problem without addressing the economic state of our neighbors. Why do people come to this country, after all? If our southern neighbors had economic and social parity it wouldn't be an issue at all, as there would be no incentive to relocate.
Until the Mexican government is stable, including laws which protect their citizenry and workforce, and economically healthy, I see no real solution to illegal immigration.
As for the recent law itself? If I understand it correctly, it's just the Federal law coupled with the ADDITION of Miranda rights (there must be probable cause to justify requesting ID, much like the seatbelt law, and I don't think the feds need to worry about that). I don't have a problem with this at all.
Just my two cents.