So last week my brother forwarded me this essay from the local Mormon novelist, in order to cause me aggravation. I wanted to comment on it immediately, but it’s taken a whole week for my blood pressure to simmer down enough so that this post would be merely sprinkled with four letter expletives, as opposed to completely composed of them.
See, OSC is in favor of illegal immigration. This is because he’s not a mean, brown-person hating racist, unlike border enforcement advocates, who are also Nazis. Yes, that’s right. Wanting federal immigration laws enforced is morally equivalent to rounding people up and gassing them. Do you feel bad yet? Are you happy, NAZI??
This is not the argument of a serious thinker. At best, it is a ham-handed attempt at pulling heartstrings. At worst, it is a slanderous blood libel. Either way, it is a shallow, superficial, childish position.
The notion that in order to enforce immigration law, we will have to use police going door to door on ID raids is idiotic. I dare OSC to name a single serious border enforcement advocate who is in favor of such a thing. Follow this: If the IRS and ICE would simply start cross checking employers SSN lists and heavily fining places that aren’t in compliance, then businesses would stop hiring illegals, and then they’d go home! Self deportation! That Card doesn’t acknowledge this argument demonstrates his predilection towards only doing battle with straw men.
Card’s economic arguments are similarly simplistic. He claims that illegals are a net boon to the local economy. However, this is demonstrably false, as a great proportion of under the table earnings are simply wired home to Mexico! How does that enrich America? Nor does he mention illegals using emergency hospital services as free clinics, neither the added burden to law enforcement.
If we’re going to import labor en masse, how about importing people that are actually economic force multipliers? Engineers, scientists, doctors, inventors, motivators, merchants? Oh, wait, all those professions have their own guild protectors in Washington who keep visa levels low so that their own wages are inflated. Funny how it’s morally acceptable to bring in sub-minimum wage lettuce pickers so that our produce is a few cents cheaper, but bringing in foreign born electrical engineers who would reduce the cost of enterprise computing by hojillions of dollars would be predatory.
Tangentially, we might inquire as to why there aren’t engineers and entrepreneurs sneaking across the Rio Grande. I have a theory! Perhaps these sorts of people tend to obey the law more than their more desperate cousins. So we’re selecting mass immigrants who think it’s okay to break the law if they believe it justifies the ends!
Fucking brilliant, that is.
His wage arguments are also moronic. Businesses aren’t employing illegals because there’s a shortage of labor, they’re employing illegals because there’s a shortage of labor at the price that businesses want to pay! Which is, interestingly enough, below market rate! This is such an obvious point that I wonder why Card doesn’t acknowledge it. Oh wait, no I don’t. He doesn’t answer this argument because he is either too stupid or dishonest to do so.
[Obligatory "I'm not a racist, goddamnit." section]
Look, I have nothing against illegal immigrants, personally. Shiva knows if I was in a shitty hell-hole 3rd world nation like Mexico I’d probably do the same. I also think that legal immigrants are a tremendous boon and credit to our economy and culture. After all, I’m married to one.
But importing illegals in mass quantities that depress low-end wages, increase crime, refuse to assimilate, overburden our legal and medical system and prop up an illegitimate foreign dictatorship in order to save a percent on lettuce and drywall hanging is demonstrably a bad fucking idea. It’s such a bad fucking idea that it makes me wonder what open-borders advocates are really campaigning for.
I guess that when someone uncritically embraces obviously demonstrable bullshit in one area of his life, it shouldn’t be a shock when he embraces it in another.
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Which is, interestingly enough, below market rate!
And the illegals are capable of meeting those rates largely by violating more laws:
If you forced those illegals to obey those laws, pay those costs – they suddenly wouldn’t be as cheap.
“…it makes me wonder what open-borders advocates are really campaigning for.”
As well it should. I’m with Victor Davis Hanson on this one. I think there’s an active hatred of America. Or at least capitalism and nationalism. Socialists don’t like the idea that capitalism works. Anarchists don’t like the idea that some governments are demonstrably better than others, and that a little government is necessary. (Many of these anarchists masquerade as libertarians, but true libertarianism is minarchist, not anarchist. Controlling the borders is one of the few legitimate duties of our constitutional government.)
A working nation is an affront to these ideologies. Nothing could please them more than to have it fail.
I loved OSC’s “Ender’s Game”, but after reading that I looked into his other works, particularly his non-fiction essays, and it made me ill. You’ve hit the nail squarely on the head.
Now, for me, I never thought Ender’s Game was all that earthshattering. I’ve never read the (I don’t know how many) rewrites. I’ve read a couple more books in some series, and been underwhelmed.
But I’ve been very impressed in the past with OSC’s essays. Which are usually far better thought out, and far less inflammatory than this.
And usually a hell of a lot more common sensed.
Yeah, over at the Fungus I tried dealing with that lovely pile of tripe, and gave up. Thank you for dealing with it in detail and with prejudice, ’cause I sure didn’t have the patience for it.
uhhh, put me down for “What PDB said.” :D
Well, the businesses want cheap labor. The socialists want socialism, so they are willing to bring in a whole ‘nother population to achieve that goal. And the anarchists are just dipshits. They are the type of people who use the term “USian”.
Japan and other East Asian nations seem to get away with very strict immigration. Hell, Mexico itself has very strict immigration and even has a fence on its southern border (albeit, the border is much smaller). Those countries have little legal immigration compared to us, yet we are demonized when we worry about trespassers.
“I also think that legal immigrants are a tremendous boon and credit to our economy and culture. After all, I’m married to one.”
Hell, aren’t you one yourself?
Hell, aren’t you one yourself?
Actually, no. I had the good sense to be born 2 years before my parents moved to Canada, so I am in fact a Pennsylvanian. My brother was not so smart, and suffers from extreme Canadaism to this day.
But I’ve been very impressed in the past with OSC’s essays. Which are usually far better thought out, and far less inflammatory than this.
Correct. I felt bad about this one, because it was OSC’s advocacy for fighting the war that he changed my Mom from liberal hippie squish to reluctant supporter.
I’m with Victor Davis Hanson on this one.
Hell, I’m with VDH on just about everything, except maybe farm policy.
Oh, boy do I get this one. I live in South Texas, for Crying Out Loud.
I usually start my side of the argument with this simple (at least to ME) point: if they enter the country illegally, then are they just going to magically start obeying the law? I say this falls under the Camel’s Nose Theory myself. It’s like trying to wed the woman who cheated on her husband to be with you: you think she’s gonna quit now?
Oh, I could fill up chingos bandwidth with the rant I got bubbling here, but I’ll digress…
tweaker
“I’ve never read the (I don’t know how many) rewrites.”
Well, that’s just mean. After all, Lucas changed the Han/Greedo scene in Star Wars and nobody complained!
Heh, I also love it when they (pro-illegals) bring up the Indians. My response? “Yes. And have you learned nothing from their mistakes? The Indians didn’t control their immigration and look what happened to them!” grumble grumble
I’ll third or forth or whichever: What PDB said.
Rick:
Well, not just re-writes of the original, didn’t he do a version from the enemies side, and now one from… errr. whatever the little sidekick dude? was? (It’s been a while).
So, same story, but this time from Greedo’s side. (Getting shot first is preferential to shooting and missing by 8 feet at a distance of 2 feet).
I, too, used to like OCS essays. His novels are good, if not stellar.
However, on this front I had to disagree with him.
OCS’s main assertion seemed to be that allowing carte-blanche immigration (and ignoring legality) was an act of charity. I could follow him up to that point; then he lost me. It’s not that the poor of Mexico don’t deserve some help; it’s that we shouldn’t break our own laws to help them.
We also shouldn’t enable other lawbreakers by enabling this act of charity.
It’s not that we should ban Mexicans from the country–but we should at least have some legal control over who, when where, and how many. Some of them are the kind of hard-working people that we should welcome. Some of them are criminals, or at least don’t mind working with criminals to gain entry into our country. We need to have an immigration authority that can weed out the bad ones.
Sheesh, just because I like immigrants I’m suffering from “extreme Canadaism.” And yeah, OSC’s civilization/world watch articles are usually a lot better than this. My main issue with it is that a liberal news commentator has never sounded so calm and rational in real life!
Sometimes an act of “charity” (or omission) is done to make the actor feel good, but the results are not so beneficial to the recipient if they learn nothing or they get the entirely wrong impression… We’ve been giving-off the wrong impression for years, in a pathetic effort to be liked, just because we think that it makes us feel good.
UJ–I dunno about variations of Ender’s Game. I read what I think was a novella of it in high school, and I read the book several years ago. If there’s more than one version, I dunno.
Now the shadow of the xxx book, I think are stories about the other major characters, including his older siblings, taking place in the same universe and around the same time as the events leading up to and in the years after EG.
For Star Wars, IIRC originally Han shot first, then the movie was modified so that either they both shot at the same time, or Greedo shot first, then it was modified again to be the opposite of the first modification.
Either way it’s not just lame, it’s probably untrue to Han’s idiom.
I think he’s kinda anti-gun, too. IIRC, when talking about his latest novel on the Rusty Humphrey(s?) show, he mentioned not approving of having lots of armed private citizens.
I mean, an anti-gun *Mormon*? I thought “Ender’s Game was cool when I read it in “Analog”, and all.
Ender’s Game
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind
. . . are the books in the original Ender series. Ender’s Game started as a short story and then novella, so you might have seen those, too.
Then the “alternate” books are about Bean, Ender’s second-in-command during Battle School and the Bugger campaign. Bean’s abilities are greater than Ender’s in some areas, but he is Ender’s opposite in many ways. These books also let Card tell the stories of what was going on back on Earth after the Bugger Campaign ended.
Ender’s Shadow
Shadow of the Hegemon
Shadow of the Giant
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