How to Solve America’s Immigration Problem(and Save the World as a Side Effect) – By Frank

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

*I think Frank’s Guest Post has enough validity to be published here and discussed here, but I have some quibbles with it. Not enough to be “disagreements” as such, but serious quibbles, so I am going to list them:

1- True a wall won’t keep TRULY DETERMINED immigrants away. However, most immigrants (unless bizarrely desperate) aren’t THAT determined. Most people — trust me on this — don’t want to go to a strange place and live there. We don’t need an absolute barrier, we need a DISCOURAGING barrier. Which is why Trump’s wall slowed immigration way the heck down. This is the principle of a fence around your house. Or a house alarm. As an alarm salesman explained “The sign alone will stop most would-be-burglars. It might be a fake, but it’s too much work.” This is what we want in place. For one, the people really determined and crafty enough to get in, have already passed a test of sorts.

2- It’s not Mexico. That open border is open to the THE WORLD. we can’t have the world here.

3- Soros wants one world government because he knows it will be a tyranny. It’s impossible to be responsive to everyone in that big a polity. we might already be too big, (but thank heavens we’re ornery.) A one-world-government will be an intolerable tyranny to 99% of it. Also, the most ineffective government ever. So.

4 – I don’t object to your method of making citizens. I would limit the velocity of it. There are problems with having mostly foreign-born people. Ask the Romans. And there is a problem with too many immigrants. TRUST me.

5 – A better solution, in my opinion and perhaps as practicable is to stop welfare to immigrants. ALL forms of welfare and benefits paid for by citizens, including but not limited to schooling and medical care (no worries. Some charitable organization will pay, but with more supervision than the government.) until two years after citizenship. (That last one might not be constitutional, so it can be “till citizenship” and make that a minimum of 7 years, by which point you’ll know if you’re going to want to go back.

That’s my quibbles and counter-proposal. – SAH*

How to Solve America’s Immigration Problem (and Save the World as a Side Effect) – by Frank

America has an immigration problem. Even those who want the world to have unfettered access to America recognize that our laws do not allow it, so we must either change our laws or change the circumstances. Unrestricted immigration advocates like George Soros would do away with the nation state in favor of a one-world government. How that government would be organized is an open question, so that is hardly a solution. Changing the circumstances is more difficult, but could go hand-in-hand with changing the law.

My wife, the chemist, explains that the root of the problem is entropy. If you pour a tea kettle of hot water into a bowl of cold water, pretty soon you have a bowl of lukewarm water. Putting a barrier (like a border wall) between the hot and cold water only slows down the exchange. Canada and America have very similar levels of economic opportunity. Hence there is no great rush of Canadians to America or Americans to Canada even without walls or even rivers dividing most of the 1900-mile border. The 1900-mile border between Mexico and the U.S., despite numerous lengths of wall and many law enforcement patrols along it, proves a much less hardy barrier. The economy and job creation level in America is just so much stronger than that of Mexico, that America proves an irresistible draw to much of Mexico’s impoverished population. Even at the lower rungs of the American economy, the opportunity is so great that Mexicans living in the U.S. sent 26 billion dollars back to their families in Mexico in 2017.

So how do we solve the root of the problem? Well one solution only proposed by those most impervious to criticism is to invade Mexico and fix it by reconstituting their government along American lines. No one who’s been there can realistically deny that if the Gadsen purchase had included Baja California, that region would be an American Riviera filled with huge hotels and resorts and positively booming with economic activity, rather than the lackluster backwater that it is. But changing the culture and mores of a country is not something that can easily be imposed by an occupying army. The former British colonies around the world show what a spotty record results despite a century or more of trying.

Demonstrably, more people want to come to America than currently live in America, and certainly more than the vast majority of Americans are willing to accept. So how do we change our immigration laws to, as President Trump suggests, let the right ones in? Sure we could just let in the doctors and engineers and such, but what about those poorer immigrants who have later so enriched our country? Do we want to close our doors to all of them? How could we convince ourselves that those we let in want to continue to support the great American experiment even if they aren’t credentialed yet like Anheuser and Busch or Carnegie? Well, we already have laws on how to become American citizens. What if we require that any non-American who wants to move to the U.S. learn English and pass the citizenship test before ever coming to our country? To facilitate this process, we will have to turn our embassies and consulates into training centers in English and the Constitution. Once a would-be immigrant has passed the citizenship test, he would be added to the list of eligible immigrants. At that point those on the list would be allowed in based on the order of their seniority of having passed the citizenship test and on how many immigrants America decides to allow each year. Maybe we could even make a big live TV show of the list announcement like the NFL draft. Of course we would have to be vigilant to make sure the citizenship test remains valid and fair and not allow lowering of the standard. Nobody said it wouldn’t take constant vigilance. Heinlein’s concept of requiring military service as a prerequisite to full citizenship might be a step too far, but how about requiring even native-born Americans to pass the citizenship test to be able to vote. They might be forced to learn something other than anti-Americanism in high school.

But, you object, there would still be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who would go through the training, take the citizenship test, but still have to wait for years to get into this country. Exactly! And what would they do while they waited? Would they become impatient with the governance of their own country that led them to want to emigrate to America in the first place? Would they seek to make their own country run more like America in the respect of the rule of law over tribal and familial relationships or raw exercise of power by those holding government positions? Might we create a cadre of millions of wannabe Americans armed with the knowledge of how America came to be a country better off than theirs? Might it not occur to those people that they would prefer to make their government and economy in the likeness of ours while continuing to hold onto all their own cultural heritage? Wouldn’t it be great to have a world still made up of many diverse nations, but where everyone had the opportunity to be prosperous?

248 thoughts on “How to Solve America’s Immigration Problem(and Save the World as a Side Effect) – By Frank”

  1. Just learned about the Gadsden purchase. Given the whole idea was to buy land to allow a southern route transcontinental railroad, I suspect Baja just wasn’t on the table.

  2. Could Frank please take the citizenship test and report back on precisely how he thinks that’s going to help? I’m not saying a three-year-old could pass it, but a lightly coached six-year-old could. It’s a pretty darn low barrier.

    3. It is entirely appalling. To pass her civics final, my daughter had to score an A-* or higher on the citizenship exam composed of all the questions.

      The actual rules are absurd: 60% is a pass? Exemptions for speaking English if you have been here “extra long”-?

      Read (Scroll down to the FAQ) the rules and weep: uscis.gov/citizenship/2020test. Note that the Bidenreich has reverted from the slightly harder 20 question test (2020 version) to the 2008 10 question version.

      (*Grade to pass any class. What you do not know well enough, you go back and study until you do. You are done when you are done. )

      3. I had THREE questions: What country did the US get independence from; what is the most widely spoken language in the US; How many branches of government does the US have. Yeah.

        1. By the Constitution – three branches. By how things work today, poli-sci folks say four. The official three, plus the federal bureaucracy. Alas, in some ways, they have a point, just not the way a lot of the academics imagine.

          1. Legalistically the Bureaucracy is part of the Executive. In reality they answer to almost no one in a rather Kafkaesque fashion. Certainly they thumbed their noses at Trump. The old spoils system led to some bizarre nepotism, but the Civil service laws generate a class of unassailable mandarins. It rivals and perhaps exceeds the 18th Amendment in its dunderheadedness.

            1. If they’re part of the Executive branch, the President should have the absolute power to fire them. Not necessarily the power to hire new ones unilaterally, but definitely to sack the ones that won’t DO THEIR JOBS as directed. That would go a long way to cleaning up the rot.

              D.C. is more of a sewer than a swamp.
              ———————————
              There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

  3. I have a major nit to pick with Frank’s solution and Sarah’s phrasing in her first serious quibble; They are NOT immigrants that’re invaders.

    2. Friends come through the gates, enemies come over the walls.

      Vae victis.

      Caedete eos.

      Cartago Delenda Est.

      1. Enemies sneak through the gates too. Have to watch out for those.

        Hell, enemies spring up inside the country. Got a passel of ’em holed up in D.C.

        1. English was a translation of the Latin, which summarized a policy of executing /anyone/, including Roman troops, who crossed such military walls.

          Ergo, it is part of my culture, and anyone who has a problem with it is motivated solely by racism.

        2. In this case they are being invited in by a political party (the Democrats) in order to facilitate that party’s quest for absolute totalitarian power. See the below from American Spectator:

          https://spectator.org/illegal-aliens-vote-hr-1-s-1/

          It is why they are running secret flights to the heart of the USA; they intend to harvest enough illegal votes in 2022 to ensure they retain and expand their control of Congress, so that they can impose their “fundamental transformation of America”.

        4. Yeah we have a serious 5th Column issue and have had so since before the Second world war.

        2. Again, English is a translation of the Latin. See Brand’s Roman Military Law.

          It is expressing a fundamental principle, not a bunch of weasel words written by a team of lawyers to cover ‘every’ contingency.

      1. Or really motivated by the perks of being MS-13 with much higher profits in NYC.
        Or really motivated by the ~$3500 a head each illegal pays a coyote.
        Or really motivated by the desire to commit jihad.

        Don’t mistake strong motivation to get here for commitment to America.

        1. All of those can become less motivating by price and difficulty of crossing the border.
          I’m not. I’m saying coming to another country is difficult. ask me how I know.

    1. I think they’re determined to destroy the Hugo.

      Our last Worldcon was 2016, and it would’ve been a losing proposition even without the vehicle problems.

      1. Thanks, I also would like Sarah’s reaction since she was involved in the Sad Puppies efforts.

    2. Of course they’ll blame it all on Sad Puppies.

      Sad Puppies did not cause the decline of Worldcon, only made people aware of it. Like headlines do not cause the events they describe. They stuck the knife in themselves, and twisted it, too.
      ———————————
      Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

      1. Already doing so. Comment I just left over on the PBR post:

        Hmph. Yes. Those of us that tried to make those awards mean “quality writing” gave up after that. The consensus is best expressed as “If that tiny group of people is truly enjoying sticking their heads up each other’s asterisks – why should we bother?”

        1. The reason they can still gas off about “quality writing” is that none of the voters have actually read the nominees. This year they are going strictly by surface albedo, pronouns and Victim Points. Not just saying that either, “females” swept the Best Novel at the Hugos and the Nebulas, 54% of nominated authors were LGBTQFBICIAKGB, leaving straight women under the bus along with straight men and now gay men too. Gay and black is the new straight white male.

          Leading me to believe that a large number of female authors are tacking LGBTetc. bullshit onto their Facebook profiles. Because nobody can see you when they’re reading your book.

          Consequently the nominated novels and stories feature things like walk-ons by trans characters and house-husbands who appear once and are never seen again, for the Woke Points(tm). The Nebula Best Novel winner features things like guns which appear when convenient and are never mentioned otherwise, characters who disappear and are never heard from the rest of the book, etc. One of the other Hugo nominees suffers from the horse=car syndrome, where horses are just there and never get fed, watered, they can run 20 miles, and so forth. And a blonde MC who doesn’t have a hat, wandering around the American South West desert on her magic car/horse.

          Quality. Writing. Yep, you betcha.

      1. Ahahaha. Apparently everything people discussed back in the day was a “direct assault by ill-wishers.”

        Among the current issues? If you have a magazine or group project nominated, the contributors all want to be listed. Every single one. Not: “Refer to masthead.” They want: “My name and five hundred other names, all engraved on a statue.” They all want to come and make acceptance speeches. They all want to be on the Powerpoint slide in a very large font, so that the awards ceremonies can last much longer.

        Also, people involved with nomination stuff who aren’t the main nominees want to be personally contacted and asked for an RSVP, rather than the other way around, or rather than the people running nominated group projects taking care of getting hold of their contributors and asking them.

        There are also people who want an awards ceremony that lasts longer than War and Peace, because it’s totally important to get their moment in the sun — which nobody will be watching, because the ceremony is so long.

        And so on.

        Honestly, it’s like a daycare center with snacktime an hour late.

        1. Same reason why the credits on modern movies seem to last longer than the movie.

          Every production gopher and xer’s dog have to get a credit. 🙄

          1. Well, it is pretty funny to see the production babies, because it shows that young couples interested in the future are working at a production house. It’s also advertising a production house as supportive of family obligations. Production dogs are a bit more dubious, although they should get credit if they are doing production work or making appearances.

            Movie credits _are_ the masthead, and movie credits are basically a searchable resume for other productions, so it’s okay. But it would be weird to demand that the Best Movie awards list everybody in the production

            1. They also determine who gets royalties. (I know, no one because all movies lose money.)

          3. And then they go put vital stuff after like the scene in the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

            1. Ah, that is the advantage of Netflix and the like. That bar at the bottom lets me flick right past all of the credits. Also useful when an old friend from college writes to tell you that her daughter was involved in a production (as she described it, the job was “keeping the donuts, coffee, and cheese sandwiches flowing”). The kid’s name was, IIRC, about three quarters of the way through – when they’ve taken to speeding up the credits, I suppose to keep theater goers from throwing stuff at the screen…

      2. Sounds like not worth the trouble or abuse to attend. I can remember decades ago when WorldCons were great fun. Haven’t been in a long time, and now that one is close, it soulds like a disaster in the making.

        1. I remember in a con in Boston one day I saw an elderly man with a jacket with WorldCon patches from the forties and fifties on it. Spent a lovely few minutes chatting with Hal Clement that day. His and the Lieutenants’ like are sadly missed.

      3. Oh come on I bet you a nice Dijon mustard and some Tabasco ( or Sriracha but only for Asian members lest we culturally appropriate 🙂 ) would perk long pig up a lot. Mind you I don’t know who we would ask, although for Canis Familiaris we could get input from a previous US President.

      1. Good one, that is what it sounds like it has become. The Woke Left destroys everything. Even the Admin Committee couldn’t take it. i wonder if they have reached the collapse stage where it has just become ungovernable and a Hugo is worth less than an Obama Nobel Peace prize?

    5. I understand that the Chairman resigned as well. Probably because the Wokies can’t/won’t understand that there is:

      A) a very limited budget for the award show since the Sad Puppies quit buying memberships four years ago and,

      B) Nominee and +One means two (2) people, not the whole magazine staff plus wives, children, extended fam and hangers-on.

      Wokies don’t/won’t understand that to accommodate everybody who wants to go means they’ll be 50 miles outside DC, standing in a 20 acre field with the MC perched on the tailgate of Cousin Merl’s pickup truck and yelling because there’s no PA system. If they’re lucky Cousin Merl will mow and bale the field for them first. Watch out for ticks, Wokies.

      I think the current melt-down was inevitable and exactly what they deserve. Victims won’t stop victim-ing when sugar-daddy runs out of money.

      Going to be fun to see if they really do a Zoom call for straight white old guy Robert Silverberg this year. 50/50 they denounce him as a racist and dump him.

      What’s the over/under on WorldCon voting to have it in China in 2023? I bet they’re thinking about all those sweet, sweet Chinese Rasbuckniks.

  5. 1. no federal money to non-citizens (including ‘refundable tax credits’ from the IRS, people can arrange their withholding to not give the feds extra money in the first place).I limit this to federal money as I don’t believe that the feds have the right to restrict how state and local governments spend their money, and I am sure that they have no right to restrict how private citizens (including charities) spend their money.

    2. require everyone entering the country post a bond that covers the cost of returning them to their home country, plus some additional fee (to cover the cost of administrating the system, including deportation costs) Allow the bond to be refunded after 5-10 years with no jail time. (possible exceptions here for special case refugees, but the exceptions need to be limited)

    3. immediate deportation of any ‘guests’ who are convicted of a crime and serve jail time. (so people aren’t deported for trivial matters, but are for anything serious)

    4. (more questionable) no birthright citizenship for children of these guests (similar to children of foreign diplomats, so there is precedent)

    5. with these rules, allow anyone in who has no criminal record (or who can convince a judge that the criminal record in their originating country is the result of persecution) as a guest

    Immigrants who want to assimilate make the best citizens, as they are making the decision deliberately, not as an accident of birth. The problem is the people arriving for the handouts rather than the opportunities. Remove the handouts and let the hard workers in. But don’t try to have bureaucrats figure out who the hard workers are going to be. They have shown over the last century that they are abysmal at doing so.

      1. That is true, but the attempts at limits that have been tried either don’t work, or have been horribly abused by the powers-that-be.

        so I think it’s time to try something different. We don’t seem to be willing to enforce a hard ‘no’, so I think it’s worth trying a different strategy of eliminating as many of the magnets as possible, and being much more draconian on deportations of criminals and see how that works for a while.

        The fact that the government is allowing hordes of illegals over the southern boarder, but is severely limiting the numbers that can come from Afghanistan who helped our troops there, and so are in danger as we pull out is beyond merely disgusting.

        Having laws that aren’t enforced leads to people ignoring other laws, and selective enforcement is the worst of all as bias of the enforcers becomes more important than what the law is.

        1. “The fact that the government is allowing hordes of illegals over the southern boarder, but is severely limiting the numbers that can come from Afghanistan who helped our troops there, and so are in danger as we pull out is beyond merely disgusting.”

          This is more of an intentional move by certain groups that have pull in the government. Those same groups would also probably be quite happy to let that Afghani stay in the US – but only as a political prop non-citizen, of course – if he was able to sneak in.

        2. The pre-1965 immigration laws worked just fine for a long, long time.
          So did the pre-1965 welfare laws.

          Maybe we just need to back up the laws to 1964.

      2. Agreed Sarah, and that’s why I said there will have to be limits. Of course no law will work if those responsible for enforcing it actively undermine it. Also note that the citizenship test has to be hard enough for people to understand the essential freedoms that allow people to prosper. As always the devil is in the details, but I stand by the concept.

      3. Too many at once – in the same place. The Vietnamese “boat people” tended to be fairly good citizens, most raising their children to be “real Americans.” They were scattered all over the country, though.

        2. Although scattered across the country the Vietienne often end up in little enclaves (like immigrants have since time immemorial). Here it was Lowell and up into Southern NH. And yes many of them (escpecially the Hmong) seemed to make excellent Citizens and their children and grand children are as American as my two Swede/Irish/Italian/ etc. girls (in fact several folks had moved out to the suburbs JUST for the schools, that’s a lot of work and devotion).

          I think how good an immigrant is for their target society depends on their culture. Cultural features that seem to help
          1) A cultural devotion to learning/written texts (e.g. Judaism, South Asian cultures, Much of Indian culture)
          2) A strong work ethic (Northern European/ British Protestant, Chinese, Much of the other Asian cultures)
          3) Limited Xenophobia/ pronounced Xenophilia
          4) Historical adherence to Rule of Law (Anglosphere)
          Strong detraction/anti indications include
          1) Clear cultural Xenophobia (e.g Japan/ China, Most of the Arab world, Afrikaans )
          2) Intense Tribalism ( Much of Arabia, Sub Saharan Africa)
          3) A serf/subject attitude (the government will take care of me)

          Oddly some of the strongest candidate people (e.g. strongly Orthodox Jewish, Japanese, Chinese) have BOTH indicators and counter indicators/ Here personal experience and flexibility seem to matter a great deal.

  6. “Before you’re allowed aboard, you have to prove you’ve read at the basic version of ship’s manual.”

    “And if we have to wait too long?”

    “You’ll have read the manual. You’ll know how a ship ought work. We can’t keep you from building your own ship.”

    1. Yeah, this.

      I have a dream.

      I dream that the other populations of the world will mind their own damn business, and get their own shops in order.

      I dream of a day when there is not a huge demand to come to America, because all of the nations are decent, appropriate for human life, and comparable.

      I dream of a day when there are no living Democrats in America.

      That dream may never happen, but warring against all until the very end is an acceptable alternative to negotiation with tyrannical devils.

  7. Create an obstacle, and make Mexico suffer for it; “Build a wall, and make Mexico pay for it” is the leftwing liberal squish position. Depopulate northern Mexico, destroy the roads, burn the ground cover, and poison the water. This would make surveillance by sensor networks relatively practical.

    In all seriousness…

    Fundamental problem with bringing in ‘educated’ professionals, is that Americans of that background are too friendly to the left, and the Chinese/Indian/etc. graduate students may be assimilating to the academic subculture, and not the American metaculture.

    I think the answer is a default foreign policy of warring against the rest of the world. Yes, we may still conclude that peace with most of them makes sense now. But, fundamentally, most of the foreign populations are not keeping their governments properly in check, and are an attractive nuisance. Their current cultures are part of why they are bad at this, and the ‘go school, get credential, turn crank professional success in life’ fractions of those populations are not necessarily the people who best fit the US.

    Our lack of deep hostility towards those populations misleads those people into giving too much leeway to their governments. And look at the international treaties we tolerate. (I am deeply and profoundly opposed to much arms control. And to the effing ‘outlaw the old refrigerants’ crap.)

    I’ve been reading about how significant Gottingen was in fluid mechanics. I’m not certain if they are still any good. If they are any good, then the German government should know that this global warming theory is not sound enough to trust in for decisions of human welfare. This would also be information accessible to ordinary Germans, so their trust in their government’s claims would be quite unconscionable.

    Most populations do not have the cultural mores to properly keep government in check in the American way.

    But, all the cultures are in much closer contact than they have ever been historically, and all will change as a result. This change is not predictable.

    I think we should be resolved to war against all comers, unless and until they learn to behave themselves in a civilized manner.

      1. That, seriously, is not a problem for this policy ‘proposal’.

        The people they are leaving alive are somewhat useful to them.

        The people they’ve already killed just mean that the job is already part way complete.

        If everyone else is killed, they will not be working to improve the habitability of those areas. If you do not have sedentary types in an area collecting resources to live off of, it is harder for everyone to move through the area.

        And you may be underestimating the area I am considering as northern Mexico for this mass murder. Turning the jungles to ash and deserts may be more trouble than it is worth. But if you interdict food to the whole country, it will be easier to hunt down survivors in the areas you want definitively cleared. Anywhere with productive fields that can deliver to market is relatively accessible. You would be setting the size of the security zone by looking at terrain, road possibilities, etc. I mean, you could make it better by building a wall across a narrow part of the country, and killing folks on both sides, but hundreds of miles of desert is reasonably prohibitive if you can’t get water on the other side of the border.

    2. You weren’t serious about the “depopulate, destroy, burn, and poison” thing?

      I am. For about 30 miles inside Mexico from the border. Lay waste to the whole thing, mine it, salt the land, etc. Then withdraw to the border wall, and guard with plenty of border patrol troopers. (Avoid having to invoke posse comitatus that way — just police it, don’t send the Army down there.)

      1. Posse comitatus forbids using the Army against American citizens. These are foreign invaders — exactly the folks the Army is supposed to fight. There’s no law against fighting invaders on our own territory; we’ve done it before, starting in 1812, and again in 1836.

        1. Posse comitatus is also statutory; there is nothing preventing a Democratic Party controlled Congress from repealing it and unleashing the military on its domestic political opponents other than the ability of people to fight back against it once it occurs. Screaming “posse comitatus” as the tanks roll Tienanmen Square style is not going to save anyone.

        2. “Posse comitatus forbids using the Army against American citizens.”

          And has been a dead letter since Little Rock 1958.

      2. I think at some points, out to hundreds of miles might be appropriate.

        If they are not going to respect our borders, it removes the obligation to respect their borders.

        I’m just angrier about enemies domestic at the moment, and think that with enemies domestic dealt with, it might not be actually necessary for harsh measures securing the southern border.

        1. I’ve often said giving Mexico back their land after we beat their ass in the Mex-Am War was a mistake. Should have annexed it then and there. Well, it’s not too late to turn Mexico’s border states into American territories… and I’m not so sure anyone, other than the cartels, would object.

  8. The problem with a citizenship test is what are you testing for? Knowledge of English and the US Constitution are good things, but not the root of the matter. Arguably the first test, taken by our founding fathers, was to pledge their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.” Heinlein’s test in “Starship Troopers” is oversimplified as military service. It was “civil service” in the non-bureaucratic sense. Most were military, but the requirement was service, with the possibility of it being to the extant of giving your life, to the species, I guess, in the book. There didn’t seem to be nations. But what we need is a profound degree of commitment to the United States. Not to the government, but the ideals and culture, particularly as represented in the Constitution. How do we realistically test for that? I’m not sure. But I could point out that the great waves of immigration from Europe, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Central Europeans, all essentially pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. They left home, often with nothing they couldn’t carry on their persons, and went “all in” on America. They made us great. And I am proud to be descended from some of them.

    1. in Starship Troopers it was mentioned that the medical testers could not disqualify anyone, they were just determining what a person was qualified for. IIRC, the example was that if you didn’t qualify for anything else you may end up counting caterpillars by touch.

      1. It was testing spacesuits out by Pluto. The point was that you had to be willing to put your life at risk for society. If they had any easy no-risk jobs you’d soon create an aristocracy that pulled strings to get their kids into those jobs so they could get their ticket punched.

    2. Geoff, I agree and would make the Declaration of Independence a serious part of the test more than what the term of congressmen is.

      1. Question 1) Is the following the greatest sentence in the English language? Why or why not?

        “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

        Question 2) Is the United States of America the greatest country on Earth? Why or Why not?

        This concludes the citizenship test.

        1. That would work.
          No on either of those and unless the answer was “Well, there might be a way to make the idiots understand that sentence better and stop pushing. Not that I know of any, but there might” and “Only because we don’t know of other civilizations yet. I think the US is the greatest country in the universe.” Stamp it denied and kick them where they came from.

    3. Not all of America speaks English. Spanish and English are the official languages of Puerto Rico, both English and CHamoru are official languages of Guam, and Samoan is the official language of American Samoa. I have no idea what they speak in West Virginia.

      1. English is the official language of California (passed via ballot proposition back in the ’90s), but you’d never know it unless someone near you started to rail against how racist such a thing is.

  9. Just heard the thing about nominating bioweapons releaser for Nobel prize in medicine.

    Pretty congruent with the awards of the Nobel peace prize.

  10. Close the border. Completely. For five years.

    THEN, once the invasion is paused, talk this way and fix the system.

  11. We had a missionary lady at church who has spent a decade or so working in Honduras. Her take was, about 15% of the people trying to get over the border from Honduras are genuine asylum seekers who will be killed if they remain in Honduras. They’re desperately trying to get away from criminals. 10-15% of the people ARE criminals and should be booted back at once. The rest…well, let’s just say she was conflicted.
    OTOH, she’s been working all this time to improve women’s conditions in a culture of machismo, where even other women are generically sympathetic to rape victims until they discover their husband/brother/nephew is the rapist, at which point they declare the women undoubtedly deserved it. That’s an aspect of culture a lot of women here are totally blind to. (And at last count, the number of assassination attempts on her was up to five).

    1. How about they kill their own damn criminals and stop making ’em our problem??

      1. I think there’s a bit of difference between “There’s no way our Johnny would rape someone.” and “If our Johnny raped someone she obviously deserved it.”

        1. It went a little farther than that. More on the lines of, “I don’t care if he did it, you are not going to arrest him!”

          1. Yep, that’s definitely beyond being blinded by love, which is at least understandable, and well into placing tribe over society, which is unacceptable.

  12. “If you pour a tea kettle of hot water into a bowl of cold water, pretty soon you have a bowl of lukewarm water. ”

    This is also what happens if you just leave the bowl of cold water alone, as it returns to room temperature. It just happens more slowly. As a metaphor, I question its usefulness.

    A better metaphor is of a pot of hot water, sitting over a fire. If you dump a lot of nearly freezing water into the pot, then the rapid temperature change in the water might cause the pot to crack. If, on the other hand, you slowly and carefully pour that same water into the pot, two things will happen. The first is that the much more gradual temperature change reduces the likelihood of your pot cracking. The second is that the fire has a chance to compensate for the introduction of the cold water, and when you’re finished the temperature of the mixed water will be greater than the temperature if you dumped it all in at once.

    2. And then it overflows and puts the fire out.

      You can only dilute a people so much before they become something else.

      1. This is why arguments via analogy are bad, someone is always going to take a part of the analogy you didn’t think of and run with it.

        In this specific case, there’s no dilution if we make them Americans as they come in.

            1. Right back atcha.

              Mainly because being American isn’t a supernatural effect. Stop and think about it for a minute. Are people who are born in the U.S. American? Sure, by fiat. So why bother with any plan you have to “be sure to make the newcomer American” immediately. Why not just pass a law, saying that anyone who wants to can stop by the DMV and pick up their I Am an American card. Heck, have a mobile service that drives around the border offering instant Anerican cards.

              But that’s ridiculous, Mrs. Hobbit, you think. Yep. So why the kids, but not the “wetback” as Caesar Chavez was wont to say?

              Emmigrating to another culture takes time, even by folks who *want* to be of that culture, and no guarantee they’ll ever succeed. All you can do is go for the probabilities, so their kids do not go full ” I feel deracinated : La Raza / Isis / Etc. here I come.” and they understand what they’re choosing. Make it easy to get ahead if you buy in, and painful to stay without assimilating… Almost like the parents and schoolteachers were supposed to do.

              1. Wanting to change the first (birth right by reason of soil) doesn’t mean we have to endorse the second. As someone who assimilated: it’s difficult, and most of the time will take generations.
                Yes, there are exceptions. But let’s not bet on them.

              2. “Are people who are born in the U.S. American? Sure, by fiat.”

                Well there’s your problem. If people who were born in the US automatically Americans we wouldn’t have the people in the White House we do today.

      2. 1.) If the destination pot is sufficiently larger than the pouring pot, then this isn’t an issue.
        2.) If the pot sizes aren’t in your favor, proper preparation can allow you to avoid extinguishing the fire with overflowing water. But it requires preparation beforehand.

  13. To facilitate this process, we will have to turn our embassies and consulates into training centers in English and the Constitution

    This would require that the people in charge of our embassies and consulates have confidence in American culture and civilization. Given that those people are the State Department, to paraphrase Adam Sandler on Mythbusters: Well there’s yer problem.

      1. D’OH!

        Yes of course. And I even subscribe to Adam Savage’s Youtube channel.

    2. Trudat, and the biggest failing of the late lamented orangemanbad was that he underestimated how much of the federal government he would have to get rid of. He was, however, great at reframing the goals into steps that could be accomplished and thus solved the immigration problem even without a completed wall by bringing pressure on the countries that were (and now are again) the source of the problem. Of course that’s all been undone with the stroke of a pen by he-who-must-not-be-allowed-near-little-girls.

      1. I think trumps biggest weakness was that he did not clear the upper ranges of the bureaucracy as is permitted. He should have dumped every last one and rammed through his people ( he had both houses) who could then set explicit strategies and then dump some of the mid level folks for disobedience to the rules which although hard IS possible. The other issue closely related is that he brought in a lot of Rino Ne’er do wells that hemmed and hawed an sat on their hands until he dumped them. For a man who’s catch phrase was “Your Fired” he was VERY forgiving of non performance.

          1. I stand corrected, Trumps coattails were not as long as I remembered. However he had the Senate which is the only branch of the legislature which is involved in “Advise and Consent” and the in a massive own goal the Demoncrats had recently removed cloture from all but the Supreme court. So although my memory is faulty the result is the same, all Candidates could have been shoved through like they were doing with judges as long as you could keep the usual suspects in line (which is a big if).

            1. Hmmm. I’ve never seen anyone actually deny the existence of NeverTrumpers and RINOs in the Senate before.

              2. As I noted The Senate republicans do/did have problems keeping their members in line. Murkowski, Snowe and and some others in the RINO department, An ex governor from my State (Romney, UTAH WTF were you thinking?) and some others in the not possessing a shred of backbone or moral fiber were old line norther GOP department. I do not deny they existed (nor did I in my statement), Rather pointed out the got a lot done in SPITE of those fools. They managed to corral them and shove judges through such that the 9th circuit is NOT all lefty loonies but actually has a few folks that care about law for probably the first time since I was in college. with similar intent and the removal of the filibuster via cloture they could and should have given it to the Obama cheerleaders good and hard. But they decided to give the Tranzis a chance to show their devotion to the US and ideals in an attempt to gain credit with the press or something. They choose poorly the only path that was going to work was one that would make General Sherman and General LeMay look like pansies. No one but their own people was EVER going to like them so trying to kowtow to that side of the aisle was doomed to failure.

                Trump got whole bunch done, but the start of that administration was a charlie foxtrot of epic proportions because they let Obama folks stay in place at the mid levels (deputy foo bars ) giving a Hydra (mythical and MCU) effect. They didn’t clean house because they hadn’t really thought that far ahead and they’d been co-opted by some of the GOP regulars they initially salted through their entourage. An unusual failing from someone from the commercial side familiar with the resistance in a business when you take it over.

                1. Is there a CEO in America that could handle the following:

                  1. Your nominee pool is limited to applicants who are willing to have people attacking every aspect of their lives (including mob action) starting with the first inkling that they were putting in an application, and those attacks continued for the rest of their lives, both personal and professional.

                  2. The HR department that is required to investigate and clear any and all potential hires is actively manufacturing evidence of said CEOs criminal and moral failings (Mueller? Mueller?). How many good candidates do you think actually made it through? Not to mention having that HR department provide a steady stream of leaks designed to enable Step 1. This is why Big Jim Towne and the Cosmocrats didn’t get a say on Lensmen.

                  3. Note that most of the upper management is under civil service protection, and Big Jim and his Cosmocrats have been stuffing the bureaucracy with zwilniks for a couple of generations. Oh, and those Trump judges aren’t in place to overrule the whistleblower laws / civil service laws keeping them in place. So eventually, Trump would fire his way down to zwilniks he couldn’t get rid of….. who’s running things, REALLY.

                  Our government has been beyond salvage for at least 20 years. Trump would have needed a miracle to reverse it, and so will any successor who sticks within the corrupted process.

                  1. > 1. Your nominee pool is limited to applicants who are willing to have people attacking every aspect of their lives (including mob action) starting with the first inkling that they were putting in an application, and those attacks continued for the rest of their lives, both personal and professional.

                    itdoesn’t start at the first hint of being interested in the job, they go back and investigate your entire life.

  14. My dad came to the US with parents and sister in 1916, all possessions in 2 trunks (one sits in my living room today), fluent in english, little need for any assistance, ready to hit the ground running. Unfortunately that’s not the case with many today that want to come here. And we have few that want to leave for Honduras, Ethiopia, communist China, or other places our new visitors come from.

    The US is open to the extent that it has become a victim of it’s own laxity and fear of being labeled as uncaring or racist, when the opposite has been true.
    We breed our own haters of our country and citizens, but that’s not enough. We then don’t filter out the bad incoming and even give the haters positions in our government so they can destroy from within.
    I’m still waiting for the US government to declare english as the official language.
    The traffic has to slow way down first or it’s just another one of our paths to destruction.

    1. My great-grandfather, his wife, sister-in-law and daughter came in, IIRC 1919 – middle-class, and with twenty-one trunks (great-aunt recollects they were all day going through customs at Ellis Island) following an older son (my grandfather) who had already immigrated. They were prosperous, educated and skilled, English-speaking and all-in to be American.

      1. We had to do a report in Grammar school about our ancestors and Ellis Island. My mother was offended. She came through Idlewild Airport, now JFK, on Pan American.

        1. We had to do something similar, our ancestors that came through Ellis Island. Problem? Oh yes. We were already here, on the west coast, across the continent … still “Johnny-Come-Lately’s” (or not Amerindian) but been here well before Ellis Island. Only one got here in that time frame and he and his brother came through Nova Scotia, from Scotland, across Canada before turning south. They weren’t emigrants coming from Scotland to Canada, until they turned south from BC to Washington state. The teacher was all “Everyone has someone who came through Ellis Island!” Wrong. We could prove it. Both sides. Direct ancestors. Now some gg-Uncles, probably (from Germany). But they aren’t “direct”.

          1. The teacher was all “Everyone has someone who came through Ellis Island!” Wrong.

            Wow. Yeah, that’s… um, is “idiotic” too strong a word?

            I know for a fact that none of my ancestors immigrated anytime after 1850, and that’s only because that’s as far back as I’ve nailed them all down. All four of my great-grandfathers were born before or during the Civil War, and the furthest-back $LASTNAME was of unknown ancestry but an adult Virginia backwoodsman by 1770 and the original $MOTHERSMAIDENNAME is recorded as coming to Massachusetts in 1634. (Which is why I count my ethnicity as “American”, not Anglo-Scots-Irish.)

            Besides, even during the “Ellis Island” period, Ellis Island wasn’t the only major immigration port, even for European immigrants. But it’s the one in NYC, so it gets all the press.

            1. Wow. Yeah, that’s… um, is “idiotic” too strong a word?

              –
              No. It isn’t too strong of a word.

          2. We have records of a relative through Ellis Island. Carefully stamped “not an immigrant” and noted as en route to Montreal.

  15. <>
    Not in my experience. With the notion of an exodus to America lighting the sky ahead of me, I became rather disengaged locally. I still opposed things that needed opposing, especially if they threatened my future exit. But that was merely survival. I wasn’t living there anymore, even though physically I still was.
    I had made my choice, you see. I had made the decision to leave, and despite the wait, there was at least a serious opportunity to do so. So internally, I have cut off those roots. I wasn’t invested in that place anymore. I was living for the time when I would come here.
    The idea of staying there and getting to remaking that country into something salvageable never crossed my mind at that point, other than as a nightmare. I was suspended in my wait to get here. I don’t even remember much from those few years, because existing there did not have my focus. Coming here did.

    1. That was in response to this:
      “Might it not occur to those people that they would prefer to make their government and economy in the likeness of ours while continuing to hold onto all their own cultural heritage?”
      But the quote got eaten.

    2. Sam, you bring up a very valid objection, but perhaps having a lottery among a large, public group of potential US citizens might lead to a different attitude. There’s strength in numbers after all.

  16. So, you decide Venezuela sucks and you’ll take your chances in El Norte. Or you make your way from Somalia to Panama, and you caravan on up, slide across the border, and… let’s say you get caught by the CBP, *and* they charge you for criminal entry into the US, *and* you’re convicted in a Federal court. Do you know what the sentence is? It’s a $100 fine, and you don’t even get deported.

    Last time I looked, I couldn’t find where anyone had actually had to pay the fine.

    If there’s no penalty for criminal trespass, and America isn’t as much of a shithole (yet) as where they’re coming from, well, why not? And if they make it to a “sanctuary” state or city, they’re not only home free, they’re on the gravy train.

    If there’s no crime and no punishment, the wall is meaningless. We’ve had US Congressmen escorting illegals through border control, if you care to remember. The illegals are only a symptom. The *problem* is with the Feds, who not only permit, but encourage them.

    1. Yeah, I’ve noticed that since 2020 my position on the illegals has shifted towards “first we must get our own house in order” from the “Wake Up America” platform.

      We fix the internal issues, and the border security issue may resolve without harsh measures. Fixing border security without addressing the internal issues is pretty pointless.

  17. Illegals are just the symptom, anti-american leftists are the disease. We have to get rid of the disease first.

    I think a rebellion against them will happen naturally, it’s just very hard to predict. It has to be en masse and fairly spontaneous. Anything organized, even a peaceful protest, will immediately be infiltrated and ruined by glowies and lefties.

    1. If a war starts, the Democrats will start it.

      I hear the FICUS hasn’t said a word about that building collapse in Florida. I’m sure it’s NOT because they’re all too busy laughing behind their hands…
      ———————————
      Some folks believe ‘Soylent Green’ had a happy ending.

      1. The folks who think Soylent Green had a happy ending are the same ones who think 1984 had a happy ending, and many of them have high positions in the HarrisBiden administration.

      2. Actually… there was a rare joint appearance by FICUS and Commie-la, and FICUS was unable to remember that he was supposed to say something about the collapsed building. Commie-la whispered and reminded him, on camera, prompting him that it was in Florida, and then he announced his condolences and promised federal help.

        But… yeah, it’s getting more obvious.

    2. Concur.

      Crazy idea: What if the FBI gets disgruntled and radicalized by failure to set up patsies, and decides to murder some Dems themselves?

      1. The outcome might depend on who is responsible for investigating it. For example, I can’t imagine the Secret Service would be particularly pleased to discover that the FBI is offing some of the people that the Secret Service is sworn to protect.

  18. My opinion on illegal immigration has remained unchanged for years. It’s going to have to be fixed, nobody is going to like how it’s fixed, and at minimum it will probably be the last thing a lame-duck President does in his administration.

    But, a border wall is a good start. Creating policies where legal workers can come over from Mexico and similar places without all the hassle-and make it easily enforceable-would help as well. Cutting off cash remittances until Mexico gets their own fiscal house in order would be good, too.

    1. Part of things is that Democrats have been screwing around with policy for years making dysfunctional messes, in hindsight perhaps maliciously and knowingly.

      Get the Dems, and their bureaucrat and university lackeys, out of policy and things may get fixed pretty quickly.

      In particular, make employment law less of a festering mess.

    2. There are already hundreds of different types of worker visa available. Not being able to come here legally is not really a problem.

          1. Stop huffing the Continental Philosopher’s Bong.

            Rights are something that exists before any citizenship is possible. Citizenship does not create them, it merely designates the particular polity which has the duty of protecting them.

            By your logic it is not only acceptable, but the morally preferred option to eliminate taxes and fund the government through the traditional method of invading, confiscating, and enslaving other countries.

            1. Practically, there is nothing to steal in the rest of the world that is worth what we can produce on our own, or even the opportunity cost of the extracting.

              Fighting the others to the end, and at any cost, /is/ the morally preferred option if it gets us back to producing, and does not result in a continuation of the fight /soon/.

              You can only fund an empire off of conquest when it has a seriously messed up internal economy. Okay, this may describe most empires and most economies, but…

              If a population is dysfunctional enough that they cannot form or integrate into a polity that will secure their rights, other populations are not obligated to put up with their bullshit by unilaterally having their polities recognize the rights of the dysfunctional population.

              1. Recognizing rights of individuals within so dysfunctional a population may make pragmatic sense, but it is not mandatory.

                Okay, situations where this distinction is important may be rare enough not to matter much. So it may simply be my own crazy talking, where most situations are concerned.

    4. > Cutting off cash remittances

      How? Unless they set up some kind of “ignore the fruit of the poisoned tree” system like when the USPS dropped mail to Europe off in the Azores and then claimed clean hands because it wasn’t opened in US jurisdiction, there’s no practical way to stop it. And that’s not even counting the many cybercoin schemes, or even credit cards.

      The kind of mail and money tracking you’d need to block remittances would be worse than the problem you’re trying to solve. By several orders of magnitude.

      1. And the crypto belies a more fundamental point: when a reasonable goal for any American is to slash the Federal Government’s control over the financial / monetary system, any scheme which starts with “and then we give control of all transactions to the government” is a non-starter.

        Just like the people who want to ban non-citizens from owning weapons. First of all none of the government’s damn business. Second we are trying to repeal all of that horseshit, not add to it.

      2. “The kind of mail and money tracking you’d need to block remittances would be worse than the problem you’re trying to solve. By several orders of magnitude.”

        We already have it, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s been used since Operation Chokepoint against Americans…. and still is. If we can use it against citizens, using it to actually help control the border might be considered obvious.

        1. Abominations don’t stop being that because you target the icky people. It just makes the problem harder to get rid of when the opportunity arises.

          And we have already done this enough times that the argument should be over. About the 10,000th time a bad law is enacted to deal with a Problem (real or imagined) — which then destroys all sorts of innocents just like anyone with a brain predicted it would — you would think everyone would learn the lesson. Nah, this time the holy government will save us, praise be onto it.

          1. Nope.
            If a law is on the books, it should be applied to EVERYONE. Period. Full Stop.

            The flaw is not just that a bad law is on the books, it’s that it’s selectively enforced.

            1. If a law is bad then every time it is enforced is a crime. The guilt of those crimes are on the heads of every officer, prosecutor, and judge who enforces them.

              Selective enforcement is also a crime, but its guilt lies on those using the law as a weapon or tool of personal aggrandizement.

              Any officer of the state who refuses to enforce a bad law is not committing the crime of selective enforcement, but their duty as one of the checks against tyranny.

    5. > nobody is going to like how it’s fixed

      Tell me about it. Nobody liked my Soylent Green Solution. They didn’t like my Ballistic Return System either. Or my Organ Donor Program. So much for compromise.

      “That joke isn’t funny.”

      “That wasn’t a joke.”

  19. First, we have to admit that the 1965 Immigration Act has been a total disaster. It discriminates against the very people we want, educated first worlders, meanwhile allowing large numbers of poor, low.IQ 3d worlders to enter the country, displace Americans in the low income jobs, getting huge amounts of welfare and free medical care, and lacking any interest in assimilation…while voting for democrats even when they are not eligible…If that isn’t repealed, it’s over…As to the illegals, Ike deported 1.4 million of them in 4 months…As to enforcing the border, authorizing the States’ citizens to prevent invasion by any means necessary would be a likely answer….And I agree that eliminating welfare for non-citizens would help a lot…

      1. Actually, I think ALL immigration should be halted for at least a generation to allow the US to recover from the blunders of the last 55 years….Obviously, “birthright” citizenship, which has no basis in law, should be eliminated as well…

          1. The Constitution’s definition of “birthright citizenship” has been under debate for a while.

            1. Not by anyone with a basic understanding of English and any intellectual honesty.

              1. Yes it has, the law is that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the US is a citizen, That explicitly means that children of foreign diplomats don’t get US citizenship, it’s not clear if tourists or illegals should as well.

                the courts changed their interpretation of this once, they could change it again.

          2. Read the debates when Congress was considering the text of the Amendment. There were concerns raised (about Chinese laborer’s children at the time) – and the Congressional drafters of it essentially said “Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean their children.” (Undoubtedly some with fingers crossed behind the back.)

            It is the courts that “interpreted” it to mean what it does not say. When a foreign consulate can intervene in any case involving one that is legally their national – that person is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

            1. That wasn’t in the debates, it was one Senator after the amendment had been passed. The language is quite clear and unambiguous, there’s no interpretation necessary. If Congress had wanted it to mean something else they would have used different words.

  20. I have long held that one of the things we must do, is do away with anchor babies.

    Option A: Just being born here no longer automatically confers citizenship.

    Option B: Okay, your baby has citizenship, but you do not and you do not get to stay here. Either your baby stays and goes into the foster care/adoption system while you go back home, or you take your baby with you after giving up all rights to citizenship on their behalf. Regardless, you go back home. It’s just up to you whether you do that with or without your child.

    I don’t think there are many other countries that auto-confer citizenship just because you were born there.

    1. Option A would require an amendment to the Constitution. It shouldn’t be that much of a hurdle, since the conditions that lead to the amendment in question haven’t been applicable for nearly a century, but it would be a fight.

      For Option B I would still consider the kid a citizen and once he reached 18 he could apply for a US passport. We could take a DNA sample and file it away so that we can be sure that the teenager claiming to be a US citizen is the same baby who was born in the US.

  21. Sarah, I don’t really disagree with any of your quibbles. A border wall is only as good as the will to keep it patrolled and enforced (ask the Chinese about the Great Wall). We’re certainly in agreement about limiting the number of even worthy immigrants. Mexico is mentioned only in that they are not the source, but the next to last stop, and if Mexico were a truly free economy with actual property rights (I know. I know.), it would be the destination rather than the next to last stop. When I am confronted with a one-worlder, I ask, and what form would the one-world government have? Tends to get them to stop and inspect the a-miracle-happens-here box, at least for the merely deluded rather than the people who just want to see the world burn.

    1. I’ve long proposed an “immigrate OUT” program. Identify people we don’t want in America and offer them cash money and a plane ticket to wherever would take them. Say, “repeat offenders.” The State of California claims it costs $65,000 per year per inmate. That is, about a million dollars of taxpayer funds for a 15-year sentence. They could just pay the criminal a million dollars in exchange for revoking their citizenship and a permanent ban on re-entering the country, and they’d come out ahead.

      Nobody seems to like that idea, either…

    1. Oh, that is a wonderful read, David – thanks for it. My slippery Scots-Irish grandad came over, in 1910 – and apparently spent his meagre inheritance on Second Cabin (on the Lusitania) rather than steerage class.

    2. Followed the piece and read it. Interesting propaganda writing. I wonder how many modern writers use pieces like this to create their historical fiction?

      One would have to really dig into primary sources to figure the writers’ game (and how much of the tale is real. Probably quite a bit, but how to know which parts?). One clue dropped late in the story was a mention of an Immigration Commission of 1910 by the feds. I was able to pull up part of an archive copy + just the sitting members (led by a Cabot Lodge, which rung a bell – but I don’t recall why) and the table of contents. There were 42 volumes including a volume on immigrant crime, one on immigrant children in schools, one on immigrant descendents and how they ended up employed, one on steerage conditions, etc. There were 20 separate volumes on immigrants in industry. Hmmm.

      I suppose its reassuring that the newspapermen have been manipulative fraudsters for over a century, justifying the same by the nobility of the Thing for which they lie.

        1. Yes! Thank you. Getting old and having things wrecking my memory. Also my historical education was weak sauce (mostly public school) and the autodidact version is a bunch of ideosyncratic rabbit holes.

          1. I think it was the early 20’s when the debates in Congress were about preventing immigration of those terrible southern europeans (Greeks and Italians especially) who were definitely “inferior” because they had rounder rather than more elliptical heads. And, of course, the much despised Chinese were only allowed in (except for a trickle) after we went to war on their side against the “even worse” Japanese (you should see the early Buck Rogers strips) in WWII. The past is rather frightening to look at sometimes.

              1. The reason there was so much propaganda against the Japanese was because most Americans had liked the Japanese until after WWI, and mostly went back to liking them after WWII. That’s also why we gave a care about Kyoto and other famous historical and beauty spots, during WWII.

  23. I suspect if we enforced the employment laws it would go a long way towards fixing it. Much of the pull in the US is so companies can have state subsidized sub-minimum wage chattle.

    The corpos love it because they both get to pay way less than the work is worth, and have a lot of control over their chattle than they would over legal employees.

    They do essentially the same thing with H1B visas as well, though they have to do it through paper work to make sure they don’t randomly lose their indentured to periodic raids.

    If you wonder why the left is going on and on about slavery lately, well, they’re trying to make it happen again, and they’re pulling the rest of the world through a meat grinder to do it too.

      1. Either way would be fine. Also shifting away from income taxes to consumption taxes help too.

        That’s likely one of the reasons Texas hasn’t seen the same distortions that California has from the illegal immigrants; they can’t evade taxes as much because it’s all sales tax and property taxes, and the state has less welfare to live off of.

        That said, all of those require changing laws, while simply enforcing the existing law may be a quicker path

  24. 3- Soros wants one world government because he knows it will be a tyranny. It’s impossible to be responsive to everyone in that big a polity. we might already be too big, (but thank heavens we’re ornery.) A one-world-government will be an intolerable tyranny to 99% of it. Also, the most ineffective government ever. So.

    THIS. The new self-anointed aristos like Soros want a government that listens to them and their ilk, and very few others. After all, they are the important ones – look at their net worth. It should be obvious to anyone that they are the new Puritan Elect, so annointed by their worldly success.

    This is why the continuing diatribes demonizing “populism” rub me the wrong way so effectively – Populism is appealing to the People, which happens to be the actual named sovereign in that Constitution thingee, dude.The alternative is an Oligarchy of those Puritan-Elect-By-Net-Worth.

    Kind of like Nationalism being so evil-bad-ungood: Sez who? I realize it ended up being blamed for the first world war, but that was just because the “solution” being pushed was Russian Imperialism cloaked as the “Socialist International”, or the less obvious more modern term, Internationalism.

    So opposing Oligarchy and internationalism via Populist Nationalism is triple-plus-ungood-red-cap-bad. This is why Soros and his buddies (all guys, note) had to remove DJT.

    2. Nationalism can get you into “My country right or wrong!” thinking. That’s where it goes bad. But the default judgement by many these days is that all nationalism falls into that category, and doesn’t make allowances for the more restrained sort of nationalist who is willing to take a step back and critically examine what his or her country is doing.

            1. When your country is literally doing the ditches and neck shots dance any loyalty you have to it is either to something that doesn’t exist, or to a monster.

              In the former case your loyalty means you need to “betray” the monster that has taken the place of your country.

              In the later case you are a monster.

            2. I might grant you Rommel, he had a family and it’s certainly possible that the Nazis would have punished them even if he had simply resigned, but Lee would hardly have been the only Southerner to reject secession and fight for the Union.

        2. “I was just following orders!”

          Additionally, over-enthusiastic nationalism can also lead to situations in which a person is unwilling to confront certain facts about the true nature of the country of which he or she is a citizen. People sometimes use the term “patriotism” to distinguish a more careful form of nationalism that is willing to acknowledge the short-comings of one’s own country.

            1. Yes, it is. Again, the problem is only the degree of nationalism, and not that it exists to begin with. As Terry Pratchett noted in ‘Night Watch’ there’s nothing inherently wrong with singing the national anthem. The problems arise when you run into situations like the one that caused the backlash in China against the video streamer group HoloLive because a couple of members were reading their viewership numbers (provided by their streaming service) aloud during a stream, and Taiwan was listed separately. As a result, all of HoloLive is now persona non grata among a chunk of the mainland Chinese population that watches streamers like HoloLive.

          2. > just following orders

            That was a sore point at Nuremburg. Under German law, that *did* shield them from responsibility for their actions. It was part of the Fuhrerprinzip; authority and responsibility only ran downhill. If the order came from your lawful superior, the results were his responsibility, not yours.

            Every German officer swore the oath of obedience at their commissioning. So did Party members, which meant basically all the functional government and police. In practice, it was little different from how it was before, under the Kaisers.

            The German lawyers claimed their clients were innocent, and were being tried under foreign law for actions that were specifically *not* a crime when and where they were done. The judges basically said “sucks to be you” and tried them under American, British, French, and Soviet law anyway.

            “If you don’t want to be tried in a foreign court under foreign law, don’t start a war you don’t win.”

            1. Anyone know the WWII-era Red Army oath text? I know the Nazis changed the Wehrmacht oath when the took power to have them all swear to Adolf, and the Japanese obviously swore an oath to the Emperor, but how about the Red Army?

              1. Search and ye shall find:

                https://kihnu.com/Red_Army_Oath.html

                I, a Citizen of the USSR, entering the staff of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants’, am taking the oath and solemnly swear to be an honest, well-disciplined, vigilant warrior; strictly protect the military and national secrets, implicitly abide by the military regulations and orders of commanders, commissars and all my superiors.

                I swear to conscientiously study the military law, implicitly safeguard the military and national property and till the last breadth of my life be devoted to my people, to the Soviet Motherland and the Government of Workers and Peasants.

                I am always ready to defend my Motherland – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the behest of Workers and Peasants Government and as a Workerss and Peasants Red Army serviceman I swear to defend it courageously, skillfully, with dignity and honor, not sparing my blood or entire life in order to achieve overalll victory over our enemies.

                If for some evil intentions I violate this herein-solemn oath, let the Soviet Law, nationwide hatred and contempt of all the workers strictly punish me.

                1. Yeah I was lazy – so it’s not an oath to good old Joe Steel, it’s “to my last breath to be faithful to the people, the Soviet Motherland, and the Workers–Peasants’ Government.”

                  Source I found with a slightly different translation of that one, which is the 1939 version, and the earlier 1918 one, at: http://soviethistory.msu.edu/?s=Oath

                  1. Yeah I was lazy

                    Honestly I was surprised it was that easy. 🙂 I expected to have to dig a little deeper than typing in “Red Army Oath” and picking the second result.

                    1. It’s easy to forget we live in an age of wonders.

                      On the Red Army oath, since it, like the Soviet Constitution I read a translation of back in the day, is itself very benign, one could conclude that the fuhrerprincip-based Nazi Wehrmacht oath or the Imperial Japanese military oath really had little to do with resulting behavior – benign oath or do-exactly-what-that-guy-says oath, bad things still get done, I’d contend based on the cultural context.

                    2. The HarrisBiden folks want it readily available as they rework it to replace the current oath’s given to American civilian and military personnel which vows to uphold the Constitution, rather than a particular political party.

                  2. benign oath or do-exactly-what-that-guy-says oath, bad things still get done

                    Look at the crap our alleged civil servants get up to, and consider that they take the American oath.

            2. “If you don’t want to be tried in a foreign court under foreign law, don’t start a war you don’t win.”

              “What matters is, I won.”
              “He lost, didn’t he?”

              Sounds like victor’s justice no matter how you slice it. Don’t surrender (or concede), you can’t afford it.

              1. Well, more importantly, don’t give your enemy cause to go after you for war crimes.

                And, in any case, imprisonment (only a few prisoners at Nuremberg were sentenced to death) was vastly preferable to the alternative. “Conceding” in May 1945 was largely a matter of looking at what was already happening, and realizing that if you kept fighting, you were guaranteed to die, as were all of those around you. If you stopped fighting, you might live.

                As an example, the infamous Joachim Pieper did his time, and then got released. He ultimately died when an old German living in France who made his living translating texts was outed by local French Communists in the early ’70s, and died not long afterwards when a group burned his house down.

                1. Stalin was not enthusiastic at the whole idea of the Nuremberg trials, preferring instead to just shoot them all, nominally under field courts marshal as they were captured but in fact because the Red Army had bullets available. He eventually was convinced by the show trials aspect, and provided judges and prosecutors, but his preference was always just shoot them all in some forest like he did in Katyn.

                  1. Stalin was a monster, but he was a practical monster.

                    If the Democrats keep pushing their bullshit, I foresee widespread outbreaks of practicality.

      2. Remember that that line is incomplete as misused. It continues, “If right, to be kept right. If wrong, to be put right.” Or something mighty close to that.

      3. The oath of enlistment for US service members reads, “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES against all enemies, foreign and domestic..” Likewise elected officials oaths of office. We do not defend our country but our Constitution. The oath explicitly states the highest authority and descends from there. No man, no matter what his office, can legally give me an order that violates the US Constitution. That is not exactly nationalism and certainly not an oath of loyalty to any race or ethnicity. Nikki Haley, Rick Scott, and Ron DeSantis would be as ethnically acceptable as the lily-white current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. My country right or wrong has always been a jingoistic parody of patriotism for propaganda purposes. We do not have and never have had the Fuehrer Prinzip. My constitution, right or wrong, and, if wrong, to be duly changed by one of the methods prescribed therein.

        1. Until those methods are corrupted beyond repair within the legal system the Left is wearing as a skin suit.

          Ask Ashli Babbitt. For that matter, ask Donald Trump, who was careful to work within what he thought was the universal law. How did that work out again?

        2. Given that we have people on this very page who seem to be having difficulty understanding the idea that morals trump national bonds, exactly how much of a parody is it?

          1. Come on, dude.

            The communists have been scamming us for decades with bullshit ‘moral arguments’.

            National/government policy is Caesar logic.

            Morality is Jesus logic.

            Conflating the two is a category error. Trying to combine the processes results in dysfunction that serves neither objective well. You work through each logic process independently, then try to compare the results.

            Analytically, a mismatch is merely cause for further consideration. Practically, mismatch means soul searching about how much various policy goals are really worth to you. Some folks, after their soul search, conclude pacifism. I do not get to dictate the results of soul searching to you, and you do not get to dictate results of soul searching to me.

            Though, fundamentally, ‘necessity of harsh measures’ conclusions rest on reduced order models, and I have been banging the drum of ‘reduced order models are not strictly reliable at predicting for human societies’. Reduced order models are definitely not correct objects for faith. OTOH, trusting that a serial killer will stop killing simply because someone mentioned Jesus to them is naive, and I doubt Jesus asks us to do so.

            1. The communists have been scamming us for decades with bullshit ‘moral arguments’.

              There is nothing that Communists can’t turn evil. I don’t care how much sugar Stalin ate.

              And your polity had better be taking morals into account if it doesn’t want to be running the gas chambers.

              1. Moral arguments are only persuasive when there are common values.

                If government, or anyone, is trying to decide what those values are for others, they are dictating them. I think my position is that such dictation always amounts to a false or worldly morality.

                If you are the only person in a group with morals, it will go badly regardless of whether you get to wear the badge of an Official Morality Policeman.

                There are some systems that may appear to let a human wearing the badge of Official Morality Policeman dictate morality to other humans.

                I am not saying that the whole category of moral arguments are unsound.

                I am saying that you could reasonably expect people to be on guard against bullshit moral arguments.

                It may be reasonable and appropriate for a human to, because of extensive noise produced by communists, set their filter to discard all moral arguments from those who they are not first persuaded that they have common values with.

                You also say that you are a Protestant. Why must your moral arguments be automatically sound in the eyes of others?

                What, beyond that I am nuts, makes your moral arguments sound and mine unsound? Okay, “Romans had slavery, give unto Caesar, amirite, LOL” is an obvious bullshit argument. But difficult circumstances can definitely exist, where reasonable moral arguments can be made for actions that are not moral in other circumstances. Now, a lot of these ‘moral arguments’ may be bullshit, but it is not likely that humans will agree on every one.

                1. Moral arguments are only persuasive when there are common values.

                  Agreed, which is why I usually use ethical, not moral arguments.

                  Of course the flip side is people who will only accept arguments from their particular moral position. No amount of logic or ethics will work with them.

                  But in this discussion I’m mostly talking about the Big Should Be Obvious Stuff. Like “no, you don’t get to kill anyone you feel like just because they don’t have citizenship in your particular polity”.

                  In theory this is a base I can rely on when talking with real Americans, because whatever their particular morality source they understand that the foundations of the country say “this stuff was all here before the country existed”.

                  1. Except that this version of the ‘common base’ is a cheat.

                    There were /two/ components to the common base, not one. There was the mostly Christian moral teaching about the value of human life, and there was something like natural military law.

                    The left cheats when it appeals only to the moral teaching about the value of human life. The left also cheats when it ignores that the moral teaching was sought, historically, and tries to guilt trip for the actions based in natural military law. That guilt trip cheating involves a deeper lie that a) assumes peace is the default instead of war b) ignores whether the conditions for peace were even possible.

                    There were always Americans advocating for killing the other guys. There were always Americans advocating for leaving them alive. ‘Leave them alive’ may have won the debates more often. But there were very definitely a number of very rough sorts, and the ideas they had may not have been recorded and preserved to the degree that the opposition’s were back in the more settled areas.

          2. > morals

            I claim no morality. Lots of people do, but they always seem to resolve to “do what I expect you to do.”

    3. At least the real Puritans (not the straw-Puritans of fiction and anti-Congragationalist writings) admitted that they didn’t – couldn’t – know if they were truly Elect or if they were Reprobated. That kept most of them in check. Not all of them. And they lived in a time where almost everyone everyone except the anabaptists believed that church = state. The modern Anointed [self-proclaimed Elect] don’t have that excuse.

        1. Indeed to quote a common bit of rhetoric “”Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Mussolini codified it there, but that IS where our Brahmandarins appear to be ideologically at present. Oddly they are SO fricking stupid they don’t seem to realize (or perhaps care) that that is the basis of a totalitarian/fascist state. They apparently wouldn’t know fascism if it bit them on their over fed posteriors.

          1. Oh, they know it is, they are just going the full big lie route to project their own sins on their political opponents.

  25. Ellis island equivalent on the border, with 2-, 5-, and 10- year sentences to hard labour building the wall it sits on if caught trying to avoid it. That includes visa overstay and other ports of entry.

    College debt removed (and a 10% fee taken from the college or university from which the debt was incurred) at 25%, 50% and 100% for taking a minimum wage menial position (at 2, 5, and 10 years of service) working Ellis Island Del Sul. Housing provided, as well as room and board. People with degrees in anything hands-on practical +plumbing, nursing, etc) get an accelerated deal.

    As long as we’re all pretending the “problem” is anything other than a feature to anyone with the authority to enact our ideas; might as well blue sky it.

    1. I’d rather not have the people trying to circumvent the wall being the same ones forced to build it…

        1. The people that you’ve forced to build the wall will be motivated to leave flaws in it that won’t be easy to detect, or to avoid correcting flaws that they identify. After all, they hope that sooner or later they’re going to get another chance to sneak past it.

  26. “My wife, the chemist, explains that the root of the problem is entropy.” I like the entropy analogy. Too many people think it’s always good to connect systems or consolidate them into larger and larger systems…from individual nations to world government, for example. Some thoughts on this at my post Coupling:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58361.html

    1. Very good article David. “Skin in the game,” as you mention is an essential concept. Feedback is essential to life. Kick a rock, and the rock doesn’t care because it’s not alive. Put an amoeba in a petri dish with a drop of acid on the left, and it will squirm over to the right, not because it’s intelligent, but because it’s alive, and the acid means death. If you do not feel the consequences of your actions, you become destructive of yourself and those around you.

      1. And NOBODY in the government feels the consequences of their actions. They’ve made sure of it.

    2. Entropy is relentless, and it takes a lot of well directed energy to counteract its effects…We have been losing that battle for some time.

    3. Ships have their electric plant designed so that any load can be powered from any generator, but they never have it lined up so that all the loads are being shared by all the generators. Why? Because if something goes wrong it can take down the generator it’s attached to. If all the generators are connected together and something goes wrong you’ve just lost all of your electricity outside what’s in a few battery-powered devices. By keeping the generators split you ensure that there’s always a source of power available to bring the whole system back once you’ve fixed the problem.

  29. Having actually been an immigrant to the United States of America, I have some thoughts on the matter.

    1) You people need to -extinguish- the entire Department of Immigration and all it’s regulations. The whole thing. Fire every single son of a bitch who ever worked there, and start over. Seriously, it is that broken.

    2) You need to decide what your immigration policy is. You don’t have one right now. Being the Nice Guy country is not a policy. It’s also a lie, because Dept. of Immigration is a meat grinder. It eats humans.

    3) Whatever the policy turns out to be, you need to end welfare for immigrants. No free schools, no Medicare, no food stamps, nothing. Nada. Zippo. Immigrants pay for public services, or they don’t get any.

    Do those three things and you have a -start- on fixing immigration to the USA.

    As to the suggestion that improved processing and a better immigration test would help, that is simply not going to happen. It is a more/better/different instance of the same thing you already have. A gigantic and all-powerful bureaucracy run by unionized public employees who all do the bare minimum and only move faster for breaks and quitting time. It is a Hell on Earth for the people processed by it and for the people who work in it. It should be destroyed and replaced with nothing.

    Because prior to WWII, there was nothing like the current system. You didn’t need one, because there was no massive welfare system acting as an attractive nuisance, dragging people from all over the world to America.

    Canada of course does have an immigration policy. The policy is to import third world immigrants in such numbers that they nullify the votes of native-born Canadians. Then the current regime will rule forever over a nice pliant population of serfs.

    1. Current regime thinks it will rule forever.

      Current regime has its head up its ass, and will find out that the truth is otherwise.

    2. Give them the free schools. They are being taxed for specifically for them and why should their kids get a better education than ours?

      1. Also the schools were designed to be, and are a major part of assimilation. It is a pity that they currently assimilate to wokeness.

      2. You’re not getting it. They have to pay their taxes AND pay for the school. This isn’t supposed to be fair. Services are for -Americans-. Immigrants can pony up for the school, or make other arrangements.

        If there’s no free stuff, the lazy and the stupid will go home. The industrious and smart will stay and thrive. Those smart ones are a net plus to America. The stupid ones are a drag on society. Let them be a drag in -their- country.

    3. 1) You people need to -extinguish- the entire Department of Immigration and all it’s regulations. The whole thing. Fire every single son of a bitch who ever worked there, and start over. Seriously, it is that broken.

      Supporting Point of Data: Our local pilots association gave a small scholarship this year to a young fellow who is here with his family from Afghanistan – his older brother helped out the Marines as a Terp, so their father was killed and the entire family threatened with dismemberment. The Corps got the surviving family into the US on a Humanitarian Parole visa basis back in the Sotoero administration, and they applied for permanent asylum status…but almost a decade later they remain here under USCIS ‘Asylum Refugee – Temporary’ in the immigration limbo status of “Not Disapproved”. This kid is now in college. It’s a straight-up disgrace that these folks who risked life and limb, and in this case family paid with their life, to support teh US Military, and they are just stuck in limbo.

      This is just a single example from personal knowledge that can be blamed on the permanent imperial bureaucracy of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

      1. Ten years, yeah. That’s what they did to me as well, despite money thrown away on lawyers and a stern note from the Senator for Minnesota.

        You’ll notice I’m writing this from Canada. After ten years of pointless bullshit and head-smacking stupidity, and watching literal goat-herders from Somalia get Green Cards just for asking, I told them to shove it.

        If you ever go to an INS office, you’ll notice that it is fortified. The places are built like prisons, with the workers behind bullet proof glass. There’s a reason for that.

        1. Both of these are more of an ideology thing; they are for open borders except when the people seeking to remain in the USA appear they will not be leftists/vote for Democrats. There is a reason that at the same time Obama opened the flood gates at the borders he reversed decades old policy that allowed people from Cuba to remain in the USA if they touched US soil. Refugees from Cuba fleeing Castro would certainly NOT be voting for Democrats or support leftist policy and ideology.

  30. The Russian Communists lasted three generations, Bob. They did everything so catastrophically, unbelievably wrong that 20 -million- people died. In the 1980’s we still thought they might beat us. Ten years later they were toast.

    Things move very slowly, and then very fast without warning.

    China will be the same. They look big, but they are standing on a sand hill behind a wall made of paper. One good wind and the whole thing comes down.

    Canada could cripple along for another 100 years before the reckoning comes for the elite. Or it could come apart like a rotten stick anytime. No wonder they’re nervous, eh?

    1. It actually can’t cripple along for a hundred years.

      Thing is, law and order ultimately come from the population, /and/ borders are not the barrier that they are imagined to be.

      Lots of Americans in the Southwest have been quietly salty about the Cartel situation in Mexico. Because it did not stay in Mexico, all of that stuff also showed up on this side of the border.

      The stupid bastards here are screwing around with rule of law. It will not go as they expect.

      If America has an epidemic of vigilantism and law degree criminal conspirators suddenly finding themselves hanging from lamp posts, there is a decent chance some of that spreads to Canada. If for no other reason than that some of ours won’t be stupid enough to wait for the mob to drag them out, and may make it to Canada. If Canada does not extradite, we cannot know now how well Canada can secure that border if persons decide that some parties cannot be left rotting in exile.

      Would not be an objectively desirable situation in absolute terms. Does not mean that we have a practical way to avoid it. Especially as your would be tyrants appear to be as colossally moronic as ours appear to be.

      Your guys are toast, our guys are toast, even the PRC’s guys are probably toast. Maybe the Russians are stupid enough, and their idiots clever enough, that they will leave theirs in power.

      1. “…we cannot know now how well Canada can secure that border…”

        Oh, I can tell you that right now. The border between the USA and Canada is unsecurable. Cannot be secured. No way. If every able bodied man in Canada stood on that border, it wouldn’t be secure.

        That’s what makes the official Canadian government distaste for Americans so utterly moronic.

        1. Chuckle Chuckle

          Many years ago, I was on a Boy Scout canoe trip along the US-Canadian border and saw no “border guards”.

          IIRC there were a few “markers” for the border. 😀

          1. There are a lot of places where the only way you can tell there’s a border is when you get to the next town and the flag on the post office is different. Single strand of barbed wire strung across a wheat field, and that’s it.

        2. Oh, that trip was within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (starting point was Ely, Minnesota).

    1. I believe it’s still the law. Just ignored like all the other inconvenient things like the Bill of Rights.

  33. Today I read one of the most shocking headlines I’ve ever read. “What are pandas good for?” And then the entire article went on to evaluate how each species isn’t or isn’t good for the “environment.”

    What in the name of holy fandago is that shit?

    Leftists believing they are God, without even realizing that God considers beauty useful.

    1. The Good, the True and the Beautiful are intrinsic goods, and instrumental goods derive their goodness from causing them.

      Remember that if you try to evaluate everything as useful you get infinite regress.

      1. In fairness, this is not just a problem of Leftists…a lot of libertarians have the same problem. I suspect it is because at the base the philosophies are materialist, to the point of being reductionist.

        Oddly, while as expounded in non-fiction Objectivism is, but as expounded in fiction it is not.

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