On Oct 3, 2006, at 3:35 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> You can start by not sweating the small stuff. The borders of the
> US are essentially open at this point anyway....
Not really. The borders are patrolled, and foreigners have to contend with crap like USA Visit. People here illegally are under constant threat of deportation, and won't ever be eligible to collect Social Security or Medicare benefits, despite often paying into the system. And if we had a more expansive welfare state - with more generous income supports, or, heaven forfend, an active labor market policy like in Sweden - how could you administer that? Make everyone who shows up eligible? And if we had, heaven forfend, more economic planning, what would the scope of that be? Who would administer, and how, infrastructure investment or publicly funded child care in the countries our immigrants come from, like Mexico or the Dominican Republic?
Doug