My final thought on the Arizona thing is that I guess a lot of it comes down to how effective and efficient you think law enforcement measures will be. I view it as similar in nature to the narcotics trade, in that in both cases market forces are too strong to be jammed up by laws and law enforcement.
To me the drug war has been a miserable failure and filled with misguided policies. So that’s where I’m coming from: making something illegal doesn’t make it stop, and I’d rather actually solve the problems than have a morally right law on the books (and huge government bureaucracy to enforce it) that is horrible ineffective and inefficient. Whatever you think about using illegal drugs, they are cheaper (in real, inflation adjusted terms), more potent, and just as available as they were before the drug war started: we are losing the war. The rise of even less healthy drugs like crack and crystal meth can be directly attributed to prohibition, because other drugs become more expensive due to the risk of producing and trading them. I see similar repurcussions occuring from a large scale law enforcement push against illegal immigration.
Furthermore, I don’t personally have a problem with the free movement of people. A more flexible global labor market would be great to me. A post-nationalist world order might also be great.

Agree or disagree, I appreciated you thoughts, Ted. Now if you can just comment on Bosh’s changes to his twitter account I think we can close this thread on a positive note. ;)

Any chance of getting the one long one put up and 34-36 deleted?

Oops, ‘fraid not.

Sorry, Ted!

-First, I agree that there is a problem with the current policy (a.k.a. relative chaos) and I respect that you have a comprehensive list of solutions rather than just “they took errr jerbs” type reactionary stuff (which is why I should have asked the questions in the first place instead of going off on rambling tangents).

-Without having a single figure in front of me, my hunch is that enforcing immigration law will be a far bigger increase in taxes (or more so increase in government spending which will probably lead to increased debt more so than taxes, not that I’m as hyper as some about the national debt… but I do have a problem with it and can’t see how it’s sustainable). Every time someone goes to court (illegal immigrant, suing their town–I have now read the law–or suing for discrimination, etc.), everytime someone spends time in jail, every time someone is deported, every new officer/bureaucrat that’s hired, every fence that’s built… the government has to spend money. Not saying it’s a good or bad thing to spend money on, more so that I think it would be the reality of the situation considering the history of government bureaucracy.
(Tangent) I find it a bit contradictory that the tea party, for example, is for small government as well as huge law enforcement and often military budgets… you can’t have both. A huge budget necessarily makes the government large and someone has to eventually pay for that… hence taxes and government debt. I can at least respect libertarians and communists for having their stories straight.

-As I’ve said previously, I don’t think drug smuggling and immigration are completely linked. Both are border issues, but even building a giant steel wall around the country isn’t going to stop the proliferation of narcotics (and probably also wouldn’t stop illegal immigration). They’re similar issues in nature, but I think they’re seperate. Basically, my point is that stopping illegal immigration 100% would probably not make a dent in the drug problem.

It wasn’t meant to be condescending, but rather a change in my approach to the discussion since I realized that rambling on and on somewhat aimlessly wasn’t really productive.

I am as guilty of this as anyone, but often when an argument/disagreement/discussion/whatever starts both parties don’t actually know where the other party stands. A lot of the points I’ve personally made in my ramblings were less directed at the individuals I was responding to and more directed as a strereotypical characature.

There’s a lot of common ground where we agree.

One of the problems with blogging, texting, emailing and other e-communication is that what a person is trying to say can often be perceived in a different way than what was meant to be communicated. In giving you the benefit of the doubt that your request for my person beliefs on a particular topic were not meant to be condescending, my response follows.

Also, I’d like to say that I don’t participate in this blog to discuss my personal political beliefs, and I don’t like mixing sports with politics as I have stated above. But I also have strong beliefs and will assert them when I find it necessary.

Problems in no particular order:
Increased taxes for Americans
Threat of terrorism
Increased crime
Increased drug smuggling
Taxing national resources
Overcrowded hospitals, emergency rooms, schools, jails, etc.
Disincentivizing legal immigration
Lack of accountability
Accidents caused by unlicensed drivers
Increase in insurance rates
Voter fraud
Unfair advantages to people who hire illegal aliens

Solutions in no particular order:
Increased Federal government involvement on the boarder (maybe a fence, national guard, etc).
Punish companies that hire illegal aliens
Streamline process of legal immigration
National database
Disincentivize illegal immigration

That said, did anyone see Alan Hahn’s article which references the recent changes to Chris Bosh’s twitter page –

“Chris Bosh is at it again on Twitter. His latest action is to change his profile, with his location changed from Toronto to “Everywhere” and his bio no longer makes reference to him being captain of the Raptors. Bosh has an opt-out this summer and it seems pretty clear he plans to exercise it.”

I would be interested to hear what you think the problems are with illegal immigrants and how you think they can be solved.