Freedom Folks: American Jobs: Foreign Policy?

Sebastion Mallaby has an op-ed in the Washington Post that appears to suggest that American jobs are simply another tool in our foreign policy quiver...

Migrating To Modernity

After the terrorist attacks of 2001, voters understood that poor failed states could hurt them. President Bush launched a smart new foreign aid program and multiplied the U.S. commitment to fighting HIV-AIDS, and rich countries around the world boosted development spending. But our approach toward poor countries remains confined, idiotically, to the debt-aid-trade box. People don't see that other policies in rich countries have a major impact on poor ones.

Consider immigration. Just about all rich countries are arguing about border enforcement, employer sanctions and so on, but nobody relates this stuff to the parallel arguments about development. *snip*

Lant Pritchett reports that if rich countries permitted extra immigration equivalent to 3 percent of their labor force, the citizens of poor countries would gain about $300 billion a year. That's three times more than the direct gains from abolishing all remaining trade barriers, four times more than the foreign aid given by governments and 100 times more than the value of debt relief.

He goes on to say that (insert happy face, smiley kitten talk -- here -- that illegal immigration doesn't effect American wages and that illegal immigrants don't (more happy happy joy joy -- here) take American jobs. What actually happens you see, and you'd know this if you were a high falutin Wapo editorialist, is we take all the best people in a process called "Brain Drain." To which Jake replies, um, sure, could be true, all evidence to the contrary.

He continues...

Still, Pritchett's numbers show that the development gains from migration swamp the brain-drain problem. For the migrants themselves, a ticket to the rich world is the fast track out of poverty: A laborer who moves from San Salvador to Phoenix can multiply his income without altering the type of work he does or how good he is at it. And this process benefits developing countries, too. Migrants send home remittances, which exceed aid flows and are probably more effective, since the migrants ensure that their hard-earned cash is used productively by relatives. After a few years the migrants may return home armed with savings and ideas. The brain drain becomes a brain gain.

Uh-huh, except for the "they don't return home part." Sure. This next part contains the sentence for which I am fisking this. He continues...

So migration ends up as a net plus for development. But a development-friendly migration debate would sound different from the current one. Immigration advocates in the rich world feel most comfortable making the case for allowing in skilled workers. Skilled migrants, however, trigger the biggest brain-drain concerns; allowing in unskilled workers does more to reduce global poverty. Equally, immigration advocates tend to want arriving workers to assimilate. But the best way to promote development is to allow a rolling cohort of poor workers to amass savings and experience -- and then return to their own countries.

"A rolling cohort of poor workers."

...

Jesus H. Mahogany Kee-rist! You have absolutely got to be freakin' kidding me. One would presume the budding genius who scribbled this tripe went to college, hasn't suffered a massive head trauma, has most of his teeth?

Cuz this is dangerously stupid, the kind of stupid that needs to be licensed in all fifty states and parts of Canada. Stupid on a scale so breathtaking it makes the Hoover dam look like a science fair project.

Yes please Mr. Wizard, our current importation of 'migrant killers and rapists' is working out so well let's formalize the deal. I mean, gee whillikers Ace, how about we make absolutely certain we screen them so we get nothing but MS-13 bangers and their ilk, oh, I forgot, that's pretty much the current system.

And how precisely, Mr. IQ would you suggest we get them to go home?

Enforcing repatriation would still require tough government action.

From a government that has simply been covering itself with glory dealing with the illegal alien problem currently, right Sherlock? Oh, and remittances have been going to these countries by the billions, how's that been working?

Allan Wall of Vdare has an excellent rebuttal to this nonsense and answers my question...

But the fact that 6 to 11 billion dollars is flowing into Mexico just has to be helping people, hasn't it? Well, it does serve as a source of income for many families, and probably keeps a number of grocery stores afloat. But as a source of long-term job-creating investment, the effectiveness of remittances is more dubious. About 95% of the remittance money is spent on food and day-to-day supplies, not in meaningful investment which increases long-term job creation. A small percentage of the remittance money has been donated to local communities for paving projects and refurbishing churches, and a smaller percentage specifically targeted to investment, but most of it is eaten up in groceries.

Should American jobs be a part of "foreign policy?" Should jobs inside this country be set aside for those who aren't citizens? Are American jobs part of foreign aid programs?

Well, what do we have here? A historical example?

MIAMI - The Bush administration has decided to extend special temporary U.S. residency for Central Americans for another 12 months, a spokeswoman for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Wednesday.

The decision means hundreds of thousands of Central Americans will not have to return home when their Temporary Protected Status ends next month.

The U.S. provided temporary legal residence and authority to work in this country to Nicaraguans and Hondurans after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and to Salvadorans following a devastating earthquake in 2001. That status has been renewed several times.

The residency was due to expire this year amid criticism that the program was never meant to be permanent.

But Central American leaders and several members of Congress have been pushing for a renewal. Immigrants and their advocates say allowing the special status to expire would devastate not only these individuals but also their families - and the Central American nations - who count on the billions of dollars the immigrants earn in the United States and send home.

To which I responded thusly...

This is important. I don't want people here who don't see this as their home except in very small numbers. This will happen every single time we try to "help" people in this fashion. Why in God's name would they want to leave. And of course our race pandering whore of a president cannot say no to any person on the planet willing to demand American citizenship as a right not a privilege.

American citizenship is a precious commodity. Clearly far too precious to entrust in the hands of the race pandering whores that currently inhabit our government like termites, termites that will hollow out the tree of liberty by filling this country with those who call another country home or view America as nothing but a cash tit for them to suck on until they drain it dry.