An appraisal of Spain´s recent policy of regularization for immigrants -- within the context of EU constitutional crumpling, kaleidoscopic population flows, ethnic violence, "warehouse" detention centers and human rights abuses, Spain´s construction boom, labor demand, an aging Spain, and the vanishing townships of yesteryear.
The Heritage Foundation rails against proposals for opening up routes to normal legal status for immigrants in America. I´ll jot down a few problems with this article in the comments section.
posted by mr. p @ 1:56 PM
1 Comments:
On first reading, a few problems:
The use of sources here is often quite inept or cynical. For example in arguing that Malaysia´s amnesty policy failed, this article, published in June, cites an article from February. What happened since February? Check a few threads back for the Independent´s expose on the embarassing back-fire of the subsequent Malaysian crack-down on immigrant workers. For the HF to omit this and cite its antecedents is bad scholarship.
Most of the policy proposals forwarded here are unrealistic. So we are to encourage third-world countries to voluntarily crack down on their largest source of direct foreign investment, and rather, simply, "develop." Mexico will not voluntarily stem its flow of immigrants, quite the opposite. And what third world country hasn´t been trying to develop for the last half century? By allowing the black market of labor to persist we only hamper the emergence of accountable policies and respect for law in these countries.
Also, to "encourage" an illegal immigrant to return to his or her home country and re-apply via legal means must be a joke. How many swat-teams will this require? What illegal immigrant, aware of the miniscule percentage of immmigrants legally admitted, will willingly turn themselves in to go back to their home country? To plausibly forward this suggestion, it would need to be coupled with a radical opening of opportunities for legal admission. HF is seeking the opposite.
More abstractly, the use of the word "amnesty" is a rhetorical ploy. It´s going to be hard to have a conversation about a policy if we can´t find a word that both sides of the debate agree on, but "normalization" or "regularization" focus attention on the economic and legal processes which pertain to the reality of the situation. The ´crime´ of illegal immigration is not one which would otherwise be punished by fines or jail-time, as per the cases we usually think of with "amnesty", simply by expulsion. It has in any case long been actively promoted by legal actors including the government.
America´s economy has been built on a series of so-called "amnesties." Watch any Western, the heroes are all squatters and/or free-rangers with no legal permission to be doing what they are doing -- or only very local legality. As Hernando de Soto persuasively argues in the Mystery of Capital, America became a succesful capitalist country once it recognized the need to grant legal recognitions to ´reality on the ground.´
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