A couple days ago I linked to Peter Mork. Later I noticed that Mork has some postings on immigration that I find agreeable.
Here’s a quote from his latest, The One-Day Window:
A few months back I received a large manila envelope in the mail which I thought was junk mail. But to my surprise, as I opened it up, I realized it contained a photocopy of a letter to the editor I wrote to the WSJ that had been published a month before. My closing paragraph was highlighted and on the side margin was a note telling me that I should learn about “the real costs of immigration”. The letter was from The Programmers Guild and they implored me to read their newsletter, which was also enclosed, to learn about the true costs.
Unfortunately, it seems they ignored the true point I was trying to make. How is it that if I was born only 30 miles south of where I am currently sitting that this would deny me the right to enter into a voluntary agreement with a U.S. employer? This question has never been answered to my satisfaction.
And it won’t be. Change “only 30 miles south of where I am currently sitting” to “with skin a shade darker” or “with slightly different genes” to unmask the perverse injustice of movement and work only by state permission.
Like white miners in South Africa the last century most first-worlders are scared of competition and racist. There is no moral excuse.
Did you see this post over at MR? Relates to our discussion…
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/10/protectionism_r.html#trackback
I saw. Of course I agree with Landsburg’s sentiments about protectionism, but not as a justification for preferring Bush. I would say “steel tariffs”, but no need — the invasion of Iraq is far more egregious than any protectionist measure either side has considered.
[…] Programmers’ National Party berates U.S. computer programmers and last century’s white South African miners for fearing and seeking to exclude competition. Instead, compassion is called for toward the fearful trade workers, and agitation against their bosses who seek to breed and profit from fear and hate on both sides of relative exclusion. What has been the greatest extent of cooperation between groups of workers where one group has obtained relatively vastly superior conditions and compensation to the other group, which is excluded by law and custom from the market the first group trades in? Perhaps this question would be a more effective tool for reducing hatred and grappling with fear among relatively wealthy workers than would impugning their morality. […]