Freedom to Move (follow-up)

Cooley wrote specifically about peaceful immigrants who respect our laws and customs, who assimilate. Throwing rocks at law enforcement is neither peaceful not respectful of our laws and customs.

The free market doesn't need protection from Cooley's immigrants.  The free market needs protection from everyone who doesn't understand and respect the values that make a free market work.  Price-fixing, insider trading, monopolies, bribery, and rock-throwing are some examples of actions that can turn a free market into an oppressive market.  Immigrants who don't assimilate are just one group who can eventually erode our free market system.  Corrupt politicians, for example, are another group that can and has attempted to destroy free markets, and that's one reason we have laws against bribes.

We don't have an effective system in place to help peaceful and respectful immigrants to learn our customs.  Those who manage do so because of their own strong character. We also don't have an effective system of deporting non-assimilating immigrants. Or non-assimilating natives for that matter.  Which means that we have a growing segment of the population who doesn't respect our laws and customs.  

In my opinion, only a small fraction of the Mexican immigrants are assimilating.  The rest are simply occupying our land.  

The Mexican immigrant population has a birth rate higher than the general population.  It's already a significant population in California.  Certainly not a minority.   There will come a time when a large Mexican immigrant population will demand changes to our laws that are are contrary to our culture and customs, but consistent with theirs.   At that time, most of them will be citizens by birth. 

Then we will figure out that,  although we shared our land with them, they are not willing to share it with us.  We'll either have to give up large portions of the southwest or fight to take them back.  There won't be a peaceful solution, just as there wouldn't be one today if we tried to take northern Mexico.

Just as there won't be a peaceful solution to a similar problem in Europe and the Middle East, where Arabs with different value are immigrating with no intent to share.

Just as our own native American Indians didn't have a peaceful solution to deal with the European invaders, who came with different values and no intent to share.

Without assimilation, which is a key component of Cooley's argument, the strongest culture will win.  It may not be ours in the form it has today.  I believe that, if we arrive at such a future, we will have to reinvent ourselves in order to survive.  If we do prevail, the culture we will have then is the culture we should have had today.

Our free market needs protection from anyone who would exploit it and destroy it, whether intentionally or through ignorance,  whether immigrant or citizen.

On Jun 10, 2010, at 8:49 AM, Sheldon Richman wrote:

Dear Mr. Buhacoff,

The freedom to move that Cooley and Poirot supported is not respected, and so armed government agents hunt down people for nothing more than attempting to peacefully cross a political border. Thus the violence is initiated by the government.

I fail to see how preventing immigrants and American employers from getting together protects the free market.

You can learn more about our views on immigration by searching our archive, which goes back some 50 years.

Thanks for your interest in FEE.

Regards,
Sheldon Richman, Editor