Journal yintercept's Journal: Force in Numbers 4
The current immigration debate is remarkably similar to the music sharing debate that rocked the Internet community a few years back. Both debates came about because antiquated laws simply were not geared to current needs. The strongest similarity between the IP and immigrant debates is the idea that if enough people break the law and create a social movement, that the laws will change in favor of the social movement.
This idea failed in the music sharing debate. I suspect that the protests will work in the immigration debate.
The primary reason for the difference is the cost of compliance. A person could come into compliance with IP laws simply by deleting file shares or by deleting downloaded files. Complying with immigration laws requires costly court battles and deportations. Many of the immigrants are people who simply can't go back. The cost of deporting 12 million people is really beyond our means.
A second reason is that increasing the number of immigration slots fits in with the goal of transforming North American into a single market.
On the cynical side, we probably won't send immigrants back because a large number of businesses interests are aligned with the immigrants. Business interests were uniformly aligned against file sharing.
A final difference between the debates is the tone of the debate. The immigrant protests began with the typical in-your-face "our-mass-movement-will-rock-your-world" style rallies. The second round of rallies took the more conservative tone that immigrants weren't trying to transform society, but want their needs and contributions recognized as part of society.
In this world where our laws are becoming out of sync with our technological and social needs, we are left in a quandry of how to achieve change. Our legislative bodies have a poor record of adapting to change, yet this process of breaking laws to force change gradually undermines the rule of law at the foundation of society. Even worse, this process of discourse hurts good people like the HB52 workers who returned to their homelands when we prematurely expired their work permits. Legitimizing the undocumented immigrants also hurts the long line of people who are trying to immigrate through legal channels.
This idea failed in the music sharing debate. I suspect that the protests will work in the immigration debate.
The primary reason for the difference is the cost of compliance. A person could come into compliance with IP laws simply by deleting file shares or by deleting downloaded files. Complying with immigration laws requires costly court battles and deportations. Many of the immigrants are people who simply can't go back. The cost of deporting 12 million people is really beyond our means.
A second reason is that increasing the number of immigration slots fits in with the goal of transforming North American into a single market.
On the cynical side, we probably won't send immigrants back because a large number of businesses interests are aligned with the immigrants. Business interests were uniformly aligned against file sharing.
A final difference between the debates is the tone of the debate. The immigrant protests began with the typical in-your-face "our-mass-movement-will-rock-your-world" style rallies. The second round of rallies took the more conservative tone that immigrants weren't trying to transform society, but want their needs and contributions recognized as part of society.
In this world where our laws are becoming out of sync with our technological and social needs, we are left in a quandry of how to achieve change. Our legislative bodies have a poor record of adapting to change, yet this process of breaking laws to force change gradually undermines the rule of law at the foundation of society. Even worse, this process of discourse hurts good people like the HB52 workers who returned to their homelands when we prematurely expired their work permits. Legitimizing the undocumented immigrants also hurts the long line of people who are trying to immigrate through legal channels.
amnesty (Score:1)
Agree On the Concept (Score:2)
This issue was forced on us because we have a ruling elite that fails to address the concerns of the people. This goes for the Democratisc, Republicans, Socialists, Big Business lobbyists and other groups that yank us about.
I was adamant againt P2P, not beca
if you want a good read... (Score:1)
meh, I'll make it easy, clickable link [amazon.com]
no idea why it is so expensive, I have the original paperback, got it as a gift but it was cheap then. Most of the reviews don't really hammer homer how well it is written and documented, they concentrate more on the sensationalism. It is an "in your face" written style of book,
Re:if you want a good read... (Score:2)
Beyond the need to defend our border, we are engaged in a battle for the minds of the Hispanic community. Our greatest ally in this battle is the creative and entrepreneurial impulses of the Hispanic community.
A mass deportation pushes people toward socialism and the attrocities that follow socialism. That means our b