The Pinky Show is a left-leaning internet editorial. They even have a video which presents the AK47 in a positive light. But their presentations are much more palatable than the insults and demagogic ramblings of dictators like Hugo Chávez. This is what they have to say about solving illegal immigration.

Flame retardant: I don’t approve this solution, it’s just conversation bait. Feel free to think a bit; I’d like to hear your ideas.

A Canadian fellow blogger, Matthew Hogg, of littlewoodenman.com, recently posted this cartoon about the process to become a US citizen. Pundits of legal immigration like to highlight the unfairness of granting legalization to illegal immigrants who are already in the US, compared to the gruelling process of legalization.

But why not make it easy for people to immigrate legally? Opening first-world countries to immigration has already been successful in Europe, when post-communist nations joined the European union. That way jobs wouldn’t go to India, Latin America, and China, but stay in the US. Wages would go down, initially, but the law of supply and demand means that unless it becomes too expensive to outsource labor outside the US, more and more jobs will be lost in the US anyway.

The following article in Reason Magazine, where this cartoon originated has more to say on humanizing immigration law.

I’ll share with you a slightly edited comment I wrote in this post by “La Gringa”, of La Gringa’s Blogicito:

As I contemplate leaving Honduras in three weeks, I wonder that I’ll miss. I know the main things I miss are family and friends, but when I’m in the States I just don’t feel at home.

The attitude I get from most Caucasian or even African-American strangers is a subtle “you don’t belong here”. I could read it from the redneck barber who wasn’t very glad I walked into his shop. I could see it in the way some African-Americans walked extra slow in front of our car because my brother was driving. I could see it from the cruel treatment my girlfriend, a blue-eyed blonde, got from her peers because of my ethnicity.

When I returned to Honduras after college and saw the beautiful green Sula Valley from the airplane window, it brought tears to my eyes. I missed the mountains, the ocean, the landscape, the food all the time I was there.

But earlier on the return trip, when I boarded in Houston, I saw people bickering because some HONDURAN idiot didn’t want to sit in his assigned seat. I definitely won’t miss that. I won’t miss the crime, the poverty, the mediocrity, the corruption. Yet, I think I’ll feel a tinge of guilt living in a place where things are OK.

I do think Mr. Walton’s 48 thousand dollars wasn’t wasted in me when he gave me that scholarship. I can see people whom I’ve influenced for good, mostly through church, and I hope that will be my legacy to my “patria” (fatherland).

Marcelo Chimirri has been denied entry to the US, despite being an Italian citizen. An official declaration published in the print edition of today’s El Heraldo said the decision was made after long consideration. The reason cited was his involvement in serious cases of public corruption. Italy is among the 27 visa waiver nations, whose citizens can usually enter the US with only a valid passport.

The article is a good summary of the case against him, mentioning illegal possession of arms, violation of state secrets, and a pending investigation of “grey traffic”. The article details that fiber optic cables lead to his mansion in Valle de Angeles. Also, unexplained transactions amounting to approximately 62 thousand dollars suggest that he was involved in telecom piracy, the very crime he accused several businesses in 2007, successfully dismantling them, without a warrant or trial.

Image by Tom Magliari, used with a Creative Commons license

The Washington Post published an article today about the troubling decline in the Japanese population. Like many developed countries, the birth rate has been declining; it has been for the past 26 years. The cost of educating and raising children in Japan is high, and young, independent mothers are growing averse to marriage and motherhood. Even more prickly is the Japanese distrust of immigrants. Immigrants are seen as a source of “crime, impolite behavior and untidiness.”

Every year there are fewer workers to support an aging population. The article cites experts who predict a collapse in the Japanese pension system in as little as 25 or 50 years.Meanwhile, industrial giants like Toyota are working hard to produce robots who can feed the elderly, give them preliminary medical supervision. The government susbsidizes them to do so, because robots have “no political downside”. Robots are seen as safer and more friendly. The Japanese would rather let robots into the home than strangers.

The solution, acording to some experts, is to let immigrants in. Among developed nations, Japan ranks very low in immigration. In the US, more than 1 out of ten people were born somewhere else. In Japan, it is less than 1 out of 50. But this is a solution no one wants. The government would rather spend billions on robotic technology.

Is this the genesis of a robotic revolution, albeit a less violent than the one seen in I Robot? Will the chasm between the rich developed nations and the poor, exploited ones become a literal one, sustained by robotic labor?

Image by Don Solo, used with a Creative Commons license

CNN and MSNBC both gave some coverage to yesterday’s outrageous ads by House Republican Tom Tancredo, that said Honduran illegal immigrants were gang members and “terrorists”. Unfortunately, neither dug under the surface. They should have reported that the two major, rival, gangs that plague El Salvador and Honduras, the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, and the Mara 18 or 18th Street gang, had their origins the streets of Los Angeles.

I don’t support amnesty for illegal immigrants living in the U.S. But it is definitely easier to enter the U.S. illegally. Why make it difficult for honest, hard-working, educated or skilled people to live and work in the US!?

As I was reading about congressman Tancredo, I found Mike Huckabee’s proposal for immigration reform. It is tough on immigration, but reasonable. I especially like that he wants to make legal immigration easier. That is a refreshing contrast to Tancredo, who talked about eliminating immigration altogether, legal or illegal.

I have an aunt and uncle, many cousins, a brother, and several nephews living in the States. Four of them have doctorates, and at least 2 have master’s degrees. There are pastors, doctors, university professors, economists, homemakers, college and high school students among them. And, they all got there legally or were born there. They sacrificed themselves to get there, and most have become citizens. They are loved in their home communities, in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and New Jersey.

Image by Jim Frazier, used with a Creative Commons License

This makes me furious. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado congressman, is airing ads blaming immigrants, specifically, Honduran immigrants, for gang violence in the U.S.

Get your facts straight Mr. Tancredo. Gang violence was virtually unheard of in El Salvador and Honduras until the U.S. started deporting illegal immigrants from the U.S. back to their countries. It was in the U.S., in Los Angeles, where many of our poor young people learned gang violence! They brought that back here, to our cities.

He has the gall to say:

“It’s terrorism of another sort,” … “They terrorize our cities. They terrorize our families.”
“What we state (in the ads) is something that is completely factual,” … “Certainly, I think we should all be fearful of the massive problems caused by illegal immigration.”

Mr. Tancredo, these gangs terrorize our cities, they terrorize our families too!

Not for an instant do I defend breaking the law to get into the U.S. I defend the image of my country. It is first world nations who have fostered the corruption in my country, from Spain with its rape of America, to the U.S., who created the “Banana Republic”. It is the millions of dollars of U.S. loans and aid that line the pockets of the corrupt politicians in my country. Have some shame!

Image from Wikipedia

I have not heard the speech President Mel Zelaya´s delivered before the UN yesterday. I must say I was surprised to hear about what he said when I listened to a local newscast this morning. His plea: that the UN treat migration as a basic human right.

Major news outlets reported nothing. Even the local news only has a paragraph or two about it, except for this Tiempo article. CNN is more concerned with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s decision not to attend, and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmaninejad’s hilarious assertion Monday at Columbia University that there are no homosexuals in Iran. But Xinhua mentioned Zelaya’s speech, as did Scoop, an apparently independent media group from New Zealand.

Zelaya spoke about the paradox of a world whose borders are open to “commerce and goods”, but not to “people and migrants”. He proposed that migration be seen not as a threat or a crime, but a “right, a simple and elemental right.” He called the current world view of migration “myopic”, concerned mostly with money and not people.

After this, unfortunately, Daniel Ortega took the stage, and tried his best to fill Hugo Chavez’s role of prophet of socialism. I say unfortunately, because in the eyes of the world, our president is a friend of Ortega and Chávez. This friendship might lead to Zelaya’s speech being ignored, as Ortega’s speech has certainly been.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Mel and I agree on something, and also that he was able to speak to the UN with grace, and not embarrass Honduras, as he has been doing on occasion in the past 2 years. There was no mention of Hondutel though. I bet that would have interfered with his vibe.

Image by J. Engerundio, used under a CC license.

Lately, there’s been discussion in the U.S. about raising tariffs on imports of socks from Honduras. Many manufacturers moved their plants from the U.S to Honduras chasing the low wages. Fruit of the Loom is already ahead of the game and is closing one of its plants in Honduras. 800 jobs will be lost, and possible more as other manufacturers turn away from investing in Honduras.

All this is an answer to the protectionism and xenophobia in the U.S. Apparently the concept is: “Jobs are scarce, let’s favor U.S. workers”. That is all right. But, where do you think those 800 Hondurans will be tempted to come now that they’ll be unemployed? Confronted with hunger, and in the name of survival, I can confidently predict that at least 1, if not a major portion of them will try to cross the U.S. border illegally.

I am convinced that we need to eliminate immigration restrictions. That will mean the end of all outsourcing, as there would be no need for it. People would move to where labor is needed, and flee the places where wages are too low. Immigration restrictions are getting in the way of prosperity, and directly sustaining poverty and the governments that thrive from it.

By trying to protect ourselves, we damage ourselves and others.

Image by Uma B., used under a Creative Commons license

According to this eWeek article, the U.S congress is considering raising fees and reducing the quota of H1B visas to highly skilled immigrants. This is an expression of the xenophobia that’s running rampant in the first world.

Isn’t this the result of globalization? Bringing the smartest people in the world to your country, to work for your companies, and spend your money, on your products is not a stupid idea. Keeping them away and allowing them to waste their talent or working for the competition is not a smart idea.

Jobs in the first world have gone elsewhere, where labor is cheaper. But workers in those countries are fleeing the jobs that pay the subsistence-only salaries. In the end, if the job market is left alone, there will be equality. Jobs will no longer go to Asia and Latin America if labor prices there are the same as in the first world. Unless, and this is a big unless, unless the first world countries stop immigration.

The mass exodus is caused because workers realize they are being cheated and enslaved. They risk their lives and families to find freedom in the first world. When the big companies realize that it’s no longer cheaper to hire labor from the third world, they’ll start hiring from home again. This can only come about if immigration restrictions are removed. Otherwise, the third world nations are condemned to perpetual poverty, and and in the first world, more and more workers will lose their jobs.

Guess what the first world countries will do? If you guessed they’d want to keep us in poverty, you guessed right! The result will be a lose-lose situation. The first world will lose jobs and prosperity, and skilled workers. The third world will remain steeped in poverty, and will turn to the leftist politicians. The U.S. Congress is handing Latin America to the leftists with a nice garnish of isolationism. This has already revived the cold war, and might create a conventional war soon.

The message to the first world: Don’t be afraid of the poor, live up to your ideals of freedom, or lose your leadership in the world!

Images by Matt Harriger and Pete Ashton, used under a Creative Commons license