Immigration

Last week while driving with some people to FHE one of the people found out that my family is from Brazil. He asked if the recent government movement on illegal immigration had bothered me at all. I think he assumed that because government is putting tighter restrictions on it that I would be upset seeing that my family were beneficiaries of emigrating from Brazil, but I'm not bothered at all by it.

Laws allowing immigration were probably looser when my parents came over, but whatever the circumstances, they did it legally and had a solid plan for once they arrived. My dad even came and visited a couple of times to get a feel for the US, his business prospects, and figure out where he wanted to move to. He had tens of thousands of dollars saved. And he was coming from Brazil, a third world country.

Immigration is such a complex problem because it allows for the US to secure the best and the brightest minds from around the world. Think about how much better off we are because of all of the people who have come over because of greater economic opportunity that only this country can provide. At the same time, however, it's difficult because there are so many people who want to take advantage of what it is that we can provide that come from all walks of life.

There are no solutions coming from me today. There does need to be some major reform within the system, but it doesn't feel like that is going to happen any time soon. A friend of mine forwarded me this letter that was featured on the KFI website. Here are a couple of paragraphs:

Dear Steve,

I am mad as hell today. My best friend is leaving to go back to Brazil on Wednesday. She is not leaving because she wants to... she has been in the country legally for 6 years now, being sponsored by her company. Her company has recently laid off several people and cut the hours of employees that remained. As it didn't look like the company would stay afloat, she had no choice but to leave the country. Well... that's not entirely true, she could have: A) stayed in the country illegally like the other millions of them, B) gotten married to some one (she had offers of "help"). If she would have broken the law by doing either of these... she would have been able to stay - NO PROBLEM!

So, she's got 6 years under her belt contributing to our system, speaking the language, following the immigration laws, being a good citizen. She is college educated, beautiful, and an exceptional individual in general. She has given away or sold all her furniture and other belongings, had her last day of work yesterday, and now all there is left are the goodbye's.

While I can empathize with the plight of her friend, those people who abide by the laws are always going to be the ones who contribute most to the system. I've always thought about what it would be like to run a study looking at the the differences between the lives of those people who immigrate legally and illegally, examining specifically variables like level of education, annual salary, life expectancy, time spent in jail, and it just seems pretty clear that you're dealing with a completely different class of people.

When there are higher costs associated with getting certain benefits, people are more appreciative of those benefits and act in a corresponding manner than when they receive the benefits without any effort on their part. This is related to a principal called cognitive dissonance.

There was a study done comparing two groups of people. Both groups of people were asked to give their opinions regarding their membership in a club that studied closely the mating rituals of certain insects - not exactly something that anybody would ever be excited about. The independent variable was how favorable their opinions were of the club, and the dependent variable was the barriers of entry. One group had relatively no barriers of entry toward gaining membership in the club, while another had to read aloud to a group of strangers text from an erotic novel. Which group wound up finding the insect mating ritual club to be entirely fascinating and entirely riveting? The group who had to read sex stories to complete strangers.

The idea is that when you have no reason to support or enjoy something that you're taking part in and it didn't cost you anything to do it, then you don't have to bother with coming up with any kind of justification about why you're involved. However, when you are going to participate in something, even if under most circumstances you would think it was the dumbest thing in the world, when barriers of entry are high, you have to convince yourself that you really love it. You have to rid yourself of the dissonance in your cognitions, hence cognitive dissonance.

While it sucks that her friend has to leave the country, I'll bet you that she's going to come back, and when she does, she's going to live a better and more grateful life than those people who skirt the law and don't pay the price to live in this country. For those people who jump through the hoops and deal with the high barriers of entry, I'm sure that they end up becoming among the hardest working and best citizens of this country.

Yes, it is harder to move legally into this country than it has been in years passed, but it's not like people aren't still able to do it. There are plenty of law-abiding legal immigrants who live here as well, and those are the ones that we're really after anyway.