Charles Barkley makes for an interesting interview

[grysar]

There's a TNR interview with him (probably subscriber only).

I tend to agree with him on immigration:

"Illegal immigration to me is the easiest thing in the world to fix.. All they have to do is penalize the people they work for. You should get penalized. It's all poor people who argue over illegal immigration.They want poor people to--I call it divide and conquer... A lot of these politicians say things like"We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants."

I'll have to check out his sports show at some point when it's covering something of interest to me.

Comments

Re: No Amnesty

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Wow. I'm so proud. ^_^

Anyways, generally speaking it's easier to manage a program than it is to manage a vast illegal population. But there is definitely some downward wage pressure. The hope would be, at least in construction, that new jobs are created as a result of the increase in infrastructure. That's not particularly true for landscaping. On the other hand, some landscaping jobs would probably go away. Demand is elastic to a degree, if you aren't a golf course or something.

The other element to this is the possibility of aid to Mexico. I think it is safe to say that the fairly moribund Mexican economy is a key driver here. Illegal immigration wouldn't magically disappear if there were more Mexican jobs, but it would probably make a big difference.

I do tend to believe a wall would actually work. Israel's had dramatic success after all, and I tend to think that migrants, while hard-core, are a bit less determined than suicide bombers. However, image aside, it would be really effing expensive.

We aren't that great at doing development aid, but it could probably be cheaper than building a wall across the southern border.