Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...

My impression of the Immigration Bill is that, from theperspective of stopping illegal immigration, legislation is irrelevant.  The most we can hope for from the law is thatit might give direction to the flow. This impression stems from an ecological perspective, in which illegalimmigration is a process taking place within the larger context of economic anddemographic globalization.

The United States, as a developed nation, has undergonedemographic transition.  This meansmiddle class WASP-ish Americans are disappearing, no matter what, due to anegative population growth curve.  At thesame time, we have an economic model of continuous growth, which requires apositive population growth curve.  Ifthere weren’t constantly new jobs being created, the national economy wouldcollapse, and with it the global market.

The commodification of labor guarantees that those new jobs willbe filled, as cheaply as possible, one way or another.  In a global free market, labor supply willmeet demand at the market’s price.  Whetherthat happens through immigration or outsourcing makes no difference.  American business has a choice: import cheapforeign labor to maintain domestic production, or export production facilitiesto developing countries like Indiaand Brazil.  In the current economic and legalenvironment, those are the only real options for globally competitiveindustries.  And in the age of globalsupply chains and electronic commerce, every mom-and-pop store, every farmer,every factory and office worker faces global competition in an unregulatedmarket.

Unregulated Capitalist markets have long been understood asa formula for oligarchy.  So why is theinternational labor market unregulated? And isn’t that part of the purpose of immigration law in the firstplace?  Given the above context, we cansee why immigration law and other forms of regulation are doomed to failure byhalf measures.  The driving forces in theimmigration crisis are the global commodification of labor and the disparity inpopulation growth between the post-industrial and developing worlds.

National laws are marginalized to the point of irrelevanceby Globalization.  This has long been thecomplaint of Environmentalists, who must confront the reality that, even onthose rare occasions when they score a major legislative victory,multinationals can simply relocate their environmentally destructive behaviorto less regulated foreign markets. Further, having done so, these same companies can then lobby bothgovernment and popular opinion with the (very true) argument that these lawsare just obstructing domestic economic growth without doing anything to benefitthe environment.  In essence, policieslike our rejection of the Kyoto Protocols amount to capitulation to thismessage from business to government: “We’ll just cheat, so don’t bother makinglaws.”  Corporate multi-nationalism hasmarginalized national sovereignty and crippled the power of law to regulate themarket.  So long as no transnationalgovernment exists to exercise regulatory power over multinational corporations,they will continue to operate in a mercantilist Wild West where all are drivenby competitive pressure to exploit every opportunity, no matter how unethical,to maximize profits.

The combination of economic growth and population declinecreates a demographic vacuum.  In thetopography of global population movements, North America and Western Europe aredownhill from Central America and North Africa.  So long as we ignore this reality, so long aswe remain in denial about its inevitable consequences, our reactions will onlyhasten our own destruction.  Our currentcourse leads inexorably towards ethnic apartheid: the Two-State Solution.  This represents an inherently unstable statefor the socio-political ecosystem; it is a recipe for revolution.   Our only recourse is to become again whatmade us a great nation in the first place. We must become a multicultural melting pot.