Solving the Immigration Problem—Once and For All

The true story of the Save the Endangered Americans Act of 2018

Ross Levatter | May 14, 2009

It started when the depression began in 2008.

After the first decade, people lost hope it would end soon. The bailouts and government stimuli didn't turn the market around, nor did government's takeover of the financial sector, Michigan-based automobile companies, and fast-food restaurants west of the Mississippi make much difference. (Although the ads with Barack Obama guaranteeing you could "have fries with that" caused a brief resurgence in the stock market.) It all led to the government's fateful decision to monetize the debt.

After a few years, the country began running out of trees for paper. Congress wavered between reducing the speed with which the debt was monetized and allowing previously off-limit trees in federally protected forests to be used for the production of paper money. There were reasonable arguments on both sides, but the monetization crowd won in the end, leading to the great Federal Deforestation Program of 2013-16.

Despite all that, there was growing concern that something more must be done. It was around this time that Bangladesh suggested it might stop buying our debt. The politicians—some pushed by conviction, others by letter-writing campaigns originated by Fox News opinion-leaders—felt that the problem was illegal immigration. Obviously, there were too many people in the country. Illegal aliens either worked or they didn't. If they worked, removing them would free up more jobs for unemployed Americans (unemployment then hovered around 33 percent). If they were not working, removing them would free up governmental services (unemployment insurance, food-stamps, guaranteed mortgage payments, extended GM car warranties, all the usual suspects) for Americans who really deserved them.

Everyone agreed that legal immigration was good for our country. We were a nation of immigrants, after all. Politicians got choked up all along the Potomac shouting the praises of legal immigration—although the choking might have had something to do with the fumes from all the new paper plants needed to keep up with Treasury's demands.

Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and the other Fox pundits had nothing but hosannas to sing about legal immigration. But, as they endlessly reminded viewers, we are a nation of laws. (So many laws that the Congressional Register stopped publishing them. Besides, the Treasury hoarded all the paper.) A nation of laws must enforce the law. Who could disagree?

In 2017, during the first term of President Michelle Obama, the bright boys in the Office of Management and Budget worked closely with the president's top economic advisors, Paul Krugman and Lou Dobbs, to calculate how many immigrants would have to go in order to free up sufficient government funding to take care of so-called real Americans. The answer turned out to be the last two generations of immigrants.

When presented with the stark numerical evidence—to say nothing of President Obama's eloquence on the subject—Congress overwhelmingly passed the Save the Endangered Americans Act of 2018, which defined Americans as those people whose grandparents were born in the United States. The rest were illegal immigrants; the law allowed no retroactive immunity. "No one should be grandfathered in, so to speak," said our first Madam President. She was certainly sad to see her husband, the former president, deported, since two of his grandparents were born in Kenya. "But we all have to sacrifice to improve America," she declared.

Fox News hailed the move, running hour-long specials on the worsening immigration crisis. Illegals, the pundits ominously declared, now numbered over 200 million. And like the Communists in the 1950s, they had infiltrated every aspect of the government. Bill O'Reilly denounced those who were destroying America from his remote feed in Ireland, since he, too, was forced to leave the United States.

Things ran smoothly after that. In an interview several years after leaving office, Michelle Obama explained that once the definition of an illegal immigrant was clearly defined, it became quite easy to solve America's economic problems. Hyperinflation ended because the few remaining Americans didn't need that many paper bills, especially with the population's new interest in barter. Government seizures of American businesses became less frequent as American businesses themselves became less frequent.

So the depression finally ended. The few remaining Americans—true Americans—became self-sufficient. People of other lands had little reason to want to emigrate here, so illegal immigration dried up. As Americans developed more rustic ways of cooking—usually with a pot on the hearth—all those Geithner dollars finally came in handy.

Ross Levatter is a writer in Arizona.

Comments

|5.14.09 @ 5:10PM|#

STFULW!

Sorry...I was feeling left out.

Paul|5.14.09 @ 5:23PM|#

Damn, Richard, you beat me to it.

Paul|5.14.09 @ 5:34PM|#

And like the Communists in the 1950s, they had infiltrated every aspect of the government.

Canadians. They walk among us. William Shatner. Michael J. Fox. Monty Hall. Mike Meyers. Alex Trebek. All of them Canadians. All of them... here.

Naga Sadow as Harrison Bergero|5.14.09 @ 5:37PM|#

What? No Handicapper General? This story is bullshit!

|5.14.09 @ 6:02PM|#

Funny piece of satire, based on a bunch of bullshit of course, but still entertaing

|5.14.09 @ 6:58PM|#

I think Mr. Levatter has been out in the Arizona sun too much.

I had better hulicinations back in the 60s

|5.14.09 @ 7:07PM|#

Damn, Richard, you beat me to it. -Paul

Yeah. Maybe in the future the Reason staff can just stick that note at the end any immigration related story. Like those disclaimers Ronald Bailey used to use. That should save us all a lot of time.

Kolohe|5.14.09 @ 7:24PM|#

The Kelly Chronicles have been much better satire than Mr Levatter's piece.

mark|5.14.09 @ 7:45PM|#

So the coming inflation is pretty much accepted truth right? Kind of like how the end of the housing boom was rather well accepted in 2005. So what's the best way to profit off the coming monetization of the debt? The best I can think of is buying Puts on Treasuries.

I just hope the 12/21/12 event everyone's talking about will be relatively benign.

|5.14.09 @ 8:45PM|#

I am a Libertarian. But when it comes to illegal (and legal) immigration I must go the nativist road. One reason is that current media, politics, and popular entertainment at every turn dismiss anglo culture in favor of "diverse culture". The founders of America (the most prosperous and free nation in the history of the world) were white men of European dissent, yet today to say such a thing is blasphemy in the new world order. I say no. I am not a racist for embracing my heritage and my past and will not be called such. What will happen in America when there is no majority to keep the balance. This nation may find itself as a squabbling- festering pot (in spite of the left calling it a melting pot which it has not been for some time) in which everyone is split into their own little groups all clamoring for "their" power. It is already happening! The mass influx in demographics from the south is not "good" for America and in fact quite the opposite. It will destroy us. I look at the nations south of the lower border and they are in no way prosperous (at least not to my standards or Americas better yet). The nation of Mexico (where most of these illegals/legal are coming from) is infested at all levels with rampant corruption, disease, drugs, organized crime, failed socialist policy, extreme poverty, pollution, bad water, etc etc etc. And these are the people who we are welcoming? Why? It is not in our interest to do so as a nation. The Federal government has been hijacked. Our nations interest are now subservient to our politicians interest. America will implode on the road we are on.

|5.14.09 @ 8:58PM|#

Buy gold...With all that his happening and all that is coming gold may be a good bet

Mike|5.14.09 @ 10:44PM|#

This was the stupidest article I've read all year.

|5.14.09 @ 10:53PM|#

Agreed. This was a stupid article.

|5.14.09 @ 11:11PM|#

Not only was this a stupid article, it wasn't even particularly funny.

I come to this site expecting intelligent analysis. There are plenty of other sites offering vacuous hot air (whatever that is); Reason really doesn't need to start competing in that market.

michael jordan shoes|5.14.09 @ 11:17PM|#

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|5.14.09 @ 11:39PM|#

Don't forget these Canadian imports:

Lexa Doig, Erica Durance, Evangeline Lily, Natasha Henstridge, Laura Vandervoort, Grace Park, Tricia Helfer, Cobie Smulders, Jewel Staite, Shannon Tweed, Kim Catrall, Pamela Anderson, & Elisha Cuthbert.

There are many more. I just included the ones I thought most people would either know or have seen (without necessarily catching their names) in popular media over the past decade or two. In particular, does anyone appreciate how much of "American" TV is actually Canadian, and has been for quite a while...? Shatner and contemporaries were only the "first wave." But review the list above. I'm not complaining. ;-)

|5.14.09 @ 11:55PM|#

New York Times: "Mexican Data Say Migration to U.S. Has Plummeted"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15immig.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igw

The upshot is that the claims of many Libertarians, that the migration is less about "reconquista" and more about economic opportunity and prospects of a better life, are borne out by recent Mexican government data. People south of the border are delaying or abandoning plans to enter the US illegally, because the lack of jobs Al Norte changes the risk-reward equation for illegal immigration to a considerable degree.

If it is the case that immigrants (legal and illegal) come primarily in response to economic opportunity, then we should expect a healthy, vibrant economy to attract as many immigrants as it can support. But that's OK, because a healthy, vibrant economy has jobs for all (and more!). If we make it easy to come to the US for employment AND RETURN HOME, then economically-based immigration will largely regulate itself. Restrict welfare benefits (including free education and health care assistance) to citizens or declared candidates for naturalization, and require all others to pay. You should never have to prove citizenship (or participation in the naturalization process) if you don't ask for welfare-state benefits.

Deport anyone who commits crimes here or otherwise shows themselves to be a malicious threat to the safety of Americans. But let everyone else come and go as they please. The most that most people should ever need to do would be to "sign in" and "sign out" at the border, to document the crossing.

Paul|5.15.09 @ 12:39AM|#

I had better hulicinations back in the 60s

You remember? Then you weren't there, man.

John Tagliaferro|5.15.09 @ 12:45AM|#

I suppose the only factual criticism is this:

although the choking might have had something to do with the fumes from all the new paper plants needed to keep up with Treasury's demands.

Linen, not pulp, is what USA money is printed on. But the future might be different.

The future I write about is not so bleak.

John Tagliaferro|5.15.09 @ 12:47AM|#

When Mexico adopts something approximating a free market, I cannot wait to see the twisted excuse making of the left over why they left.

Ebeneezer Scrooge|5.15.09 @ 2:48AM|#

You're hallucinating.

John Tagliaferro|5.15.09 @ 7:18AM|#

Did that Pelosi press con happen too late to make Hit & Run?

! </a|5.15.09 @ 8:29AM|#

Did that Pelosi press con happen too late to make Hit & Run?

LOL! Maybe sometime after the next congressional election.

Barry Loberfeld|5.15.09 @ 8:39AM|#

From "Keep 'Em Out? Kick 'Em Out!":

Many in the civil rights community -- Coretta Scott King and the Black Leadership Forum, for example -- accuse immigrant browns of taking work away from resident blacks. Fine, so the U.S. won't admit anyone who could compete in the job market. Better yet, it will banish everyone who isn't of African descent, leaving more than enough jobs open for everyone who is. There you have it: Ethnic cleansing in the name of racial equality. But outdoing even that is the view held by such environmentalists as perennial doomster Paul Ehrlich and a significant faction within the Sierra Club. For them, the movement of population from the less-developed nations to industrial America means only more people consuming more resources and creating more pollution. But would just closing America's borders forestall global ecological disaster? Wouldn't the green thing to do be to have the U.S. and all the other industrial nations drive the entirety of their populations into the jungles, deserts and tundras of the world? Fancy that: Khmer Rouge primitivism on an international scale. Maybe Pol Pot can now truly rest in peace, knowing that there're still those who share his vision.

Support for mass expatriation is the perversely perfect flip side of the opposition to mass immigration. If we ever really took seriously the ideas justifying that opposition, not only would we not have anybody coming to America, we wouldn't have anybody left in America. Yes, we are very much a "nation of immigrants" -- our real "sense of identity" -- which is exactly why ending immigration would be nothing less than a collective act of self-negation.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE.

NeonCat|5.15.09 @ 10:48AM|#

Technically, Andy Dufrane was an illegal immigrant to Mexico.

BTW, every single one of your arguments was used at the turn of the 20th century as reasons why we needed to keep out Chinese, Japanese, Italians, eastern Europeans, etc. "Immigrants are destroying America" is a steaming pile of unAmerican crap. If you don't believe in the power of American culture to turn immigrants into Americans, frankly, you don't know what you are talking about.

JB|5.15.09 @ 1:15PM|#

So the coming inflation is pretty much accepted truth right?

Spend any money you have in the next year because after that it won't be worth that much.

I suggest guns and ammo since those will retain their value or go up.

WHITE RIGHTS|5.15.09 @ 4:43PM|#

FIGHT FOR OUR WHITE RIGHTS, AND GET READY FOR THE RACE WAR!!!!

|5.23.09 @ 10:59AM|#

The author has a way of being "right" in his assumptions about long term social changes as a consequence of current political policy. Good satire although the Harrison Bergeron "style" is a bit stale. Still....sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

|5.25.09 @ 1:13AM|#

As champions of freedom, most libertarians lean towards open borders and liberal immigration policies. The problem with this is that these libertarians fail to look at the negative net effect on economic and social freedom that these policies generate:

1. 2nd and 3rd generation Latino immigrants contribute to an expansion of the use of welfare and social services that add to the fiscal burden that Americans face.

2. The said groups vote overwhelmingly for parties and politicians that support an expansion of the state.