Join Reason's Immigration Conference on January 30 to Discuss the Proper Reform Agenda for President Trump's First 100 Days and Beyond
He is off to a terrible start, but how should he shift course?
With Donald Trump going on a tear today in announcing his executive orders, the future of immigration policy in this country has assumed a new urgency. To take

stock of these orders and also offer President Trump more humane ways to achieve his objectives of national security and economic growth that are consistent with freedom and limited government, Reason is assembling a top-notch roster of immigration experts to weigh in on January 30 in Washington, D.C. Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward will kick off the conference with opening remarks and Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia will discuss the leviathan state President Trump's harsh enforcement approach will require.
Other speakers:
Stuart Anderson, Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy
Theresa Cardinal Brown, Director of Immigration Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center
Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity
Dan Griswold, Co-Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University's Program on the American Economy and Globalization
Tamar Jacoby, President of ImmigrationWorks USA
Tim Kane, Fellow in Immigration Studies at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Matthew La Corte, Immigration Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center
Liz Mair, President of Mair Strategies
Alex Nowrasteh, Immigration Policy Analyst at Cato Institute
Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University
What will they discuss?
Panel discussions on how President-elect Donald Trump can most effectively move ahead with Congress on immigration reform; the best policies to deal with undocumented workers already in America; and how immigration policies will impact economic growth.
When?
The event starts at 9:30 am ET on January 30, 2017. Complimentary lunch will be served. The full schedule is here.
Where?
Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center in Washington, DC
To get more details and register, RSVP:
Patrick McMahon
Communications Specialist
Reason Foundation, Reason magazine, Reason.tv
patrick.mcmahon@reason.org
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
SD;DR
What's with the disappearing posts?
They're still there, you're just too baked to see them.
No, it actually did 404 for a bit there.
Might be squirrels, their home-brew (shitty) CMS, a load-balancing squirrel problem, caching, etc.
They're hiring a webmaster.
I know, I went to the thread just to see what tech they were using, figuring they'd tip their hand in the process of putting out a hiring notice. Wondered what they were feeding the squirrels with. 😉
WordPress PHP developer. Most likely not going to need to develop that much new stuff and likely going to be a migration planner first off.
Seems like they pulled the original post to re-title due to it containing false assertions and fixed to re-post, so it 404ed temporarily as it was changed to be internal-only.
Does the ideal candidate need to be well versed in running a web server on a Intel 286 laptop and Python coding? Yuk yuk yuk. Squirrels indeed.
Let's hope move to WordPress results in less squirelliness!
I mean, it's just wordpress but, comparing to their home brew, it has to be better.
Any official setup is better than a home brew. Just ask Herself.
A move to WordPress will be good for the site.. but I fear that means they'll implement some bullshit like Disqus for the comments.
Disqus sucks balls.
If they care about user experience at all they won't implement Disqus. So I guess it's inevitable
/taps mic.
Erm.
/scratches back of head.
Hello, eh? My name is Rufus. Can I come in, there?
Land of opportunity's not here, man.
That panel is a fucking joke.
More like an immigration cuckference, amirite?
I don't see anyone putting "Senior Analyst" before your name, SIV.
"Senior High-Waisted Bloomers Analyst"
Is that some sort of euphemism for chicken shenanigans? Because otherwise I don't understand.
check out SIV's blog
Pass.
I don't see anyone putting "Senior Analyst" before your name, SIV.
That list is populated by #NeverTrump activists, some of whom (Mair, Somin) have no "immigration expertise" whatsoever. I guess they couldn't get David Frum, Rick Wilson, Tom Nichols, Cheri Jacobus, Max Boot or Bill Kristol to participate.
And S.E. Cupp must have had a prior engagement.
One panel, no Cupp?
*narrows gaze*
Think of it like this SIV...
You want to make cockfighting fully legalized again, but these American cucks don't want you to torture birds or whatever. But you know who bloody loves cockfighting? Mexicans.
I think it would be amusing to swap them with the undocumented day-laborers down the road; Shika and Ilya could learn the rigors of tarring a roof, and Jose and Miguel could say things like, "No me gusta el Trumpo"
Where?
Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center
Am I the only one who needs to be told where this is? Should I have picked up the notes at Kinko's?
file under: collateral damage
Limo Leftists torched during anti-Trump protests belonged to Muslim immigrant
Acceptable collateral damage.
File under: Irony?
lol
that makes perfect sense, but i think its entirely lost on the types of morons who engage in those sorts of "look at me!!" political posturing.
Rich people don't own limos = aspirational-cabbies do. they're often the same guys who drive yellow-cabs, only they decided to take out a loan and run their own business. It just shows how little the protester types understand economic reality; they can only conceive of the superficial appearance of the thing. as though they struck a blow against the 1% by depriving some poor lower-middle-class immigrant of his livelihood.
Trump is missing a golden PR opportunity here.
Buy the guy a new limo. Do a video op with him to give him the keys. Post to social media with something about helping legal immigrants become prosperous Americans. Pop the popcorn.
Council on American Islamic Relations: Refusing refugees is equivalent to slavery
Does CAIR support the right of women in Islamic countries to walk in public with covering themselves, the right to drive, or...you know, the right of any Muslim in an Islamic country to vote?
[clicks "flag Islamophobia" button]
Maybe they should seek asylum in Saudi Arabia. It's a wealthy nation nearby and has been turning them down so far. It's one of our "allies" and they sit on the UN human rights council, so they ought to be really concerned about charges of slavery brought against them.
I think Jordan has taken on some refugees, but I don't know of any other (stable) country in the MENA that has.
Lebanon (stable?) did too, and Turkey if it counts. All in millions, more than "some". The Arabian peninsula states were...not quite as generous.
Yeah. Turkey did. Then Turkey immediately fell to complete shit.
Turkey allowed many of them to pass to Greece. Now Greece uses them as leverage against the German, threatening to unleash the hordes if more of their communist welfare programs aren't shored up by German tax payers.
Nihad Awad, CAIR's national executive director, called the proposed border wall a "multi-billion dollar monument to racism." Awad went on to say that President Trump's proposal has nothing to do with national security and is strictly an "Islamophobic" proposal.
Did Mexicans convert to Islam en masse recently?
Stop "helping", you idiots!
Someone should just say to CAIR: No. No, it's not. Now go suck a lemon.
Your food-based insult game is a bit weak, though I note the Canadian disposition towards swearing.
Try: Go eat bacon.
[Ponders lunch, and why no one makes sushi with bacon]
How dare you!
Um, wasn't the slave trade technically a form of refugee relocation, where slave traders were buying captives from tribal raids?
CAIR. Now there is a bunch of disingenuous turds.
A wall between us and Mexico is about Muslims. So, they are planning on coming in through Mexico illegally?
No Joe, what the savages in terrorist hotbeds are doing is the affront to God.
The last one is just laughable. Slavery and women not being able to vote.
You know what else is like the slave trade? Buying and selling captured Yazidi women.
Actually, if you want an expert on racism, an Arab/Palestinian is actually not a bad candidate.
Now, if I want an expert on racial tolerance . . . .
file under: with some people, even if you walk on water, they'll just yell at you for not knowing how to swim
Sexism row over 'Engineering Barbie' - which encourages girls to build washing machines and clothes rails
I wonder how well nuclear reactor engineer Barbie would sell.
I could eat alphabet soup and shit something more coherent.
Shut the hell up woman and go engineer me a sandwich.
Which is exactly what they do.
My daughter has a Barbie she got as a gift one year. The only time I've seen her play with it was when she put a sword in the Barbie's hand and called her "Gandalf."
"Look, here comes Ken!"
YOU. SHALL.NOT. PASS!
Building washing machines is men's work, I guess
So, let me ask, is anyone participating in the conference going to have anything to say that is at all palatable to the Trump administration? Or is it going to be a festival of impotent bitching, pissing and moaning?
I mean, I get it. Yes, we should have either more open borders or a dramatically more liberal immigration policy. But, if that and "Trump's a poopy-head for not doing that", when a major portion of his electoral mandate rests on a policy that is not that, you're not really going to be doing much to move the ball forward on the topic.
Say what you will about Scientology, but they know how to put an uppity broad in her place.
Barbie encouraged her to be a sanitation engineer.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, Director of Immigration Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center
Eddie is pissed with the idea that women can be cardinals.
Good one.
file under: to absurdity, and beyond!
No, Trans Women Athletes Do Not Have Unfair Advantages
Let them compete, I say. That way men can be better women than women.
Let 'em make the argument.
Moreover, what opponents to trans women's inclusion in female athletics often gloss over is the drastic effect that a standard regimen of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) has on the athletic performance of trans women.
Huh, I was wondering what their argument is. I guess this is it. That HRT sufficiently weakens that man that he is essentially athletically a she when he's done (all of this of course assuming that 'trans' means they've gone full blown sex reassignment surgery and HRT-- not someone who just declared which is the new standard).
Well and good, but let's not forget that requiring someone who "identifies as a woman" to actually go full trans before they are entitled to be treated as woman is the rankest bigotry.
Renee Richards' revenge!
I am sure the actual women who will never win a trophy feel reassured.
Supposedly immigrants lower economic well-being because they represent a net drag to the economy rather than a positive, if one believes the fraudulent studies released by the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies and Heritage Foundation. This explains why American cities are much poorer than towns or the countryside.... Right?
If it were true that immigrants lowered opportunities for non-immigrants, then cities should be populated by increasingly poorer people because of all those immigrants from towns and small cities coming over. Of course, the OPPOSITE is true; economics can easily explain this but Trumpistas still want to argue that immigrants makes us poorer because Takum Er Jebz or lower the average wage or whatever.
Yeah, anti-immigrant zealots do not think much at all about what they imply.
...if one believes the fraudulent studies released by the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies and Heritage Foundation.
Not incorrect, mind you. Fraudulent. Probably hacked by the Russians, even. I'm sure your rigorous methodological deconstruction will be following forthwith.
Applying bad statistical models to mold the data to tell you what you want to hear, I call that fraudulent, Pat.
Supposedly immigrants lower economic well-being because they represent a net drag to the economy rather than a positive, if one believes the fraudulent studies released by the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies and Heritage Foundation
Were those studies about all immigrants, as you imply, or about illegal immigrants?
National Security will always be at odds with the principles of liberty and limited government. Those two things will always be contradictory, if one accepts the truth that National Security always means keeping the State safe, not the people.
I'm sure Trump will listen to this well-reason approach. *laughs*
Talk about navel-gazin'
ITEM #1 for American Renewal: Investigate bullshit claims of voter fraud that make Trump look bad.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/25
What a guy. Why does the press even attend this liar's press conferences. Trump should just stand at the podium and let Breitbart's White nationalist flunkies fire softballs at Das Fuehrer. That's what he wants and we're all safer if he just gets the uncritical adulation that racists and assholes will assuredly give him.
Look, we're trading one fake news story (Russians haxxed the election) for another, massive voter fraud. the public can't be enthralled by more than one fake news story at a time.
I see it like you-- mostly. Russia couldn't have fucked up the electoral process if the electoral process wasn't already fucked up. However, I will say, I have been convinced by others that having Putin put his dicks on the scale might have influenced an election that was so close with a population so incredibly gullible.
Yes, gullible. Because nobody who voted for Trump could possibly have done so in an informed and considered fashion. Keep calling your opponents ignorant, that worked so well this past election.
Gullible enough to actually believe the actual words of those in the DNC, you mean?
Buncha rubes.
Your tears sustain us.
I thought you were on your way to Australia to escape the Trumpocolypse? You better get moving.
I was skeptical at first, but you won me over with your Hitler references.
Libertarian activist Austin Petersen is challenging Donald Trump, asking how we can build a wall with no new federal employees.
It's simple.
We can just freeze dry the old ones to make the bricks.?
Is he dumb enough to think our federal workforce is working at, or close to, 100% efficiency?
Why do I suspect the the fedgov builds most of what it builds without using any actual federal employees?
Plus, whose to say we can't just ship boxcars of federal employees to the border, hand them shovels, and tell them to get to work on the footings?
Which side of the immigration debate will Shikha Dalmia be arguing?
The libertarian side.
The NeverTrump side, like all the rest of them.
This is as much about immigration as the pussy hat march was about "women's rights".
The goal for the next 4 years with a President that has access to 10,000 or so nuclear weapons is to not make any sudden moves. He has the nuclear tipped bazooka gun and the people have spitballs. I'm not entirely without ambivalence about participating in protest marches. Why participate lest we provoke this insane clown president. At this point the goal is survival-- not opening women's shelters for besieged Iraqi immigrants. We just need to silently compile a ledger, wait for the moment that Trump relinquishes the nuclear codes, and then quickly throw his ass in jail for the war crimes he will most assuredly commit.
One of the problems with starting out by going off the deep end is that there's nowhere deeper to go if things actually get scary.
Have you seen how he acts when someone puts a picture of his inauguration beside Obama's or someone posts science on a twitter page for a national park?
I suppose you are right though. Let's all take a breath. 5 days without a nuclear explosion over a major city, only 1456 to go.
Are you familiar with Poe's Law?
Is this the american socialist of yore?
I don't think so. It is probably a sock. Performance art trying to parody the hysterical bullshit half of the Reason staff has been displaying.
Wrong. I'm trying to parody the hysterical shit the political Right did when Obama took office. Am I doing a good job?
If you have to ask...
U.S. has around 5,000 warheads, and only about 700 strategic platforms and less than a hundred bombers. At least do some basic research before you post your idiotic tripe here.
So, in other words, you want him to never post here again?
"He is off to a terrible start"
FTW? A terrible start? Here's the guy who's actually going to see through the repeal of the horrific healthcare debacle known as the ACA, is beating the living shit out of an out of control EPA, is going ahead with Keystone, and who's promising to cut 75% of regulations, and that's a terrible start? A terrible start compared to who? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Trump will not be more awful than good over the next 4 years, but a terrible start?
You forgot taking a machete to the free lunch the fucking snake-pit at the UN has been sucking up for decades. Any one of those things you listed is more libertarianism than Obama accomplished in his entire career. Or Bush. Or Clinton.
A lot of libertarians are finally going to get some of the things they never thought they would see but they cant get past the 'Trump is the wrong kind of person' nonsense. He isnt a very nice guy, doesnt send out the right virtue signals and doesnt tailor his language to accommodate delicate sensibilities.
Oh, and he is terrible on some issues. The one that gets under their skin is immigration, and I am not sure he is terrible on that. He could be better.
My list wasn't an all inclusive list, but just by itself was more than enough to cast a lot of doubt on Reason's claim of a terrible start. A terrible start to who? Butthurt progs, sure. I mean, he's already done more stuff that I like than any president in my lifetime and he hasn't been in office for a week!
Trump could make the dead rise and reason writers would blame him for overpopulation.
That's where I stopped reading. His start is way better than I could have imagined.
That statement says more about Reason's new slant than Trump's actions to date.
I'll cut them some slack, and say the "terrible start" is a reference to his immigration policy.
Panel discussions on how President-elect Donald Trump can most effectively move ahead with Congress on immigration reform;
He can propose they legislate to eliminate the welfare state.
the best policies to deal with undocumented workers already in America;
Best policy #1: End the welfare state.
and how immigration policies will impact economic growth.
Not nearly as much as ending the welfare state will.
See, that's what totally separates current immigration from the former great waves of immigration. Immigrants who came here 100 years or more ago, had to work or starve. It took them weeks or months to get here on a dangerous journey. Throw open the gates today. A billion+ person humanitarian crisis on our borders within a month, guaranteed. No serious person believes that could work.
I consider myself to be a right-libertarian. I think that's been made abundantly clear here. But I don't know where the movement has gone when we get screed after screed on immigration and none of the writers ever come close to addressing the terrifically fucked up welfare system and how it effects our ability to tackle the immigration problem with anything even remotely approaching a libertarian solution.
They've either got the cart before the horse and don't realize it or they're mendacious fucks that don't care about the welfare system bankrupting our nation. Those are the only two options I see.
It's not just that, sloop, even without the welfare state, you can't put desperately poor people right on top of opulent wealth. I've seen it in Sao Paulo, Baltimore and other cities where the poorest people in the country live on one block and the wealthiest on the next. It leads to an increase in both petty crime and violent crime. The left want to bring large numbers of the poorest 3rd world immigrants here without any plan on how they are going to assimilate, how they are going to acquire the skills to acquire jobs to let them become self sufficient in first world countries. It's just a fucking disaster waiting to happen. And the only reason they want to do it is to increase the Democrat voter base, seemingly no concern at all for the unintended consequences. Look at Europe, what is happening. We have enough poverty already, we need to fix that first. Of course, ending generational welfare and getting the government out of the way of wealth creation are the first steps.
I love it when they give you the "they're doing jobs Americans won't do" while simultaneously holding the belief/knowledge that automation is phasing out low skilled labor as we speak, but still we need tons of (subsidized) low-skilled labor from the third world because reasons.
I consider myself to be a wrong-libertarian.
That is by definition!
/TEAM
The staffers of Reason believe in the "magic dirt" theory of immigration. When someone from Mexico, central america, Africa, or any other crappy place steps on the soil they magically have a "libertarian moment" and become small government libertarians. Never mind that immigration worked pretty well before 1965 because it favored those of European descent, you know, the kind of people with a similar culture as Americans.
Never mind that immigration worked pretty well before 1965 because it favored those of European descent, you know, the kind of people with a similar culture as Americans.
I'm fascinated to hear about how early modern urban American culture had so much in common with the peasant farming communities of Ireland, eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. Do tell.
Well, a fair number of those immigrants actually moved to farming communities all over the country, you know. Just because some stayed in NY doesn't mean they all did.
undocumented workers
What an oily euphemism. It assumes that every single illegal alien in the US actually has a job, which is demonstrably untrue.
Too bad the conference won't be in some Southwestern border city. That would add perspective to the proceedings.
'The best policies to deal with undocumented workers ...'
Undocumented workers = illegal immigrants.
If you don't have the basic honesty to to correctly identify the problem then what chance is there that you will come up with a decent solution.
Exactly. It is really counterproductive to call immigrants undocumented.
They should be called illegal to put the blame where it clearly belongs -- on the law. The solution is then plainly obvious: legalize them.
For absolute accuracy, we could call them government property that needs to be returned to its rightful owner. Those state employees in Insert Home Country Here don't work for free, you know! How can our Top Men have weighty dialogue about matters of great import with their Top Men and run everyone's lives properly if the chattel get to leave the reservation any time it wants? What do you think this is, a free market? No one wants that.
WTF reason, cannibalizing a previous post for this thing?
Special guests include Sevo and Michael Hihn, two of the first white men to be born on American soil.
Oh Lord save me, I would pay to watch them square off!
Cock fight!
Legalize It
So, when does Reason plan on having a conference to address Trump's protectionism--an approach to markets that has had a history and track record of economic destruction?
When Kochtopus check arrives, duh.
Don't you worry - if the funding is there, they'll gladly conference on any pet peeve they have, and a few they don't. Travel expenses, accommodation, and that sweetest Latin phrase in English, per diem...
"A lot of libertarians are finally going to get some of the things they never thought they would see but they cant get past the 'Trump is the wrong kind of person' nonsense. "
(((But mah borders... )))
No. a lot of libertarians will never be happy until they get their stupid open borders utopia.
Say what you want about yokels but if they were in charge of Reason we wouldn't have recycled posts. They'd be filling up landfills or sold for scrap.
Say, I don't suppose they will be discussing Trump's ban on immigration from known terror hotspots in light of the livestreamed gang rape of a Swedish woman by three Afghan immigrants, will they?
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2.....-facebook/
Judging from the SFW stills, the boys enjoyed themselves.