So, my opponent PMed me wanting to not affirm this topic. I agreed to affirm, but, I wasn't aware that this also meant that I would go first as well. Anyway, here goes:
A government's obligation to protect its country's borders should always outweigh the right to freely immigrate, especially if a country is wealthy. Of course, our being wealthy wouldn't be such a big deal if economic distributive outcomes relied solely on capitalist mechanisms, but, this is not the case. America's economy is mixed; that is to say, the production and distribution of goods and services is at least partially determined by something other than supply and demand. In theory, this is great; it's good to know that I, and yourself, will get at least a little something something back from the federal, state, and local governments that take about a third of our income every year, regardless of how hard or long we've worked. But, let's take a look at this from a practical standpoint and ask the following question: Would it pay for someone to immigrate to the United States who has little to offer economically?
From the look of things, we can answer affirmatively to the previously proposed question. According to
this report from The Heritage Foundation, a third of all US immigrants live in a household headed by someone without a high-school diploma or its foreign equivalent. Furthermore, a quarter of America's poor is comprised of first-generation immigrants and their families (taking into consideration that these people comprise a sixth of America's population, a little bit of math shows that approximately 20% of America's immigrant population is impoverished; this is above the 13% of people estimated to live below the poverty line in America). While sympathy with these people is inevitable, it is important to remember that such destitution also qualifies these immigrants for means-tested government benefits should they bear children on American soil. Furthermore, as de jure American citizens (yeah, I'm an asshole; I don't consider anyone a de facto American citizen unless they speak English fluently), these children are entitled to the same public education as children with second- or further-generation American parents. Combined with what seems to be an allergy to American cultural assimilation (at least linguistically speaking), these immigrants, when analyzed as households rather than individuals, take away from our public coffers more than they add to it. Ultimately then, such a situation, from an economic standpoint, gives disadvantaged and poorly-educated foreigners an incentive to move to America.
Obviously, such a situation is unfair to American citizens. Sure, it might seem hypocritical to let some Americans leech off of government benefits their whole lives while refusing poor immigrants to do the same, but nothing can be done about the former while something can be done about the latter. Of course, the biggest opposing argument to shutting down our borders and expelling from our country poor, uneducated immigrants is that this would create a vacuum in the labor market for individuals willing to do jobs that most of us would vomit just thinking about. But, to those who believe this, I would like answers to the following questions:
*Is it the undesirability of certain jobs that dissuades people from taking them, or is it that the ends don't justify the means? Personally, I'd gladly scrub toilets or clean cum-stained peep-show booths all day if I got paid $20 an hour to do so. Why I don't do this has nothing to do with the job and everything to do with the fact that they probably pay $5 an hour. If we assume that unskilled, native laborers are more educated than their immigrant cohorts (which, in my opinion, is a safe one to make), then what's to say that these natives just don't unionize and demand more wages? Is it not the case that higher wages would make these jobs more desirable?
*Does cheap immigrant labor really result in lower prices to consumers, or does it just result in a bigger bottom-line to capital owners? This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. Lower prices is an oft-cited pro of immigration, but it is one that is seldom (if ever) backed up by empirical evidence.
That's all I have for now.
