Illegal Immigration

 I found an email that I wrote a couple of months prior to the 2016 election.

My ability to write has improved over time, so I touched up parts of it.

We have reached a point where you can get into trouble for just talking about issues like this.  You can be blocked on social media or ostracized in other ways.  We have experienced a loss of free speech and this has become normal.

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From: John Coffey

Concerning immigration and illegal immigration in the United States:

1.  Although I believe in freedom and lean libertarian, I am not an anarchist.  I believe that we need laws to protect people and those laws should be enforced.

2.  I have always been concerned about population growth.  Increasing population strains resources.  Labor itself is a resource, but every new person needs land, housing, water, food, farms, and roads to support that person.  As the demand for natural resources increases, the cost of those resources goes up.  It makes life more expensive.  I have heard some people say that we have plenty of land, but the most desirable places are already taken.  In highly crowded areas, housing costs are astronomical.  As the country becomes more crowded, it makes life more inconvenient and there are many problems associated with overcrowding.  

Hypothetically you could reach a point where the country is so crowded that people would realize that we need to stop and control the population.  For example, to be as crowded as Europe the United States would have to have a billion people.  By definition, there has to be a point where any reasonable person would say that we have too many people.   Wouldn't it be better to not reach that point?

Improvements in technology will allow some steady population growth.  In a free market, people will make decisions on whether to have children based on the resources available to them.  In that respect, it can be a self-limiting system, although the long-term trend will always be to increase the population because the natural human tendency is to procreate.  

One way to distort the natural population increase is through too much immigration.  I honestly believe that with open borders that a billion people would want to come here.  Maybe not all would have the means to come here, but the population would increase until the United States is no longer a desirable place to live.

Therefore we need limits on immigration.  You can debate what those limits should be, but regardless of what they are, they should be enforced.  People entering this country illegally are lawbreakers and should be deported.

3. There are real threats in the world, and we should not be bringing in people whose viewpoint is fundamentally antagonistic to ours.  I understand that people want compassion, but the cost of being compassionate and wrong is too great.  We could have another 9-11 or worse.

Europe is self-destructing because of immigration. We have seen repeated terrorist attacks and rape capitals forming.  The United States has also had terrorist attacks by people who came here legally.

4. The political left uses immigration to its advantage because naturalized immigrants typically vote Democrat.  As a result, the demographics have changed radically to the point where a free-market conservative has little chance of getting elected.  Meanwhile, the country is headed toward a financial crisis because the government has promised people far more than it can deliver.

5. Trump was mostly right in his comments about illegal immigrants.  Statistics show that they are committing higher rates of crime, rape, and murder.  The California prisons are full of illegal immigrants.  I personally have been threatened by illegal immigrants and witnessed crimes committed by them.  When I visited a court in Salt Lake City, every case was a Hispanic facing criminal charges.

Immigration is not the same as one person moving from one state to another.  It is a false equivalence.  Immigration is (mostly) importing poverty.  Illegal immigration is importing crime at a rate higher than average.  

I think that the American people are wise enough to know that they have been screwed on illegal immigration, which is why Trump has gotten support.  He has been the only one with the courage to speak about it.

I am for immigration.  I am against illegal immigration.

Best wishes,

John Coffey