<story><title>Hell Yes, Mayor Bloomberg. I’m With You.</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/hell-yes-mayor-bloomberg-im-with-you/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bud</author><text>The only thing I disagree with in this article is Arrington&apos;s assertion that &quot;the issue of illegal immigration over our Southern border must be separated from the issue of immigration of people who want to come here to build companies.&quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t really see why we need to separate those issues. They are the same issue. We should discard isolationist policies in both cases and move toward a more enlightened policy in both cases.&lt;p&gt;After all, one can&apos;t always tell with certainty which immigrants are the &quot;good&quot; immigrants and which are the &quot;bad&quot; ones, in advance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ajkessler</author><text>It&apos;s certainly a thorny issue though.  If you&apos;re going to run any sort of welfare state, it&apos;s pretty hard to argue for totally open borders; it simply leads to financial ruin, as much of Europe has found out over the last 30 years (which is why European countries have swiftly and brutally tightened immigration policies).  If you&apos;re giving away a lot of free stuff, you&apos;re forced to guess at which immigrants are going to be productive and contribute to your society and which are just there for the freebies.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve always found this cognitive dissonance interesting (particularly and recently evident in France): those who feel it&apos;s morally wrong not to support the poorest of their societies have no problem refusing to do the same for those who were born on the other side of an arbitrary stripe on a map.</text></comment>
<story><title>Hell Yes, Mayor Bloomberg. I’m With You.</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/hell-yes-mayor-bloomberg-im-with-you/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Bud</author><text>The only thing I disagree with in this article is Arrington&apos;s assertion that &quot;the issue of illegal immigration over our Southern border must be separated from the issue of immigration of people who want to come here to build companies.&quot;&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t really see why we need to separate those issues. They are the same issue. We should discard isolationist policies in both cases and move toward a more enlightened policy in both cases.&lt;p&gt;After all, one can&apos;t always tell with certainty which immigrants are the &quot;good&quot; immigrants and which are the &quot;bad&quot; ones, in advance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gyardley</author><text>I don&apos;t know why we&apos;re so picky about our employees, either. After all, one can&apos;t always tell with certainty which ones are the &apos;good&apos; employees and which are the &apos;bad&apos; ones in advance.&lt;p&gt;Look, there&apos;s a world of difference between someone coming to America to do sub-minimum-wage farm labor and someone coming to America to start a company. Enlightened policies raise our average skill level, not lower it.</text></comment>