With the failure of an immigration bill to get through the Senate at the Federal level in the United States, local government such as counties have started passing similar legislation. Recently Prince William County and Loudoun County in Virginia have passed laws which deny illegal immigrants services and require police to arrest them if discovered during routine stops and enforcement.
The problem for local lawmakers is we are moving from a nation-state to a market-state.
The WaPo Editorial writes:
Illegal immigrants are in Northern Virginia for the same reason that they are in so many other parts of the country: Their labor is in demand. That's not going to change, unless the powers that be in Prince William and Loudoun have discovered a way to defeat market forces.
It is easy to write off nativism, nationalism and monoculturalism as driving these laws; but there are some real concerns in neighbourhoods due to over-crowding and some real oddities such as one recent article where a chook pen was kept in a local suburban house.
It should be noted where I grew up in the outer-edges of Sydney, the folks over the back of us had a chook pen until they tore their house down and rebuilt it. We lived in a suburban development.
Home Owner Associations [HOA] are having a role in this area too as they effectively homogenise suburbs and developments through voluntary agreement. Putting a chook pen in a HOA development will quickly earn a ticket from the board.
The argument for banning illegal immigrants from services is that they don't pay taxes as it is assumed they exist in a cash in hand economy. The local county here raises all their revenue from property taxes and business asset taxes.
Immigrants by increasing the demand for rental housing and supplying cheap labor indirectly increase the revenues for the county. Since the county does not have income taxes I don't see that as a valid reason at the local government level.
The other argument is that they are breaking the law. Which is true. However, nation-states have absurd regulations and bureaucracy in order to enter a country and work. Apparently H1B visas have made it easier for seasonal workers to come to the US in summer, but with the recent crackdowns it has become harder to get the H1Bs. So people enter anyway. The drive to work is greater than the drive to adhere to the bureaucratic regulations. Market forces ...
What is a valid policy then?
At the local level it is best to pass ordnances to ensure that local communities and developments have recourse for complaint. These exist anyway and most of the issues or horrors of suburbia are dealt with through county and town officials or inspectors.
HOAs also provide services in this area - mainly through being exceptionally strict and having a very homogeneous approach to the development, right down to what colour the house can be.
I don't think forcing police to check for illegal immigration is a good policy, it is probably best left if the individual is charged and then discovered to be illegal. However, rule of law is the rule of law, but I would not be surprised if discretion is used in this area.
Local officials are hampered in their ability to have some kind of local work visa or policy as this is handled at the federal level. The states, counties and towns have no recourse in that area.
What is obvious is that the political structures of the nation-state cannot deal with this aspect of economic liberalism. We allow capital and goods to flow unhampered from one nation-state to another. Inevitably labor will seek to do the same. I am personally of the opinion that economic prosperity is incomplete without the free movement of labor.
However, like capital and goods, I am comfortable with some degree of regulation - though minimal - inside a wider policy of the free movement of capital, goods and labor between political bodies.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
