NAFLA

The North American Free Labor Agreement could be a possible title for a solution to the "immigration problem" in the US.

Here's what I was thinking: suppose that we negotiated an agreement among the NAFTA partners, Canada, the US, and Mexico, that extended the free trade zone to be a free labor zone. What would happen?

I'm basing this idea on similar agreements among the countries in the European Union. As I imagine it, negotiations would create a system that would allow properly identified citizens of any of the NAFLA countries to live and work in any of the others. Within certain limits, they would have all of the rights regarding residence and employment enjoyed by the citizens of the host country, as well as the right to travel freely back and forth across the various borders.

Let me mention some of the limits that would be present. First, convicted felons would not have the same degree of freedom as other individuals, and in fact, member nations could require such individuals to go through the same work permit process required for citizens of non-NAFLA nations. Second, certain jobs deemed critical to the nation(s) could be restricted to citizens of the host country with exceptions granted on a case-to-case basis. For example, jobs in the defense industry that required a security clearance would probably remain inaccessible to all but a very few foreign nationals. Third, communities could open their local elections to foreign nationals residing there, but state and federal elections would probably remain limited to citizens of the host country. In other words, it makes sense for all of the residents in a community to have a say regarding community services, schools, local surtaxes, and the like, but not for foreign citizens to be involved in decisions regarding state or national laws or policies. Another issue is social welfare. If you work or have recently worked for a significant period of time in the host country, or are the spouse, child, or dependent parent or sibling of someone who does or has, then under NAFLA, you would qualify for social welfare just like host-country citizens. However, if you aren't a worker or in the immediate family of one, then you do not qualify, unless a local jurisdiction allows it. And there are probably other similar limits on non-citizen workers that would all be decided during the treaty negotiations.

As for the process that would result from this, all of the member nations would issue ID cards and other documentation that would, as a matter of law, be recognized by all governments and employers in the other nations. It would probably be necessary to adjust the laws of each country to accomodate this, or to spell out rules to make up for mismatches. For example, employers in the US would be required to provide healthcare coverage comparable to that provided by the Canadian and Mexican governments (or to switch to a single-payer government-administered system, which is unlikely). Retirement or social-security type plans would have to be aligned, and laws regarding the pay-out of funds accrued to individuals residing in another NAFLA member would need to be passed. Rules regarding the length of the workweek, vacations, and other benefits would need to be discussed as part of the treaty negotiations, as would the details of rules regarding social welfare. When mismatches remained, they would have to be well publicized to reduce misunderstanding on the part of workers. This is not to underemphasize the difficulty of these negotiations, they would be lengthy and hard. Compromise would be necessary, and the end result would not please everyone. Still I think that a successful NAFLA treaty that would be acceptable to the NAFTA nations is at least theoretically possible.

So, what would happen if such a treaty could be constructed?

First, in the current immigration debate, the presence of undocumented workers is muddying the water. Apparently, about 10% of all Mexican nationals currently live in the US, most of them without papers. Under NAFLA, all of these individuals would have the same legal relationship to their employers and to the host governments as citizens. For example, they could be issued US Social Security numbers and have ordinary SS acounts; they could receive provincial health care cards in Canada; they could get Mexican drivers licenses, and so on. Taxes would be assessed on them just as for local citizens. They would have the same rights and obligations under the civil and criminal justice system as citizens. One effect of this would be to increase the number of taxpayers in the US to the tune of many millions. There would no longer be a sizable immigration problem here, but there would be a considerable flow of people back and forth. But it is very unlikely that the flow would be larger into the US than it is now, because of the limitations imposed by the treaty. In other words, it is only a free labor agreement, not a new nationality. There would be new administrative burdens, but there would also be new tax revenues and a more vibrant economy to help support them. Many of the security concerns regarding the leaky border would be eliminated because of the requirement for valid, secure identification of individuals who cross the border. In fact, anyone who crossed illegally would either be an idiot or some kind of criminal. The job of patrolling the border for criminal or hostile activity would be made much easier because the current noise factor created by illegal but harmless individuals who are merely seeking work would no longer be a factor.

Second, because of the open border, I believe that the issue of "a path to American citizenship" would become largely irrelevant, because I don't think that the majority of Mexicans would continue to want American citizenship. Given free passage back and forth between the two countries and full rights to live and work on either side, I believe that the overwhelming majority of Mexicans will decide to retain their citizenship, to maintain their familial and cultural relationships, and their identities as Mexicans. In short, the intense economic pressure for Mexicans to become American citizens would disappear. It is true that children born and raised in a host country should have the right to choose citizenship there when the reach their majority; this is currently the case and should not be changed. But absent any legal or economic incentive, it seems unlikely to me that the parents would become citizens, and it also seems likely to me that their children will be more likely to claim Mexican rather than American citizenship when they reach adulthood than under our current system of vicious inequity.

If we could somehow shift the energy currently being poured into debates about the dangers of "illegal immigration" and even the "browning" of America into active negotiations targeting a free labor agreement among the NAFTA partners, I believe that we could accomplish something that would increase security in all three countries, improve all three economies, and be a stabilizing influence throughout the hemisphere and the world.

Iraq Timetable

There's an old joke: you go up to an attractive member of the opposite sex and ask them, would you sleep with me for $25 million? If they say yes, then the punch line is something like, "Now that we've established what you are, let's work out a better price". I think that this might be a useful strategy in attempting to bring the Bush administration to heel regarding withdrawal from Iraq.

For example, would the president sign a bill that had a mandatory withdrawal "within the 21st Century"? "Within the 3rd Millenium"?

I would think that his refusal to sign either of those bills would probably lead to his impeachment. I doubt that more than a handful of even the hardest of the hard-core rightwing Iraq hawks would have the stomach to keep up this struggle for 93 more years.

However, if he did sign, then the political battle, just like in the joke, would move to establishing a better "price", or in this case, a better date for withdrawal.

So, let's pursue this mental experiment: what about 50 more years? 20 more years? Or even ten more years? Would any of those timeframes be acceptable? One shudders to think that George Bush might be unwilling to commit himself to a withdrawal before ten more years of this slaughter have passed. My sense is that probably 20 years, or a generation (actually, 24 years counting those already passed) is about what he would be willing to sign.

But time passes very quickly. Think about how fast the past four years have gone by. In fact, a commitment to a 20 year deadline would actually be a substantive improvement over what we have now.

Furthermore, with a commitment to a time certain for withdrawal, even an absurd one like two decades, many things would become possible. For example, it would facilitate a much more concrete discussion about things like what our goals are in Iraq, the status of American military bases there in the long term, and so on. And, it would completely end the absurd "setting a deadline is 'cutting and running'" theme.

Therefore, I humbly suggest that the Democrat leaders submit a new bill to President Bush that is identical to the one he has said he will veto, but with a much longer deadline for withdrawal, for example, "within 20 years". Not only would it greatly enhance the dialog about the war, but would also be much more sane than the current endless, rootless, killing.

Social Security Numbers: release them all

The situation with identity theft and Social Security Numbers is getting worse. Recently it was announced that several US government agencies' web sites had been displaying thousands of SSNs for more than 10 years. In response, the pages were taken down, and the government has offered free credit monitoring for the individuals whose numbers were exposed. There have been other cases where even millions of SSNs were jeopardized.

But my question as a random philosophizer is, is the problem here that SSNs are being exposed through malfeasance and/or malefaction, or is the problem that these numbers, part of a system created 80+ years ago for reasons having nothing to do with unique personal identifiers, are being used as critical pieces of personal ID?

I think the answer is clearly the latter. SSNs are useful to identity thieves solely because they are a handy way to tell people apart, and because there is an assumption that they are private.

It is very expensive to protect SSNs, or to pay for credit monitoring when they are exposed. And under the situation we are in today, when one is exposed, it clearly does make the individual who holds the number more vulnerable to fraud via identity theft. I think that the whole approach is wrong-headed.

The random philosopher's plan for dealing with SSN exposure is very simple: the government should immediately open a database on one or more of their web sites listing all SSNs, along with the names and DOB of people registered under the numbers. This should be a public web site, with no restrictions on access.

While it sounds rather absurd, what this would do instantly is remove all expectations of privacy with regard to SSNs. It would not interfere with the administration of Social Security: the numbers would still be perfectly useful as Social Security account numbers, which is all they were designed to be. But they would no longer be useful in any way to help someone prove their identity, which would eliminate the problem of SSN fraud and of identity theft based on SSNs.

A minor advantage of this would be that employers could do some basic checks on employees claiming certain SSNs, just name, DOB, gender; the basic info on the Social Security card, which would be in the public database. This would help prevent people from using the wrong SSN, either through error or deliberately.

SSNs could still be used as unique identifiers, something they are extremely useful for, but they just wouldn't be useful as proof of identity. Instead, something more useful would have to be developed for this purpose.

Most people who have studied this problem concur that "smart" codes, along with biometric data of some sort (fingerprints, photos, retinal photos) are much more useful for this purpose. Another element of a reasonable system of identification is to have multiple independent sources of identity, so that even if one source is exposed or contaminated, the other sources would continue to be valid. However, the specification of a viable system of identity is beyond the scope of this note.

In summary: Social Security Numbers were never designed to function as proof of identity, and as a result, inadvertent or deliberate exposure of SSNs is a tremendous problem in our society. The problem with SSNs can be solved overnight if the government simply publishes them all, removing all expectancy of privacy from them. This action would have several additional advantages, but its primary effect would be to force bureaucracies that have been misusing the SSN as their clients' personal identifiers to find something better for this purpose.

Text messaging to the rescue

Today, the worst mass shooting in history happened at Virginia Tech. Over 30 killed and many wounded. The police and university officials are receiving a good deal of criticism, because the shootings happened in an initial, less mortal phase, followed two hours later by a second, horrible slaughter. It seems "obvious" to us that the campus should have been shut down during that two hours, in order to protect the university community.

The university used email and had people calling dorm RAs on the phones, but there are 26,000 students, plus faculty and staff, at that school, and most of them were on their way to campus during the critical two hours. So I ask the question: how in the world were the university officials supposed to implement a warning to tens of thousands of people, in a few minutes?

I think that we have reached a point in our cell phone technology where they can begin to perform a much larger role in emergencies than they do currently. The cell phone system works by interconnecting a vast network of smaller, local "cells", hence the name. When someone moves from one cell to another, the old cell deletes the SIM code from its database, and the new cell picks it up. As a result, the computers that control each cell always have an up-to-date list of all cell phones, by service provider, that are in range.

Therefore, it seems to me that there is no technical reason why in the case of a mass emergency, such as what happened today at VTU, but also other kinds of terrorism, or natural disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and so on, that emergency messages couldn't be pushed out from local cellphone towers to all phones in range.

In the worst case, it would take only a few minutes for a text message to be sent to every phone in range, and in most cases, it would take only seconds. Text messages are highly superior to voice messages for this purpose, because they do not require anything like the bandwidth or time of a two-way voice connection.

If all of the towers serving the VTU campus had sent out one or more messages after the initial shootings, they could indeed have shut down campus and warned virtually every member of the community, or someone standing nearby who could have spread the word.

Well, that's my thought on this topic.

Greg Shenaut

Considering the role of US military force

The neoconservative movement had at its core the principle that in addition to self-defense, a valid use of American military force is to spread American ideals such as democracy, human rights, and justice throughout the world. The movement has now been thoroughly discredited as a result of the misconceived and botched regime change in Iraq (and to a somewhat lesser degree in Afghanistan). However, I believe that it would be a mistake to throw out that core idea without careful consideration.

In fact, there are many grave injustices around the world, cases where entrenched local governments, extremist insurgencies, or endemic regional conflicts are bringing great harm to millions of individuals, and which endanger the unalienable right of all human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if I can use that phrase. There have been cases where the judicious application of American military force has made a positive difference, especially when American have played a major or leading role in multinational interventions under the auspices of the UN or of NATO. Unfortunately, there have also been many cases where American intervention has created a bad situation or worsened an already bad one, in some cases even more so than in Iraq. How can an idea that seems so obviously good cause so much harm? Are we wrong to think that American might can improve the lives of people living under the yoke of tyranny or sinking into chaos?

There are important lessons to be learned from our adventure in Iraq. I think that perhaps they can all be summarized in two small proverbs: "Don't bite off more than you can chew" and "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". We didn't--and perhaps couldn't--commit adequate forces to the Iraqi occupation/rebuilding/democratization effort. It may be that we do not possess an adequate amount of men and materiel to do this, but certainly our leaders grossly underestimated the magnitude of the effort that would have been required. Also, the essence of democracy (dēmos "the people" kratia "power, rule") indicates that there are inherent contradictions in an external power attempting to forcibly impose democracy on an occupied people. It is possible to impose the forms of democracy, but how can you impose the habits of thought and the view of the world that must underly any effective practice of democracy? I don't think it's very easy to do that, and it may in fact be impossible. It certainly hasn't worked in Iraq.

I think that the most important lesson about Iraq and Afghanistan, though, is the importance of using our own democracy effectively. There are two really important things that we did not do, which could have prevented a great deal of trouble. First, in a time of national hysteria immediately after the twin tower attacks, we rushed into military action without any attempt by our leadership to seek calmness and an informed discussion of our options. That is, the people, basically out of fear, relinquished their role as the dēmos and submerged their thinking to that of the mob. Calmer voices were available, for example those who assessed the attacks not as an act of war, but as a particularly horrible and disgusting mass murder by a band of psychotic thugs. There is a real difference between those two perspectives. Of course, the advantage of the act-of-war interpretation is that we could spring into action and let the chips fall where they may. (This had tremendous advantages to a political party determined to cement itself into power, and to a presidential administration determined to inflate the power of the executive.) As has often been said, the army isn't a democracy, and therefore, once the army and its commander in chief took the lead, democracy fell by the wayside. The much more accurate "band of psychotic thugs" perspective, on the other hand, would have required international cooperation to a much greater degree, and it would have required a slower, more thoughtful approach, with things like evidence, laws, jurisdictions, and so on. As I have blogged elsewhere, there was even some indication that that approach would eventually have compelled Mullah Omar to give us bin Laden and the other al Qaeda leaders, if we had hard evidence (Sharia law doesn't like circumstantial evidence very much, and that is all we had during the few weeks leading up to the Afghan invasion). But the bottom line is that there was no evidence then that another attack was imminent, and in any case, a thorough investigation, looking for evidence, creating diplomatic connections to get access to international police work--all that would have been a perfectly adequate way to protect ourselves from another 911-style attack. We had time to let things calm down, to allow the dēmos to play their role, both individually and through their elected representatives, and to gather the hard evidence needed to convince the naysayers around the world that al Qaeda were indeed the perpetuators. If after this period of consideration, Mullah Omar had still refused to give us access to the murderers of thousands of our people, and if as a result the American Congress had declared war on Afghanistan, then that war would have been on an entirely different footing. Those who opposed it would have had the clear message that a calm, reflective dēmos, which included them, had considered the matter fully and openly, and had adopted a certain clearly specified and limited course of action. This message would also have been clearly understood around the world, and most importantly, by the Mullah. I personally believe that we could have broken up al Qaeda and jailed its leaders without any significant military action, had we followed that route. But we didn't.

The second thing we didn't do, to some extent with Afghanistan, but to a very large extent with Iraq, is to give the dēmos access to the information they needed to make an informed and rational decision. In fact, access to information was limited selectively, to paint a picture that was very inaccurate, and to mislead the people into backing military action in a direction and to an extent that was miserably mismatched with American and Iraqi interests. I don't need to belabor this, because most people have now understood it.

There is an obvious connection between these two points: a calm and involved dēmos can do nothing without free access to the best possible information, and good information is wasted on a hysterical public. It should be one of the foremost roles of government in America to ensure that the people are fully and accurately informed, including information that may not agree with the government's agenda. Furthermore, it should be central that whenever possible, the people as well as Congress be involved in important decisions such as the use of military force, and that their involvement not be detoured by hysteria or demagoguery. For example, government should not fan hysteria, but calm it, whenever possible. (Don't get me wrong: there are emergencies that require immediate response by our military and that can not wait for calm reflection by the dēmos. But this wasn't the case in Afghanistan, and definitely not the case in Iraq.)

What am I saying here that pertains to the neoconservative notion that America can use her military might to enforce and promote American ideals?

Well, I think that we should consider the principle itself, that is, whether American should ever go to war in the cause of justice and democracy, in the absence of an imminent military threat. By consider I mean that this principle should be the focus of a national debate, in the media, the Internet, and in Congress. I believe that once all possible sides of the debate are heard, an overwhelming majority of Americans would most likely agree in principle that such an action could be justified, but only under a certain very constrained set of circumstances. It is quite odd that in spite of the fact that America has gotten involved in that manner over many decades, above all during the Cold War in both overt and clandestine actions, this debate has never taken place in a meaningful manner. In my opinion, its importance rises to the level of a Constitutional Amendment. I admit the possibility that the result might be other than what I expect, and I could live with that if the debate were honest and thorough.

However, assuming that the dēmos decided that America could, in principle, use its forces in that way, then the next and even more important step would be to implement a set of supporting rules and facilities, and then to make a decision about specific instances where our military could lend a hand.

First and foremost, we should never make a move unless we are invited by the victims of violent injustice to intervene. Furthermore, the people who invite us must be willing to participate before, during, and after our involvement. Once we have been invited, there must be a period of research, the information must be published for public consumption, and there must be a public debate, and a debate in Congress. There must be an official, constitutional Declaration of War by Congress (or an alternate form if one is created by an amendment as mentioned above). Our involvement must be limited, what the French call a coup de pouce. It could be large or small in terms of expenses and personnel, but it must always be clearly limited. If things start to go wrong, as they often seem to do, the limits could always be extended, but only after the same kind of honest and thorough public debate as during the initial declaration. Once there has been a national debate followed by a Congressional declaration, then at that point the military force of the nation will be led by their commander in chief to implement their mandate, with little if any further dickering by either the people or Congress (although it is Congress who will have established rules guiding and constraining the military). That is, the people and Congress need to debate the various issues before the flag goes up, and, once they have committed the military, no "micromanaging". On the other hand, if things go wrong and the people lose their appetite for some particular intervention, and time runs out on the declaration, then the military will just have to withdraw, doing so in a manner to reduce the deleterious effects as much as possible.

Anyway, this is all just an attempt to sketch a possible framework where neoconservative-style interventions could be done in a manner consistent with American principles. I think that the interventions we have done recently, in the absence of such a framework and with the contravention of the dēmos, have been disasters. I think that our best course, until we can go through some kind of process along the lines I have outlined, is to stick with what is already has been established and which is in our Constitution: Congress must declare war, and decisions by the president to go to war without a declaration must involve true emergencies. I think that a fairly good model can be found in Article VI of the Articles of Confederation, which discusses the exigent circumstances under which an individual state can go to war:

No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.

The key concepts are that "the danger [must be] so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted", and that the response must go on "so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise". (I admit that the context is fairly different, but I believe that the concepts are still relevant.) This is not what we have seen either in Afghanistan or in Iraq. The resolutions for the use of force that were issued by Congress contained so many hedge words and conditionalities that they were almost useless except to eliminate Congress and the dēmos from the process. Basically, what we have is a kludge, an attempt to force the system we have, designed in the 18th Century (note the arcane phrases "some nation of Indians" and "infested by pirates" in the Articles of Confederation extract quoted), to work with the goals articulated by the neoconservatives of engaging militarily in the name of democracy and justice. It was a huge misstep to try to create a framework for such a drastic new role for America on the fly as we have done.

In summary, I think we need to start the debate about the underlying principle immediately. We need to decide once and for all, as a nation, whether and how our military forces will be used. The result has to be comprehensive and specific legislation, preferably one or more constitutional amendments. Until this happens, we need to disengage as cleanly as possible from all military interventions short of declared warfare or responses to true emergencies.