So, despite the guy arrested coming from Canada for the Millenium Bomb Plot and this weekend’s arrest of terror plotters in Canada, none of the usual suspects are calling for a wall across our northern border with Canada. You see, the illegal immigration thing is secondary for them, they say, but they’re just so concerned about terrorists coming in from Mexico.

But there don’t seem to be any terrorists in Mexico. We have proof there have been several in Canada, and one tried to enter via that route.

So if they are only concerned about border security when it involves Mexicans, that means that these people are just worried that we won’t be the Fourth Aryan Reich if too many brown people show up.

There. I said it. Every last one of you who hasn’t called for a similar wall on the Canadian border is a racist. Just have the balls to admit it to yourself and say in public what you believe in private: you want America for whites only.

You disgust me.

CNN has a very interesting Reuters story demonstrating how poorly-targeted aid can hurt some while helping others.

A year and a half ago, terrorists took a school in Beslan, Russia, and and killed many of the students and teachers. More were killed in the crossfire when troops went in to rescue the hostages. Little Sveta Dzieva heard the gunshots and ran, saving her own life. But the shock — 186 of her classmates were killed — struck her mute for a month. Going to Moscow for treatment cost her mother, Albina, her job and their apartment. Ironically, a lot of aid from Russia and elsewhere poured into Beslan and made it harder on the Dzievas. Why? Because Sveta wasn’t killed or physically injured.

Sveta, her mother, and her brothers now live in a shack in a neighboring village. Why can’t they go back to Beslan?

Officials say the money — 1.45 billion rubles in the first year after the attack — has split many families in the poor North Ossetia region as they argue over how to share it. Albina said it had split the community as well. Those who received compensation had driven prices up, pushing those without compensation even further into poverty in a region where many already struggle to make ends meet.

“You can’t even rent an apartment any more. The owners now ask for a year in advance, and the prices have gone up so I can’t pay anyway,” said Albina.

Money isn’t wealth: just pouring money into the hands of victims means the prices for scarce supplies will increase. It’s worse in this case because the money is a one-time deal. Aid will slow and stop as memory of the tragedy fades. So no one will risk new construction to house those forced out by inflation. Unless some other source of wealth comes into town, my guess is prices will eventually fall, but not before a lot of harm is done to people like Sveta and her family.

So people are all upset at these illegal immigrants coming in, and they think the dirty, smelly, uneducated (*cough*brown*cough*) ones are the problem, even if economists disagree that they’re a problem. But while the polite Canadian or German immigrant may be a more grokkable neighbor to you…do you really want high-skilled legal or illegal immigrants?

Mexican day-laborers are not going to be competing for your white-collar job, but those highly-educated ones will. Remember a while back when we were all freaking out about H1-B visas and Indian programmers coming in to “take ahr jarbs”? An increase in the supply of any product drives the price of that product down, whether the supply has brown or white skin. So just because Germans aren’t used to living in third world conditions for the privilege of programming doesn’t mean they won’t drive down the average salary of a programmer.

So before you say you’re “pro-immigration, but we can’t we get those highly-skilled valuable immigrants instead of more dishwashers,” you might want to think about the consequences of that statement.

For extra credit, figure out why both arguments are full of crap, even though the income effect might be measurable and real, and why I don’t support more restrictions on high- or low-skilled laborers.