Roy Beck's The Case Against Immigration
One of the more remarkable aspects of the continuing debate over
American immigration policy is that the nation's liberal elites seem,
ever so gradually, to be finally catching up with the people. For years
opinion polls have shown that a large majority of the American people,
of all political persuasions and all ethnic backgrounds, want less
immigration. Yet year after year immigrants continue to flood across
our borders as "opinion molders," elected officials, business
executives, and professional eggheads insist that mass immigration is
really beneficial and its dangers are much exaggerated by "nativists"
and "racists."
Only in the last couple of years have a few books been published
that dissent from that view, and the appearance of these books,
published by major New York houses, suggests that the elites are
finally beginning to grasp what uncontrolled immigration means for the
people and the country they rule. What began as a popular protest
against elite policies and preferences has now started influencing the
elites themselves, even if the elites still like to imagine that they
thought of it first.
Roy Beck's *The Case Against Immigration* is the most recent
example of a book published by a major publisher that challenges the
conventional wisdom about immigration (Peter Brimelow's *Alien Nation,*
published last year, was the first), and although Beck has been
actively engaged in the movement to restrict immigration for some
years, he has done so as a card-carrying liberal. A former newspaperman
in Washington, DC who has been deeply involved in the social activism
of the Methodist Church, Beck has seen firsthand what immigration means
for ordinary Americans, not only underclass blacks but also middle and
working class whites. His book is an exhaustive documentation of the
evil consequences that immigration is causing for these groups as well
as for the nation as a whole.
Beck's liberalism, however, is by no means of the polemical or
partisan variety, and the impression that his book gives is that he is
a man deeply and genuinely concerned about the injustices endured by
the real victims of immigration. He avoids most of the cultural
arguments against immigration that conservatives tend to use, his main
concern focusing instead on the economic effects of immigration on
workers and on the social consequences for those Americans whose jobs
There are several theories to look into when discussing the morality of borders. I specifically look into Stephen Macedo’s chapter “The Moral Dilemma of U.S. Immigration Policy, open borders versus social justice?” in Debating Immigration and Joseph Carens article “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” Using political theory back up his argument, Carens uses Rawlsian, the Nozickean, and the utilitarian to support and explain his claims that there is little justification for keeping oppressed people from other countries seeking a better life out of the United States. Macedo also uses similar liberal philosophy referencing Rawlsianism to support the opposing idea of a more restrictionist society, posing the question of cosmopolitanism
The Enron Corporation was founded in 1985 out of Houston Texas and was one of the world 's major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies that employed over 20,000 employees. This paper will address some of the ethical issues that plagued Enron and eventually led to its fall.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher was Britain’s first female Prime Minister, leading England for almost eleven years. Nicknamed “ The Iron Lady” associated with her inflexible politics and strong mind , she had created policies that are now know to be called “Thatcherism.”Born on October 13,1925 in Grantham, England, Margaret grew up in a conservative home into a family of grocers and was introduced to politics through her father who was a local businessman and a member of the town council. Margaret married Denis Thatcher in 1951 and a year later welcomed their twins Carol and Mark Thatcher .
One of the biggest, growing debates today is the issue of immigration into the U.S. I just don’t understand why there’s such a big debate. I compare this issue to the issue of racism in the way that, no matter what you do, "they" are always going to be here, and it is only ignorance that keeps the issue ablaze. The fact that migrants are not mostly white these days, also makes the issue one more of race. As Charles S. Clark puts it in The New Immigrants, "In the 1990’s, Americans who grew up in a historically white, Anglo-Saxon society are having to adjust to a Polish-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili; to Spanish-language editions of People magazine on Seven-11 shelves; and to Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques rising in their communities." In the case of immigration, though, the ignorance is apparent in both the immigrant and the non-immigrant.
Enron was formed following a merger between two natural gas companies in 1985, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.3 When Enron formed, it had accumulated a large sum of debt, roughly 2 billion dollars.4 As a result of deregulation, Enron no longer had the exclusive rights to its pipelines, resulting in the company hemorrhaging money. Kenneth Lay5, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Houston Natural Gas, became Enron’s CEO. Lay knew he had to quickly come up with a new innovation to keep the company afloat. Lay hired McKinsey & Company6 to help in coming up with a business strategy for Enron. McKinsey & Company assigned Jeffrey Skilling7 to Enron’s company as a consultant. Skilling, who had a background in banking, asset and liability management, came up with a solution to Enron’s financial crisis in the gas pipeline business. He said to create a “gas bank”, in which Enron would buy gas from a network of suppliers and sell it to a network of consumers, allowing them to control the supply and price of the gas. Enron’s debt was no more, and Lay was so impressed with Skilling, that he created a new d...
Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. N.p.: University of California Press, 2006.
Helyar, J., Mclean, B., Revell, J., Sung, J., & Varchaver, N. (2001). Why Enron Went Bust. Fortune, 144(13), 58-68.
Hoover's Company Records. Austin: Jan 1, 2007. , Iss. Sj-Sq; pg. 59476. Retrieved Friday, January 12, 2007 from the ProQuest Standard database
Immigration has been a topic that has caused multiple discussions on why people migrate from one country to another, also how it affects both the migraters and the lands they go. Immigration is the movement from one location to another to live there permanently. This topic has been usually been associated with sociology to better explain how it affects people, cultures and societies. Sociology has three forms of thinking that are used to describe and analyze this topic. There are three forms of thinking that are used to tell and describe immigration to society; structural functionalist, symbolic interactionist, and conflict theory. Each of these theories uses different forms of thinking and rationality to describe and explain socio topics.
America is sometimes referred to as a "nation of immigrants" because of our largely open-door policy toward accepting foreigners pursuing their vision of the American Dream. Recently, there has been a clamor by some politicians and citizens toward creating a predominantly closed-door policy on immigration, arguing that immigrants "threaten" American life by creating unemployment by taking jobs from American workers, using much-needed social services, and encroaching on the "American way of life." While these arguments may seem valid to many, they are almost overwhelmingly false, and more than likely confused with the subject of illegal immigration. In fact, immigrants actually enhance American life by creating, not taking jobs, bolster social service funds through tax payments, and bring valuable technical knowledge and skills to our country. If we are to continue to excel as a nation, the traditionalists who fear an encroachment of foreign-born Americans must learn to accept that we achieved our greatness as a result of being "a nation of immigrants."
On the surface, the motives behind decisions and events leading to Enron’s downfall appear simple enough: individual and collective greed born in an atmosphere of market euphoria and corporate arrogance. Hardly anyone—the company, its employees, analysts or individual investors—wanted to believe the company was too good to be true. So, for a while, hardly anyone did. Many kept on buying the stock, the corporate mantra and the dream. In the meantime, the company made many high-risk deals, some of which were outside the company’s typical asset risk control process. Many went sour in the early months of 2001 as Enron’s stock price and debt rating imploded because of loss of investor and creditor trust. Methods the company used to disclose its complicated financial dealings were all wrong and downright deceptive. The company’s lack of accuracy in reporting its financial affairs, followed by financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses, contributed to its downfall. The whole affair happened under the watchful eye of Arthur Andersen LLP, which kept a whole floor of auditors assigned at Enron year-round.
The American Dream typically involves working hard to build up an organization, maintaining it well, and reaping the benefits. This vision most certainly drove the formation of the energy powerhouse known as the Enron Corporation. The company began as two average sized organizations and within 15 years emerged as America’s seventh largest company. The organization employed close to 21,000 staff members with locations in over 40 nations around the world. Unfortunately, this success was decimated by numerous scandals involved with accounting practices. From lies of profits to questionable dealings, such as concealing debts, the parties involved with running the company had made some fatal errors. The end result left Enron without creditors and investors, leading to the firm to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (British Broadcasting Corporation, Enron Scandal at a Glance). The story of this once remarkable company is one that can be traced from the decisions made from its inception leading all the way to the much publicized trials that ensued.
Enron was a company founded in the year 1985 based in Houston, USA. It was one of the world's largest energy trading and Distribution Company having an income of nearly hundred billion dollars during 2000 and was also regarded as America’s most Innovative companies for 6 consecutive years by the fortune magazine. In the last quarter of 2001, it was exposed that it’s declared financial condition was maintained significantly by systematized and skillfully premeditated accounting fraud, known thereafter as the Enron scandal. They hid major debts and did not book them in the balance sheet. The inflated figures in their balance sheet shot up their stock price to unprecedented levels, taking advantage of the situation executives with insider information traded in millions of dollars of Enron stocks. The senior executives and insiders were aware of the offshore accounts that were covering up losses for the Organization; the investors were kept in the dark. This sent across a domino effect which resulted in shareholders losing seventy four billion dollars, loss of hundreds of jobs and thousands of investors and employees losing their retirement accounts.
Corporate fraud, greed, corruption, what company comes to mind when you hear those words? Enron! In this paper, we will take a look into the corporate facts and history as well as, stakeholder relationships, organizational trust issues, ethical leadership and ethical culture at Enron. As well as where improvements could have been made to improve organizational trust and ethical culture before Enron’s collapse.
The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,