Posted on 3/29/2006, 1:21:48 PM by oldtimer2
Guests or gatecrashers
Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing. Phony arguments and phony words are the norm in discussions of immigration policy. It starts with a refusal to call illegal aliens "illegal aliens" and ends with asking for "guest worker" status for people who are not guests but gate crashers. As for the substantive arguments, they are as phony as the verbal evasions.
What about all those illegal workers that we "need"? Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market.
Do we "need" illegal workers to produce bigger surpluses?
In California, surplus crops grown and harvested by illegal immigrants are often also subsidized by federal water projects which charge the farmers in dry California valleys far less than the cost to the government of providing that water -- and a fraction of what people in Los Angeles or San Francisco pay for the same amount of water.
Surplus crops grown with water supplied at the taxpayers' expense and raised by illegal workers can be grown elsewhere with water provided free of charge from the clouds and raised by American workers paid American wages.
Naturally, when the real costs of those crops have to be paid by the farmers who raise them, less will be grown -- that is, there will not be as much of a surplus going to waste in government-rented storage bins.
With some crops, we don't really "need" any of it. If the United States had not produced a single grain of sugar in the past 50 years, Americans could have gotten all the sugar they wanted and at lower prices, simply by buying it on the world market for half or less of what domestic sugar costs.
Sugar has been in chronic surplus on the world market for generations. It can be grown in the tropics far cheaper than it can be grown in the United States. All the land, labor, and capital that has been spent growing sugar here has been one huge waste.
We don't "need" to grow sugar, with or without illegal workers.
Many people are understandably sympathetic toward Mexican workers who come across the border illegally, not only because of the poverty which drives them from their homelands but also because their willingness to work makes them in demand.
When you see beggars on the street, they are usually white or black, but almost never Mexican. But American immigration laws and policies are not about whether you like or don't like Mexicans, though some demagogues try to play the race card.
For too long, we have bought the argument that being unfortunate entitles you to break the law. The consequence has been disastrous, whether the people allowed to get away with breaking the law are Americans or foreigners.
Legalizing illegal actions is the easy way out, so it is hardly surprising that politicians go for that.
One of the ways of legalizing illegal acts is by the automatic conferring of American citizenship on babies born to illegal aliens in the United States.
The law that made all people born here American citizens made sense when people crossed an ocean and made a commitment to become Americans.
Today, it is just another way of essentially legalizing illegal acts by making it harder to deport those who broke the law.
One of the most bogus of all the bogus arguments for a "guest worker" program is that it is impossible to find all the millions of illegal aliens in the country, so it is impossible to deport them.
If tomorrow someone came up with some brilliant way to identify every illegal alien in the country, it would not make the slightest difference. Right now, those who are identified as illegal, whether at the border, in prisons, at traffic stops or in any of our institutions, face no penalty whatsoever.
Identification is not the problem. Doing nothing is the problem.
Thomas Sowell is the prolific author of books such as Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Applied Economics.
Please call them INVADERS and don't compare them to people who are legal aliens!
President Bush has been great on most things except for our border.
He has been great on the war on terrorists.
But on the border he is a gross failure.
He acted fast and correct on the 3,000+ people murdered at the world trade center.
He ignores the many rapes, murders and robberies which might be larger than the murders and money loss at the world trade center.
More Americans are abducted on the border of Mexico than in Iraq!
Start building the fence.
It should be made a felony for Criminals who overstay their visas and Invaders.
I believe we should give amnesty to these poor CRIMINALS or INVADERS.
This should be a 2 week amnesty to get the heck out of our Country.
The ones who ignore this amnesty should be buried in a tent city jail and fined $10,000 or buried elsewhere.
All aiders and abettors of these CRIMINALS or INVADERS should get 1 year in a tent city jail and a $10,000 fine for each CRIMINAL aided.
Those in government should be the first ones charged.
Exactly! So what are our representatives doing? Discussing letting even more in and letting those already in stay! Do we have a nation or not?
Exactly! So what are our representatives doing? Discussing letting even more in and letting those already in stay! Do we have a nation or not?
Ever wonder why Washingtom refers to them as "GUEST workers", we didn't invote them so why call them "guests"?
Because they have been imported by those that will exploit them, make no mistake about this they were IMPORTED.
The MS keeps talking about 11 million illegals. The real number is probably two or three times that number. And our spineless Arlen Spector Republicrats will tell us that suddening adding them legally to our popualtion is not an amnesty. We need to tell these RINOs and squishes that illegal means illegal; not guest, not undocumented, not econic refuge. The polticians need to be told they will not get votes and money if they grant amnesty -- and we need to back that up by action!
And as such, the term "traitor" strikes me as appropriate for those enabling politicians -- beginning specifically with the President, aided and abetted by other feckless Republicans.
Needless to say, Democrats are already traitors to our country.
The latest "demonstrations" by criminal aliens recently just underscores the fact that our politicians, from the President on down, are encouraging, enabling and empowering these invaders among us.
If I see that Mexican flag flying over Old Glory in my own country one more time... !
The border problem is part of the war on terror, and he is worse than a failure...he's more like an accomplice.
Exactly.
But you'd think by what's gone on our President was Kerry, and both Houses were controlled by Democrats.
' If I see that Mexican flag flying over Old Glory in my own country one more time... !'
With ya.
But where's the outrage amongst our OWN politicians??
Naw, as long as their re-election coffers are full they're ok with it.
...provided a target rich environment for rounding up the law breakers. So much for the "we'll never be able to round 'em all up" theory. As a matter of fact...let's make more announcements on radio and TV, tellin' the illegals where to show up for the next protest...er...I mean...round-up.
The Bush Administration is MIA in their responsibility of upholding the constitution.
And shipping them back in WHATEVER transportation vehicles are available -- even if it's 24/7/365.
Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the United States, is already the biggest private employer in Mexico
Excellent piece by Sowell.
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