Posted on 04/06/2006 7:28:43 AM PDT by Reagan Man
Those of us who want real immigration reform had better reconcile ourselves to the fact that it just isn't going to happen. We are at least 20 years too late.
The trouble began, as so many of America's troubles have, with a proposal by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.) -- specifically, his 1965 immigration reform bill. That bill, which duly passed, opened the floodgates for Asian and Latin American immigration, and they have never closed since. But at least the newcomers were legal immigrants. Thereafter, the appetite of American employers for cheap labor, combined with the desire of impoverished Mexicans to provide it, simply overwhelmed the laws and the Mexican border. The Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986 tried to stop the flood by granting amnesty to the 5 million or so illegal aliens already in the country, while tightening border controls. But the government, pressured by American business, simply failed to enforce the law. Today, it is estimated that there are at least 11 million illegal aliens (mostly Mexican) working in the United States at low-paying jobs that U.S. citizens are reluctant to do at those wages.
This enables defenders of the status quo to argue (correctly) that the U.S. economy simply couldn't sustain the arrest and repatriation of those illegal aliens, even if they could be identified. Many U.S. businesses, large and small, that are dependent on cheap illegal immigrant labor would simply go under. And the many millions of Americans who are dependent on such workers would discover that there was now no one to tend their gardens, pick their crops and do other menial jobs for anywhere near the same low pay.
Finally, the issue of illegal immigration having at last been forced to the forefront of the public consciousness by a few vocal critics like Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) and become a really hot controversy, American business has bestirred itself and successfully pressured President Bush and the Republican Congress to resist real reform. Appallingly, the Democrats, who are also more vulnerable to business pressures than they like to pretend, have gone along with the charade, calculating that they will get the votes of most of the aliens when they finally become citizens, even though the illegal immigrants are a deadly economic threat to the Democrats' traditional allies in the labor unions and the black community.
The result is that there will be no serious immigration reform. Either the two parties will kick the gong around for a few more months and end up doing nothing, or (more likely) some bill along the lines of the one currently being debated in the Senate will be passed, beefing up the border patrols, but leaving the 11 million illegals still in the country, perhaps subject to some largely unenforceable penalties, but headed for legal residency and, ultimately, citizenship.
Will this matter? What harm, after all (their defenders argue) have the illegals done? It would be wonderful if, in the long run, they and their children were to assimilate to the American culture, as so many other waves of immigrants have done. But, as Victor Davis Hanson has pointed out, Mexican immigrants, unlike those from Europe or Asia, don't come from a distant land: their homeland is just a yard away, across a largely undefended border. They can return to Mexico at will, and many intend to -- though they rarely do. Instead, they become permanent residents of the lowest rung of the American economic ladder, and are acutely bitter over their status. Moreover, there are so many of them that millions cling to their Hispanic language and culture, refusing assimilation and living in politicized ghettoes.
That is the meaning of those Mexican flags waving so prominently in the hands of many of the half million Hispanics who demonstrated in Los Angeles recently against immigration reform. America is not just being invaded by an eager horde of willing workers. It is being taken over, gradually but inexorably, by millions upon millions of Spanish-speakers who, without yet even having the vote, are already a political force the American public cannot generate the will to resist. Our two major parties have already sold out to them; American business is happily profiting by the labor they perform so cheaply; and the 11 million illegals already here will look like a drop in the bucket by 2030.
Mr. Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.
Regardless, the whole matter lies squarely in the lap of Washington, DC. They have failed this country miserably and of course, will little accountability and recourse -- until the public learns how to put as much pressure on Washington, DC as our criminal invaders do.
Not holding my breath. The American public is just too lazy and complacent.
I keep thinking of that old Rolling Stones song, Sympathy for the Devil. What a title. What lyrics. People who are morose over the current sorry state of affairs should give it a listen.
Yep, those Mexicans are here taking all of the jobs and putting able bodied Americans in the unemployment lines. Somehow, tax revenues are increasing at double-digit rates. Surely congress is telling us the truth about all of this. Right? "WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell for a third straight week, providing further evidence of a strong job market.--snip--The total number of Americans receiving benefits dipped to 2.44 million, the lowest level in six years, signaling that the labor market has posted a strong rebound after the blows received last year from the Gulf Coast hurricanes."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060406/economy.html?.v=5
and by that I mean the part about blaming you and me.
yup to #2 , ... and thanks Reagan Man [re-read**]
Try again today - call your elected and tell them to CLOSE THE BORDERS NOW!
Unbelievable, but it's happened. Horrific, stupid, insane -- words fail.
Immigrants are not "taking jobs". Immigrants never take jobs because every immigrant is a consumer who creates jobs. What they do in large numbers is depress wages. That gives the appearance of taking jobs because the wages of some jobs are depressed below the level of being worth doing by better educated and more affluent natives. That tends to make entry level jobs scarce for young workers looking to maintain a standard of living.
As in the past, after a wave of mass immigration, a breathing spell is needed for those immigrants and their children to become better educated and accumulate a degree of wealth so that wages rise and equal out between natives and newcomers and entry level jobs become more attractive for all.
The fatcats who sit in the corner office had better notice what will happen to America's credit rating when it becomes a third world nation about to repudiate its debt. But then again maybe that is the plan, destroy America.
That's the crux of the matter.
Zillions of legal immigrants from Latin America and Asia will cause the same disruption to our schools, neighborhoods, hospitals, social services,and infrastructure than zillions of illegal immigrants from Latin America and Asia
If 20 million illegals are a good thing, will 100 million illegals be a GREAT THING? They are on the way, and if it is impossible to round up the 20 million, what will we do to deal with the 100 million?
ping
I've posted this before, but it's worth repeating:
Is that all there is?
Do you remember that old song that was a hit for Peggy Lee:
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
Well, if that's all there is,
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all...
I've come to the conclusion that there is almost nothing left that can be done to save ourselves from the Immigration Bomb. Time is running out. We are fast approaching the threshhold of "is that all there is?", and, as it will follow, the reality of "if that's all"...
Any talk of actually sending back the millions already here is met with guffaws and opprobrium. Who's going to send back 20 million? Or 5 million? Or even 500,000? Yet each and EVERY new arrival is (to paraphrase James Q. Wilson) "one more broken window" to our notion (and nation) of borders, citizenship, and European-American culture. And each and every new arrival sends a signal to the millions more waiting to come in, "you can get away with it, so, go for it!"
For the record, I'm for sending back every illegal that can be identified and proven as such. Every one. If that means I have to pay more taxes to be rid of them, so be it. I (and you) are certainly going to be paying far more to support them for the rest of their lives here (and the lives of their descendants).
Any talk of building a security barrier to protect our Southern Border from the illegal onslaught is also met with guffaws. No one in this forum can doubt the effectiveness of the Israeli security fence as to protecting their own borders against the infiltration of Palestinian terrorists. If a security fence around [nearly] the entire country of Israel can protect them against intrusion of malevolent invaders, why wouldn't a security barrier on our southern border protect _us_?
For the record, I advocated building a wall from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico 'way back in the early 90's, before Pat Buchanan (or anyone else) was even considering such notions. I've been to the Berlin wall (when it was in existence), seen it from _both_ sides, passed through Checkpoint Charlie. For the purposes it was intended, the Berlin Wall worked. It provided a well-defined point of demarcation and kept those on one side _out_ of the other.
The lie that the border cannot be sealed against unwanted intruders and properly policed was laid to rest by the few hundred "Minutemen" patrolling in Arizona - for even in their small numbers, they seemed to produce a surprising effect!
But real deportations en masse aren't going to happen (I know that).
And a security barrier isn't going to be built (I know that too).
And so does everyone reading this posting.
So what's left to be done?
Well, if you stop to think about it.... nothing.
Because nothing else can effectively keep the hordes of illegals from pouring across the borders. We won't stop them from coming in, and once here, we won't send them back. We'll even guarantee them benefits equal to - or better than - what actual American _citizens_ can receive.
Thus, "is that all there is?"
So, better get used to it. Since neither political party will ever be willing to take the hard steps to STOP the illegal invasion, you might as well fill your glass with whatever you like, hoist it high, and drink a hearty toast our fading civilization.
Because as the song says, "that's all"....
I wish I could be more optimistic about things, but looking around at the hard truths, I cannot be.
- John
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