Posted on 04/22/2006 12:05:03 PM PDT by Reagan Man
Liberalism's delusions have reached their most ridiculous extreme in the protests by illegal aliens. It was ridiculous enough that American liberals thought they were entitled to things that other Americans had worked for and earned, but now America is being told that illegal aliens -- people who have no right to be here at all -- should have the rights of citizens.
Illegal aliens and their supporters claim this is a civil rights issue. Balderdash. It is a desperate -- and despicable -- attempt to put a moral veneer on morally bankrupt protests. If illegal aliens have a moral claim to civil rights, then a band of burglars marching down the street protesting tough burglary laws also deserve moral respect.
Lest I am accused of being a racist or a xenophobe (epithets that are routinely hurled at conservative critics of immigration), I should perhaps provide a few personal details. Ideally, the legitimacy of your argument should not depend on who you are; rather, it should depend on the logic of your argument. But regrettably, in this age of political correctness, you are presumed to have no credibility on minority issues unless you are of a minority.
A Third World immigrant who went to a great deal of trouble to come here legally, I arrived here as a lone young man, brown-skinned, with very little money and a thick foreign accent--but a legal arrival nevertheless. I got my green card not by protesting down the street, but by waiting in line for years and obeying the rules. I never received any food stamps or welfare checks. Not a dime. A naturalized American, I am extremely proud of my U.S. citizenship since I know I obtained it the right way.
I graduated from a historically black college. My first career was as a high-school teacher (math and physics), and two of my ten years in teaching were spent in a very poor, predominantly black district in the South. There I saw intractable black poverty. I saw where the civil rights struggles had made a difference -- and also where they had made no difference whatsoever. I saw where personal responsibility improved lives, and where entitlement destroyed lives.
In any case, it is a shameless travesty of the civil rights movement of the 60s when illegal aliens claim that theirs is the latest struggle in civil rights. This is very much like burglars claiming that having to disarm high-tech alarms and breaking through double-paned windows is the latest struggle in their line of work.
There is absolutely no moral equivalence whatsoever between the civil rights movement and the illegal alien protests of today. In the first place, that movement was the natural culmination of deeply moral arguments made over three centuries against patently immoral practices -- first slavery, and then the forced segregation of a whole race of people.
But there is nothing in our laws that bars Hispanics from coming here legally. So it is not as if our immigration laws exclude a whole race of people. In fact, the number of Hispanics admitted legally is far greater than that of any other race. For instance, in the five years from 2000 to 2004 inclusive, legal immigrants from Mexico totaled almost 900,000 (890,953, to be exact), while immigrants from India, the second highest, totaled 303,929. The trouble is that for every Mexican who comes here legally, five of his compatriots come here by simply jumping over the border.
(By the way, immigration from historically high European sources -- e.g., Germany, Ireland, and Italy -- is very low now. For instance, during the same five years, immigrants admitted from these three countries combined totaled only 57,710. So much for the liberal notion that immigration laws favor whites over nonwhites.)
The civil rights movement was launched by people who had every right to live here. After all, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and other civil rights pioneers were not foreigners. They were Americans. They considered America their homeland. They spoke English, and spoke to the whole country. They did not march down the street waving African flags. They did not ask for special treatment from the law -- they only asked for equal treatment under the law.
But illegal aliens have no right to live here. They entered our country by jumping a fence in the dark of night. They are marching down our streets waving Mexican flags. (Though many of them have begun carrying the Stars & Stripes in the more recent marches, they have done this only after their own organizers told them about the bad publicity generated by the Mexican flags.) As their protest speeches indicate, they take ethnic pride in speaking Spanish; thus they speak only to one another, alienating the vast majority of Americans. No matter what they say, they are not seeking equal treatment under the law -- for if that is what they sought, they would have waited for their turn in the immigration lines, as countless legal immigrants have. They are asking for special treatment from the law -- that is why they want us to just forget about their illegal arrival and change our laws to suit them.
It is a point worth repeating -- what illegal aliens demand is special rights. Perhaps the liberals who support these fraudulent protesters should read some history. Rosa Parks did not ask the bus operator to take a special route just for her; having waited in line, she only asked that she be treated the same as other passengers.
The civil rights pioneers were descendants of people who were brought here against their will. But illegal aliens are people who came here willingly -- and willingly violated our laws. Theirs is not an involuntary condition, as involuntary servitude was for blacks. Illegal aliens chose to put themselves in the illegal condition. They cannot claim to be victims when their condition is self-induced.
By insisting that every American citizen be treated the same, the Civil Rights Movement brought change that uplifted both the letter and the spirit of the law. But what illegal aliens seek is change that will corrupt and destroy the law. In fact, if they get their Third World way, America will eventually have no laws. There will only be corruption and lawlessness just like in Mexico.
Given the fraudulent attempts by illegal aliens to arrogate civil rights, it is puzzling indeed to see the conspicuous silence of major black organizations. These organizations, the putative trustees of the civil rights movement, are being spectators while the house they built is being ransacked by squatters. Their inaction is particularly egregious considering that the people who will lose the most from uncontrolled immigration will be poor, unskilled blacks. After all, a basic knowledge of economics will tell you that the presence of a vast pool of cheap alien labor will only exacerbate the poverty of blacks by depressing their wages.
In fact, the late Barbara Jordan, undoubtedly one of the best-known black politicians of all time, who also chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in the 1990s, was among those who warned about the adverse impact of cheap alien labor on blacks. She was hardly a conservative, yet she advocated restrictions on immigration.
Here is a telling example from recent days. The Washington Times reported that an Alabama employment agency sent 70 workers, predominantly black, to work for contractors involved in the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. The men were to be paid $10 per hour. But they were sent home after just two weeks -- the contractors had found Mexicans who would work for smaller pay.
Such instances would be a routine occurrence if illegal aliens are legalized. Once legalized, the ten million here could bring their relatives, and the final influx could easily reach thirty million or more. Poor, unskilled blacks would be pushed out of work in their own country by people who have no roots here. It would be a cruel irony if such a plight were brought about by the inaction of the very organizations whose self-proclaimed charge it is to protect the civil rights of blacks.
This is going to be a tough sell if they are granted any form of amnesty.
If that were true we would have neither legal our moral authority to maintain a border at all. Just throw open the border to the poor, oppressed, and diseased of the world. After all we did it before but still had health standards and required naturalization for citizenship.By the way the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) has broken out in LA. Anyone for Leprosy?
ping. please ping the others.
In fact some illegals have more rights thancitizens. Some States give illegal students a Resident Status at paying for college while out of State "American" students pay more. if that isnt the stupidest thing you ever heard i dont know what is.
"By the way the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) has broken out in LA. Anyone for Leprosy?"
You jest, but surely everyone does know that the reason you have to take a TB test now for employment at many places is because there is a rather large number of people in Mexico who are TB carriers and they are bringing it into the U.S.
But, of course, the people who hire them are NOT in the group who test for TB.
ping
Illegals also qualify for "free down payments" and home loans at below standard interest rates offered by FHA, pay no taxes, penalty or interest. They are also not subjected to a "9 day demand letter" from the IRS until they attach homes, cars and bank accounts for those who simply disagree with what IRS "claims" they owe.
Not only that, the ILLEGALS want to change OUR COUNTRY to suite them. They don't want to adopt OUR LANGUAGE. They want to turn the US into MEXICO. Thanks, but NO THANKS! Maybe they should spend more time trying to change MEXICO instead of trying to change the US!
Either speak English dammit or go home! I don't want to search for ten minutes looking for ENGLISH instructions to put something I bought together. When I walk in an US bank I want to READ ENGLISH since I am in AMERICA, NOT MEXICO!
How about institutionalizing it on the federal level?
Hidden Bombs (Extremely Important Article on Immigration)
The second nasty surprise? Just before the committee approved the bill on the evening of March 27, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered the "DREAM Act" as an amendment. It passed on a voice vote.The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 law that prohibits state universities from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. The principle, of course, is that no illegal alien should be entitled to receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit that out-of-state U.S. citizens can't get. But the committee's bill allows illegals to be treated better than those U.S. citizens on tuition.
This is an ammendment to the Kennedy/McCain bill. You may have seen photos of protesters with "Dream Act" signs.
My boys Kennedy and Mcpain again.
Two Pieces of Shiite if there ever were any.
Are all these people swarming in from Mexico the victims of some sort of political persecution? Is there a famine, or some other great natural disaster, now going on in Mexico?
If either of these conditions exist, there is great justification for entering that country with a large enough military force to successfully suppress the political persecution, even if that means removal of the current government, and installing one that can restore the internal balance of the nation. If Mexico has deteriorated to the point that there is widespread social disintegration and loss of civil order, through some calamity, then they desperately NEED our help, and should get it immediately.
Of course, these foreign expeditions do cost a good deal of money, so in exchange, we would accept Mexico's kind offer to repay us with adequate supplies of crude and refined petroleum products. As part of the deal, the US corporations will be extended the right to set up domestic operations, which will employ large numbers of the Mexican native population.
In fact, it makes enormous good sense to adopt the policy of making Mexico a protectorate of the US, and annex their entire territory, giving the Mexicans the same rights as Puerto Ricans now enjoy.
Let's roll!
This article makes abundant sense, except that he mentions several times the impact on 'poor, unskilled' black men. They are poor because they are unskilled and, yet, for some unexplained reason they remain unskilled. Time to change that, IMHO.
Kinda opens your eyes doesnt it?
Does a America really need a Manchurian candidate?
Illegal immigration only makes things worse for them, but they are two much like sheep to buck the self-anointed 'Black Leadership' in bed with the Democratic Party.
I don't jest. Just Google it.
"In fact, it makes enormous good sense to adopt the policy of making Mexico a protectorate of the US, and annex their entire territory, giving the Mexicans the same rights as Puerto Ricans now enjoy."
Wouldn't that be blanket amnesty as well?
Puerto Rico is not merely a "protectorate". It is a territory of the United States, U.S. soil under the sovereignity of Congress and those born here are born citizens of the United States of America.
The United States of Mexico should get their act together and stop pretending that the United States of America take care of their indigent population.
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