Posted on 01/07/2014 9:05:52 AM PST by neverdem
The GOP needs to oppose the White House’s immigration plan and expose its flaws.
Several prominent amnesty advocates, including Mark Zuckerberg and top Obama administration officials, have argued that amnesty is a civil right. The claim is, of course, preposterous on its face. Under this reasoning, every immigrant currently living in the U.S. on a temporary visa has the right to refuse to leave when that visa expires. And every household in a foreign country has the right to enter the U.S. illegally tomorrow and demand the Obama administration’s amnesty for “DREAMers” and their relatives.
To say that amnesty is a civil right is to effectively declare to the world the right to enter the United States without permission, to bring one’s family, and to receive all of the financial benefits our nation provides. To say that one has a right to freely violate our immigration laws is to deny the very idea that a nation can establish enforceable borders.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s motivation is not elusive. He heads a lobbying group representing many of his industry’s wealthiest CEOs, and their companies wish to extract generous guest-worker programs from Congress. Similar efforts are underway from other CEOs seeking new workers for everything from manufacturing to construction to restaurant jobs. Presumably, Mr. Zuckerberg believes it is more advantageous to frame the group’s lobbying as a civil-rights crusade than as a corporate crusade for lower-cost foreign labor.
Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has called the argument that amnesty is a civil right “incoherent and ahistorical.” He explains that the civil-rights movement sought equal protection of the laws for all Americans, whereas a grant of mass amnesty necessitates the uneven application of the law, privileging the illegal immigrant over the lawful immigrant and U.S. citizen, causing disproportionate harm to African-American workers in the process. Mr. Kirsanow notes that such policies “would severely affect the rights of blacks generally and all low-income Americans. What it is going to do is displace those individuals from the labor market.”
Kirsanow has written elsewhere that “the bill will wreak enormous damage to the employment prospects of American workers who have already seen their wages and employment rates plummet over the last several years. . . . It will act as a magnet for future illegal immigration and substantially increase the number of legal immigrants. It is conservatively estimated that the bill will result in 30–33 million additional immigrants over the next 10 years.”
The upside-down conception of rights increasingly articulated by amnesty activists would mean that when an illegal worker seeks a job sought or held by an American worker, the civil-rights equity is on the side of the illegal worker.
Yet the Republican party does little to rebut these immigration fallacies. Although the GOP is the one group standing between the American people and this legislative disaster, its formal message has been muddled and uninspired. Rather than clearly opposing the White House immigration plan and exposing its flaws, the party’s official response to the White House pressure campaign has been passive, weak-kneed, and lacking in principle.
Republican officials reflexively collapse into a defensive posture, offering assurances that they will pass undefined “immigration reform” because we need to “fix our nation’s broken immigration system.” But does doubling the annual flow of immigrant workers fix a broken system, or make it dramatically worse? Is our goal just to do “something,” or to do the right thing?
The RNC should demand that the president and Senate Democrats justify their embrace of a bill that would double the flow of immigrant workers when a record 91.5 million Americans are outside the labor force. Republican leaders should also demand answers from the White House about its open refusal to uphold existing law.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented period of uninterrupted levels of high immigration, coinciding with falling wages, declining work-force participation, and expanding welfare rolls. Yet “immigration reform” somehow remains a euphemism for the tired formula of combining an indiscriminate amnesty with a massive surge in new workers from abroad. Shouldn’t we allow wages to rise and give time for those more recently arrived to rise into the middle class?
Rhetoric lags behind reality. Many in Washington argue that we must urgently pry loose the ports of entry, seemingly unaware that those ports of entry have long ago been flung wide open: The U.S. admits more immigrants each year than any other country on earth. In fact, the number of immigrants to the U.S. has quadrupled over the past four decades, and more permanent residents were admitted in the past ten years than in any previous ten-year window. Just last year the U.S. admitted over 1 million mostly lower-skill permanent immigrants (who can apply for citizenship) in addition to roughly 700,000 guest workers, 200,000 family members of guest workers, and 500,000 students.
U.K. prime minister David Cameron, explaining his efforts to establish immigration controls, said:
There are those who say you can’t have a sensible debate because it’s somehow wrong to express concerns about immigration. Now I think this is nonsense. Yes, of course it needs to be approached in a sensitive and a rational manner, but I’ve always understood the concerns — the genuine concerns of hard-working people, including many in our migrant communities, who worry about uncontrolled immigration. . . . We can’t allow immigration to be a substitute for training our own workforce and giving them incentives to work.
So what kind of immigration policy then do we need for the 21st century?
That is the conversation we should be having. Not only on immigration but on trade, taxes, welfare, and energy, Republicans should seize the opportunity to offer a conservative vision for this new century, a vision centered on the legitimate interests of working Americans.
— Jeff Sessions is the junior United States senator from Alabama and the ranking Republican member on the Senate Budget Committee.
The Zuckerburgs of the world do not realize that having a bunch of new citizens will back fire on them in the form of new regulations and higher taxes. However, Zuckerburg voted for Obama and Democrats in 2012 and 2008, and most of his donations were to Democrats.
“The GOP needs to oppose the White House’s immigration plan and expose its flaws.”
this would be under the assumption they grew a pair and had a spine.
We are extending unemployment for people who can not find jobs, but will legalize 15 million new workers? Insanity!
I’m not sure it will matter once the TPP is passed.
The ruling class has discovered the best way to lower labor costs is to replace the workers. However it has to be done as discreetly as possible.
Amnesty is a civil right? Do words mean ANYTHING anymore? Does anyone understand what a RIGHT truly is?
RIGHTS are given by God. They are inalienable truths about life from conception to death. You have a right to life, meaning no one can take your life from you for any reason. You have a right to be free, just as any animal on this planet is free when it’s born. You have a right to pursue whatever path you wish in your life. If you want to be a panhandler who washes windshields for pocket change, you be the best damn newspaper swiping nasty bastard you can be!
Amnesty is a man-made concept. Amnesty is a legal concept. Amnesty isn’t a right, it can’t be. Man may have the right to travel where he wishes and to pursue his dreams, but laws can put the kibosh on that. Without a change to American immigration law, amnesty would simply be legalization of the illegal by fiat.
I don’t think the GOP would oppose immigration laws favoring citizenship for illegals.
This is an opportunity for the Tea Party to differentiate themselves from the Democrats and GOPe. (To the average American)
In 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012, 60+% of the US was for securing the borders and opposed to amnesty for illegals. Both the Democrats and GOPe ignored the issue completely. If the GOP had run on the issue, they would have blown the Democrats away. But they remained silent.
“The ruling class has discovered the best way to lower labor costs is to replace the workers. However it has to be done as discreetly as possible.”
The workers themselves aren’t discreet; I’ve worked with consultants that have come from overseas who are open about the process and how much they make (sometimes not much less than an American would cost). These foreigners originally destroyed the job market for many blue-collar Americans; they initially wrought havoc with white-collar workers in the tech field, and now are doing it in finance.
Frightening to watch it unfold...
Our government and its stupidity, ignorance, corruption and greed is the cause of Americans being crowded out of the labor market.
Why in the hell do the need to move here?
Mexico: More than 6000 miles of coastline in a temperate part of the world. Rich in arable land and other natural resources.
Population density: Similar to Tennessee, the 21st most densely populated state in the country.
Same question.
Our land area and our population represents a little over 4% of the world. The world is no more "entitled" to settle here than we are "entitled" to colonize the world.
Can NRO please tell the WSJ illegal immigration and amnesty for breaking the law is bad?
Because of an ‘idea’ he became a billionaire. It did not make him a genius. He’s still basically a boy - a teenager with too much money.
A sensible thing to do with immigration law would be to to repeal and remove anything connected to the 1965 Immigration Act. All that has done is incentivize fraud at every skill level whether it is through guest workers or illegals.
That, and it would be good to enforce the laws that already exist on illegal immigration.
Tell you the truth, as far as I’m concerned, let it start to affect the upper class where these elitist idiots promote illegal immigration. Let the upper classes have their neighborhoods affected with crime and disease and let the kids of the upper classes lose their opportunities to various illegals.
Yes, a child with adult toys.
They want to move here because it’s all already set up for them. They must lack the stamina to build their own opportunities and fortunes.
I wonder how Zuckerburg will feel if one of his precious new workers starts stealing ideas.
“this would be under the assumption they grew a pair and had a spine.”
Precisely.
They’re still waiting for that ideal candidate to come along and take all the hits and do all the dirty work so they don’t’ have to lift a finger.
I always wondered where the lawyers are; a good smart mind can make a fortune suing businesses on behalf of native born Americans who lost out on opportunities like schooling and jobs because an illegal took them.
Another idea of mine is to make the born here = citizenship reformed to mean that the kid born here can only come back at age eighteen. Until eighteen the kid has to live in the country his parents were born in. Then once the kid is eighteen the kid can decide where he wants to live permanently.
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