Posted on 01/14/2004 7:14:12 AM PST by SJackson
Judicial fiats, socialist blood coursing through the veins of INS officials, and hoity-toity journalists keep the steady stream of human traffic coming across the U.S./Mexico border. Illegal immigrants (pardon, "undocumented aliens") inundate the Border States.
Let's recap. Government mandates on hospitals have them absorbing costs of "emergency" care for illegals who use ER rooms as their primary care physicians. LA County spent $350 million for illegals' care at hospitals and free clinics last year. I have entertained myself on many a graveyard stint in the ER by telling my compadres that my employer is INS. I can clear the room in 35 seconds.
Public schools officials cannot ask, tell, or daydream of parents' status. Despite voter referenda, schools continue instruction in Spanish. Arizona House Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, a fiscal conscience on illegal immigration, who endures charges of racism despite his Mexican national father, estimates that Arizona spends about $2 billion on their health and education.
Courts have slapped the wrists of cities and their police officers who question Latino men standing on the street corners at 5 AM, oh, just down from agricultural fields, because the assumption that some undocumented aliens might be among them is race-based and, ergo, unconstitutional. So, Arizona police stop Hans and other chaps in leder hosen to see if perhaps some coyotes are conning Swedes in Nogales for a sneak across the border.
President Vincente Fox visited Arizona and demanded that we make immigration easier. As Jay Leno says, "How? By installing moving walkways?" Former Gov. Gray Davis issued an edict giving driver's licenses to everyone. Now President Bush has proposed a crackerjack amnesty plan for illegal immigrants and a "guest worker" plan. Granting amnesty to those who have tiptoed across the border may not be the get-tough signal our free-service-Nirvana needs. Save us the suspense, decades of debate, and budgetary surprises. Let's just annex Mexico.
The debate on illegal immigration remains wholly unsatisfying because those who are most vocal know very little of the reality of living in a border state. The Wall Street Journal's pro-immigration posture springs from its vision of immigrant programmers and engineers from India and China who give us Intel inside. The strange bedfellows with the Journal in this debate are compassionate conservatives who now offer Mexicans "jobs Americans don't want."
Americans don't want the jobs because, with skills and education, they earn wages that afford them an above-poverty living. The recent Wal-Mart raids for its use of illegal workers in its janitorial services subcontractors show that our low prices on Cheeto's do come with social costs. Immigrants, not required to learn the language by "compassionate" courts and schools, are sentenced to a Wal-Mart-wages-life in the underclass. They are segregated into barrios, shielded from assimilation. They recreate the very society they tried to escape: classes and a caste system in which they could not get ahead.
This life of poverty does not just drain our health and government systems; it breeds crime. The crime rates in the barrios are so high that Arizona's prison population is 10-20% "guest workers," documented and otherwise. Poverty creates a multigenerational assimilation problem. Four of every 10 Hispanics in the U.S. do not finish high school.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me first state what I understand to be your position. It is that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case the President is the sole judge.
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him,--"I see no probability of the British invading us"; but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."
Abraham Lincoln
February 15, 1848
Abe changed his mind when he got to the White House.
My favorite part is 130 new Congressmen who can't speak English...
High time to annex Mexico http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Judicial fiats, socialist blood coursing through the veins of INS officials, and hoity-toity journalists keep the steady stream of human traffic coming across the U.S./Mexico border. Illegal immigrants (pardon, "undocumented aliens") inundate the Border States.
Let's recap. Government mandates on hospitals have them absorbing costs of "emergency" care for illegals who use ER rooms as their primary care physicians. LA County spent $350 million for illegals' care at hospitals and free clinics last year. I have entertained myself on many a graveyard stint in the ER by telling my compadres that my employer is INS. I can clear the room in 35 seconds.
Public schools officials cannot ask, tell, or daydream of parents' status. Despite voter referenda, schools continue instruction in Spanish. Arizona House Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, a fiscal conscience on illegal immigration, who endures charges of racism despite his Mexican national father, estimates that Arizona spends about $2 billion on their health and education.
Courts have slapped the wrists of cities and their police officers who question Latino men standing on the street corners at 5 AM, oh, just down from agricultural fields, because the assumption that some undocumented aliens might be among them is race-based and, ergo, unconstitutional. So, Arizona police stop Hans and other chaps in leder hosen to see if perhaps some coyotes are conning Swedes in Nogales for a sneak across the border.
President Vincente Fox visited Arizona and demanded that we make immigration easier. As Jay Leno says, "How? By installing moving walkways?" Former Gov. Gray Davis issued an edict giving driver's licenses to everyone. Now President Bush has proposed a crackerjack amnesty plan for illegal immigrants and a "guest worker" plan. Granting amnesty to those who have tiptoed across the border may not be the get-tough signal our free-service-Nirvana needs. Save us the suspense, decades of debate, and budgetary surprises. Let's just annex Mexico.
The debate on illegal immigration remains wholly unsatisfying because those who are most vocal know very little of the reality of living in a border state. The Wall Street Journal's pro-immigration posture springs from its vision of immigrant programmers and engineers from India and China who give us Intel inside. The strange bedfellows with the Journal in this debate are compassionate conservatives who now offer Mexicans "jobs Americans don't want."
Americans don't want the jobs because, with skills and education, they earn wages that afford them an above-poverty living. The recent Wal-Mart raids for its use of illegal workers in its janitorial services subcontractors show that our low prices on Cheeto's do come with social costs. Immigrants, not required to learn the language by "compassionate" courts and schools, are sentenced to a Wal-Mart-wages-life in the underclass. They are segregated into barrios, shielded from assimilation. They recreate the very society they tried to escape: classes and a caste system in which they could not get ahead.
This life of poverty does not just drain our health and government systems; it breeds crime. The crime rates in the barrios are so high that Arizona's prison population is 10-20% "guest workers," documented and otherwise. Poverty creates a multigenerational assimilation problem. Four of every 10 Hispanics in the U.S. do not finish high school.
Economist Milton Friedman's warning for three decades remains unheeded: open immigration cannot work in a welfare state. The wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century was different. Among the many questions immigrants faced at Ellis Island (after the health screenings) were: How much money do you have? Do you have a job? If not, do you have a sponsor? Mr. Bush places great faith in present-day INS screening to curb the problem. How will the same folks who granted visa renewals to two of the dead 9-11-01 hijackers police this program for 15 million people?
Economic screening in a pre-New Deal had inherent veracity because there was no fallback position for those who lied about work or sponsors. Those immigrants were left to survive on their own from their moment of entry. Harsh? Following the Ellis Island wave of immigration, just one generation passed before children of those immigrants were fully integrated into American society. They spoke the language and headed to college. By World War II, they were mainstreamed.
The welfare state assuages liberal guilt with a helping hand to underachiever nations. Good intentions have negative consequences. Despite belief in the American dream, generations of Latino immigrants still live substandard lives in a welfare state that tempts and protects them, tragically and ironically undercutting the work ethic that brought them here.
Mr. Bush touts national security concerns. He promises to document who is here so that we can then focus on real threats. Right. Is this not the wrong border? Jorge bin Laden? Folks named Santos and Manuel are not hijacking American Airlines' jets. Mr. Bush insults our intelligence. Worse, he insults the noble people of Mexico. In pandering for votes veiled with national security promises, he ensures their dependence on a welfare state. Finish it all in one fell swoop, never to worry about the borders again. Annex Mexico.
JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University.
No, nothing like that.
JWR operates on a wing and a prayer. We try to support them by giving them "hits" which benefits their relations with advertisers.
More to the point, how will overburdening the INS more than it already is help us to keep terrorists out of the country? The fact is that, even if INS was made vastly larger to handle the larger numbers, it will be easier for terrorists to get in: all that they need is for some sympathetic fellow countryman to give them a bona-fide job offer and, viola, instant admittance.
I am disgusted by this proposal by Bush. Guest workers will make this country far less safe, and the failure to pursue and toss out existing illegal aliens will only serve to encourage massive numbers of new illegals from all over the world. The culture of this country will be irreversibly changed for the worse, all in an effort to buy a few Latin votes for the next election.
She does a very good job of laying out the problems we have due to untrestricted immigration.
She's right when she paraphrases Milton Friedman - open immigration cannot work in a welfare state.
But
She's dead wrong when she says
"Following the Ellis Island wave of immigration, just one generation passed before children of those immigrants were fully integrated into American society. They spoke the language and headed to college. By World War II, they were mainstreamed."
It took the GI bill and a lot of legal changes to do much of that, and she completely overlooks the role of ethnicity; some immigrant cultures progressed much faster than others - and Mexican immigrants were among the latter.
For ideological reasons she completely ignores the role of greedy businessmen and their desire to profit at any cost, and certainly to ignore any rights which might be due labor and to obtain cheap labor any and every way they could including hiring illegals rather than citizens, and the substantial support government has often provided them.
See post 1, that's one of the reasons we kept them out in the first place. :>)
You hit the nail on the head. I see nothing wrong with traditional immigration, as it existed before the mid-1960's. Literally tens of millions came in over the decades, and virtually all of them learned English, worked, and had kids that went on to become productive, loyal members of our society. Many Latins have not, because the rules have changed. And before anyone accuses me of being anti-Latin, my wife is Mexican. She came here legally, speaks English very well and is in the process of becoming a citizen - and she's politically conservative. OTOH, I have seen many here in South Texas that are diametrically the opposite, who after even 2 or 3 generations still speak English like immigrants and who are not loyal to this country. It is people like that, Latin or otherwise, who make my blood boil.
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