Posted on 06/17/2004 7:45:09 PM PDT by asmith92008
REVIEW & OUTLOOK advertisement Borderline Republicans June 17, 2004; Page A18 For the most part, President Bush's calls for immigration reform seem to have fallen on deaf Congressional ears. And one of the main reasons is the anti-immigrant groups on the political left that have been making inroads with Republicans. It behooves GOP restrictionists to better understand their new bedfellows. The cool reaction to Mr. Bush's guest-worker proposals is the most prominent example of party division on immigration. But it's not the only example. The phenomenon has also manifested itself in a number of House and Senate GOP primary races, where some Republicans have teamed up with radical greens and zero-population-growth-niks to intimidate and defeat other Republicans willing to defend immigration. In Congress, Republicans invite population-control advocates posing as conservatives to committee hearings to denounce the Administration's initiatives. Republican Tom Tancredo of Colorado has gone so far as to set up Team America, a political action committee and Web site that bashes members of his own GOP House caucus who aren't sufficiently anti-immigrant. To date at least, restrictionism hasn't been a political winner. Earlier this year in California, GOP state Senator Rico Oller ran for Congress by passing out fliers depicting Mexican aliens as turbaned terrorists. He lost the March primary to Dan Lungren, the pro-immigrant opponent he was attacking in the fliers. Nor did immigrant-bashing help Jim Oberweis of Illinois in his recent Senate bid. In radio spots Mr. Oberweis suggested that the immigrants not here to steal U.S. jobs are only here to collect welfare. Voters rejected such rhetoric and awarded the primary to Jack Ryan, a vocal supporter of the President's immigration reform. However, the border brigades are unbowed. Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Numbers-USA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), ProjectUSA and the Coalition for the Future American Worker (CFAW) continue to use direct mail, television, radio and other media to target pro-immigration lawmakers throughout the country. Among others, they've mobilized against Arizona Republican Congressmen Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, as well as Representative Jim Leach (R., Iowa) and Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.). The crime? Support for legislation that would streamline the process for hiring foreign workers and allow certain illegal aliens to apply for temporary visas and U.S. citizenship if they pay fines and meet various work requirements. Extra special attention is being paid to a GOP House primary in Utah, where incumbent Chris Cannon is facing a June 22 runoff against Matt Throckmorton. Mr. Cannon, now serving his fourth term, hasn't had a primary challenger since 1998. This one comes courtesy of deep-pocketed restrictionists campaigning on behalf of his opponent, who is running hard on xenophobia. CFAW and ProjectUSA have used billboards in Mr. Cannon's district to denounce him as a supporter of blanket amnesty for illegals. Mr. Cannon tops the restrictionists' target list because he's been one of the few politicians in either party to expose the extreme nature of their underlying agendas, which has less to do with immigration per se and more to do with environmental extremism and population-growth concerns influenced by the discredited claims of the 19th-century British economist Thomas Malthus. During a immigration subcommittee hearing in March, Mr. Cannon had the gumption to question the executive director of CIS, Mark Krikorian, as well as to challenge Roy Beck, who heads NumbersUSA and serves as "spokesman" for CFAW. After first denying it, Mr. Krikorian was forced to admit that CIS is a spin-off of FAIR. In fact, CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, Project-USA -- and more than a half-dozen similar groups that Republicans have become disturbingly comfy with -- were founded or funded (or both) by John Tanton, a retired doctor in Michigan. In addition to trying to stop immigration to the U.S., appropriate population-control measures for Dr. Tanton and his network include promoting China's one-child policy, sterilizing Third World women and wider use of RU-486. FAIR, where Mr. Krikorian once worked, is run by Dan Stein and shares advisers and personnel with CIS and other members of the Tanton nexus. As our Jason Riley noted in a March 15 op-ed, "By Dr. Tanton's own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics." Representative Cannon says, "Tanton set up groups like CIS and FAIR to take an analytical approach to immigration from a Republican point of view so that they can give cover to Republicans who oppose immigration for other reasons." It seems to be working. Messrs. Stein and Krikorian regularly appear before Congress at the invitation of Republicans, who don't seem nearly as interested in people who can speak with authority about, say, the importance of flexible labor markets. Representative John Hostettler of Indiana, one of the most pro-life Republicans in Washington, chairs the immigration subcommittee that featured representatives of CIS and NumbersUSA as the Republican witnesses. The third GOP witness at the hearing, if you can believe it, was Frank Morris, who at the time was running for a seat on the Sierra Club board and actively campaigning for the defeat of President Bush. Apparently, unless you're a certified Malthusian, dedicated restrictionist or someone who knows next to nothing about economics, the Republican Congress isn't interested in what you have to say about immigration reform. Mr. Cannon says most GOP Members believe that the vast majority of aliens, documented or not, are productive and that our economy needs them. But he is concerned about a "bunch of Members who are demagoging the issue -- some to raise money, some for attention" and "want this to become a litmus test" for Republicanism. "If I get defeated or if Kolbe or Flake get defeated, that would be significant because some Republicans might conclude that it's not worth fiddling with immigration," he says. Maybe it's time for Mr. Bush, who raised this subject, to show where the GOP still stands on immigration.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Paragraphs (< p >) are your friends.
COnsidering he's been at FR for over a year I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
"The phenomenon has also manifested" in the loss of my vote, my time and my money. I'm now an Independent.
Good point. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to be the first to post a "paragraphs are your friend" rebuke.
What the WSJ ignores is that immigration is occuring in an America given over to multiculturalism. We can no longer assimilate immigrants into American culture at the rate we once did. Rather, they keep their own culture and language and, with sufficient numbers, expect to assimilate us.
The problem with this is that immigrants come from dysfunctional political cultures and nations. They flee here for a reason. Why should we import their dysfunctional culture? Why should my grandchildren have to live in a country become like Mexico, where bribery is the grease that runs the government--to the extent that the government runs at all--and everyone accepts that as the natural order?
We have a reasonably functional political culture here and it is up to us to make good decisions to keep and enhance it. Those who suggest such decisions are labeled racist. Well, I think the Ukraine is completely dysfunctional too. And the folks there are completely white bread. It ain't race. It's culture and political culture. We are better in that regard than both the Ukraine and Mexico and we should not be ashamed to say so. We should not be ashamed to reject the wholesale importation of such cultures into our culture.
My attitude about immigration would change a LOT if we were to reverse the multicultural trends of the past 40 years.
But America cannot continue to exist with both unlimited immigration and multiculturalism--we will become just another dysfunctional third-world nation. That, of course, is the goal of the left because they think they would be in charge in such a nation.
---And one of the main reasons is the anti-immigrant groups on the political left that have been making inroads with Republicans. ---
?
I must have missed them when they came knocking.
There is a real problem with racists trying to use discredited studies, such as those by Donald Huddle to cloak their racism under the guise of opposing "ILLEGAL" immigrants. They claim they have no problem with legal immigrants, but only with ILLEGAL immigrants.
When you suggest that their objections can easily be cured simply by making them legal through amnesty, they drop back to the position that since they entered the country illegally they can never be made legal.
Sometimes it's difficult to tell which ones are simply racists and which ones really believe that ILLEGAL immigrants are responsible for them being unable to keep a job. Anyone who can't keep a job in today's tight labor market has serious personal issues. It eventually comes down to them blaming Bush for their personal problems.
Oh, so if you kill someone and we pass a law to make murder legal, then it's OK?
If there is a need to have all these advantages that large immigration offers, the law should be changed. Until then, it is illegal to enter the country without proper clearance and authorization and the law should be enforced.
The journal editors also espouse the view that the population of the United States should be about 1 billion people, and they don't care how they get here or if they do it legally.
So whatever they write you can bet its going to support a massive influx of population in the United States by any means.
Pretty odd that this is the first I heard of this. Mr. Tancredo spoke in my town a few months ago and said the WSJ "had issues with him". I guess he was too nice to say they're willing to stoop to such depths as this to demean him.
In my experience most Mexican immigrants already are good citizens regardless of their status with INS. They work hard to support their families. They have strong religious beliefs. They have served our country well in times of war. They don't have an anti-American attitude like many immigrant groups.
"Secondly, immigrants, legal or illegal, do drive down market wages and benefits."
And your point is?
The business interests, whose mouthpiece the WSJ is, want one thing: cheap labor. Swamp the U.S. with third world workers, labor costs go down, and profits go up commensurately. Its that simple. Paradise, to the WSJ, would be a U.S. in which labor earns, like China, 75 cents an hour. The cost of Government coddling these workers is huge, but, no problem, that check will be left in front the taxpayer (that sucker) to pay. The Journal hints at times that profitable cheap labor is what is behind their rah-rah position on immigration, but since that is such a crass rationale, they intermittently trot out, none too convincingly, other rationales.
But since no one actually believes that mass third world immigration is a benefit overall to the U.S., the Journal makes only halfhearted attempts to convince anyone of that. Instead, tts immigration editorials are usually smash mouth, with more than a whiff of the old time Pravda. Like Pravda, it adopts the "Everyone knows that [immigration is good]..." tact, and proceeds to bash, name call ("Xenophobic"), impute ignoble motives, and basically copy the liberal stance of dismissing your political opponent as nothing more than a bigot.
Is it OK to kill someone as long as it doesn't constitute "murder"? Is it OK for a woman's family in Saudi Arabia to kill her if she commits adultery? Is it OK for a soldier to kill an enemy in war? Is it OK for a man to kill another man who is raping his daughter? Is it still OK if the rapist has already finished? Is it OK for vigilantes to kill immigrants wading across the Rio Grande?
I don't need the law to tell me when killing is "OK" or not "OK"
But to answer your question, pardons by Governors and Presidents are common. A pardon is more than amnesty. A pardon says "you're forgiven"; an amnesty simply says we aren't going to put you in prison.
You probably didn't recognize them, but their presence has been quite strong lately on FR. They present the arguments they get from the liberal/racist websites but when you challenge them for sources they won't give them because their sources are radical liberals or white supremists.
I agree. Join me in supporting President Bush's immigration reform initiatives.
What's wrong with that? It would solve our social security crises for a few more decades. There's plenty of room.
Are you a follower of that radical ZPG advocate Donald Huddle? I remember having to read a book in college entitled "The Population Bomb" that expressed the prevailing opinion of most intellectuals.
Among other things it said that by the year 2000 we would be so crowded that single family residences would no longer exist; that there would be insufficient food to allow the inefficient consumption of meat (we'd all be eating soy beans), and that based upon studies of overcrowded rats we'd all be homosexual (didn't have gays back then).
When I fly over America, all I see are forests and farms. Last I checked the government was still spending billions on farm subsidies because overproduction of food is a big problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.