Heather Mac Donald: Rule of law and other conservative principles do not allow for amnesty

The immigration debate has divided the conservative movement, with each side accusing the other of betraying core conservative principles.

Amnesty proponents argue that America's best traditions require legalizing the estimated 12 million illegal aliens already here and opening the door wide to would-be migrants the world over.

Illegal immigration, these conservative advocates say, is the inevitable and blameless consequence of misguided laws that foolishly – and vainly – seek to prevent willing workers and labor-hungry employers from finding each other. Hispanics – the vast majority of aliens and the real center of the immigration debate – bring much-needed family values and a work ethic to the American polity; refusing to grant them legal status would destroy Republican hopes for a large new voting bloc. Since popular opposition to large-scale Hispanic immigration stems from economic ignorance and nativist fear, policymakers should protect America from its own worst impulses and ignore the anti-immigration revolt.

Conservative opponents of amnesty and liberalized immigration respond that the rule of law is at stake. Rewarding large-scale lawbreaking with legal status and financial benefits will spark further violations. The mass amnesty protests of the spring were part of a growing international movement challenging national sovereignty. Conservative respect for facts should encourage skepticism toward claims of superior Hispanic values. And the conservative preference for local decision-making cautions against dismissing the popular backlash against illegal immigration; it is just possible that people closest to the problem know something that Beltway insiders do not.

Illegitimacy. Half of all children born to Hispanic Americans in 2002 were illegitimate, twice the rate for American whites and 42 percent higher than the overall American rate. The birthrate for Hispanic teens is higher than that for black teens. This predilection for out-of-wedlock childbearing cannot be blamed solely on corrosive American culture, since the illegitimacy rate for foreign-born Hispanics is 40 percent. The illegitimacy rate in Mexico is 38 percent; in El Salvador, it is 72 percent. It is hard to reconcile these statistics with the durable myth of superior Hispanic family values.

Got to build that "new America" as fast as possible.

THE "NEW AMERICAN".....

.....<

We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.

Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.

For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.

As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico.

George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000.

You can read the speech here.

Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:

In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster

"Remember that in his August 2000 Miami speech, which I've often quoted, Bush contrasted those who "praise" the cultural Hispanicization of America with those who "resent" it, adding: "By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America."

"It follows that if the welcomers are to carry the day within the Republican party, the resenters must be driven out, or at least silenced. (This, by the way, was a classically peremptory Bush remark, as it was simply untrue that Republicans in nominating him had thought that they were consenting to a Hispanicized America and prohibiting any further debate on the subject.)"

"What I am suggesting is that Bush's January 7th immigration announcement was nothing less than a conscious declaration of war against those remaining elements within the Republican party and the conservative movement that still show any resistance to the open borders ideology and the destruction of the historic American nation. If this interpretation is correct, then the wave of outrage that Bush's announcement has unleashed will not discomfort Bush and his strategist Karl Rove in the slightest. They were expecting it and desiring it. They see our anger as the last hurrah of the old xenophobic America, before its final defeat and expulsion from the Republican party and from American political life as a whole. "

Bush's real motivation: to eliminate "racism"
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002094.html

"Our biggest challenge will be to separate my uncle from the rest of the Republican Party."
- George P. Bush

“‘This is a President who represents the diversity of our society, who we can count on to change the Republican Party to represent our views.’" … He told the rally his mother had instilled him the values of Cesar Chavez, the Chicano activist who fought for the rights of migrant farmworkers in the United States. ‘She told me we have to fight for our race, we have to find the leaders who represent us,’ he said in fluent Spanish.’
- George P. Bush

"This, then, could be why George W. has spent so much effort promoting a wedge issue that can only split his own party. He thinks the long-run fate of his dynasty demands a new, improved Republican Party—and a new, debased America."
- Sailer

Interesting reads:

Sailer on Bush's real motivations
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002086.html

The Bush Betrayal: Maybe He’s Not Thinking But Feeling—Family Feeling, Mexican Style
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/bush_thinking.htm

http://dgmweb.net/genealogy/FGS/B/BushJohnEllis-ColumbaGarnicaGallo.shtml
John Ellis BUSH
Columba GARNICA GALLO

"3. Two items from the archives of the Laredo Morning Times of Laredo, TX:
14 Feb 2001
p. 8A [Photograph] (husband and wife sitting on sofa with three children), with this caption:
LOOKING BACK: In this 1957 family portrait, Columba Bush, 4, left, sits on the lap of her mother, Josephina Garnica, at their home in Leon, Mexico. At right is her son, Francisco Garnica, 8, and sitting on the lap of her father, Jose Maria, is their daughter, Lucila, 6.

MORE THAN 27 YEARS AGO, COLUMBA GARNICA TOLD HER FATHER SHE WAS GOING TO THE POST OFFICE. HE HASN'T SEEN HER SINCE -- except on television beside her husband, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush."

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