So in the face of a de facto amnesty bill with bipartisan Beltway support that legalizes at least a dozen million illegal border-crossers, what's the priority? Stopping that legislation, or putting on a seminar about why legal immigration is just as bad or worse?
You are not very well informed. I have never said that I am against immigration.
There is nothing in what you have written in your previous responses that would give anybody the clear signal that you are in favor of legal immigration. This is what you wrote in post 43 (bold mine):
You again, from post 46:
...She doesn't know beans about legal immigration policies, e.g., chain migration, visa lottery program, the demographic impact, the importation of poverty, etc. To Laura, all legal immigration is good. It isn't and is far more dangerous and difficult to resolve, especially when you have people like Laura spitting out such bromides rather than using her platform to educate people about the issues.Her discussions with Tony were about illegal immigration and amnesty. Big difference.
On top of all of that, you misstated the facts you referenced. You wrote in post #46 that legal immigration brings in 1.2 million a year. Here's the Center for Immigration Studies page you linked to (bold mine):
If the amnesty bill had passed, it would have been game, set, and match for this country as we know it, mainly due to chain migration. However, we are being destroyed piece by piece through legal immigration, which now brings in 1.2 million people a year. The demographic impact is enormous.
OOPS! The 1.2 million aren't ALL legal, like you said -- it's the combination of legals and illegals minus either or both that have left the country -- "net immigration," which is the amount to which the endless charts and graphs on that page are referring. Like you said, "big difference."
Currently, 1.6 million legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year; 350,000 immigrants leave each year, resulting in net immigration of 1.25 million.
So much else of what you write about Laura is twaddle. "She doesn't know beans about legal immigration policies, e.g., chain migration, visa lottery program, the demographic impact, the importation of poverty, etc.," you wrote. Maybe if you hadn't "stopped listening to her a long time ago," you would know such subjects were a regular feature of her highlighting of the immigration issue. And PLEASE don't compare her unfavorably with Ann Coulter, whose rightness on many issues is counterbalanced by her childish need for constant attention, which she gets by making gratuitous asides that are certain to offend. To wit: In the Coulter column you linked, it wasn't enough for her to take on Ted Kennedy for the way he has transformed the demographics in the nation through his immigration legislation spanning five decades; she just HAD to write "If only the U.S. Senate had had an 'Irish Need Not Apply' sign!"
For all your supposed superior intelligence and better grasp of the issues, you don't know how to communicate them. Laura does. That's how she became the most popular female political talkhost in history. That's how she topped the New York Times bestseller list with her latest book. And that's how she helped rally millions to take on President Bush, Ted Kennedy, and Lindsey Graham to shove shamnesty and the DREAM act down the throats of the pols, pundits, and media figures (like the majority of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News' All-Stars) who wanted to shove it down ours.
Again: If what you want is to slow legal immigration to under half a million a year, you're not going to have a prayer of accomplishing that until you slow down efforts to increase illegal immigration. Laura helped do that for you. So I have no idea what you're bitching about.
Bravo!
It is not an either/or choice. You need to do both. The 2007 bill was defeated several months ago. So was the 2006 Senate bill [S 2611] that passed the Senate. So was the Dream Act and the Ag bill add on. Laura is still saying that legal immigration is a good thing without educating the public about the issues involved.
There is nothing in what you have written in your previous responses that would give anybody the clear signal that you are in favor of legal immigration. This is what you wrote in post 43 (bold mine):
I have been totally consistent. "To Laura, all legal immigration is good. It isn't and is far more dangerous and difficult to resolve." I stand by that statement, i.e., all legal immigration is not good.
"However, we are being destroyed piece by piece through legal immigration, which now brings in 1.2 million people a year. The demographic impact is enormous." That statement is correct. We are bringing in far too many people and the wrong kind in terms of making this country competitive in the global economy.
OOPS! The 1.2 million aren't ALL legal, like you said -- it's the combination of legals and illegals minus either or both that have left the country -- "net immigration," which is the amount to which the endless charts and graphs on that page are referring. Like you said, "big difference."
It is not a big difference demographically. If you notice, net legal immigration is about twice as much as net illegal immigration. Legal immigration, not net, is about 1.2 million a year. I attended the press conference and panel discussion when CIS announced the outcome of the study. You need to read the study and its "endless charts and graphs." There are different results depending upon what assumptions you make in terms of legal immigration, illegal immigration, and net immigration. Moreover, legal immigration numbers will continue to climb due to chain migration and the lack of caps on various categories of immigration.
The author, Steve Camarota, whom I know and discussed the report with, stated that he used a more conservative number in order to make the report more defensible and less vulnerable to attack by detractors. In fact, the net immigration numbers could be much higher. And if you take the time to read all of those "endless charts and graphs," you will learn how much higher. This is an inexact science. We don't know how many illegals are here with estimates running from 12 to 38 million. We do know how many legal immigrants are coming in every year. We estimate the net number of illegal aliens at 450,000 to 1 million. For the pruposes of this report, the low number was selected.
From the report:
Legal vs. Illegal Immigration. The above projections treat legal and illegal immigration together. But it is possible to think about them separately. At present, net illegal immigration is about 450,000 a year and net legal immigration is about 800,000 a year.6 Table 1 can provide a rough idea of the separate impact of legal and illegal immigration by looking at the appropriate level of immigration. As already indicated, the relationship between immigration levels and population growth is linear, so if one wishes to know the separate effect of net illegal immigration of 450,000, then this would be the value at the mid-point between net immigration of 400,000 and 500,000 a year. So for example, assuming net illegal immigration continues at 450,000 a year, Table 1 indicates that it would add 13.4 million to the population by 2030 and 37.9 million by 2060. For legal immigration, one can use the net figure of 800,000 found in the table. Legal immigration of 800,000 a year will add 23.9 and 67.4 million to the population by 2030 and 2060, respectively. Of course, the racial composition of legal and illegal immigration differs somewhat and this matters because birth and death rates vary by race. Thus, dividing up legal and illegal immigration in this way can provide only a rough indication of the impact of the two types of immigration.
There is of course the question of illegal immigrants already in the country. Table 4 provides projections of population size assuming illegal immigrants leave the country, but the U.S.-born children they have already given birth to remain. The top portion of Table 4 is drawn directly from Table 1, the middle portion of Table 4 assumes that half of illegal immigrants leave the country and the bottom of the table assumes that all illegal immigrants leave the country. Based on prior research, we estimate that 11 million illegal immigrants were included in the 2007 population estimates that are the baseline for our projections.7 To see the full impact of illegal immigrants already here one can compare the zero net immigration figures at the top of the Table 4 with the zero net immigration figures assuming all illegal immigrants leave the country. The top of Table 4 shows that if future immigration was zero, and all illegals remained, the total population would be 362.7 million in 2060. (This is the same value shown at the top of Table 1.) If immigration was zero and all illegal immigrants left, the total population would be 340.9 million in 2060. This means that allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the country would add 21.8 million people to the population by 2060. Or put a different way, about one-third of the 61.8 million population increase that would occur without any future immigration is due to illegal immigrants already in the country plus their descendents. Again we assume the children already born to illegal immigrants would remain in the country.
So much else of what you write about Laura is twaddle. "She doesn't know beans about legal immigration policies, e.g., chain migration, visa lottery program, the demographic impact, the importation of poverty, etc.," you wrote. Maybe if you hadn't "stopped listening to her a long time ago," you would know such subjects were a regular feature of her highlighting of the immigration issue.
You are a Laurabot, I am not. She doesn't understand the immigration issue, Ann Coulter does. Specifically, what has Laura stated about our chain migration policy? What has she said about the demographic impact of legal immigration?
For all your supposed superior intelligence and better grasp of the issues, you don't know how to communicate them. Laura does. That's how she became the most popular female political talkhost in history.
Perhaps you have a comprehension problem. My issue is one of substance not communication skills. Laura has not addressed, to the best of my knowledge, the legal immigration issues. I have heard her say that no one is against legal immigration and never mention any changes she would make to current legal immigration policies. Have you?
Again: If what you want is to slow legal immigration to under half a million a year, you're not going to have a prayer of accomplishing that until you slow down efforts to increase illegal immigration. Laura helped do that for you. So I have no idea what you're bitching about.
Again, they are two sides of the same coin. You need to do both. There are bills now in Congress to eliminate extended chain migration and limit it to the nuclear family. The SAFE Act proposed by a blue dog Dem, Heath Shuler, has over 45 Rep sponsors including Tancredo and Hunter, to beef up enforcement. Other efforts have been made on eliminating birthright citizenship.
One in eight residents of this country is foreign born [including my wife], the highest it has been in almost 90 years, and within the next decade it will be one in seven, the highest it has ever been in our history. We can't continue to take in these kinds of numbers and expect assimilation. Instead, we are going to have a Balkanized country along cultural and linguistic lines.
We need a national dialogue on immigration, legal and illegal. My group along with others is trying to make immigration a defining issue for the 2008 Presidential election. There were over 1400 state and local legislative initiatives last year around the country on illegal immigration issues. It is an enormous issue that has metastasized around the country. It comes down to whom do you believe, the politicians spin or your own lyin' eyes.
What I am "bitching" about is Laura's failure to address this issue in its entirety and mouthing the same platitudes that the policitians spout about the current legal immigration system being an unqualified good. It is not and I view our current pro-population immigration policies as being a serious threat to our long term survival and prosperity. The real third rail of immigration is actually LEGAL immigration policies. The sooner the public realizes that, the better.