Posted on 05/18/2008 9:31:35 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal has long been an indispensable voice of conservatism. As President Bush said in 2003 in awarding the Medal of Freedom to editorial page editor Robert L. Bartley shortly before his death, he—and by extension his editorial page—has been "a champion of free markets, individual liberty and the values necessary for a free society."
But there is one area in which the editorial page's policy diverges strikingly from conservative orthodoxy, and that is on the matter of immigration. To varying degrees, the paper's editorialists have inveighed in favor of a more flexible attitude toward immigration. That tendency reaches its apotheosis in the recently-released book by WSJ editorial board member Jason Riley: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.
Riley appeared on this weekend's Journal Editorial Report show on Fox to discuss his book with host Paul Gigot and make the case that borders should indeed be opened. Riley seemed surprisingly passive in the defense of his controversial proposal, and I personally came away unpersuaded. Here was the exchange.
View video here.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Open border ping to Today show list.
Just wait until the first dirty bomb goes off in America, or a first big disease plague is traced to illegals.
Have you ever seen dysfunctional, malfeasant politicians tap dance???
Hey, I’m all for a policy of “Open Borders, No Benefits”, but the Democrats won’t have it. Can’t have hordes of hard-working Poles and Czechs and Taiwanese swarming over here and living conservative lifestyles - no, any new immigrants have to be Net Benefit Consumers who know which party butters their bread. ;)
They started this junk a couple of years ago. That’s when I cancelled my subscription.
Open borders are a laudable goal. We can talk about it when Mexico decides to join the first world.
When the WSJ board members tear down the fences to their private estates, get rid of personal body guards and let us have full access to their homes and property whenever we want and wherever we want, then even I'll support open borders.
The WSJ editorial page is famous for its fiscal conservatism, but less so for its social conservatism. I don’t believe they are especially pro-life, for instance.
Amnesty is a money issue. They stand with big business and the Chamber of Commerce in wanting cheap labor, and the hell what it does to the country.
It must be said that this is very short-sighted, because if the country goes down the tubes, so will big business. What good is it to have cheap labor if the country is overrun with gangs and the government starts behaving like a Latin American dictatorship?
Which it will, if the balance tips far enough.
The WSJ is a mouthpiece for the country club GOP business owner who has made his millions on the backs of illegal immigrants and the taxpayers that pay their benefits (healthcare, education, insurance, etc, etc.). F- them!
OK. Let them in - right into the military as a “pathway to citizenship.”
The stat is that illegals are killing 25 NATIVE BORN folk a day.
And there’s the economic cost to the welfare, school and medical systems (which are already in technical bankruptcy).
My niece is an OB/GYN who took her pre-med at HAAAAVVAAAAADDD! Needless to say, she emerged from that experience a FLAMING, BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL.
Upon completing her medical training at yet another liberal university, she interned at a hospital near the border in San Diego.
It was there that a mystical transformation took place: She began to connect the heavy deductions from the GROSS EARNINGS for which she busted her butt for as many as 72 virtually sleepless hours in a row with the taxis and jalopies regularly sliding to the curb in front of the ER.
Many of them contained pregnant illegals who won the race to deliver their babies HERE. She caught many of those “anchor babies” who, under the current — and ERRONEOUS — interpretation of the 14th Amendment were IMMEDIATELY NEW AMERICANS. The mother – who, obviously, could not care for the child if she were back in her native land — could not be deported now even if the INS and the political bosses WANTED her deported . And as the mother of a new US citizen, the woman could remain here for about as long as she cared to – and that was usually for life.
Most of those patients were welfare recipients and the deliveries were charity cases: The bill for the hospital’s – and HER services – were routinely spread over the bills of those who DO pay. And what the other users of those facilities don’t cover went back to the taxpayers.
And since my niece was now a taxpayer, they were costing HER.
And while she may not exactly be a libertarian, today she’s now a LOOONNNNG way from Haaaavaaaaaad.
And just so the bleeders who might see this don’t think me some sort of ethnocentric bigot, I submit this problem is MORE than just about illegals.
Before my oldest daughter was born at University Hospital in Cleveland in 1967, I sat in the main lobby as welfare mother-to-be after welfare mother-to-be shuffled through the door to the maternity ER for THEIR free deliveries.
Before WE could take OUR daughter home, I had to cough up over 3 grand. And that was a great deal of dough in 1967, especially for a guy just out of the USAF.
As I wrote the check, I remembered the magazine article I’d recently read by a hospital administrator from Massachusetts who admitted that all US hospitals practiced a form of medical Marxism, spreading the costs of care for indigents over the bills of those who DO pay for care. Given the move to socialism here, it probably will never be otherwise: Not counting Byzantine complexity and confusion, government produces – and has — NOTHING unless it first takes it from some PERSON. SOMEBODY ALWAYS PAYS.
Look, I have a big enough problem paying for the 3rd and 4th generation slackers and welfare bums who were BORN here.
It’s time we stopped paying for those who were not.
That’s fine—they can all live at Mr. Riley’s house and he can foot all the food/medical/living expense bills for them, what say you???
D’oh. We HAVE open borders. For LEGAL immigrants. Good grief.
And they can't put a dollar value on a law-abiding, disease-free, socially harmonious society. If they ever get their open society and they can no longer move about with impunity, trusting that they or their family members won't be kidnapped or raped, one wonders if they'll realize only then what they've lost.
Sad to say, with their inability to see anything beyond its material worth, the WSJ board has become a capitalist self-parody.
Sadly, my friend, there isn't one thing that "We the People" can do to these people to make them pay in a meaningful way. Sure, we can throw them out of office, but they leave with their pensions intact, free to go back to whatever lives they lived before congress.
They can reek misery and strife on the American People, dust off their hands, and say that they tried as hard as they could. They would, to a man, blame it on their constituents, saying that the stupid people didn't understand what wonderful benifits that they could have had.
I want a way to make someone who inflicts great damage on us to pay....jail, death senetnce(no chance), or as a minimum, putting them in stocks so people can publicly riducule them and throw rotten eggs and tomatoes at them.
I’m happy I subscribe to IBD.
Just another one of Grover Norquist's puppets-on-a-string.
I saw a little bit of this interview, and it left me screaming at the TV. Mr. Riley was insisting that the Hispanics coming across the Mexican border are learning to speak English. Bullbleep! I don’t know where Mr. Riley lives, but I’m guessing it’s not in a border state. I challenge him to come live in Texas for a few years and see what he says about it then.
This guy was on with Lou Dobbs the other night. As could be imagined, things did not go well.
He does seem like a passive, effeminate version of Wayne Brady.
I would have liked to have seen that! Perhaps that’s my he was so passive in this interview—still licking his wounds.
Illegal children are learning English, Riley is correct about that. In fact children of illegals slowly become Americanized (pop culture, etc) within three generations. HERE IS THE IRONY. These kids will attempt to follow their dad’s footstep inconstruction. When queried during an interview they are not hired because their ENGLISH IS TOO GOOD!!!! Meaning they cannot be silently exploited, so the American business men would not hire them. What this means is that the children of illegals will be unemployed because the American business men will look for more illegal immigrants instead, thus triggering another wave of illegal immigrants. If we do not close our borders, this problem will snowball as the process will repeat itself - hire illegals, reject their children (more on welfare and underemployment) and hire new set of illegals, thus creating new wave of illegals while at the same time balloon the size of American underemployed poor in this country. Both have financial and social consequences to this country.
The children of illegals are in many cases, AMERICAN citizens. Yup, anchor babies. Get ready as they line up to vote.
It's bad enough that we have to carry the deadwood base of the democrat party without adding 20 million more freeloaders to the welfare roles.
Kick 'em out!!
These smarmy little faggots with their Ayn Rand books want the United States to do what they would never do in they own private lives. Anarchists and phonies. They need to get the shit beaten out of them by construction workers who got put out of business by illegal aliens
LOL! Of course. Didn't you love his "arguments" that in order to decrease illegal immigration we must make it legal? And that doing so would decrease the pressure on Homeland Security? Hello Mr. Riley! Anybody home?
The WSJ epitomizes the term "Country Club Republican". If there's a way to make rich people richer (whether deserved or not) they're all for it, regardless of whether or not any conservative principles are violated in the process.
Agree.
If this were 1860, the WSJ would be propagandizing about the ecomonic virtues of the South’s “perculiar” institution — slavery. After all cheap labor is good for the economy.
And if we decriminalize murder, rape and robbery we could empty most of our prisons, also.
I am not sure what Jason Riley is thinking or if he is even capable of thinking. He might as well be arguing for blue skies as open borders. The truth is the sky is blue, the borders are open and are about to become exponentially more so.
When a country has 25 million illegal invaders I do not think “closed” is diction one could very well use and be accurate and/or honest. If the borders were “open” would we have 50 million, 75 million invaders?
The American Sheeple, utilizing their American Idol pop sensibilities and puerile intellect have selected for themselves the Senior backstabber and Junior Marxist. Amnesty cometh, our Republic goeth, so what is your argument, Mr. Riley? The pimps on Wall St. and leftist enemies of America have for all intents and purposes, won. Again Mr. Riley, what is your argument?
The sad thing is that when government no longer protects the citizen, the citizen will turn to organizations like La Cosa Nostra to insure his and his families welfare and safety.
When it happens, I hope Jorge and Juanito don't say they weren't warned.
Absolutely! We can eliminate crime virtually overnight. I wonder why no one thought of that before?
Jason Riley claims the way to solve the problem is to provide more ways to legally immigrate. Ok, what is wrong with what we have now? Ummm nothing but it is too slow is the common response. Well heck, they are right, hopping the fence (if there is one) or wading across the river is much faster. And what they want when they get here is to be legalized. And that would be amnesty. But it is quicker.
Jason claims the Texas controller did a study that indicated illegal aliens are a net plus to the economy. Ok, that would be Carolyn Strayhorn in 2006 and in that study removing all the illegals results in the overall decline in the economy ranges from 0.1% to 2% The average would be roughly 1% However that very study tries to bemoan the fact that it found there would be a rise in wages.
“Wage rates would rise by 0.6 percent in the first year and stay above the forecast rate throughout the entire 20-year period.”
But there is more. Carolyn Strayhorn the comptroller also did an audit of the Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC, pronounced “trick”) this week. This Commission has been heavily criticized for its overbearing bias towards the homebuilding industry. Instead of providing protection for new homebuyers, the commission has provided ample protection for the builders. And just guess what makes that industry go? Illegal aliens of course.
So Carolyn, who is part of the Governor Perry team, audits the Commission, which is comprised of Governor Perry appointees. Anyone care to guess the results of the audit?
Jason goes on to claims they are assimilating because the are learning English. Well, I live in Dallas and I don’t see the illegals learning English and for the most part they are dragging the others, legal and illegal back to Spanish because it is their “culture.”
Jason also indicates a sign of assimilation is signaled by the illegals buying houses. Apparently Jason is unaware of one of the larger contributing factors to the real estate collapse is banks handing out mortgages to folks that could not handle them i.e. illegal aliens.
Lastly Mr. Riley claims that the illegals are assimilating because they are “climbing out of poverty.” But it, according to the study, depresses our wages.
Somehow I just can not buy off on Jason’s premise. Just call me mean-spirited I suppose.
A little set up: As I recall, Michelle had criticized the WSJ’s open borders stance and they fired back citing guerrilla attacks, so Michelle lampooned them with a gorilla attack in this video.
The video is of an actual WSJ editorial panel meeting where Gigot calls us irrational and another says it's a cultural thing, code word for us being racists. But then Michelle delightfully points out that all the WSJ editorial page members are middle aged white males and while there is a woman and a black man in the room, there's no place at the table for them.
It's WSJ hypocrisy at it's best:
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/06/07/new-vent-gorilla-warfare-against-the-open-borders-wsj/
Everyone needs to remind this open border fool of this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017532/posts
In LA, Special order 40 has become interpreted so that the police CAN NOT ASK ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF A SUSPECT. Therefore, they if they do not know the immigration status of a suspect, if the suspect is an illegal alien, THEY CAN NOT TURN THE SUSPECT OVER TO THE BORDER PATROL FOR DEPORTATION!
Jamiel Shaw’s family (His mother is fighting in Iraq!) are upset that Espinoza, an illegal alien gang member who was in county jail, was released back into the community, instead of being deported.
They are currently trying to get Special Order 40 changed, but are apparently getting pressured by the mayor, who acts like a hispanic activist, the chief of police and others, to back off of changing special order 40.
Even if there were no objection to all the illegals coming in to work- what about the criminals of all sorts, and middle-easterners that are crossing the border? Is that good for this country too?
The border issues are not all about one thing- yet many try to make it seem that way. No matter how you feel about illegal workers coming in- the border needs to be secured for so many other reasons.
I am setting up a home theater and had to run over to Orchard Supply and Hardware this morning for an S-video. I had to pass by the paint booth to get to the tv accessories. 3 gal employees all standing there just blabbing away in Spanish. I stopped, looked at them, and said.....speak English. They didn’t know what to say. lol
The argument to use against people like these is....okay, let them all in. No free healthcare, education, food stamps, WIC, section 8, etc. And any children they have are not citizens so the children are not eligible for bennies either.
Let them all in but they must pay for EVERYTHING themselves.
Watch em do the two step.
Many of them contained pregnant illegals who won the race to deliver their babies HERE.
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And the responsibility for the $300 BILLION (with a “B”) we have stolen from us for these criminals, lies stricltly with those that have engineered, supported and protected the entire scheme to re-engineer our society. Our federal government. They DO NOT CARE about the cost, the impact and the fact that the will of the people is TOTALLY AGAINST open borders and the support of illegal criminal aliens in our country. Not one bit of care. These criminals are a SOURCE OF VOTES AND CHEAP LABOR, WHICH IS ALL THAT MATTERS TO WASHINGTON. The well-being and will of the REAL CITIZENS of this country be damned....
More Americans killed by illegal aliens than Iraq war, study says
When you start digging into the numbers the only ones that can be sourced with the feds are the number of American murdered in 2005: 16692
I have seen federal numbers for illegals held in jail ranging from 19.3% to 27% of the federal prison population.
Here's a sampling of USA cities wanted for murder. What you'll see is that in big USA cities like LA or NYC most of the murderers are Hispanic. Unknown are the % of illegals. In smaller cities the FBI will post the nationalities of the murderers. About 25% of the most wanted are illegals wanted for murder. This number agrees with the percentage of illegals incarcerated in federal prisons. +-25%Pictures of top 10 most wanted in LA. Up until recent stories about crime in LA posted by the LA Times--the pictures included the nationality of the murderers. They were all foreign nationals and mostly Mexican.
Wanted for Murder in New York City.
Chicago wanted for Murder
Philadelphia wanted for murder
San Francisco wanted for Murder
New Orleans wanted for Murder
Pictures of suspects wanted for murder in Washington DC
FBI USA 10 most wanted. (two of 10 are Mexican nationals) Around 40% of the FBI's wanted for murder are Mexican Nationals
There are currently no exact numbers on the number of Americans killed by illegals. Part of the reason is that the government deliberately obscures the number. I talked on the phone with the head of statistics for the US Bureau of Prisons. He said his office wasn't allowed to publish the number of illegal alien murderers. Rather they were forced to put legal and non legal residents in the same category. He said further that most of illegals in the federal prisons were in for drug related charges. Most of the illegals in jail for murder were in the state prisons. I talked to ICE. They put out detailed numbers on illegal child molestors. However, they put out nothing on illegal murderers.
Part of the reason for the silence on the matter is that there is evidence to suggest that most Americans being killed by illegals are black--as is the suggestion in this LA Times Article. Also this article from the LA Times. And here. This makes intuitive sense. We see stories regularly of drug gang killings in Mexico but we don't see those same stories in the USA. The reason we don't see those stories is not because its not happening. Rather we don't see the stories about illegals killing blacks because that kind of story is terribly politically incorrect. The populations being displaced in downtown sanctuary cities especially are American blacks. That means that their criminal elements would be pushed aside by Mexican gangs as well. That's also the story that the wanted for murder posters in all the major cities seems to suggest.
Nevertheless, the pattern of non reporting is starting to break. Discovery Channel has a series called Gangland that mentions ethnic cleasing of blacks by Mexican gangs
Reported Foreign Nationals on Death Row in the U.S.
To look at other USA cities go here http://stlouis.fbi.gov/ and replace stlouis with the city you want.
All that said the true number of criminal aliens is far higher than is revealed by criminal aliens in prisons. Most are simply waived through the courts.DHS Secretary Chertoff, has been quoted as warning that two million people in this country illegally have committed serious crimes. If you check the links you'll notice that its McCain who cites Chertoff. See also here and here Here is more info from Judicial Watch.
However the number of illegals on death row is far lower. Sadly, so many small towns and villages across America have sent their warriors off to war half way across the world only to see communities fill up with illegal aliens. The costs in dollars to taxpayers of illegals far outweighs that of their tax benefits. However, the elite republicans get cheap labor and elite democrats get cheap votes.
As early as 12 years ago, when he was my representative, I was a regular at Newt’s Town Hall Meetings where I spoke in support of the FairTax. 70% or more of the others who took the mike were visibly ANGRY ABOUT THE FAILURE TO STOP THE GROWING FLOW OF ILLEGALS! (While he DID and probably still DOES support the illegal invasion, at several sessions – clearly pandering to the crowd -- Newt suggested the 100,000 IRS agents be given weapons and sent down to the border with Mexico.) That certainly works for me.
Under Bush, that flow became a TORRENT!
He CLEARLY doesn’t care WHAT we think!
DO TRY TO GET THAT MEMORY OVER THE TRADITIONAL 20 NANOSECOND LEVEL AND HOLD THE THOUGHT THROUGH NOVEMBER ’08!
In ABSTRACT terms, this is the conspiratorial view of what’s going on vis-à-vis the INVASION of the illegals here:
The current alien invasion from the south serves BOTH the elites who run Mexico – and many of the OTHER states of Central and South America -- and the political ruling class who increasingly run the United States:
· It takes pressure off the 60 or so families who control approximately 80% of the wealth in Mexico. Without the northern “safety valve” (the United States) for their poor, those poor MIGHT be inclined to do what America’s early colonists found it necessary to do: Revolt! Parenthetically, that would be MY suggestion for them: Instead of fleeing here – and converting “here” to a larger, more poverty infested version of “there,” they ought to stay there and make “there” into their version of “here,” whatever that would be. Revolutions ARE messy and there are no guarantees that they will produce the desired result. But – according to one T. Jefferson – they are often necessary. Never forget that THIS country was born in revolution!
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson ·
· For the NAFTA/CAFTA coveting US national ruling class – especially those who, in varying degrees, quest after some sort of One-World utopia run by guess who? – it provides yet another level of insecurity and tension among the indigenous populace which can be used to justify new and more draconian limits to freedom here. Instead of securing the borders, allow millions of illegals to come in and when the natives become alarmed, require a national ID card. “Your papers, please!” will soon become a phrase familiar to all. It’s Mr. Franklin’s trade of freedom for (false) security. It’s also the time-tested Hegelian Dialectic the One-Worlders have successfully worked like a rented mule.
While they occasionally squabble among themselves, the elites of history have ALL had one thing in common: They will do ANYTHING to remain in charge. And throughout that history, except for the 230 year-old experiment in freedom called “America,” most of the men who have walked the earth have lived as slaves to these elites whether they call themselves kings, emperors, potentates, sultans, czars – or presidents.
Get ready, folks. Unless some SERIOUS changes are made and the handful of Americans who CARE about liberty get involved, that history will almost certainly repeat here.
Now for the SPECIFICS of the matter:
My take on Bush's role in all of this is:
1. His long and apparently positive experience with the large hispanic population in Texas is largely responsible for his inaction on this alien invasion. And why wouldn't HIS experience with them be positive as he traveled in the highest, best-educated circles among them, not the Hispanic gangbangers and pine-straw spreaders...
2. Boy Jorge Bush was cared for by a Hispanic nanny for many years while his daddy was running Zapata Oil (into the ground).
3. His brother Jeb is married to a native of Mexico (the daughter of a migrant worker) and his nieces and nephews are mixed blood. And before you scream "ethnocentric bigot" at me, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But that fact -- and items 1 and 2 – DO predispose him to a warm and fuzzy feeling for folks from south of the Rio Grande.
And if -- in some strange and metastasizing American desire for a new royal family dynasty -- Jeb or his son should win the White House in some future presidential beauty contest designed to divert the American electorate every four years, I'd bet that HIS activities toward this alien invasion will make W's behavior look like a warm-up exercise.
Any vestige of Western European culture -- the culture MY great-grandparents and probably yours brought here after standing in line at places like Ellis Island, being interrogated, deloused and recorded -- will be a distant memory – IF it’s remembered at all.
And if — in some strange and metastasizing American desire for a new royal family dynasty — Jeb or his son should win the White House in some future presidential beauty contest designed to divert the American electorate every four years, I’d bet that HIS activities toward this alien invasion will make W’s behavior look like a warm-up exercise.
::::::
Very well stated, and thorough response. Thanks — it really says it all. Yes, Bush, and the dynasty that bred him, turned out to be a major utopian elitist caring NOT for the definition of America, the TRUE protection of its citizens to attack across its borders, or the horrid impact this travesty, which he has FOUGHT HARD to perpetuate, is causing to REAL AMERICANS, our system of laws, our security, our soverignty, the sanctity of an American citizenship, and the grotesque financial burden he has put on the American taxpayer.
How dare he ever use the word CONSERVATISM in the context of obeying the Presidential oath....
Signed: Liberal in high school...but I'm recovered now...
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