Posted on 11/29/2011 2:12:04 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
OK, Republicans. Since you’re so religious and all – it’s time for a little “come to Jesus meetin’”. If you’re not familiar with the term, click on the link. It’s time for a little harsh dressing down.
Do you realize what we have at stake in this election next year? This isn’t just about taxes, pork spending, social security benefits and repairing bridges. This is about saving our Republic. Do you know we’re already past our life expectancy? Economies and societies built on the rule of law, liberty and economic freedom have this troubling tendency to destroy themselves at around the 200 year mark. This happens when people figure out they can use the ballot box to get their hands on someone else’s stuff.
Well guess what, folks? We’re there. We’re past there. We’re on the ropes. We’re old – and durned near on our deathbed.
We have a president who was not raised as an American. Oh, I know. He’s a citizen and all that … but he was not infused during his formative years with how fortunate he was to have been born in this country and what it means to be an American. He lived in Indonesia, for crying out loud, for much of his childhood; that and Hawaii. Well guess what? I lived in Hawaii too, and I can tell you that as a student in Hawaiian schools you weren’t exactly saturated with American culture and history. Hawaiian history? Sure. And that’s understandable. Hawaiians are very proud of their heritage. But U.S. history? Only what the schools absolutely had to include. And that private school, Punahou, that Obama went to in Honolulu? Here’s another “guess what?” My sister taught there; right around the time that Barry was a student. Again – not a place where you’re going to learn what a blessing it is to be an American and a citizen of the greatest nation on earth … ever.
Our president thinks that American greatness comes from government. He believes that free enterprise is inherently evil. He is robbing us of our economic liberty as he institutes a command economy. He believes in using tax policy for income redistribution rather than raising the revenue needed to pay for the basic (Constitutional) functions of government. He said he was going to fundamentally transform the United States of America, and we stupidly didn’t ask him just how he planned to do that. Now we know. And now we know that for our children to have half a chance of improving on the standard of living that we have enjoyed – or even living as well as we have -- this man has to be sent back to a community organizing office behind a dry cleaner on the South Side of Chicago … STAT.
That brings us to Newt Gingrich and this little puddin’ storm over his comments on immigration. Newt suggested that we might not want to be rounding up people who have lived in this country – though illegally – for 25 years or so; during which time they raised families, started businesses, paid taxes and helped drive our economy; and ship them back to Mexico. As soon as those words were out of his mouth Michelle Bachmann – desperate for a way to ignite voters – started screeching about “amnesty.” In no time we had the ObamaMedia falling over itself to parrot the “amnesty” line and call Gingrich out on strikes.
Let the progs and libs play this thing any way they want … but you Republicans; you GOPers … could you make a special effort and try to get serious here for a minute or two? Think! I’ve done it on occasion, and I can promise it’s not painful.
Do we need to enforce our immigration laws? Absolutely! Does the border with Mexico need to be secured? No doubt. And Gingrich has said he would do just that. But a bit of realism needs to creep into this conversation.
I love analogies, so try this one: You come home from work to find a pipe has broken. Your home is flooded. What is the FIRST thing you do? Do you sit there and argue with people about how you’re going to get all that water out of your home? No. The FIRST thing you do is shut off the water. The same logic applies to our immigration problem. The first thing we do is secure our borders. Gingrich says he will shut them down.
OK … so the flood has stopped. NOW you start to clean up the mess.
Republican voters need to mature a bit on this issue …. Not one of your candidates has actually articulated a plan deport all illegals. Not one. And do you know just why that is? Because every single GOP candidate, including Bachmann, knows full well that there is no way in the world we’re going to round up every illegal in this country and send them south.
Try to imagine what the world will think of us (and it does matter) if we suddenly start looking for people who entered this country illegally 25 years ago; people who then married an American citizen, started a business, raised several children – all citizens – and who is now a vital and integral part of the American economy and his community, not to mention a husband, father and grandfather. So we find these people, and start shipping them back to Mexico. Can you hear the screams from the international community? Try these two words: “Ethnic cleansing.” Oh, I know. In reality we would just be expelling law-breakers … but you try to tell that to people we want to like and admire us that when they see that most of the people on the green busses have brown skin and dark hair.
I’m particularly amused by Bachmann’s (and other’s) claim that letting these people go through a process to gain legal residency status in America would be a “magnet” for more illegal immigration. Earth to Michelle. Our country is a magnet. Our way of life, our freedoms, our opportunities … all a magnet; a magnet much more powerful than giving some long-time illegal (but otherwise law-abiding) residents a break. What is Bachmann’s solution? Are we going to combat illegal immigration by making the United States a country to which nobody wants to emigrate? Seal the borders! Take the same actions to protect our borders that Mexico takes to protect theirs!
There’s a lot of anger on this issue. Understandable anger. We’ve had a succession of politicians and leaders who have steadfastly refused to do anything about what I call the Mexican invasion. And when a state (like Arizona) does try to address the situation, our federal government sides with the Mexican officials to go to court to get the enforcement actions stopped!
If it were not for the 17th Amendment to our Constitution, this story would read completely different .. but that’s another column.
So, Republicans --- instead of insisting that your candidate seek revenge on people who sought freedom and opportunity many, many years ago; try demanding that your candidate promise to do something to stem the tide as soon as he’s sworn in. Shut off the water. Close the borders. Once that’s been done we’ll seek out the illegals that pose a threat to our society and greet them with a clenched fist. Those who contribute to our society and want to join our family? Let’s greet them with an outstretched hand.
Neither 3% nor 6% sounds in the least bit reasonable because you have absolutely no reliable data to back those numbers up - unless, of course, you’re smarter, and more informed, than the Kaiser Foundation, the RAND Corporation, the CBO (under GWB), and on and on and ...etc, etc, etc, all of whom have made serious efforts to quantify the costs and benefits of illegal immigrants and have found that it is almost impossible to do so reliably and without making assumptions about core issues that, if changed slightly, dramatically change the results.
About the only really reliable conclusions seem to be that there is a mismatch between costs incurred and revenues received because the states tend to bear more of the costs, and the federal government to receive more of the revenues, but that the additional revenues to the federal government are not fed back to the states to cover the additional costs the states incur. For example, every year the Social Security Administration holds several billion dollars in a suspense account that represents payroll taxes that cannot be associated with a valid social security number. Those funds are not currently used to reimburse states for the costs they incur; if those funds were so used, then the current imbalance would be rectified, at least to some degree.
That issue is aggravated by the fact that even though federal law prohibits the provision of federal benefits to illegal immigrants, federal law mandates that the states provide various types of benefits to people without regard to any recipient’s immigration status.
So, the only conclusions that can be drawn are, basically, (a) no one knows, and the data have not heretofor been collected to test, whether illegal immigrants pose a net cost or a net benefit to the country, (b) there is a significant mismatch between which level of government incurs expenses and which receives the revenues associated with illegal immigrants, which obscures the issue and makes it much harder to derive any meaningful conclusions about whether illegal immigrants are a net cost or a net benefit to the country as a whole, and (c) the apparent costs of illegal immigrants to state and local governments are aggravated by federal immigration and social entitlements policy, which prohibit illegals from receiving federal benefits but mandate that states provide benefits without regard to immigration status.
A more sensible place to start fixing things, then, has very little to do with draconian, “heartless” policies like thuggish roundups of anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant or Quixotic, idiotic policies like building some trillion-dollar wall along the entire border with Mexico, and has a lot to do with aligning those costs and benefits that do occur and by changing federal law regarding the benefits that states are required to provide and by using excess social security funds that cannot be associated with a social security number to offset the costs that the states incur for providing those services (of course, that would also have the effect of bringing the social security ponzi scheme even closer to bankruptcy than it already is, but that’s a different discussion for a different thread).
Can’t you clowns get through a single post with something more than a reptilian, knee-jerk xenophobia? If you had something more than a welded-shut view to the general run of the commentary by the anti-immigrant cadre here it would have become painfully obvious that the primary aim is a wholesale roundup of anyone and everyone who cannot prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that they are entitled to be in the US - a standard that very few citizens, let alone legal residents, would be able to satsify - and characterizing that sort of a roundup as “thuggish” is perfectly apropos.
If the shoe fits, ....
LOL I’m glad you’re saying it in the open forum so more can see how you feel about us knuckle dragging conservatives.
LLS
“So, Republicans -— instead of insisting that your candidate seek revenge on people who sought freedom and opportunity many, many years ago;”
Read Thomas Sowell from yesterday boortz... you and the pudge ball pedro can GFY!
LLS
All I hear from you are supposed government numbers indicating the positive or negative effects of illegals on the system. You come here illegally and you apply for or receive benefits, you are getting what you are not entitled to because you should not be in the system. Period.
There is a best meaning for the word immigration and that is select the best reject the rest.
Immigration is not a policy of, ok you made it here so now what do we do with you. It is a policy of you think you can hang with the best? We will decide if you pass the test.
Why do I say this? Because you are asking a country to take in an unknown if you accept no controls. Allow this policy to reject the unknown bad or good from other lands that we have no reason to incorporate, until we judiciously allow.
I think the judiciously allow part might be hard for you?
I agree with him...BUT...I know some will “eat their own”(thumping your chest)then wring their hands when Obama takes the oath of office in January 2013
Because informed citizens like to know that garbage being fed to the masses by our media isn't always coming from left wing goons with no audience.
Yeah I suppose so, however I would have just posted a link to Neil’s blather, but that’s just me. Nothing personal.
Here's where I got my figures, straight from the mouths of La Raza. Now what percentage of illegals do you think come here and end up becoming the successful business owner/model illegal citizen families Neal throws up in order to justify his theory that Republicans ought to "grow up"? I'd be willing to state that more illegals have not assimilated at all (as in not even bothering to learn English, adopt American customs, learn our history, etc.) than have become successful business owners but I'd have as much trouble backing that claim up as Neal would have backing up his. Yet he makes it the centerpiece of his argument.
We should secure the border first. Then cut off federal funding to any sanctuary cities second. Then- work on getting rid of the anchor baby bill. That is the true magnet of illegal immigration. Born here, you are automatically a citizen of the US.
I’m sick of these open borders trolls spouting New York times talking points.
So Neal wouldn’t mind if I were to seek “a better life” by say breaking into and living in his house? Raiding his fridge and so on?
If you used that food to build a successful catering business he'd be OK with it because you made a better life for yourself.
Gee Neal, did it occur to you that, if you legalize them and give them the vote, approximately 70% of these illegals will be voting for this very thing? What an effin' moron you are!
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