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Please, A Little Honesty About Illegal Immigration
Townhall.com ^ | Febrary 16, 2012 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 02/16/2012 4:25:46 AM PST by Kaslin

President Barack Obama recently assured El Salvador that the United States would not deport more 200,000 Salvadorans residing illegally in the United States. As the election nears, and the president looks to court Hispanic voters, he also created a new position of "public advocate" for illegal immigrants. His duties would appear to be to advocate that millions circumvent, rather than follow, current federal law.

The administration has also said it will focus enforcement only on those who have committed crimes -- with the implicit understanding that it is no longer a crime to illegally enter and reside in the United States. In contrast, Obama has caricatured those supporting completion of a fence on the border as wanting to place alligators in the Rio Grande.

It is time that Americans revisit the issue and ponder very carefully the morality of entering the United States illegally.

True, American employers have welcomed in illegal aliens as a source of cheap labor. Employers were happy to pass the ensuing social costs on to taxpayers. To summarily deport those who have resided here for 20 years, obeyed the law, worked hard, stayed off public assistance and are now willing to pay a fine, demonstrate English proficiency and pass a citizenship test would be impracticable, callous and counterproductive.

Most, however, probably do not fit those reasonable criteria.

More importantly, we forget that the influx of millions of illegal aliens unfairly undercuts the wages of the working American poor, especially in times of high unemployment.

Crossing the border was also hardly a one-time "infraction." It was the beginning of serial unethical behavior, as illegal aliens on everyday forms and affidavits were not truthful about their immigration status.

The legal process of immigrating to America was reduced to a free-for-all rush to the border. Million of applicants abroad wait patiently, if not naively, in line to have their education, skills and capital resources evaluated. But they are punished with delay or rejection because they alone follow immigration law.

Billions of dollars in state and federal social services do not just help provide parity to illegal aliens, but also free them to send back about $50 billion in remittances to Latin America each year. That staggering sum also suggests that Mexico and other Latin American governments, as an element of national policy, quite cynically export human capital to gain U.S. dollars, rather than make the necessary economical, social and political reforms to keep their own at home.

Nor is it very liberal to turn illegal immigration into an issue of identity and tribal politics. Too many advocates for open borders and amnesty argue about the politics of ethnic solidarity rather than considerations of immigration law. In other words, we do not hear much national outrage over the plight of the occasional Pole, Nigerian or Korean who overstays his tourist visa, but rather equate the circumvention of immigration law almost exclusively with social justice for Latinos.

How reactionary and illiberal that debate has become, when Mexican Americans who object to the undermining of immigration law are slandered as sellouts, while non-Hispanics who do the same are smeared as racists and nativists.

In fact, illegal immigration unfairly warped perceptions of undeniable Hispanic success. If one does not include millions of recently arrived poor Latin American foreign nationals in federal and state surveys, then Hispanic American citizens prove statistically to be assimilating, intermarrying, integrating, and finding economic success at rates comparable to many other immigrant groups of the past.

To mean anything, laws have to be followed. When newcomers choose to ignore them, then the entire structure of jurisprudence crashes as well. If aliens are free to ignore federal immigration law, then cannot citizens likewise pick and choose which statutes they find inconvenient?

Finally, illegal immigration has wrongly been couched in terms of a xenophobic and insensitive exploiter preying on a more noble and defenseless guest. In truth, the United States is the most generous host in the world, and never more so than during the present age.

There are now about 40 million foreign-born people residing in the United States, both legal and illegal immigrants. That is both the greatest absolute number and percentage of the population in our nation's history. No other country in the world is more liberal in its legal immigration policies or has been more caring toward new arrivals. To suggest otherwise is dishonest and shows an ignorance of how most countries, who now export their citizens to the U.S., treat any who would do the same to them.

We can argue about the history or the future of illegal immigration. But please spare us the psychodramatic appeals to a higher morality.

In most regards, illegal immigration has proven as immoral as it is unlawful.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: aliens; amnesty; immigration; vdh

1 posted on 02/16/2012 4:25:52 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks Kaslin. Illegal immigration, a.k.a. armed invasion by drug cartels.


2 posted on 02/16/2012 4:34:29 AM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
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To: Kaslin

Obammy,
the president that just keeps on screwing America.
Yeah buddy, that little magic negro thing hasn’t quite worked out too well now has it?


3 posted on 02/16/2012 4:36:30 AM PST by Joe Boucher ((FUBO) Hey Mitt, F-you too pal)
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To: Kaslin

The administration has also said it will focus enforcement only on those who have committed crimes — with the implicit understanding that it is no longer a crime to illegally enter and reside in the United States

NONSENSE. Why is illegally crossing our border not a crime???
Hell I am a citizen and if I leave the country and come back in I need to show a paspoprt and other ID


4 posted on 02/16/2012 4:38:44 AM PST by SECURE AMERICA (Where can I sign up for the New American Revolution and the Crusades 2012?)
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To: Kaslin
"Alligators"?

I'd prefer minefields.

Can't have both, might hurt the gators.

5 posted on 02/16/2012 4:40:54 AM PST by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, a Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: Kaslin
There are many paths to the destruction of American sovereignty besides denuding the country of its nuclear defenses.


6 posted on 02/16/2012 4:47:37 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Kaslin

El Salvador is not worried that their people might be sent back for being illegal, or not treated fairly.

They just don’t want them back.


7 posted on 02/16/2012 4:57:20 AM PST by Venturer
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To: Kaslin

Wouldn’t it be worth the sensitivities of just one Salvadorena if we could also get rid of MS-13?


8 posted on 02/16/2012 5:01:13 AM PST by x1stcav (I'm voting for anyone in 2012 but an Ivy Leager.)
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To: spectre; truthkeeper; processing please hold; antceecee; navymom1; jaredt112; Edgerunner; ...

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
This is a ping list promoting Immigration Enforcement and Congressional Reform.
If you wish to be added or removed from this ping list, please contact me.

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9 posted on 02/16/2012 5:21:49 AM PST by bcsco
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To: All

SCOPE OF THIRD WORLD ON US SOIL
Hyphenates’ first loyalty is to their homelands.

Argentine Americans
Bolivian Americans
Chilean Americans
Colombian Americans
Costa Rican Americans
Cuban Americans
Dominican Americans
Ecuadorian Americans
Guatemalan Americans
Honduran Americans
Mexican Americans
Nicaraguan Americans
Panamanian Americans
Paraguayan Americans
Peruvian Americans
Puerto Ricans (stateside)
Salvadoran Americans
Spanish Americans
Uruguayan Americans
Venezuelan Americans


10 posted on 02/16/2012 5:31:26 AM PST by Liz
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To: Kaslin

As Obama rises in poll after poll, it just amazes me that this issue, above all, just won’t register on Americans’ minds. Even with “media” filtration, it isn’t hard to see we’re being invaded full-force. California’s slowly being “ethnically cleansed” of Anglos; look for the same to happen to other front-line states as well.


11 posted on 02/16/2012 5:44:46 AM PST by ScottinVA (GOP, meet Courage... Courage, meet GOP.)
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To: All
Mexico is the staging area for the Third World invasion of the US---(global terrorists bent on destroying America manage to slip in).

REFERENCE Mexico, South and Central America know vote-crazed US politicians will do anything to get votes.....including voting massive foreign aid to these Third World hellholes. The countries are financing border-violators----b/c these are their "voting blocs." The plan is to increase the demographics to get the votes loot the US treasury.

Wiki: The Mérida Initiative (also called Plan Mexico by critics) is a security cooperation agreement between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the declared aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational organized crime and money laundering. The monetary assistance includes training, equipment and intelligence.

In seeking partnership with the United States, Mexican officials point out that the illicit drug trade is a shared problem in need of a shared solution, and remark that most of the financing for the Mexican traffickers comes from American drug consumers. U.S. law enforcement officials estimate that US$12 to 15 billion per year flows from the United States to the Mexican traffickers, and that is just in cash, i.e., not including the money sent by wire transfers.

The U.S. Congress passed legislation in late June 2008 to provide Mexico with $400 million and Central American countries with $65 million that year for the Mérida Initiative. The initiative was announced on 22 October 2007 and signed into law on June 30, 2008. ============================================

Just the beginninng---expect billions of US tax dollars to land in the hands of greedy, salivating Third World federales.

12 posted on 02/16/2012 5:46:26 AM PST by Liz
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To: Kaslin
That staggering sum also suggests that Mexico and other Latin American governments, as an element of national policy, quite cynically export human capital to gain U.S. dollars, rather than make the necessary economical, social and political reforms to keep their own at home.

In July 2003, then congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado), gave Insight Magazine the following account of his conversation in Mexico with Juan Hernandez, head of the newly created Ministry of Mexicans Living in the United States. According to Mr. Tancredo:

“ I asked about the purpose of the government agency he heads, since I had never heard of such a thing. He said its purpose is to increase the flow of Mexican nationals to the United States. I asked, ‘Why?’

"’It serves Mexico's needs,’ he said, and ticked off a list of such things as remittances to Mexico of $10 billion a year, which is 30 percent of the Mexican GDP [gross domestic product]. It provides employment for an exploding population, it alleviates social instability due to rising unemployment and it provides training for Mexicans, ultimately repatriating those skills back to Mexico.

“I responded to his final aim - repatriation of trained and skilled Mexicans back into Mexico - and asked, ‘Then your government would oppose amnesty for the illegal Mexicans in the United States?’

“He cried, ‘Oh no! We support amnesty totally. . . . by populating the United States with millions of Hispanics who are tied economically, politically and linguistically to Mexico, we are able to exert enormous influence and pressure on U.S. policy and its dealings with Mexico.’

“President Vicente Fox believes the U.S. border is a figment of the imagination. In fact, Fox and/or members of his government stated at one point that the borders of Mexico extend much farther north than currently drawn on the map.

That any American citizen would not be outraged by this policy of the Mexican government is, in my mind, utterly incomprehensible. That any American president would encourage this agenda is, to borrow a phrase from former Democratic Senator Zell Miller, if not treason, certainly its first cousin.

13 posted on 02/16/2012 5:48:22 AM PST by Maceman (Liberals' only problem with American slavery is that the slaves were privately owned.)
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To: AuntB; Tennessee Nana; thouworm; Clintonfatigued; La Lydia; rintense

Vote-crazed US politicans love hyphenates.

These impoverished Third Worlders-——just here “for a better life”——buy faked/forged documents for several thousand dollars each, to establish multiple identities.

All of the identities ride the US gravy train.....AND EACH IDENTITY VOTES.


14 posted on 02/16/2012 5:49:27 AM PST by Liz
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To: Kaslin

You know we do not deserve to win in the arena of ideas if we continue to let the enemy within, on the left, define the terms of every debate, discussion, public discourse.

There is no such thing as illegal immigration, PERIOD.

An immigrant is a person attempting to come and be part of this country via the legal mechanisms our government sets up and IS SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW.

A person who tries to break in to this country via illegal means is not an immigrant. They are criminals, trespassers, invaders, sneak thiefs. Our own government is in partnership with these hordes of criminals and forces REAL US Citizens to pay for their education, medical bills, rent, etc.

Stop letting your sworn enemy define the terms of the debate. Grow a pair can call a criminal trespasser a criminal.


15 posted on 02/16/2012 5:53:42 AM PST by Wurlitzer (Welcome to the new USSA (United Socialist States of Amerika))
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To: Kaslin

With all of our long term unemployed, we should halt legal immigration, unless they can offer jobs to Americans.


16 posted on 02/16/2012 5:05:21 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: Kaslin

That sums it up.


17 posted on 02/17/2012 7:23:06 PM PST by La Lydia
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To: Kaslin
Obama has caricatured those supporting completion of a fence on the border as wanting to place alligators in the Rio Grande.

No alligators, but Texas is putting State Trooper in power boats armed with machine guns on the lakes formed by dams along the Rio Grande.


18 posted on 02/17/2012 11:04:01 PM PST by El Gato ("The second amendment is the reset button of the US constitution"-Doug McKay)
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