Posted on 05/17/2015 8:06:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said the United States needs to curb legal immigration along with illegal immigration, and fast. We need a timeout, don't you know, and the only folks who favor letting more foreigners in are monocle-wearing, cigar-smoking elitists:
High immigration rates help the financial elite (and the political elite who receive their contributions) by keeping wages down and profits up. For them, what’s not to like? That is why they have tried to enforce silence in the face of public desire for immigration reductions. They have sought to intimidate good and decent Americans into avoiding honest discussion of how uncontrolled immigration impacts their lives.
Yeah, the intimidation on anti-immigration beliefs is so strong that only one of the potential Republican presidential candidates, Jeb Bush, is openly in favor of current (much less expanded) levels of immigration. And note that when Sessions (like a lot of restrictionists) talks about "uncontrolled immigration," he's not even talking about illegal immigration. He's talking about the "million mostly low-wage permanent legal immigrants who can work, draw benefits and become voting citizens."
Sessions' views on immigration are not only factually incorrect, they are influential in the GOP. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has said that he changed his mind on the topic after listening to Sessions' arguments about restricting newcomers. Walker used to be a lot like Jeb Bush. Not no more.
Elsewhere, Sessions has railed against Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for multiple reasons, not least of which is that any sort of agreement "could facilitate immigration increases above current law." Like a good populist, Sessions keeps pushing the idea that TPA, which has been used in such situations since 1974, will somehow lead to Congress voting on a deal it isn't allowed to read ahead of time. That's simply not true. The negotiations between the American team and the other countries are confidential (which makes sense). The TPP will be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Not secret.
As I wrote at The Daily Beast this week, Republican animus against i
Georgetown Bookshopimmigration is wildly out of line with the rest of the country. Fully 84 percent of Republicans say they are "dissatisfied" with current levels of immigration (presumably, they want them decreased). Yet just 39 percent of all Americans say they are dissatisfied and want to see a decrease.
Last fall, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 60 percent of Americans want to give illegals a path to citizenship—a figure that that "jumps to a whopping 74 percent if you qualify that the undocumented immigrants must take steps like paying back taxes."
In the 2012 election, Mitt Romney pulled just 27 percent of the increasingly important Hispanic vote. That was despite the fact that Barack Obama is, in Nowrasteh’s accurate term, “Deporter in Chief” who repatriated more immigrants far more quickly than George W. Bush. Hispanics aren’t stupid—44 percent of them voted for immigrant-friendly Bush in 2004. They knew things could always get worse and probably would for them under Romney.
With 2016 coming into clearer and clearer focus—and with Hillary Clinton doing her own flip-flop on immigration and now embracing newcomers—the GOP and its presidential candidates have a choice to make. They can follow Ronald Reagan’s example and embrace libertarian positions on immigration and free trade. Or they can follow Jeff Sessions’s retrograde populism and see just how few Hispanic votes they can pull.
Good luck with the future, Republicans, if you follow Jeff Sessions' lead on immigration.
Bump.
Mexico did not want to settle Texas. They regarded Texas as largely a wasteland, and encouraged Anglos to settle there as a buffer between Mexico and the Comanche and Apache, whom they feared. It was only after Anglos made a successful colony that they decided they were interested in Texas.
libertarians very much split on at least 3 issues:
immigration, abortion, the war in Iraq.
libertarians are very much for religious freedom, for a baker, pharmacist or any person being able to practice his religion.
On many issues the label is not the substance. libertarians are for free trade. The original NAFTA proposed by Reagan was free trade. But then lobbyists, environmentalists, unions, and dozens of other special interests turned NAFTA into a Christmas tree. So those supporting or opposing FREE TRADE are stuck with a monster.
Likewise on immigration. Historically one did not need the permission of the government to immigrate to the US. That was libertarian. Historically the law forbade the immigration of prostitutes, indigent aka welfare recipients, and other undesireables.
Welfare to immigrants is now the big problem. 90% of illegals are desireables. But 10% of immigrants (legal and illegal) are undesireables. The problems of that 10% make all immigrants look bad. But the libertarian position isn’t even on the table yet. Hopefully Huckabee, Rubio, Paul and others will coalesce around a libertarian immigration plan.
NO WELFARE TO IMMIGRANTS, legal or illegal.
Jeff Sessions / Last American Standing bump for later...
Nick Gillespie. Jeff Sessions.
Not much of a choice to make.
Thanks Cringing Negativism Network. It is an interesting article
Jeff Sessions files amendments and ask important questions.
“With Congress set to vote to begin debate on fast-track authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the White House still refuses to answer even the most basic questions about it. These are the questions Senator Sessions says the White House will not answer:
Will it increase or reduce the trade deficit, and by how much?
Will it increase or reduce employment and wages, and by how much?
Will you make the “living agreement” section public and explain fully its implications?
Will China be added to the TPP?
Will you pledge not to issue any executive actions, or enter into any future agreements, impacting the flow of foreign workers into the United States?
Proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership want Congress to fast-track it before the American people know what’s in it. They want us to trust that enforcement will occur, even though it has not in the past. They want us to trust that the President won’t utilize this broad new avenue to expand foreign worker programs, even though his record demonstrates that he will. They want us to trust that this time is different.”
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/20291-sen-jeff-sessions-files-amendments-issues-%E2%80%98critical-alert%E2%80%99-tpp-effects-us-sovereignty
Jeff Sessions for President
Looks very Stephanopoulosish.
Another libertarian too stupid to understand that immigrants, legal and illegal, tend to be poor, on government welfare, and most have no ties to our founding principles and traditions. They are natural socialists. And so, too many libertarians are libertarians for socialism.
They also seem to believe that "free trade" is THE most sacrosanct issue and litmus test for candidates, willing to tolerate anyone and everyone as long as they oppose tariffs of any kind, even when those tariffs are retaliation in kind for currency manipulation on the part of our trade "partners."
Wrong again Nicky. Cruz wants to expand immigration too. I doubt Cruz and Bush are alone on that though...
Like this:
I amp#9825; Sessions
replace amp with &
Even Milton Friedman recognized that you can either have a welfare state or open borders while maintaining a civil society, but you can't have both. The Libertarian ideal is no welfare state and open borders, which, while bad enough, wouldn't be the disaster that we have today. However, Libertarians know that they won't eliminate the welfare state any time soon because no Democrats and few Republicans want to do this. So what do they do? They campaign on the open borders issue instead, knowing that on THAT count they'll have full Democrat and majority Republican cooperation, completely forgetting their own hero Friedman's advice on the subject.
Putting the cart before the horse is always stupid, in this case it's suicidal.
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