President "Do Wrong"

Were you aware that if you oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, you “don’t want to do what’s right for America”? President Bush said exactly that about those in opposition to the “immigration reform” bill that he and Teddy Kennedy wish to cram down our throats.

Bush made his remarks in a speech to students and instructors at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga. In the ultimate act of chutzpah, Bush championed the secretly negotiated bill that rewards millions of lawbreakers, in front of those who have chosen law enforcement as a career. Hardly the example I would want or expect from a U.S. president.

President Bush has repeated, mantra-like, that the “guest worker” program he favors isn’t amnesty. He can say it until he’s blue in the face, but any program that enables illegals to obtain a probationary card right away, in order to live and work in the U.S. is amnesty, regardless of what Mr. Bush wishes to call it.

The president is fond of claiming that the bill will “secure our border”. Does anyone really believe that our congress critters (or the president) are serious about securing the border? Remember last year, when Congress approved with much fanfare the building of a 700-mile fence along our southern border? They then quietly never appropriated the money for it. The new bill ( Senate Bill 1348), calls for only 370 miles of fence along the southern border. If they keep adjusting downward, they can probably just borrow the fence from Bush’s ranch in Crawford. Actually, Bush can probably just leave it where it is and announce, “mission accomplished” – at least he would have “border security” against the illegals, even if the rest of us don’t.

Bush also said in his remarks that the bill would “uphold the great immigrant tradition of the United States of America.” What tradition is that Mr. President? The tradition I remember is one in which immigrants came to this nation legally – not by breaking our laws. They came here to learn our language (that would be English, Mr. Bush). They came to learn our culture, our traditions and our history. They came to assimilate, and become proud Americans. They waited their turn, and they played by the rules. This bill rewards those who have no desire to do any of that, and is an insult to all those who have. Our immigrant tradition was one of a “melting pot”. This bill doesn’t simply throw out the pot – it breaks it in the process.

“Don’t want to do what’s right for America” also begs the question, “which America”? I suspect Bush means a North America with no borders. Author and columnist Jerome Corsi has written of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, concerning the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. According to Corsi, the Bush Administration is “secretly on the path to create a North American Union, a new currency – the amero – along the same stealth path that was used in Europe, keeping everything below the radar, by administrative decree, making it too late to stop before the American people finally realize what’s going on.”

Whether or not you buy into a coming “North American Union”, there can be little doubt that this president is a globalist. His stance on immigration (both legal, and illegal), coupled with plans for a “NAFTA Superhighway” are the reflections of someone who is not concerned with such “petty” issues as border control or our national sovereignty. Mr. Bush seems to believe that the more immigrants, the better. Why? Cheap labor, of course. And of course there’s the notion that the illegals “do the jobs Americans won’t do”. The president should know the basic dishonesty of this myth – it isn’t that Americans won’t do those jobs, it’s that they won’t do them that cheaply. As I heard a local radio talkshow host say recently, “If you want a salad with your dinner, pony up the extra nickel so that an American citizen will pick your damn lettuce!”

That’s what this whole thing really comes down to – money. The reason the illegals come here is for money, and U.S. services (which cost us money). The drain on our resources is staggering. Hospitals in border towns have closed due to losses from treating illegal aliens with no insurance. All manner of services including welfare, food stamps and the like have been consumed due to the “anchor baby” provision in our current law. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has just released a comprehensive report on the costs of illegal aliens. It is far too lengthy to cover in a short column, but its conclusions are astounding. From purely a taxes-to-benefits paid ratio, low-income immigrant households are receiving about three dollars in benefits and services for every dollar they pay in taxes. In business, that would be a negative cash flow problem of epic proportions.

Senate Bill 1348 must be stopped, but it will take continued grass roots action to do so.

You can stick a fork in the president – he’s done. True conservatives and those who wish to preserve the American culture know which side he is on. Call your congressmen and urge them to stop this destruction of our nation. Especially call those up for re-election in 2008.

The way to solve our crisis is not with lofty sounding “immigration reform” bills, nor “pathways to citizenship” – no, the answer lies in cutting off the source. Make the penalties so severe against employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens, that it becomes no longer worth the risk. Also cut out the “goodies” – reverse the law granting instant citizenship to babies born to illegal aliens while in the country (anchor babies). If the lure of jobs and “free” services dries up, so will the number of those would try to sneak over our border. That would be doing what is right for America.

Interesting that we Americans seem to forget a couple of things when talking about immigration—primarily that we are all descendants of the huddles masses yearning to be free. And that during the day of Ellis Island, all you had to do was get here, with or without “papers”.

We can't take in everyone who wants to come here. We already accept more legal immigrants, now 1.1 million a year, than the rest of the world combined. Ellis Island only operated from 1890 to 1924. You had to be processed including being given a physical. Immigration, supervised by the states if it was regulated at all before the 1880's. The 1885 Alien Contract Labor law presents one example of the difficulties of enforcing legislation without federal participation. Intended to protect the wages of American laborers, this law made it a criminal offense to import aliens under any prior contract for the performance of labor or service of any kind. The law made no provision for enforcement of its terms through inspection or deportation, and the states could not enforce it.

Congress passed a series of laws in this period which specified the kinds of individuals who would face deportation if they attempted to enter the United States. By 1917 the list was long. It included thirtythree classes of exclusions including: idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, previously insane persons, persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority, chronic alcoholics, paupers, professional beggars, vagrants, persons with tuberculosis, or "Loathsome or dangerous contagious disease," anyone with a physical or mental defect which might affect his ability to earn a living, those who had committed crimes involving "moral turpitude," polygamists, anarchists, ....

"Wealthy immigrants that traveled first class and second class would get automatic entry into the United States. First they had to pass a six second physical examination. Those with visible health problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island's hospital facilities for long periods of time. Next they were asked 29 questions including name, occupation, and the amount of money they carried with them. Generally those immigrants who were approved spent from three to five hours at Ellis Island. However more than three thousand would-be immigrants died on Ellis Island while being held in the hospital facilities.

Some unskilled workers and immigrants were rejected outright because they were considered "likely to become a public charge." About 2 percent were denied admission to the U.S. and sent back to their countries of origin for reasons such as chronic contagious disease, criminal background, or insanity.

And, that, if, during WWII if we had let some of those ships in to the US, fewer Jewish people would have been exterminated like bugs by the Nazis. It’s the same as saying “Well, I passed the bar exam, now let’s tighten up the rules and make it harder for the rest”.

We still bring in asylum seekers and refugees. In FY2003, there were 42,114 claims for asylum filed with USCIS, and by the close of the fiscal year, there were 262,102 asylum cases pending at USCIS. The vast majority of the 500,000 to 1 million who enter this country illegally each year are not asylum seekers or refugees.

My true concern is this: Once the primarily Mexican population is here, can our mushy education system teach them what they need to know to maintain a democracy? A true democracy cannot be maintained with uneducated, easily manipulated people that cannot think critically and that is the larger problem the way I see it. Also, we need to require assimilation, mainitain strict limits on social programs so that people are self sufficient.

Just meaningless platitudes that have no relation to the reality on the ground. We are being invaded in huge numbers. We can't assimilate them for that very reason. Most of them are the poor and uneducated of Latin America. We are "importing" high school dropouts. Just based on US high school dropouts, we know from social pathology that they are going to have a hard time in our society and will be at the bottom of the economic ladder. Hispanics in the US have the highest dropout rates and out of wedlock pregnancies.

Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability. The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate – even more than unbounded levels of immigration – will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades.

I don't disagree with any of your statements, as far as they go.
I agree totally with the concerns listed in paragraph two.

However, the problem is that we now have a massive influx of arrivals who (a) know they are breaking laws imposed since 1910 (Ellis Island), who (b) have shown themselves antagonistic to assimilation, and (c) contribute to decline of schools, medical care, fiscal policy, and simple safety on our streets....and no one so far has been willing to seriously restrict them.

It may also be wise to differentiate between people fleeing from persecution or occupation and people stopping over for the bucks and for paved streets. It may be characterized as 'something we forget' or as 'political porn' but it's an issue that has to be addressed and 'our' president and 'our' elected representatives are addressing it from the wrong side.

As to president Bush, despite several outstanding threats to our sovereignity, as well as an ongoing war, he chooses to force this pet policy just in time to trash his own legacy as well as cohesion within his own party and the nation at large.

It's not easy to admire that.

Been my experience that people who are accused of something get all bent out of shape when they know the accusation have more then a grain of truth in them. If the accusations are absurd then tend to just laugh at the accusers.

I think the reason why old “Conservatives” are getting so bent out of shape here is they know there was more then a bit of truth in the President’s statements about them.

There is more then a whiff of “Know Nothingism” around the Immigration debate that is seriously damaging the Conservatives argument. The hyper hysteric bile and over heated rhetoric pouring out of the “Conservative” media makes people who MIGHT otherwise agree with the argument suspicious of the motivations of those making the argument. They all are just a bit too emotional on this topic to be taken seriously.

Preaching to the choir may make all the little ‘Net warriors feel all macho and cool, it will not advance their political agenda one iota.

To advance your agenda you have to reach people who may only partially, or slightly, agree with your views. Screaming hate and bile at anyone who does NOT agree only 100% with the personal dogmas of the screamers, is not going to win this fight.

But frankly, I suspect the "Conservative" establishment and it's drones really do not want to win. So much easier for them to just be an angry fringe screaming mindlessly about everything then to actually do the heavy lifting it requires to be an effective part of the political process.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.