Posted on 11/18/2003 1:13:34 PM PST by quidnunc
London – Immigration in Britain, as in the United States, is a sort of subterranean political issue. Opinion polls regularly show that the great majority of Brits and Americans favor lower levels of immigration and stricter rules on entry, but the elites (Republicans and Democrats, Labor and Tories, Big Business and Big Labor) in both countries support higher levels and laxer rules — and some even favor "open borders."
This produces an unstable hegemony of the elites. Legal immigration is now almost a million new arrivals a year and the many illegal immigrants are deported only if they have committed an additional crime. And because both parties are in agreement, these major national changes pass uncriticized. Every now and then, someone proposes to ease immigration restrictions too far — whereupon the people wake up and growl. For instance, last year the Bush administration floated the idea of an amnesty for the approximately 3 million illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States.
This provoked a popular outcry, the administration backed off, and both parties are now seeking to solve the riddle: How do you grant an amnesty to illegal immigrants without granting an amnesty. (Answer: Describe amnesty as "earned" legalization, which is the argument now being used to justify the McCain-Kolbe-Flake bill before Congress.)
Something similar has just happened in Britain. Immigration levels there have been rising silently in recent years, but the public only began to take notice with the recent publication of figures showing that more than 150,000 immigrants had arrived last year. Then David Blunkett, the Home Secretary in charge of immigration law, remarked that there was no "obvious limit" to the number of "economic migrants" that Britain could comfortably absorb. As with the amnesty of Mexican illegals, this provoked an outcry. And the seeming consensus on Britain's need for immigration began to fray.
Anyone familiar with the U.S. debate on immigration would find the British debate eerily similar. As in America advocates of higher immigration, like Blunkett, argue (a) that it is needed for economic growth, (b) that it benefits the host community economically, and (c) that in an aging economy pensions and other entitlements will collapse without immigrants to pay into the system. In the light of international experience, all three arguments are invalid. Take each in turn:
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(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
1. Continued curtailment of Second Ammendment rights.
2. Continued open border with Mexico.
3. No attempt to curb "zero tolerance" stupidity in public institutions and policy.
4. No attempt to "reign in" destruction of the second half of the First Amendmant.
There are other issues, but these are the hottest. I hope those congresscritter readers that allegedly read this site are looking at this reply.
Where are you going to house them? NYC is pretty crowded as is. Even with reduced immigration, you'd still be talking a couple of hundred thousand people every year. What about people here on specialized, short-term work visas?(think about academics teaching at a US university for 6-12 months) Does it really take a year of study to learn how to be a US citizen?
Your other proposals would also serve to keep out about 500,000 retired Canadians who live in Florida and other warm spots in the US ("snowbirds") who are allowed to be in the US for 6 months a year, but tend to stay year round. Few of them become citizens, but they contribute a lot of money to the US economy.
Financial
Contact the local hospital, school district, fire district (or paramedics), and jail. Estimate the case-load of illegals in each institution as a percentage of the total. Ask the controller for each what are his total variable costs for services. Multiply total variable costs by percentage of illegals. Contact the County CFO. Get the amount of the budget for each of those funcitons. If you want to get sophisticated, ask what might be saved in overtime costs without illegals. The total is an easily defensible number for what your County actually stands to save on those costs.
NOTE: Use only variable costs. The people and equipment don’t go away when you get rid of the illegals.
NOTE: If you replace illegals with comparable legal residents, many of them will be medically uninsured and will represent no medical cost savings. The true savings will be getting rid of criminals and getting citizens off welfare roles.
Realize that public schools get money for their enrollment, legal or otherwise. If your schools have a third illegals, think of what that impact means to their cash flow. You will probably have some unused classrooms and have to lay off some teachers, but then, once you replace illegal workers, you may not reduce the census that much. That’s the first cut (and the easiest).
Then estimate the number of unemployed who might get jobs if the illegals were gone. That may in fact be your biggest cost savings. Realize, if it was a mining or ranching town, you will have difficulty getting many of them to work as house cleaners, gardeners, and busboys.
Be conservative with these numbers. If you want to replicate the program to other counties, your officials will have to back you up that your estimates were good when they get the call. The key is to have HONEST cash flow calcs ready, not assumptions. You might need a CPA with government experience more than a lawyer.
Political
Remember: they aren’t used to enforcing the law. Get your local population educated to the idea of electing a Sheriff who will face down the Federal government. Between FAIR, Mountain States Legal, and various other reform think tanks, there is enough information out there on the legal powers sheriffs possess.
I disagree completely about going to judges for advice. A lot of them are Masons and thus have dual loyalties. Be careful on this one. Check them out thoroughly before approaching anyone. Be especially on guard for the agent provocateur who will lay down and roll over at the critical moment.
Sheriffs are the top LEO in each County. They have been avoiding trouble with the States and Feds by not enforcing the laws we want enforced. They will have to believe that we will support them if they show courage and vote them out if they don’t. Remind them of this:
"The federal Gov't may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command State' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. It matters not whether policy making is involved, and no case by case weighing of the burdens or benefits is necessary; such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty."
Justice Antonin Scalia, Mack vs US., June 27, 1997
Note: “regulatory programs” are not necessarily statutes.
Don’t expect much from help from democracy.
Steps to Implementing Law Enforcement
Step 0. The most productive cut is to get rid illegals with a criminal background. They are not only a hazard and a cost in the usual sense, they will be the ones most likely to get seriously violent and destructive when you start the rest of the program. I don’t know how to go about that, but I see it as critical.
It would be really neat if somebody could start a service business that would run the checks, identify origins and residential status, GUARANTEE that the findings were accurate subject to third party audit, and issue a private form of ID, basically saying, ‘Well, they’re clean in every respect except that they are illegals. At least we know they aren’t terrorists.’ Don’t count on FedGov for help here. They will be too slow to be effective.
That may seem wimpy to you, but getting rid of criminals will keep more LEO resources available for the rest of the program. Remember: this is about pulling this off on a shoestring. These counties are already hurting. Crimes are expensive. This is a way to reduce costs and clear out detention facilities for when the time comes.
Step 1. Set up local 800 numbers and a web site (updated daily) listing available jobs and housing in the County. Advertise its existence. Put the infrastructure in place to manage the transition first and make sure it works or you will be caught in the lurch because speed is necessary in the rest of this program.
Step 2. Retain extra sheriff’s deputies or obtain a list of volunteers. Train them.
Step 3. Advertise for legal workers for the local restaurants, farms, ranches, gas station to replace the workers who will be leaving (radio is most cost effective, Spanish too). Announce in the newspapers of the surrounding counties that the lack of enforcement of illegal employment will end by a specific date. I suggest 30 days. Target the date when seasonal operations are slow. Warn businesses to expect acts of vandalism and theft when the illegals leave. Illegals will start leaving right away creating housing and job openings if there was a shortage. Welfare costs for illegal aliens should fall. This alone will do much for your local budget and taxes.
Start enforcing vagrancy laws to round up the displaced workers. Offer them a bus ticket to Vegas in lieu of detention and delivery to the INS office in Vegas (that’s right, give them to Clark County (hehehehe)). Remember to move no faster than the local detention facility (or the bus line) can handle.
NOW YOU START SIEZING RESIDUAL ASSETS. All assets not removed from the County must be assigned by the illegal alien to be sold with registered agents or they will be seized by the Sheriff and sold. These funds will be divided between the Sheriffs Office and the County budget offices for expenses.
Start advertising those assets as inducements for more legal workers. By this time you had better see the legal workers arriving or you are in deep pucky. Remember also to have some extra volunteer deputies on hand for the likely acts of vandalism and theft when these weasels leave. Step 4. Start enforcing the employment laws by pulling the business license of any operation that employs illegal aliens. My suggestion is that you start with the restaurant industry. Restaurants are a social node, a place from which the word will get out in a hurry.
This hits the corporate franchise as hard as the locally owned businesses. If you do the sequence properly (hitting the corporations first) locally owned businesses will be the immediate beneficiaries of their competitors’ customers. That keeps more cash in town.
Step 5. Now start instituting your fines for employers of illegals. This would prompt employers to demand that their employees bring in verification of legal residency. That’s where the third party listed above comes in. This keeps the government out of our personal records any more than necessary.
I think this one is foolish unless it is done after a grace period and after implementing the rest of the program. Otherwise, you are expecting the Sheriff, as an elected official, to run around fining business people, the largest group of campaign donors in his constituency. It won’t happen.
Second, you are saddling the businesses in your county with fines when they are in a recession in an impoverished area. If you want them to go broke, fine, but how will they then hire legal residents without cash?
Third, you are making the businesses in your county that export out of the county less competitive with other counties in the area, so even if they comply they might go broke anyway.
Fourth, many will dispute the fines and that will saddle the County with expensive legal costs. It is politically untenable to arrest and fine people giving aid or care to illegal aliens.
When counties have adopted these measures and start refusing Federal funds, State officials will realize that citizens are serious about protecting their communities.
Only when they start electing legislators on this basis however, will it prompt them to demand that law enforcement agencies enforce ALL the laws or their budgets will be cut.
So were you aware of this little tid bit?
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20031117-085550-1804r.htm "....The Marches also met with Mrs. Feinstein. She came out of the meeting, they believed, with real passion for solving the problem. "During that meeting," Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman said, "my boss made a commitment that she would do everything she could to try to bring back Mrs. March's husband's killer."
In August, Mrs. Feinstein wrote Mexican President Vicente Fox asking him to change Mexico's extradition policy. Last week, she introduced a resolution, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, calling on President Bush to renegotiate the extradition treaty. Her statement said "at least 350 people have committed murder and other major offenses in California, fled to Mexico to escape prosecution, and have either not been extradited or have been effectively rendered nonextraditable...."
...but the powers are trying their level best.
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