Posted on 01/07/2004 11:29:59 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
Press conference starts at 2:45 EST....get the prilosec out...we are going to need it.
I guess we don't have to worry, as this guy has shown he is neither!
This is the same argument plantation owners in the south made on behalf of slavery and its effect on the price of cotton.
Americans are ingenious people. Take away the lazy solution (slaves and indentured servants) and they tend to come up with new-fangled ways of increasing productivity and efficiency that are the envy of the world.
We don't need cheap labor with all its attendant social and political costs. We can do better. Much better.
Tax cuts are exactly that—legalization of tax evasion. Some people evade taxes because they are criminals; many more evade taxes because taxes are too high. Lowering tax rates reduces the population of that latter category, freeing up enforcement resources to focus on the former category. Tax revenues and compliance with tax laws go up.
Similarly, some employers violate immigration law because they are criminals, but most violate the law because the law is too onerous. Reduce the law's burden and resources are freed to focus on those with criminal intent. When employers violate unworkable OSHA or EPA or IRS regulations, we generally take their side here. What makes you think the INS (or whatever they call it these days) is the one efficient, benevolent bureaucracy in the gubmint?
Actually, the tax evasion analogy helps show why this will work. The Reagan amnesty didn't structually change immigration law, it just gave some people a free pass. In that sense the Reagan amnesty was like a one-time tax rebate (like those silly "muffler" checks that got mailed out in 2002). It didn't change anyone's long-term behavior because it didn't alter the law's burden. This plan, by contrast, makes a genuine change to the law, and will change behavior the same way tax cuts do.
The unborn would beg to differ.
But two things he has done recently are simply "stupid" and now one has reached the political threshold of "unforgiveable":
1. He signed the Campaign Finance Reform Act, and
2. He is now doing this.
#1 I can understand. He did it because of "politics", but made an serious error in judgment, i.e. he figured if he wouldn't stand up for the Constitution - just like Congress wouldn't - at least the Supreme Court would and he wouldn't have to take the heat either ... but, BIG stupid mistake...
#2 I cannot understand at all. Not at all. Bush now owns the immigration problem! He has completely discredited long-standing attempts to secure our borders and our nation from waves of illegal immigrants. This will ruin the struggling economy, will overwhelm our state and national welfare and medical support systems and destroy them, it will make our balance of payments worse, it will cause immense social upheaval, it will result in a Democrat victory in 2004 as this Administration is shunned and ignored in disgust by it's very base at the polls. Likely there will be increasing violence as the border states become more pro-Mexican and estranged from the rest of the country and we see de facto "ethnic cleansing" and sky-high resentment (just read through this thread if you want some examples of this).
I don't expect this can turn out peacefully now as this pressure cooker of problems will now be accepted as "normal" by both parties and something we must adapt to. We have just now increased our internal problems exponentially - not solved them - by compromising our national fabric, cohesion, laws and respect the system can any longer "solve" this problem. This is not a solution, only a harbringer of worse to come.
Political correctness, Liberals, lawyers and endless political pandering will do the business of destruction soon enough as we become an ungovernable mess like Yugoslavia with every ethnic and alien faction vying for politial power and supremacy while the ones who hold the Constitution dear are increasingly marginalized in scorn.
I think the only solution is the "California" solution - a wave of resentment sweeping away all current politicans which brings in an entirely new team. Who that will or could be, I have no idea. But, it probably won't be soon enough before awful damage is done.
/rant
So temporary workers who in the past did not return to their country when the work was done, are now going to do just that because Bush said they must? Who would have ever thought the solution to our illegal immigration problem would be so simple?
It is a strange day indeed when a Democrat is vying for the conservative vote, and trying to look middle of the road to a Republician ,who in turn appears to be too far to the left.
Oh, BTW- You have always had an anti- Constitutional stand in any discussion with me. So just my observation, no kool aid, just persoanl experience.
It also will not stop taxpayers from funding this entire thing -- you know, the very people supposedly saving money on products and services with cheap labor.
This benefits no one but greedy companies.
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