Immigrant Realities: President Bush's proposal helps America's security and economy

Opinion Journal ^ | 01/06/04 | editorial board

[Pokey78]

The debate over President Bush's new immigration reform has so far been mainly about election-year politics. But what we believe most commends it is that it recognizes the world as it exists.

Like it or not, the U.S. is part of an integrating regional and world economy in which the movement of people across borders is inevitable. Despite nearly 20 years of efforts to "crack down on the borders," the immigrants keep coming--an estimated eight million without legal U.S. documents today. As long as the per capita income differential between the U.S. (nearly $32,000) and Mexico ($3,679) continues to be so wide, we can't stop immigrants short of means that will violate our traditions, our conscience, and our national interest.

[DrDeb]

OK, I understand now. In the future, I will poll Freepers first, THEN form my opinions accordingly. Got it!

[BlackbirdSST]

OK, I understand now. In the future, I will poll Freepers first, THEN form my opinions accordingly. Got it!

It would be a good place to start wouldn't you think? What do you use to form an opinion? Blackbird.

[CaptIsaacDavis]

If you are a "libertarian" then you have my sympathies, and I hope you get help. If not, and care about truth and liberty, then perhaps the following observations might further the cause.

Even if 90% of them just want to work, it is precisely because they are ILLEGAL, and thus unscreened by the State Department, that a much higher % of the migrants are terroristic criminals. Legal immigration and illegal invasion are two entirely different issues.

Studies show that some 12.5% of the 2.2MM prison population consists of illegal aliens. 18 of the 19 terrs on 9/11 were illegals. Some 40,000 of those who suffered violent deaths since 1968 were murdered by illegal aliens. That's a lot of funerals -- because the government failed to defend the border.

I'll bet you live in the suburbs. I have spent the better part of my life on the front lines of the "culture war" in the Bronx and Riverdale, as well as Lowell, MA (a dumping ground for the INS), and have watched first-hand what is the greatest human migration in the history of man occur. Tens of millions have been fleeing wastelands in cities across this country since the early 1970s, while tens of millions of illegals have moved in. Families, cousins, and friends have moved out of my neighborhoods not because they want suburban homes, but in circa 90% of the cases solely because of acts of violence against them or their neighbors by undocumented aliens. Then on 9/11, the first jet flew right over my head and the rest is history. It was not the first shot in what Balint Vasonyi correctly called "America's 30 Year War" (extending back to Johnson's changes in immigration policy -- great book, check it out) -- it was the last. The administration first failed to defend the border, then moved to build a police-state and destroy the 4th Amendment, and then surrendered.

What do you care living in suburban bliss or a city where the illegals aren't running wild? Let someone else pay the price for my Utopian ideals? Those people in the "urban" areas live "over there" -- abstract and out of mind. Well, the cancer is not just "urban" anymore.

People are dying every day from this invasion....

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Want them to go home fast and stay triple their payroll taxes to pay for the lazy ones that wont work .

And disband all MENChA groups across all college campuses across the US

[Texasforever]

Why? Because it doesn't have comparable counterbalance, let's say from Europe

Yep that is what we need, more European socialists coming here to impose their "workers" paradise on us. Get real. Europe is completely socialist now and the last thing we need is their influence here regardless of what any of us think about the Mexican immigration issue.

[Texasforever]

People are dying every day from this invasion....

Wow! Who?

[Print]

"Yep that is what we need, more European socialists coming here to impose their "workers" paradise on us. Get real. Europe is completely socialist now and the last thing we need is their influence here regardless of what any of us think about the Mexican immigration issue."

Considering obvious narrow-mindedness of your post, let me put it in lay terms: have you ever thought about racial composition of this country?

[thepitts]

bush, one term wonder.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Good to see the criminal figure revised downward by 90%.

I don't think you'll find an argument from GWB that the situation is not good. His plan is to indeed document those who are currently undocumented. One has to start somewhere. Pragmatism and realism seem to be two characteristics of GWB's approach, not only on this issue but others as well.

You are correct in assuming most of my life has been lived in suburban areas. Today I live in a trailer park in a town of about 40,000 where the hispanic population is large and the unemployment rate is low.

I am under no illusion that a violent crime cannot happen anytime, anywhere. I've walked through some of the nastiest parts of LA and Chicago, spent months here and there in an urban environment. While I don't particularly care for it, I was not cowering in fear.

In short, these millions of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are not all on a mission to wreak havoc. With or without them, there is a ton of work to do, including a practical way of documenting these folks and allowing thewm the same opportunities we've enjoyed by virtue of our forefathers.

[CaptIsaacDavis]

I sure hope you weren't being a wise-guy on such a sad subject. If not, this is one of dozens of sites tallying the cost... http://www.immigrationshumancost.org/text/crimevictims.html

[applemac_g4]

>The guest made the point that as American workers age and are
>better and better educated.

If you think that the education level of our general populace is increasing, you need to do some research. Yes, more people are going to college and graduating. That says more about how various degrees in our society have been devalued than anything else. And asserting that such jobs will go unfilled and that there's a maximum cap on what people can pay for certain tasks is silly.

Go try and buy an apple in Japan sometime. You'll have instant sticker shock. If we need to pay more for our food, so be it.

You make one hell of an assumption in saying that xenophobia motivates us. Take me for instance. I'm a second generation *legal* immigrant (not from Mexico) who grew up in Texas. I've seen the problems caused in my hometown by wave after wave of at best uneducated and at worst criminal illegals invading the state. We have no business further damaging our standard of living by allowing illegal immigrants into the United States.

In a way, it's a sad commentary that this level of patriotism and clear thinking eludes self-professed "WASPs" like yourself whose great-great-grandparents got off the boat generations ago.

[Texasforever]

I sure hope you weren't being a wise-guy on such a sad subject. If not, this is one of dozens of sites tallying the cost...

Look, your crocodile tears don't move me especially when shed for political reasons.

[CaptIsaacDavis]

Great...There was no revision downward, only a redefinition into two categories: criminals and "terroristic criminals." In numerous countries the maximum penalty for the crime of invading a foreign country without government approval, is, the most extreme. Here, it is also heavy -- 10 year + sentences (even heavier for the criminals that employ them), that is, if prosecutors don't dismiss charges for one reason or another (a common practice that Ashcroft recently imposed measures to prevent).

The premise of your latest argument is that of a plantation owner:"there is a ton of work to do." As the "owner" of that suburban plantation over the long-run it seems to me that you have three basic options, bring them in legally (screened) -- the position that accomodates democratic left-wing progressivism with pseudo-conservative libertarianism in an alliance to annihilate the nation-state, bring them in illegally (the position of destroyers of liberty and order), or 3 abandon the plantation and have more kids (Americans to fill those needs) -- the latter being the position of Federalists and conservatives through the 1960s (before the movement was contaminated with anarchistic drivel from neo-libertarians defiling Jefferson's ideals). Cultural terrorism from the Left has created a society in which America slaughtered 36MM kids through "legal" abortions since 1972 (one that Pope John Paul II compared to Hell on Earth by calling it a "Culture of Death") and replaced them with about the same number of legal and illegal immigrants. The greatest tragedy in the history of man...So now we are supposed to live and let live -- and let them do it all over again, only on a more massive scale in coming decades?

By the way, when one has a 78 year old grandmother fight off (successfully!) a mob of 4! young Domicans (they were shocked!), go through 9/11 knowing damned well that it could have been prevented if we had even border security at a level that Britain has (the barest minimum for a "real country"), hear of neighbors attacked repeatedly over the course of 20 years by such thugs, and then hear of cases of people be prosecuted for daring to defend themselves in a "society" that goes out of its way to keep decent people utterly defenseless to the predations of hostile invaders, it is not "cowering in fear" for neighbors to move out. It is common sense. Cowering in fear is letting the criminals be effectively PARDONED because the WH doesn't have the courage to uphold the law and the constitution -- and all in return for obtaining votes and money for political campaigns ("influence peddling" for all those in the GOP who make such a quid pro quo explicit).

[CaptIsaacDavis]

Nice try, but it won't work. Your claim of being conservative is a fraud. Go back to moveon.org

[Texasforever]

Your claim of being conservative is a fraud. Go back to moveon.org

Let's just say I am not your kind of "conservative" The kind of "conservative" than shares moveon.org's desire to get rid of Bush and the GOP. You appear to be more in line with them than me.

[Euro-American Scum]

Mr. Bush's guest-worker proposal would create a legal means--a renewable three-year work visa--for new immigrants to enter the country and take jobs that Americans don't want.

Call it compassionate conservatism in action.

[CaptIsaacDavis]

Great! Now that we can trade commentaries without a wise remark, my comment is that I share Reagan's desire (from the 1970s) not to see the Bush family's socialist internationalism, China pandering (profiteering for Prescott and Neil), and pseudo-conservatism dominate POLICY. There is a radical difference between supporting anti-conservative policies that will destroy the GOP (they, not I, are walking away from the party base, much like the McGovernites drifted away from the Democratic Party base of the '60s). That last point is a critical insight, because what we are witnessing now is a move by GOP party elites to shift the fundamental base of the party. I doubt it will work. However, my commentary rests on a forecast of what will happen over the next 2-3 presidential election cycles as a result. BUSH will destroy the GOP as a result.

I can vote FOR Bush because on some very important issues he has let Cheney and real conservatives in the DoD run policy -- like opposition to the ICC. That does not preclude me from raising hell that the neo-cons and triangulators in the Administration are destroying the country and the GOP with socialism, police-state power grabs, and open borders.

[the invisib1e hand]

The WSJ just wants cheap labor so the Wall Street boys can keep themselves in cocaine and hookers

Thank you for summing up with this remark the tenor of the current furor over the Immigration issue.

When critics resort to remarks like this, it's only because they have no valid arguments to support their bias.

[Texasforever]

That does not preclude me from raising hell that the neo-cons and triangulators in the Administration are destroying the country and the GOP with socialism, police-state power grabs, and open borders.

Then I apologize for lumping you in with the unappeasables. You mentioned Reagan and he is my FDR and the greatest president of the 20th century but I see the same words used against Bush that I saw used against Reagan from the far-right during his terms. No president can ever be the far-right conservative many demand he be because first he could never be elected and secondly he would have to assume dictatorial powers to impose the far-right agenda on the country. I don't want that from any president right or left.

[MattAMiller]

they'd just be forced to raise their wages to the point that they could attract the necessary workers.

And these people would materialize out of thin air? They've got to come from somewhere. The problem is not so much that Americans are unwilling it's that they're unavailable.