Posted on 01/09/2004 12:56:02 PM PST by JohnGalt
Real Message of The Bush Amnesty
by Pat Buchanan
If George Bush’s amnesty for between 8 million and 14 million illegal aliens is enacted, you can kiss the old America goodbye.
Consider what the president is saying with his amnesty. He is telling us that he cannot or will not do his constitutional duty to defend the states from invasion. He is saying that he simply cannot or will not protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. He is saying he will no longer send illegal aliens back.
Not long ago, this would have produced calls for impeachment and cries that, “If Bush won’t enforce our laws, let’s elect a president who will.”
By offering amnesty and residency to millions who broke in line, broke our laws and broke into our country, Bush is not only rewarding wholesale criminality, he proposes to legalize it.
His amnesty will send this message to the world: the candy store is open, and the Americans cannot protect it. Now is the time to bust in.
As there must be billions of people willing to come and work for a fraction of our minimum wage—and exploit our social safety net—the number who could come under the Bush guest-worker program is almost infinite.
Imagine a car wash that employs 40 African-American, Latino, and white working-class folks at $8 an hour each. A new car wash down the street opens up, offering 40 new jobs at $5.15 an hour. No Americans apply. Under Bush’s proposal, that employer would be free to go to Asia, Africa, and Latin America, round up workers, and bring them in.
The new car wash with its foreign workers then drives the old car wash with its American workers out of business. Taxpayers are then forced to subsidize the newly unemployed—and pay for the medical care, food stamps, rent supplements, welfare, and schooling of all the new immigrants and their families, provide legal services when they get in trouble and pay for more cops to police their neighborhoods.
And every child born of a guest worker would, under our 14th Amendment, become an American citizen, automatically entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. Meanwhile, Bush’s amnesty will do nothing to halt the illegal invasion that continues to this hour. If you would know what America’s social, cultural, and fiscal future will look like, take a ride through Los Angeles, capital of Mexifornia.
But why did President Bush pick now to propose as explosive an idea as amnesty, when it seemed he was holding a winning hand on the issues of taxes, national security, the economy, and gay marriages?
One sees here the cynical ploy of “Boy Genius” Karl Rove. With the filing deadlines for the Republican primaries having passed and no GOP opponent, with no Third Party challenger from the Right, and with Dean the likely Democratic nominee, Rove knows conservatives are boxed in. In the old cliché, “The conservatives have nowhere else to go.”
So Rove is executing an “apertura a sinistra,” an opening to the Left, pandering to Hispanics and Mexican President Vicente Fox, to whom Bush is to pay a visit.
But Rove may be too clever for the president’s good. For there is no hard evidence that Hispanics, other than those militants who detest Republicans, are demanding amnesty. And with Bush’s spending on foreign aid soaring, his deficits rising, and the White House refusing to veto a single spending bill, Rove & Co. may have stretched conservative loyalty to the breaking point.
For some conservatives, this amnesty will snap it. They may just get on their hind legs and fight, for huge majorities have repeatedly registered opposition to any amnesty for illegal aliens. How is the president helped by a bloody battle with his political base in an election year?
Half a century ago, Dwight Eisenhower, informed there were a million illegals in the United States, most of them from Mexico, ordered them sent back. The project was called “Operation Wetback.”
Ike was a strong president. But in George W. Bush, we have a leader unwilling to pay the political price of doing his duty and enforcing the immigration laws of his country because he fears the reaction from the media elite and Mexican-Americans.
When it comes to standing up to truly powerful ethnic lobbies—the Hispanic Lobby, the Cuban-American Lobby, the Israeli Lobby—Bush wilts and folds every time. Nor is it a healthy sign for the future of our republic when its president offers an amnesty to law-breakers, rather than doing his painful duty to protect his country from what has now become an unstoppable foreign invasion.
The real threats to America’s survival do not come from the Sunni Triangle. They come from within, and unfortunately we have a president who either does not understand them or will not look them in the face.
Enforcing our laws and stopping the handouts will cause most illegals to walk back on their own. But thanks for the idiotic race baiting.
While you ponder sending back millions of people on rail cars why dont you deal with reality for a second and ask yourself how those people got here in the first place? How is it that Mexico has such a huge movement of people coming into the US? Why do you support this racist policy of Mexico's elite? Why do you think it is America's responsibility? Please tell me why American citizens are required to pay for this problem in the form of taxes, depressed wages, crime including murder and rape and drug smuggling and terrorism? We can only hope that the charitable people such as you are the ones to pay.
Btw, after you've done your wonderful charity of giving American jobs to foreigners they will thank you by calling you a racist for treating them as second class citizens and demand more..and most likely get more.
Because these people really are not here, right now, as Pat types?
The reality of the situation is that 8 - 14 million illegals are here now, right or wrong. The questions that really sould be asked is how can that fact be managed effectively.
Consider what the president is saying with his amnesty. He is telling us that he cannot or will not do his constitutional duty to defend the states from invasion. He is saying that he simply cannot or will not protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. He is saying he will no longer send illegal aliens back.
I don't agree with Pat's interpretation here. While I am still working through the possibilities in my head, I can't seem to equate choosing to (realistically) manage a situation that has been around (and growing) for a while with fulfilling some kind of pipe dream like magically making every person in the US illegally disappear overnight.
And keeping them out.
Across thousands of miles of borders.
By offering amnesty and residency to millions who broke in line, broke our laws and broke into our country, Bush is not only rewarding wholesale criminality, he proposes to legalize it.
The same argument could have been (and probably was) made when ending prohibition - and that was a Constitutional amendment.
I keep thinking that leaglizing (and therefore regulating) foreign workers, even those corrently here, working illegally, would establish a better system to manage the situation to better serve our interests.
His amnesty will send this message to the world: the candy store is open, and the Americans cannot protect it. Now is the time to bust in.
Actually, the time to bust in has been here for a while. The President didn't create this situation, but unlike most of his predecessors he is choosing to attempt to manage it.
Whether the system of management is right or wrong is surely open to debate, but I would suggest that choosing to actively address it is better than continuously turning a blind eye.
As there must be billions of people willing to come and work for a fraction of our minimum wage—and exploit our social safety net—the number who could come under the Bush guest-worker program is almost infinite.
It is our Congresses fault that our "social safety net" is turning into a socialist hand out.
And billions, by definition is not infinite, for the record.
Imagine a car wash that employs 40 African-American, Latino, and white working-class folks at $8 an hour each. A new car wash down the street opens up, offering 40 new jobs at $5.15 an hour. No Americans apply. Under Bush’s proposal, that employer would be free to go to Asia, Africa, and Latin America, round up workers, and bring them in.
While I understand the logic here, I have to at least partially disagree. This argument could generically be made to support a higher "living" minimum wage just as easily as Pat has used it here or even to expand it to opposing modernization if you want.
The car wash is not required to pay their employees more than minimum wage, but do so for various reasons. As a result the car wash with the great dental program has to raise the costs for their customers (me) so I am forced to spend more of my hard earned money for a service.
But Joe opens another car wash down the street with "automated" washing - he has virtually no personnel costs (though probably a slightly higher capital investment). As such, joe is able to beat the other guys price by a buck.
Am I un-American for going to Joe's since this will put the other guy out of business?
And why is the other guy paying his employees so much? If that is a "living wage" couldn't we just raise the minimum wage for anybody (Americans and "legal-illegals") to remove this advantage?
The new car wash with its foreign workers then drives the old car wash with its American workers out of business. Taxpayers are then forced to subsidize the newly unemployed—and pay for the medical care, food stamps, rent supplements, welfare, and schooling of all the new immigrants and their families, provide legal services when they get in trouble and pay for more cops to police their neighborhoods.
Devils advocate. But the new car wash owner or company is making a nice profit so he/they decide to open more car washes. The old car wash folks decide that while making $8 an hour to wash cars was better, they will give up their cable TV and cell phones for the $5.15 job so they can eat. Now I can get my car washed at several places cheaply and even avoid long lines. Since these Americans are making $5.15 will they require more "medical care, food stamps, rent supplements, welfare, schooling, legal services and more cops to police their neighborhoods."
If the social cost of such a "meager" minimum wage is so high, why not just raise the minimum wage to a "living wage."
And every child born of a guest worker would, under our 14th Amendment, become an American citizen, automatically entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. Meanwhile, Bush’s amnesty will do nothing to halt the illegal invasion that continues to this hour. If you would know what America’s social, cultural, and fiscal future will look like, take a ride through Los Angeles, capital of Mexifornia.
This is actually the most coherent part of Pat's ramblings.
Problem is, right now the same thing applies so tanking the President's plan really doesn't help the situation, other than you continue to have a mess trying to figure who was born in the US with virtually no controls over who is coming in.
SNIP
The real threats to America’s survival do not come from the Sunni Triangle. They come from within, and unfortunately we have a president who either does not understand them or will not look them in the face.
I disagree, the President does appear to be looking the situation in the face, squarely. There is probably room for disagreement for how he is responding to the situation, but at a minimum even Pat should acknowledge that the President is looking the issue in the face.
Oh, please....
So how many people do you think would die if we dumped 10-15 million people just across the border in the Sonoran desert with no place for them to live?
That's quite a large humanitarian crisis we'd have created.
At to be fair, we couldn't just deport the 10-15 million that are eligible to this deal. I'd bet there are another 10-15 million that are here illegally, but aren't eligible.
Then, where we gonna get the Anglo's to take the jobs out in the dust of Yuma Az to replace these folks? I wouldn't work out there for double my current pay, and I make quite a bit.
Anyone seriously considering deporting huge numbers of people just because we didn't prevent them from getting here years ago just doesn't get it.
I think we need to start with teaching them personal responsibility, and keeping their pants zipped until they can afford a family.
Ah, if only it were that simple Pat. here's the complex part - if that car wash is paying Americans $8 an hour, they are probably charging an arm and a leg for a car wash, which means they will go out of business anyway.
Bring in the cheap labor and folks will go to the car wash, the labor will spend their money here in the U.S. and waaa-laaa, you have economic activity. (oh, and those folks will pay taxes as well)
Strange, isn't it?
If they are even lazier than the current crop of Americans, why are they working the $5.15 manual labor jobs. By your reasoning, the not-quite-as-lazy-Americans should be beating them to the punch for those jobs!
Nick, one anchor baby and they're here to stay.
So you have 4 - 7,000,000 here then. What now?
Turn a blind eye until we get back to a magic 8 - 14 level and do it again, or come up with a realistic and workable solution for the long term?
And if you completely ignore the obvious consequences you can remain a cheerleader.
I got news for you, they are home. There's often no "back" to go to.
So lets see, 15 million illegals, 50 seats to the greyhound, that's about 300,000 trips.
Or, you get 1000 buses, that's 300 trips. With many illegals living quite a ways north, that's maybe 3-4 day average trip. Might take 4 years.
How many people would we have to add to law enforcement to do this? I don't want to think about it.
How many of them will come back in that 4 years under their own power?
Come on people, this problem is not simple, and Bush's remedy is about as good as it gets.
The only thing I'd add is we should offer them all free English lessions. And remove the Spanish from the ballots.
OH we cant have that. And when they complain about being treated as second class citizens are we going to have them rioting in the streets? Hell NO! American citizens are the gift that just keeps on giving.
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