Posted on 01/12/2004 7:46:07 AM PST by kellynla
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.
Come on WOSG...don't be lazy, read all the posts - my #138 for example.
many MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS are the biggest complainers about illegals...I dont think most Mexicans would mind at all if we enforced our laws
Of course opinion is not unanimous. It never is. That's the reason one considers a worst case scenario...or would you prefer to be caught flat-footed and unprepared?
In this situation the worst case is rather likely because Mexican illegals in this country and Mexicans in Mexico have come to think of unlimited immigration as their right, because they already feel entirely humiliated by Yankee dominance, and because their country is in terrible trouble and would fall apart if illegal immigration were stopped.
INMIGRACION: Buen inicio para reforma
INMIGRACION: Mano de obra barata y desechable
Keep your head in the sand. Maybe it's your best position.
INMIGRACION: Buen inicio para reforma
INMIGRACION: Mano de obra barata y desechable
Keep your head in the sand. Maybe it's your best position.
"This is the advice of La Raza, a Mexican-American organization which fights in defense of latin workers of the United States, which this day characterizes Bush's proposal as an 'empty promise' and describes the 'timing' as an electoral year strategy since in the previous two years there was nothing but silence on the conditions of exploitation suffered by the undocumented."
It's not whether you or I believe La Raza is "extremist".
It's how Mexicans and Mexican-Americans feel about them.
El Diario is mainstream in their community.
And you're again missing the point when you cite statistics proving a connection between illegals and crime.
And you're being silly if you think La Raza has to call for violence whenever they oppose government policies.
And you're pointing to a strawman when you characterize me as "intimidated".
I've been trying to guage the possible outcomes of a serious attempt at deportation of illegals and border control.
I contend there's a great deal of opposition to such policies in the Mexican and Mexican-American communities.
As evidence I cited articles in the principal mainstream paper in Mexican-American Los Angeles which clearly show a deep split in viewpoints.
Unless you believe - and can show - that El Diario is printing unrepresentative, provacative garbage I stand by my positions.
Ah, I see. To show that violence might ensue as a I result of effectual enforcement of deportation laws and border enforcement you want me to present specific threats. I thought it enough to show great opposition in the relevant communities, opposition which has historically quite often led to violence...but apparently not. Tell me then what you would consider adequate? If I found such threats from radical or extremist groups would that qualify? Whose threats would you consider credible? Tell me before I start looking. It'll save a lot of trouble.
Your criticism of my dichotomy is fair...as far as it goes.
Deportation of criminal aliens could be accomplished with "relatively" little opposition.
Documentation verification and employer fines are another matter. If successful they would lead to mass deportations and/or a serious loss of revenue to Mexico. Perhaps not immediately but as soon as they became effective and with ever-increasing severity. You can't have it both ways you know; either they'll be effective and have real consequences or they won't be.
Did you read the details of Operation Wetback in the links I posted? The government claimed to have physically deported 80 or 100,000 people and scared another three-quarters of a million into returning to Mexico. So don't tell me mass deportations are impossible. It's happened before in many places.
I think your claim that I set up a false dichotomy is incorrect. I was responding to what I perceived to be the demands of posters to rid us of illegals and seal the border. If you read my posts carefully you'll see that I felt the Administration offered an alternative which can hardly be characterized as "doing nothing". You'll also note that I said, repeatedly, that I would support them in their effort...and support them if they decided to go for deportation and militarization. All I wanted was an honest assessment of the real costs, including, specifically, a worst-case scenario.
That applies to anything you might propose as well.
"So what to do about the 7 million, now 8.4 million illegal aliens? FrontPageMagazine columnist Steve Brown recently called for a new drive to deport aliens through workplace immigration enforcement on a scale of the Eisenhower administration’s Operation Wetback in 1954."
Do your homework.
Ending Illegal Immigration: Make It Unprofitable
and here's a specific threat of violence
Yo, Pat:
It looks more likely that a coalition of immigrants, other minorities and bleeding heart Liberals which, when taken together, could add up to a majority, might actually deport anglos instead of the other way around. They will be aided by the Democrat Party, other Leftist Parties, and disgruntled Conservatives who want to fragment the Right into the Republican, Libertarian, Constitution, and other assorted Parties.
The possible effects are disputed but a worst-case scenario which I proposed certainly cannot be ruled out and is not unlikely. Today's world is very different from that of the '50s - the numbers involved are much, much larger, illegals are widely dispersed and not concentrated in a few agricultural jobs and areas, and their mentality has changed as well as ours.
In my previous post I ruled out crass opportunism on the part of government - always willing to believe that it was considering "the national interest" over the long term.
I've reconsidered
After reading the Handbook of Texas link I posted earlier I was appalled by the naked greed displayed by growers, their utter unconcern for anything except profits, and government's willing complicity (much of the time).
I asked myself - and I now ask you - the following question.
When farmers lost all that cheap labor as a result of Operation Wetback, how did they replace it? Who picked the crops in 1955 and later after 1 million plus Mexicans were deported?
IMHO, their opposition is not relevant because they, La Raza (a racist organization IMHO), do not have America's interest in mind. Indeed, the Mecha-Aztlan types explicitly want to destroy our borders and sovereignty in the Southwest. Why listen to them? Should you dig up threats they might make? It would be interesting but hardly convincing ... enemies of America might make threats against us if we try to enforce our laws. SO WHAT. "Whose threats would you consider credible?" I cant say up front. Heck, we get violent rhetoric from Howard Dean!! THE REAL THREAT IS FROM OUR OWN ELITES and interest groups like La Raza that are willing to destroy our future for their own selfish interests. That is not right. But the threat is not the threat of violence if we enforce the law, its the threat of subverting the law itself so our future is threatened.
So you are still hanging out there with unsupported claims about the awful consequences of mass deportation. I am wholly unconvinced by your claims and threats (if such exist) from Mecha-ista extremists wouldnt change my mind. Let's move on.
Documentation verification and employer fines are another matter. If successful they would lead to mass deportations and/or a serious loss of revenue to Mexico. Perhaps not immediately but as soon as they became effective and with ever-increasing severity. You can't have it both ways you know; either they'll be effective and have real consequences or they won't be.
Yes, they will work if we administer them to succeed. Jobs will dry up and illegals will get the message. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Deportation of criminal aliens could be accomplished with "relatively" little opposition.
Right. That is an important place to start. Abolish EOIR and end the amnesties to criminal aliens.
I think your claim that I set up a false dichotomy is incorrect. Let me explain: the false dichotomy is between instant mass deportation versus ineffective/non-existent immigration law enforcement. There are ways to turn up the heat gradually, or to enforce the law that would change behavior over time. we are so far from having even a basic amount of enforcement, it should be called en-farce-ment.
What if we simply improved law enforcement and border security so the 700,000 new arrivals per year number dropped to 100,000? That is a significant sea change in our future without necessarily sending 10 million folks packing.
IMHO the Bush plan is not relevent to this since it is just another visa category and not even addressing enforcement. Without addressing immigration law enforcement, the Bush plan is ineffective and superfluous.
OTOH, the Bush guest worker plan is a great 'escape valve' to solve any such objections you have to enforcing the law wrt to any "backlash". That is, Mexico cant object to us enforcing the law if there are available to them a guest worker program. Similarly, the cheap labor employers cant object to employer sanctions if they have a *legal* access to such a labor pool. IMHO, we dont know that such an escape valve is necessary without first trying the enforcement.
See my other comments (this thread) on the 'carrot + stick' approach to solving illegal immigration.
Understand that we can tackle this problem step-by-step to handle the overhang of decades of mistaken policies: We need to undo the 1965 immigration law and fix legal immigration, the lack of enforcement of 1986 legal sanctions, welfare and other mistaken inducements to illegal immigration, lack of local law enforcement involvement, and our broken deportation process. All areas need to be addressed. the tancredo plan addresses all points. Bush plan looks at 1 out of 5 only.
We need to do more.
I suspect that Operation Wetback was a complete sham.
I think the million or so Mexicans were deported so as to cheat them out of wages and other benefits they negociated...and to scare the new ones who were immediately admitted to take their place into not trying to improve their lot.
If true it's as ugly as it gets.
Gotta think about it awhile and do some research before I respond. That won't happen until tomorrw.
Meanwhile, I have no problem at all with incrementally turning up the heat by gradually increasing enforcement of existing laws beginning with deportation of criminals.
I now think the risk of civil war in our cities is quite low. Mexicans do not have a record of political violence in this country...and I've found no evidence in their newspapers that that's changing.
OTOH, I still maintain that American interests and lives IN Mexico would be in very serious danger should we begin mass deportations or seriously cut the monies which illegals repatriate.
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