Immigration just might be a winning issue for Hillary?

Conservatives critical of President Bush's "liberal" stance on immigration are praising Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's position on the issue.

Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush and Mexico President Vicente Fox were working together on a plan to legalize the millions of foreign workers who sneak into the country across the 1,900-mile border with Mexico.

Since Nov. 2 when Bush increased his support in both red and blue states, Sen. Clinton has been staking out a conservative position on immigration.

Evidently, her plan is to tap into a feeling by most Americans that illegal immigration is a sizable national problem that should not be ignored.

"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," Sen. Clinton said during a radio interview.

When Clinton said, "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants," she could have been giving advice to Bernard Kerik, Bush's nominee to be Secretary of Homeland Security.

Kerik, tapped by Bush to be one of the top law enforcement and security officials in the nation, had hired a housekeeper who was in the United States illegally. Not only was Kerik's housekeeper breaking the law, so was Kerik for hiring her.

It is illegal to hire illegal immigrants. The law is seldom enforced because Congress has been too timid to establish a reliable method for employers to identify citizens from noncitizens or legal from illegal workers.

Illegal immigrants have no problem becoming documented workers. It is easier for illegal immigrants to obtain some form of false identification sufficient to let employers off the hook than it is for underage college students to get phony IDs to buy booze.

Sen. Clinton's husband experienced an embarrassment similar to Bush's when he nominated Zoe Baird to be attorney general only to discover that she had hired an illegal immigrant to be a housekeeper and nanny. The same happened to Bush in 2001 with his nominee for labor secretary, Linda Chavez.

There has been talk about the need for the IRS to simplify the forms so employers can file and pay taxes for illegal immigrant workers. That might eliminate the tax problems but not the status of workers illegally hired.

The key to enforcing employer sanctions against hiring illegal immigrants will have to be some form of national standards to reliably identify citizens from noncitizens. That is the same key needed to implement and enforce Bush's proposed guest-worker program. If we can't reliably tell who is legal and who is illegal, then the U.S. immigration laws will remain an unenforceable joke no matter how many Americans think illegal immigration is a serious problem.

It is on this point that Congress goes wobbly even when the obvious answer is presented to it on a platter as it was in four reports between 1994 and 1997 when Barbara Jordan, chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, testified that her commission's unanimous recommendation was for a standardized, counterfeit-resistant identification system.

Jordan's bipartisan and diverse commission concluded that this nation must enforce its laws. To do so, Congress had to authorize a national identification system.

Sen. Clinton has hinted at the same solution. She has talked about an entry and exit ID and "a move towards an ID system even for citizens."

There's no question that the United States needs and depends on the labor of foreign workers. And there's no question that many illegal foreign workers are taken advantage of.

What needs to be done is to protect foreign workers and also restore America's rule of law. Since 9/11 there's also national security to consider. Maybe Sen. Clinton has a winning issue.

Or maybe he thinks none of this stuff about illegal entry, congestion, crime, terrorism, homeland security, destroying teenage and other labor markets, pressure on local budgets, schools, and communities, language Balkanization, Mexican irredentism and so forth is as important as some of his campaign contributors getting their labor costs to the absolute minimum possible with unlimited docile un-unionized and undocumented foreign workers, and letting taxpayers struggle to make up the difference.

I'd say that pretty much sums it up.

And as far as the train wreck of a "country" that gets left in the wake of this sort of insanity, I don't think that, frankly, he gives a damn.

He and his buddies will have absconded with the payola, and be headed for sunnier climes. Hopefully where the extradition laws don't apply.

But then, laws don't apply to this guy, so why would he worry...

African-Americans drowning in wave
of illegal immigration

By TERRY ANDERSON

THE black community has made great strides in the last few
decades. Racism has certainly not been eradicated, but it is no
longer accepted with a wink and a nod as it once was. We are
proud to see Secretary of State Colin Powell, even when we do
not agree with everything he does. The same with Condoleezza
Rice, the president's national security adviser, and many others.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that in some regions we black folks are so
overwhelmed by the huge numbers of immigrants that we are
being displaced in our schools, jobs and neighborhoods.

That may seem a harsh thing for a black person to say against
brown people, but I don't see it that way. I am an American,
proud of both my nation and my race. What I see in my
community of South Central Los Angeles -- where I have lived
nearly all my life -- is thousands of Mexicans who care nothing
about our traditions and culture, and only want to impose their
way on us. That's not immigration, that is invasion.

It is sad what has happened in my neighborhood. This was a
respectable, blue-collar area of hard-working black folks living in
their bungalows and going to their jobs. In just a couple decades it
has become almost entirely Mexican. They live several families to
a three-bedroom house and keep chickens in the yard, but the
city doesn't care about the zoning violations or the noise of having
so many crowded into a small space.

According to the Census Bureau, nearby Watts is now 60 percent
Hispanic, and it was previously the black community on the West
Coast. No longer.

The immigration situation is really hard on our young people. A
17-year-old kid on my street couldn't get a job at McDonald's
because he didn't speak Spanish. Another young neighbor boy
was thrown into a bilingual classroom at age 8 and was forced to
listen to Spanish all day long. His six-hour school day was turned
into three hours. When his mother asked for an English-only class,
she was told "there are none."

Would you believe that I, a black man, have been called a racist
many times for speaking up against this invasion? I have a radio
program on the subject and therefore hear from a lot of people,
even some in Mexico.

When they call me a racist, I put this question to them: What if a
hundred thousand Vietnamese were suddenly dropped into
Guadalajara? And what if those newcomers didn't speak Spanish,
and further insisted that their children be taught in Vietnamese?
What would you think if they were happy to work for half the
normal wages for any job they could get, thereby putting
thousands of your local Guadalajarans out of work? Would it be
racist to say there was a problem?

When people of good will and good sense hear the situation put
that way, nearly all understand and respect my viewpoint.

Now if only they would listen in Washington. America's political
leaders are the problem. They have been selling out this great
nation for real and imaginary political benefits while ignoring the
dangers. Even after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to plug up
our borders. Another terrorist attack could be 10 times worse,
and it would likely happen because Congress and the president
learned nothing about the need to keep the nation's borders
secure.

If I sound angry, you hear right. Like other Americans, I want
immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. But as a black
American, I see that the burden my people must carry is heavier
than for many others. I am sure that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
were alive, he would understand the fundamental unfairness to the
black community of allowing more immigration than the nation can
handle.

If you ain’t mad, you ain’t payin’ attention!

www.terryandersonshow.com

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