BUSH'S IMMIGRATION PET PHRASES

michellemalkin.com ^ | 12/20/2004 | Michelle Malkin

[nanak]

After the White House news conference this morning, Bill Kristol on Fox News praised President Bush's remarks about "immigration reform" as "eloquent." Beg to differ. The president's open-borders statements were empty, garish platitudes strung together sloppily like cheap Christmas lights:

Illegal aliens "do the job Americans won't do." President Bush used that dog-tired phrase about a half-dozen times during today's press conference as he defended his impending illegal alien amnesty plan. Mark Krikorian effectively puts this mindless rhetoric to rest here.

"Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." Uh huh. Well, terrorists and gang members and drunken murderers and cop-killers don't stop there either. And based on past and recent experience, granting amnesty to 13 million law-breakers will only result in more illegal immigration, not less.

We need immigration reform that "recognizes reality." Rank-and-file immigration enforcement officials give a real reality check on the amnesty debacle here, here, and here.

As immigration enforcement veteran/former U.S. prosecutor Peter Nunez put it:

[W]e need to stop the talk of a coming amnesty, or of a guest worker program, both of which, by themselves, serve to encourage additional illegal immigration. What kind of message are we sending when we dangle that possibility before people desperate enough to put their lives at risk? Doesn’t this kind of talk also indicate that we really don’t care much about law breaking, that we don’t really care that much about the rule of law, that these immigration laws exist only as a token objection to the violation of our sovereignty? Now, that is eloquent.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

-disgusted bump-

[hchutch]

Enforcement requires juries that won't engage in jury nullification.

Guess what - they TRIED to enforce the law about hiring illegal immigrants. The juries acquitted, often in as little as fifteen (15) minutes.

No conviction - no penalties. That's how our system works. Or do you think that is something to be tossed aside?

[BobS]

I suggest we just take over Mexico, or threaten to. Their southern border is more controllable. If they want to move here, fine! We'll get beachfront property down there and fish all day long.

[Dat Mon]

"No conviction - no penalties. That's how our system works. Or do you think that is something to be tossed aside?"

I get your point. This means once again that the Federal immigration enforcement system has to be revamped...INCLUDING the process of trying offenders.

Note that I am not suggesting elimination of our jury system...far from it. Perhaps special federal grand juries would be appointed to hear immigration cases...for the most egregious offenses.

Hell....we do that now for federal racketeering or terrorism cases...right?

Isn't this the point of including INS in with the large federal dept known as Homeland Security?

[UseYourHead]

By what means will you hold an illegal before they disappear into the community if you figure out from your yard sale that you have an illegal?

[Dat Mon]

Some may raise the issue of state sovereignty or states rights in answer to the suggestion that a federal grand jury be applied to what would appear to be a local issue, but consider...

When an illegal sneaks across the border into Arizona form Mexico, is he violating state law or federal law?

I maintain he is violating first and foremost the border of the US...hence federal law takes precedence.

[FITZ]

What about the reality of who pays for their free health care or the expensive education for their kids? Their employers obviously only want to bring them in because they're cheap -- a good way to avoid the hassles of minimum wage, employer provided benefits like health insurance, taxes, Workman's Comp, OSHA compliance and all the rest.

[moodyskeptic]

You're quite right, there will be big problems with kids and non-working spouses ... and that's IF we can force worker Jose to apply for a blue card. But, GWBs guest worker suggestion is currently the only credible one on the table. It, at least, makes an effort to identify these invisibles who suck the American social safety net dry.

Sinkspur is right that this is NOT the front page issue we might like it to be. Until Americans care in bigger numbers AND politicians who openly confront illegals start winning elections, this is a nonstarter. I'm surprised Bush is brave enough to even acknowledge it, seeing as he simply can't win here. Every other politician except Tancredo simply ignores it. They certainly do here in California.

Again: from a PR/policy standpoint if the public doesn't perceive a problem, there is effectly no problem.

Yes, the Bush plan would apparently deport non-working illegals it uncovers, but families being sent back so dad can work here legally is (emotionally) substantly different than whole families being sent back in handcuffs. AND, we've uncovered these people and taken their photos and begun to quantify the problem.

Nightmare? Yes. But it beats doing nothing (keeping the current status quo) and sustaining a huge secret population here that has no ID, no car insurance ( they always run from accidents and drive crappy autos for a reason), no way to track them, no listed home or employment, a community that harbors criminal gangsters because they serve as lookouts for LEOs, the current mess.

The right hates the Bush plan because it's not tough. The left and Old Media hates it because it's too strict and insists that illegals sign up for identification and possible deportation.

Me, I believe these immigrants need to be put in the system, just like you and I are, with a number and an ID and an address. It's step one, and without step 1 we can have only two lousy outcomes: mass blanket amnesty or mass deportations. Both look bleak and one sinks the conservative movement for a generation.

I know the media, I work with it and use it as a tool. Like it or not It would turn mass deportations into the "Vietnam" it tried so hard to create recently. The angry hippie/intellectual/malcontent nation would take their puppets and hand made signs to the streets calling for Bush's impeachment and their lapdog Oldmedia would televise it nonstop.

They would finally get their "gestapo" GOP film footage they crave. And the right will have stepped in the obvious trap.

[Nick Danger]

Has any government official talked about this problem as you are doing?

No. Not honestly. The figures I used about the ratios of workers to retirees are from the recent White House Economic Conference. They came up in a discussion about Social Security.

I'm sitting there watching these guys (including Bush) who are too smart to be fooled by this themselves, talking about shoveling money around in different directions... as if the problem has something to do with money, and can be fixed by diddling with money.

It's eyewash. "Money" is a symbol; what counts is the goods and services that are available to buy, and those are produced by those who work. There will not be enough workers to make enough stuff to satisfy themselves, and their children, and this larger-than-ever-before cohort of retirees who might live to be 100 each with today's medical technology. Not just in the U.S., but in virtually the entire "first world."

Some ugly choices will be necessary in that environment. Really ugly. Nobody is talking about that, with the exception of a few pro-life types and some European professors. It's not today's problem... yet. But reasonable people can see it coming, and it just seems to me that if we can head it off, we should.

Do the apparent failures to date of enforcement of existing laws, as well as nonsense PC statements from HSA administrators such as Asa Hutchinson provide a warm feeling

Not at all. I think they all know the immigrants have to be let in to solve the demographic problem, and they also know it's politically untenable to do so. So they say this and do that. Basically, they're looking the other way while roughly the right number of people scurry across the border. Every once in a while they stage a show-raid on a garment manufacturing joint to assure everyone that Your Gubment Is Working For You, but I think it's all crap. Illegal Immigration is the policy.

And I'm not sure that's bad. People who oppose this need to put themselves through the "thought experiment" of imagining themselves, in 2025, driving their parents to the Ethical Suicide Parlor, where Mom and Dad are going to 'get out of the way.' There are so many such people, and they are consuming such a large fraction of GDP, that it's beggaring the nation's children. Everywhere you turn, there are billboards subtly urging the elderly to step aside.

Is that a world we want?

It's either babies, immigrants, or that. And our women are too busy to have babies. So here we are.

[meema]

bttt!

[FITZ]

Me, I believe these immigrants need to be put in the system, just like you and I are,

But no mention of who pays their free health care and education costs? The taxpayers are being overwhelmed --- and there is no limit in sight at all to massive immigration from Mexico and Central America. How many more do you propose we import and try to keep paying for?

[UseYourHead]

The employers will pass any cost on to the economy and if you think you can just shutdown a major corpration without an effect on everyone, think again.

Meanwhile, thousands of smaller companies will continue to fly under the radar. You cannot hire enough enforcement agents to get done what you suggest.

Fingerprinting is only going to help you figure out who you have on the bus back to the border quicker the second and third time - after that you will recognize them by site.

Hospitals will indeed have to open their own law enforcement centers and holding pens and processing locations and transportation and the cost of Health Care will Skyrocket well beyond anything you have seen yet. DHS will have to expand the INS by tens of thousands in order to handle the huge numbers that will be shipped back to their homeland WHEN the homeland has agreed to arrangements to receive them back again. AND, you will see these people again. When some of them have committed crimes against US citizens that warrant jail/prison time, we will be holding them there as well.

Technology at the borders will only tell you where they have crossed, not how to round them up, where to process them, where to hold them, how to get them back to their originating country and how to keep them out.

If you think that any of these measures will cause more than a handful of illegals to leave the country, you are seriously deluding yourself. They have suffered nothing in any of your plans that would compare to what they have grown up with and in.

As for Draconian, I had a clearance while I spent my 20 years in the military and I personally enjoy draconian. I think you should have to work very hard to be a citizen or be allowed to vote in this country. I think we need a year of martial law and anyone on death row or life in prison should be summarily shot. I think drug dealers and and armed felons should be shot on site and I think politically correct tolerance programs should be shutdown. The ACLU and UN should be disposed of and supposed medical disorders actually hiding perversions should be done away with as well.

BUT, I'm pretty sure what I think should happen won't be possible until we get nuked because of our stupidity. Be sure none of your ideas will make it very far in this ACLU run country either.

[FITZ]

Do you honestly believe Bush means they would be "guests"? That they would really return home in 3 years?

The Mexican government has no intention of having 25 million of it's citizens return home ---- not only that --- they've got plans for us to take many many many more.

[Fatalis]

By what means would the President detect and hold yard sale illegals? His plan doesn't address them at all, and offers them no incentive to leave on their own.

[Dat Mon]

Okay...lets accept the premise that we need more people here to produce wealth to support the boomer retirements.

The question then becomes...WHICH people?

I maintain that we want the ablest, best and the brightest...people who have skills we can use....but MOST importantly...

People who really want to be AMERICANS. Not people just looking for a job...or in many cases freebies that this government loves to hand out.

People who will learn our language, respect our culture and traditions, and assimilate into the great melting pot.

We already have an entitlement system out of control...for American citizens! Will it get any better with millions more?

If we were to concentrate immigration on unskilled labor, what will that do to our existing welfare problem? How can you insist on welfare recipients having jobs, if illegals at the lowest rungs will displace them at lower wages?

If we were to allow only PHD students in, what would that do to the existing labor market for American PHD students? My point is that the immigration must be managed very carefully, so as to not destroy existing American labor markets.

I main fear however, is that in our mad rush to get unregulated people into the US system, eventually giving them a gift of citizenship ahead of all those who are waiting patiently... we will attract people who really have little interest in becoming Americans.

Even if necessary, thats a terrible price to pay for retirement.

[WhatHappenedtoAmerica]

Yeah right you voted for Bush in 00 and 04. Give me a break. You probably, IMO, voted for Buchanan in 00(0.4% of the Presidential vote) , and Peroutka(0.2% of the Presidential vote), in 04. Please don't and stop considering the majority of people on FR as fools.

Your response to JustAnAmerican is very pretentious.

I can assure you that in my case, I went to Nashville in 2000 to hold Bush signs in front of Gore's headquarters.

I attended the FR inaugural ball.

I stood in the rain for Bush's inauguration.

Held my nose in order to vote for Bush in 2004.

and still wonder if the country will be better off in the long run for having elected him.

What will it take to open the eyes of you who do not see the threat to our country and our way of life from all of this immigration (legal and illegal).

There're the crime statistics. The welfare statistics.

The cost of health care and education.

The overcrowding.

For those of you who really believe in conservative ideals, how can you ignore the voting records of every immigrant group (overwhelmingly democrat, except for Cubans).

There are also the aggressive immigrant organizations that have made no secret of their desire to transform the US instead of assimilate.

When some of you wake up, it may be too late.

[WhatHappenedtoAmerica]

Check our nations crime stats. You'll find that the observation of few illegals in your church is not a representative sample.

[Nick Danger]

the immigration must be managed very carefully, so as to not destroy existing American labor markets.

I would maintain that it is being managed reasonably well, in the sense that we are successfully accepting the current rate without witnessing some huge spike in unemployment.

It is probably true that this affects those at the "unskilled labor" end of the deal disproportionally... but that's politics. If we displace Ph.D.'s, there will be hell to pay (as there is over H1-B's). Our poor tend to vote Democratic, so they are powerless.

I think we can over-worry about the "becoming Americans" stuff. When I was a kid, there were still German and Polish neighborhoods in Chicago where English was not spoken.

a terrible price to pay for retirement.

It's not about "retirement." It's about avoiding more damned Culture Of Death. We already abort an obscene number of babies; are we next to euthanize the old? What is that going to do to our souls? What will we become when life is so cheap? When even more human beings are killed for "convenience sake"? I don't want that as my legacy.

[Dat Mon]

I understand your points...but it sounds as if you are conceding that we are a society where laws and rules cannot be enforced as they are.

So...lets forfeit the existing rules, make some new ones, ones that are easier to enforce. Now the problem is solved?

That is not what you really want. It is not in keeping with your own self stated draconian philosophy!

As a military man, you recognize that it is not how to accomplish an objective.

I'm more optimistic, and I believe that we are at a critical junction, where we must decide to go forward as an orderly society, in accord with traditions,and the constitution, or suffer the long term degradations or even loss of our country.

It is that serious. And yes...the ACLU is one of the enemies.

BTW...we do have mechanisms to enforce a whole host of regulations on industry now. Things like EEOC, OSHA, SEC, etc. Don't think that the feds don't have a whole lot of whup ass they can bring down on a corp if they want.

Most times..they use and abuse this power to the detriment of business, and towards the establishment of a social and political agenda.

Here, the power could be put to a good use, IF it is strictly controlled by congress.

[hchutch]

You still gotta give the accused due process.

We can't jail or deport our way out of the illegal immigration issue. We have to insert a guest worker program into the mix, or else the support will not be there for deportation and jail.