Posted on 12/31/2004 5:43:33 AM PST by white trash redneck
No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration. There's no issue where the beliefs and interests of the party rank-and-file diverge more radically from the beliefs and interests of the party's leaders. Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.
President Bush won reelection because he won 10 million more votes in 2004 than he did in 2000. Who were these people? According to Ruy Teixeira--a shrewd Democratic analyst of voting trends--Bush scored his largest proportional gains among white voters who didn't complete college, especially women. These voters rallied to the president for two principal reasons: because they respected him as a man who lived by their treasured values of work, family, honesty, and faith; and because they trusted him to keep the country safe.
Yet Bush is already signaling that he intends to revive the amnesty/guestworker immigration plan he introduced a year ago--and hastily dropped after it ignited a firestorm of opposition. This plan dangerously divides the Republican party and affronts crucial segments of the Republican vote.
The plan is not usually described as an "amnesty" because it does not immediately legalize illegal workers in this country. Instead, it offers illegals a three-year temporary work permit. But this temporary permit would be indefinitely renewable and would allow illegals a route to permanent residency, so it is reasonably predictable that almost all of those illegals who obtain the permit will end up settling permanently in the United States. The plan also recreates the guestworker program of the 1950s--allowing employers who cannot find labor at the wages they wish to pay to advertise for workers outside the country. Those workers would likewise begin with a theoretically temporary status; but they too would probably end up settling permanently.
This is a remarkably relaxed approach to a serious border-security and labor-market problem. Employers who use illegal labor have systematically distorted the American labor market by reducing wages and evading taxes in violation of the rules that others follow. The president's plans ratify this gaming of the system and encourage more of it. It invites entry by an ever-expanding number of low-skilled workers, threatening the livelihoods of low-skilled Americans--the very same ones who turned out for the president in November.
National Review has historically favored greater restrictions on legal as well as illegal immigration. But you don't have to travel all the way down the NR highway to be troubled by the prospect of huge increases in immigration, with the greatest increases likely to occur among the least skilled.
The president's permissive approach has emboldened senators and mayors (such as New York's Michael Bloomberg) to oppose almost all enforcement actions against illegals. In September 2003, for example, Bloomberg signed an executive order forbidding New York police to share information on immigration offenses with the Immigration Service, except when the illegal broke some other law or was suspected of terrorist activity. And only last month, a House-Senate conference stripped from the intelligence-overhaul bill almost all the border-security measures recommended by the 9/11 commission.
The president's coalition is already fracturing from the tension between his approach to immigration and that favored by voters across the country. Sixty-seven House Republicans--almost one-third of the caucus--voted against the final version of the intelligence overhaul. And I can testify firsthand to the unpopularity of the amnesty/guestworker idea: I was on the conservative talk-radio circuit promoting a book when the president's plan was first proposed last January. Everywhere I went, the phones lit up with calls from outraged listeners who wanted to talk about little else. Every host I asked agreed: They had not seen such a sudden, spontaneous, and unanimous explosion of wrath from their callers in years.
Five years ago, Candidate George W. Bush founded his approach to immigration issues on a powerful and important insight: The illegal-immigration problem cannot be solved by the United States alone. Two-thirds of the estimated 9 million illegals in the U.S. are from Mexico. Mexico is also the largest source of legal immigration to the United States. What caused this vast migration? Between 1940 and 1970, the population of Mexico more than doubled, from 20 million to 54 million. In those years, there was almost no migration to the United States from Mexico at all. Since 1970, however, some 65 million more Mexicans have been born--and about 20 million of them have migrated northward, with most of that migration occurring after 1980.
Obviously, the 30 years from 1940 to 1970 are different in many ways from the 30 years after 1970s. But here's one factor that surely contributed to the Mexican exodus: In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the Mexican economy grew at an average rate of almost 7 percent a year. Thanks to the oil boom, the Mexican economy continued to grow rapidly through the troubled 1970s. But since 1980, Mexico has averaged barely 2 percent growth. The average Mexican was actually poorer in 1998 than he had been in 1981. You'd move too if that happened to you.
Recognizing the connection between Mexican prosperity and American border security, the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations all worked hard to promote Mexican growth. The Reagan and Clinton administrations bailed out Mexican banks in 1982 and 1995; the first Bush administration negotiated, and Clinton passed, NAFTA. George W. Bush came to office in 2001 envisioning another round of market opening with the newly elected government of his friend Vicente Fox, this time focusing on Mexico's protected, obsolete, economically wasteful, and environmentally backward energy industry.
Bush's hopes have been bitterly disappointed. The Fox government has actually done less to restore Mexican growth than the PRI governments of the 1990s. And so Bush has been pushed away from his grand vision and has instead accepted Fox's demand that the two countries concentrate on one issue: raising the status of Mexican illegals in the United States. But this won't work. Just as the U.S. cannot solve the problem by unilateral policing, so it also cannot solve it through unilateral concession. Bush had it right the first time.
Some of the president's approach to immigration remains right and wise. He is right to show a welcoming face to Hispanics legally resident in the United States. He is right to try to smooth the way to citizenship for legal permanent residents. He is right--more controversially--to give all who have contributed to Social Security, whatever their legal status, access to benefits from the Social Security account.
But he is wrong, terribly wrong, to subordinate border security to his desire for an amnesty deal--and still more wrong to make amnesty the centerpiece of his immigration strategy.
Right now, of course, the president does not have to worry much about political competition on the immigration issue. But Republicans shouldn't count on their opponents' ignoring such an opportunity election after election. "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants," Hillary Clinton told a New York radio station in November. And later: "People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work." Okay, so maybe Hillary will never pick up many votes in Red State America. But there are Democratic politicians who could.
Republicans need a new and better approach--one that holds their constituency together and puts security first.
First, Republicans should develop and practice a new way of speaking about immigration, one that makes clear that enforcement of the immigration laws is not anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican: It is anti-bad employer. Illegal immigration is like any other illegal business practice: a way for unscrupulous people to exploit others to gain an advantage over their law-abiding competitors.
Second, Republicans can no longer deny the truth underscored by the 9/11 commission: Immigration policy is part of homeland-security policy. Non-enforcement of the immigration laws is non-protection of Americans against those who would do them harm.
Third, Republicans have to begin taking enforcement seriously. It's ridiculous and demoralizing to toss aside cabinet nominees like Linda Chavez over alleged immigration violations while winking at massive law-breaking by private industry--or to regard immigration violations as so trivial that they can be used as a face-saving excuse for the dismissal of a nominee damaged by other allegations.
Fourth, skills shortages in the high-technology and health-care industries are genuine problems that have to be addressed--but they should not be used as an excuse to void immigration enforcement. Republicans can say yes to using immigration law to attract global talent, while saying no to companies that systematically violate immigration law to gain an advantage over their more scrupulous rivals.
Fifth, Mexico should not be allowed to sever the migration issue from trade and investment issues. Mexican political stability is a vital national-security issue of the United States--and just for that reason, Americans should not allow Mexican governments to use migration as a way to shirk the work of economic and social reform.
Finally--and most important--Republicans need to recognize that they have a political vulnerability and must take action to protect themselves. An election victory as big as 2004 can look inevitable in retrospect. But it wasn't, not at all. The Democrats could have won--and could still win in 2006 and 2008--by taking better advantage of Republican mistakes and making fewer of their own. And no mistake offers them a greater opportunity than the one-sidedness of the Bush immigration policy. The GOP is a party dedicated to national security, conservative social values, and free-market economics. The president's policy on immigration risks making it look instead like an employers' lobby group. That's the weak point at which the edge of the wedge could enter--and some smart Democratic politician is sharpening it right now.
We don't agree with your vision of America, so thus we hate America?
Give me a break. I am sick and tired of such scurrilous comments from you.
I wasn't talking to you.
BlackElk is the one who wants to overrun America with illegals so he can bankrupt state and local governments across the country and thereby defund social programs and public education.
But it is true that the OBL wants an America something like Brazil with the rich behind walls and everyone else scrounging for garbage to eat.
I don't get it.
Well, that should justify my return to Western Europe to break their laws.
My agendas are two. The first is Roman Catholicism as it was taught to me in the 1950s (not at all pacifistically inclined). The second is the Sharon Statement of Young Americans for Freedom. You can find it on YAF.com or YAF.org, one or the other. One is Young Americans for Freedom. The other is a foundation run by YAF alumni. In cases of conflicts (which I have yet to ever discover), Catholicism rules.
Anyone whose agenda is abortion AND birth control AND snowbird socialism AND lavenderism AND gun controlism and tax hikism NEEDS to be cleansed. Give them 6 months to leave for Canada or any other country large enough for them not to control before the cleansing begins. The USA started as a free country and, by damn, needs to restore that freedom whether you want welfarism for your grandma or not. Whatever your grandma gets is going to "illegals" as well. See the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection clause. It is in all the constitutions. We are conservatives. Welfarism needs to go away permanently for everyone including grandma.
I had really hoped to ignore you starting several posts ago. If I stop posting, do not assume that I agree. Disagreeing with you except on the wages subissue is my default position.
Ronald Reagan (Ronaldus Maximus) ran the cupboard down. He rebuilt the military and particularly the 600 ship Navy. It became less possible to fund the welfare state as a result. He was democratically elected and re-elected (massively in both cases) in case you have forgotten. Do you really think that overwhelming social service programs will end this form of American socialism??? If so, that's one more reason to bring in the Mexicans. Sounds like a plan.
I am loyal to the United States and not to Mexico. I am somewhat less enthusiastic now during the Abortion Holocaust Era than I used to be before it.
While you are obsessing over the borders, do you have a practical plan for ending abortion and alternative lifestyles other than importing socially conservative voters to punish the "I am personally opposed BUT...." crowd and take back the Supreme Court and do to the social issue left what they have done to 1.5 million babies per year for thirty-two years now.
As to whether the end justifies the means, you could raise that question to Injustices William O. Douglas, Herod Blackmun, Potter Stewart, Lewis Powell John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, Swish Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and some others but most of them are as dead as the 45 million babies whose murders they and others arranged. Since Roe vs. Wade and until its suppression by overrule, the rule of law is DEAD in America. So, don't appeal to the law. I am certainly willing to act democratically. Why else would it be necessary to bring in social conservatives? Newsom broke the moral law. Whether he broke California's law in judicial theory remains to be discovered by the California Supremes. One ought not to be optimistic given the contortions regularly utilized by our courts to abolish the remains of Western Civilization.
No, he seems to have a valid point about some things.
And quite frnakly, government has gotten too big. Sooner or later, it has to be reduced, or else we'll have an economic collapse.
bttt
bttt
Then what would stop the employers of illegals now from employing cheaper new illegals when the current crop gets legzlized?
With the right incentive, illegals *will* register. The carrot will win what the stick will not. Mandatory workplace registrations won't work. Voluntary registrations will work. Choose one.
If HR 5111 passes and an employer is found not to have complied with mandatory verification, he's subject to fines of $50,000 per illegal employed and five years in prison. How many employers do you think would ignore that law, after a few convictions?
Reading between the lines, you want more Mexicans because they are socially conservative, and will be part of the coalition to enact laws, or form mobs, to drive what you consider socially liberal Anglos out of the United States (you know, the folks that favor legalized contraception and the like) as part of a "cleansing" action. Is that a fair characterization?
Mass immigration soaring since 2000 “The current rate of immigration has jumped significantly over the historically high 1990s level, according to according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Immigrants are estimated to be pouring into the country at a rate that increases the population by about 1.4 million each year."
It's not federal employees who will be doing *all* of the checking. Some of that checking will be performed by union goons and liberal do-gooders.
Consider who would be doing the checking and complaining if you, a non-union person, were plugging in and setting up electronics and lights at a public venue in Philadelphia; union members, not federal bureaucrats.
The web of illegal activity is very insidious.
It's evil tenticals go everywhere, it's supporters even infesting conservative internet forums to disrupt, and front for what support of illegal immigration feeds.
Whatever are you referring too? What history book did you get this out of?
And many of us are descendents of people who were run off their land in this country as well...hell, let's just give the damn country away to any minority group that demands it!
Nope.
We use carrots in the form of plea bargains *every day* in this country. Even the IRS settles tax disputes for pennies on the Dollar rather than taking every single violator to trial. That's what the carrot can do that the stick can not (you can't even have 12 member jury trials for 8 million illegals, for instance, do the math!).
I wrote of snowBIRDS not snowboarders. Remember from 2000: Florida snowbird song: "I couldn't have voted for Pat Buchanan. I wanted to vote for Al Gore. I've been defrauded (by their own stupidity???). I wanted federal restaurant-provided breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snack care and bar-provided booze care and that fascist Bush won't give it to me!
Feigned anti-racism????? Most Mexicans are Catholics. So am I. They beolong to the human race. So do I. I would gladly trade each and every American resident abortionist and each and every American resident practicing lavender for straight, non-abortionist Mexicans or enslaved Venezuelans. I would also similarly trade away 75% of the members of the National Education Association of Senator Tom Coburn's selection and all members and conributors and employees of NARAL, Emily's List, Planned Barrenhood, the Sierra Club, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU in exchange for moral and upwardly aspiring Mexicans or other Latin Americans. I have also told you that the economic arguments that are made by the border obsessives are probably the only arguments of theirs worth listening to. You aren't hearing what I am posting. Sorry not to fit the stereotype you would like to impose. I am also not at all rich and live modestly and openly on the Northwest Illinois plains where your food is grown and not gathered from garbage heaps.
In 1900, Alabamians lived in a democratic society as a state. Many laws were known as Jim Crow laws, duly enacted by the Alabama legislature and quite unconstitutional as are the anti-Mexican acts of Pete Wilson and his ink in the modern southwest.
Which ethnic group do you suggest that I want to cleanse? Or is that just more ramblng irrational blather?
Do you have any actual conservative views: guns, taxes, abortion, lavenderism, miltary force, etc.? Are you actually a conservative or do you just do a bad job of playing one on the internet? Did you vote for Dubya in 2000? In 2004? Why, why not? You are beginning to look like you will be fun.
So you believe in freedom. Just anyone who disagrees with you needs to be "cleansed" within six months.
You support illegal immigration because you think that if America can become a majority Catholic country then "cleansing" (i.e., getting rid of all those Protestant degenerates and thereby avenging the Irish Famine) can be advanced. Sorry, pal. The Hispanics of today aren't the hyper-Catholic Irish of a century ago. And given that most immigrants are poor, why should they be opposed to social services ? The GOP has never done well with immigrant groups because immigrants, generally being poor, want lots of social services.
Ronald Reagan never really touched middle class entitlement programs. He didn't because he knew the American people would have a fit if he touched Medicare, Social Security, deductability of mortgage interest, etc. I know it upsets the rightness of you true believer types to live among the wicked, but freedom means working by persuasion, not "cleansing" people out or waging ethnic warfare against this nation. Abortion is an evil, but I smell in you the greater evils of terrorism and totalitarianism due to your fundamental lawlessness and contempt for consent of the governed.
You need to sit down, read the Constitution, and take a very, very basic civics lesson.
That's why most of the illegals legalized by the Bush plan would have to have entered illegally, taken illegal employment, and used fraudulent federal documentation to do so. The fraudulent documents and perjurious IRS forms will be necessary to prove that the other laws were properly broken by the illegal in order to qualify for Bush's legal "guest worker" status.
But...
"I don't think we ought to reward illegal behavior." President Bush, 10/13/2004
LOL!
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