GOP, You Are Warned

AEI ^ | 29 dec 04 | David Frum

[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.

[FederalistVet]

Our International Treaties require that when the illegals get here, they be protected the same as everyone else. We can deport them but only after due process.

[FederalistVet]

Possessing and governing substantiate a claim better than anything else and so while Europeans claimed most of the United States the Native Americans actually owned it. The English titles were null and void the moment they were signed because the English didn't actually possess the land they were claiming.

Sure were a lot of Jesuit Catholic Priests among those "French Huguenots" and Cartier himself is known to have been a Catholic. Come to think of it the French colonies were settled predominantly by French Catholics. In any case the Quebec Act before the Revolution nullified any previous claims. Also, after the Revolution the Thirteen States were closed independent but the rest of the British possessions still surrounded the Thirteen States. If the Quebec Act didn't nullify the claims, British possession certainly did.

[FederalistVet]

"Not sure you understand the British presence in the Ohio Valley AFTER the American Revolution.
The Treaty of Paris allowed them to maintain forts there to protect their interests in the fur trade. They didn't OCCUPY the place."

The treaty with France required the British Government to accept the French residents as British subjects and required the British Government to allow the former French citizens to retain their legal customs and hence the Quebec Act, one of the Intolerable Acts because it made the French language and French legal customs the language and law in the former French territories was regarded as "Intolerable" by the English Colonialists because it nullified the Sea to Sea claims of the Thirteen Colonies. However, the claims of the Thirteen Colonies conflicted with one another. The Sea to Sea claims were null and void anyway because the King of England didn't actually "possess" the land he was giving away.

"Further, they, themselves, did not claim sovereignty over what we Americans called "The Northwest Territory". I know for a fact that the French in Vincinnes were all too happy to join with Clark and roll the Brits right out of the place."

See previous comments. Notice however that Lewis and Clark stopped at St. Louis which was founded by the French to obtain a French speaking Native American as a guide.

"It was known that the Spanish, our allies, had claims to the Mississippi River, and presumably to everything to the West, but when Napoleon came along, he offered to sell it all to the US. Although there were some people who objected to our purchase on the basis that the Constitution didn't grant the right to extraterritorial acquisitions to the federal government, Jefferson had no problem with this. He knew already that the federal government had acquired land claims to the exact same territory from the States at the time of the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, so all he really faced, Constitutionally speaking, was the purchase of a common law claim to land, not the land itself ~ after all, the US already OWNED the land!"

Actually, the French and Spanish had claims to the Mississippi river because the French explored it from the North. Michigan was first claimed by the French and they had a fort at Detroit. Britain's claims to the Mississippi would have been inherited from the French. The "common law claim to land" was null and void. (See previous)

[FederalistVet]

You forgot to mention my French and Indian kin mix too.
See previous remarks for further response.

[muawiyah]

The Treaty of Paris gave independence to the colonies. Their claims were restored since the Treaty obviously rescinded the application of the Quebec Act.

Concerning the American Indians, by the Spring of 1648 most of them had died as the Old World diseases overtook them. Later on Mountain Men and other explorers would spread these diseases to the few inhabitants who had not yet been exposed. I think it was Lewis and Clark who nailed the Mandan (among others).

My sources inform me that the first French colony (1540-1543) was initiated by Jean-François de La Rocque sieur de Roberval, who becomes the general-lieutenant of Canada.

Roberval was a Huguenot. You may be correct about the captain of the fleet, Jacques-Cartier, being a Catholic, although probably not a very good one. Roberval's commission give him the right to construct , forts, churches and temples. It is supposed that both religions can have their institutions.

I am personally much more interested in Chapigny, a Protestant who married "up", who became later in life the Intendant of Canada, and his close relative, Cardinal Richelieu. Now these guys are "fun" FUR SHUR. Roberval and Cartier probably got along equally famously.

According to many sources the Huguenot "headquarters" for their portion of the North American fur trade was along the Green River in Western Kentucky (a territory first reported on by DeSoto). They tended to stay South of the French Catholic areas, although I find records suggesting many of them were careful to attend mass in Roman mission areas such as Vincinnes. It's probably a case of protective coloration eh. Still, the Iriquois Indians traveled from New York to Beauval Saskatchewan, a two year round trip, to collect furs. They traveled with Huguenots.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks. HNY.

[Travis McGee]

Prolonged talks, followed by bargaining over prices (millions paid in gold coin) for various tracts.

As compared to the Spanish, who merely out and out stole the land from the natives.

So if Mexico/Spain has ANY claim AT ALL to the American Southwest, they must immediately admit that it REALLY belongs to the indians they STOLE it from.

No treaties, no talks, no signed agreements between nations, no payment of gold coins totally millions, a national fortune in those days.

Just theft, out and out expropriation.

It makes me laugh out loud when I hear Mexicans boo-hoo about the Southwest being "stolen" from them, when they coneniently forget how the Spanish got the land in the first place.

Or are you an European-centric racist, who believes only Europeans "count," only Europeans can really possess land, and the native Americans were just subhuman dross to sweep aside?

[Travis McGee]

Note: I've been pecking away on my Mom's webTV, and editing/correcting is a huge PITA. Just posting is a PITA. Thus the typos.

[muawiyah]

Look here now, you substantially discount the nearly single handed efforts of Cabeza de Vaca and and his black Moroccan servant Esteban, to sleep with every Indian maiden in every village in every habitable spot in the American Southwest.

If anything, the Spanish ended up stealing it all from their cousins!

[muawiyah]

Note that I've now brought Esteban into the picture. So, what kind of racist credits the black man with anything other than hard work in the Americas?

[Sam the Sham]

There is no point now in trying to back off from your Father Coughlin rants earlier. And invoking the 14th amendment in a totally dishonest manner even as you dream of an agenda of mob rule, mass deportations, ethnic cleansing of post-Vatican II weaklings, those degenerate enough to use public education, and others whom you deem unfit to occupy your America is entirely hypocritical. (Hmmm, why does it seem to me that most Jews would fall into "march them to the trains" category ?)

Frankly, you are more of a Mediterannean Charles Maurras style clerical fascist.

[Sam the Sham]

Why should they believe her ?

What is better ? Someone who at least perceives a problem or someone who will let Vincente Fox decide American immigration policy ?

[Sam the Sham]

No one is saying she would gain control of the House and Senate. Just the White House. They did it twice before so dismissing the possibility they can do it again is foolishly complacent.

[Sam the Sham]

If Bush puts political capital into the open borders crowd that the cultural right is expecting him to invest in abortion and the FMA they will be royally pissed in 2008.

[dagnabbit]

On immigration and borders, Bush is Ted Kennedy. On these matters, there is no significant difference in the outlook or desired policies of these two alcoholics.

[FederalistVet]

"The Treaty of Paris gave independence to the colonies. Their claims were restored since the Treaty obviously rescinded the application of the Quebec Act."

After the treaty of Paris the British held most of the land surrounding the colonies and would hold it until the War of 1812, so the colonies claims to sea to sea ownership, always illicit under international law at the time, were a moot point.

Regarding Drake, he was a pirate and the British Government disavowed responsibility for his actions so no claim can be established using him.

"Concerning the American Indians, by the Spring of 1648 most of them had died as the Old World diseases overtook them. Later on Mountain Men and other explorers would spread these diseases to the few inhabitants who had not yet been exposed. I think it was Lewis and Clark who nailed the Mandan (among others)."

Then why were there so many wars against the American Indians? Then how did the Iroquois and Cherokee help their British allies win the French and Indian War? Note: during the French and Indian War we know of at least one American Indian tribe allied with the English whom the English Colonists took the opportunity to exterminate 100 percent; every man, woman and child. Strange alliance.

During the French and Indian War the Hurons were allied with the French while the Iroquois were allied with the English. The British were jealous of the French fur trade and the Iroquois had a long standing territorial feud with the Huron.

During the French and Indian War the Huron experienced 50 percent casualties (men, women, and children.) After aiding the British the Iroquois would suffer a 90 percent casualty rate at the hands of their former allies (English Protestants) and the Cherokee would later suffer 50 percent casualties at the hands of their former allies.

If the Old World diseases were such a problem why are there so many countries south of our border with a 90 percent Spanish/Native American mix? Why are there some with a 100 percent Spanish/Native American mix? Why are so many here in the United States a French/Native American mix?

It is quite obvious to me that some of your sources are unreliable.

[Sam the Sham]

The Indian population in Aztec times was considerably higher than it is now. After all, when you look at most Mexicans, don't they look more Hispanic than Indian ?

[FederalistVet]

"The Indian population in Aztec times was considerably higher than it is now. After all, when you look at most Mexicans, don't they look more Hispanic than Indian?"

Actually, most Mexicans look more Indian but the important thing is that most of them were not wiped out by disease until later when the Europeans wagon trains would purposely leave Small Pox covered clothing for them to pick up and wear (there are reports of them laughing about it) instead of burning it.

Starvation caused by placing them on reservations after murderous campaigns against them (no one has mastered "ethnic cleansing" quite like the Anglo-Saxons; noncombatants were often the primary targets of a raid and they would often wait till the warriors left before they attacked a village. That was Custer's plan too, but he messed up.)

In the East however, numerous wars were waged against the Native Americans as more territory was needed for the new arrivals from Europe. Tribes sustained more casualties in combat than from disease, and more from outright massacres of tribes that were at peace with the government.

The Spanish and French mixed with the Native Americans more regularly than the English did.

[Once-Ler]

Thanx hchutch for the ping and thanx BlackElk for a thoughtful post. You have summed up my thoughts on this issue better than I could.

[BlackElk]

Your Shamness: (well chosen screenname BTW): You don't answer questions very well or at all. What makes you think you are a conservative? That you seem to be a border bigot? That you are more likely a Demonrat Undergrounder playing a conservative on the inernet?

Fr. Coughlin was known for ranting about and attacking (during the Depression no less) what he alleged to be the "power of Hebrew bankers" and other antiSemitisms. You are accusing me of antiSemitism. I resent that libel since it is groundless. I require your withdrawal of that libel in as public a manner as you have broadcast it. Alternatively, substantiate your charge.

I have pinged above six other Freepers, some of whom may believe in restricting the ongoing immigration of Mexicans but all of whom conduct themselves here as responsible and knowledgable posters. Two are well-known Jewish Freepers. I will ping others. I ask them to respond to you as to whether or not they think I seem to be antiSemitic or seem to them to be like Fr. Coughlin in any way other than being Roman Catholic (which also seems to disturb you: too bad!). I have also pinged three Catholic Freepers to ask their response.

Mob rule characterizes the pretentious little bands of well-lubricated good ol' boys with cases of beer and pick up trucks, appointing themselves "border patrols" while attacking the Vatican in their newsletters, and illegally (not that it bothers your ilk) "arresting" women and children in the SW deserts and wilds at gunpoint on Bubba's suspicion that they might be Mexican. Mob rule does not characterize those who remind you of the specific words (strict construction) of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, as they have been interpreted for good or for ill by the Federal Courts (in accordance with their literal meaning BTW) in striking down Planned Barrenhood Wilson's illegal (and California GOP destroying) referendum in California enacted in direct defiance of the Equal Protection clause as he and you well know. If you love democracy so much, use it to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment if you can. I might even help with that since it would necessarily strike down Roe vs. Wade. I don't think it will happen though. 45 million + sliced, diced and hamburgerized innocent babies and all you have to worry about is immigration. You also cling to your love of socialism (public skewels or ignorance factories, welfare for your grandma so long as she did not come from Mexico or any other place whose people you don't like, etc., etc., etc.) Oh, and I have every right to attack public institutions for which I and mine are required to pay though we'd not be caught using such moral sewers as public skewels. Why must WE pay to have YOUR kids brainwashed by the National Miseducation Association? AND, yes, putting your children's (or anyone's) minds and morals in the clutches of gummint skewels is a degenerate act in most cases.

I also require the withdrawal of the allegation that I would "march them (Jews) to the trains." I would have brought them to the USA if they wished to come here. The ship St. Louis filled with German Jews was sent to various world ports by Hitler to "prove" their "undesireability." The last attempted landing was in Florida. Despite the understandable actions of the leaders of the American Jewish Committee in chaining themselves to the White House fence in protest, FDR ignored the AJC and ordered the Coast Guard to interdict the ship St. Louis and all of its passengers and send them back to the Nazi death camps.

Likewise, isn't it the xenophobic border zealots who want mass deportations? I want mass importations. We need social conservatives (not "cultural" but social) to vote GOP and balance out those votes being cast for Mrs. Arkansas AntiChrist who will tempt YOU and yours by suggesting mass deportations of Mexicans or anything else if it would elect them to return to the Stalinist agenda of her husband's minority regime (plurality but minority nonetheless).

I will leave it to the fever swamp of what passes for your mind to figure out what you mean by "ethnic cleansing of post-Vatican II weaklings" and whatever Vatican II may have to do with public skewels located in America. In case he wishes to respond to that suggestion, I have also pinged an ecclesiastically progressive Texas Roman Catholic deacon of the Novus Ordo persuasion (I favor the Tridentine but attend more convenient Novus Ordo Masses without guilt and with reverence for God).

I am English, Irish, Scottish and German by ancestry and not at all Mediterranean. I have never been to the Mediterranean. My mother's eldest brother was killed while serving aboard a destroyer off Salerno in WWII in the US Navy but that does not make me "Mediterranean." My most recently arrived foreign-born ancestor arrived here (from non-Mediterranean England) in about 1908. I am a lifelong layman and never a cleric above the level of altar boy. I would have difficulty being a Mediterranean, not clerical and not fascist. I am having difficulty figuring out how supporting the free immigration into the USA constitutes "fascism" but never mind. I don't want to tax your obviously limited intellectual resources.

I have no idea who Charles Maurras is or was. Nor do I have any particular interest in knowing.

Now what was that about "hypocrisy"? If we build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, can we call it Berlin Wall II?