How well did that confiscation trick work for the War on Drugs?
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.
I understand that in areas bordering Mexico, those of Mexican ancestry refer to Caucasians of non-Spanish ancestry as Anglos but I regard that as a misuse of the term and far too broadly applied.
Serious question deserving a serious answer which I hope I have provided.
President should be capitalized. I see the proofreaders at NR are also incompetent.
I am staying. I am also disagreeing with you. We social conservatives are going to win. Just as your ancestors or pre-Roe vs. Wade legally libertarian and pro-abortion soulmates stayed in America, many pro-aborts will stay after Roe has become just a receding memory of SCOTUS induced mass murder.
BTW, blacks suffer about four times the number of abortions that would be proportional to their representation in the population generally. The abortion mills are most often set up in poor neighborhoods so that the Pete Planned Barrenhood Wilsons may more effective cause the slaughter of the poor. More civilized pro-aborts prattle about providing the poor with the same opportunity (to kill their babies) that the affluent enjoy. Wow, what courage, what selfless dedication, what, ummmm, cultural liberalism!
That business about Alabama buses is really beneath your dignity. You are a lot smarter, and a lot wiser than to make such arguments seriously. Shame!
You and I get along fine. I don't take your causticity personally. By the way, I think Roe should be overturned. It was bad law when it was decided, and its bad law now. Regards.
The Iriquois survived because they were a "warrior elite" and went right out and recruited (meaning "shanghaied") new members. That's what their "adoption" system was all about. The Mingo, the non-confederation Iriquois, took it on the chin and lost numbers to the plagues AND to the Iriquois Confederation.
You can find us under "Jordan" in the Oneida. The oldest member in the line I can find is a Brotherton who was "adopted" and then had a number of children by a French Protestant fur trader with an entirely different surname.
Do you have more questions of that nature? If so, the Internet has the capability of providing them.
Now to the issue of Old World Diseases ~ Although smallpox killed a lot of Indians, they had no more higher death rate from smallpox, malaria and yellowfever than did Old World people. On the other hand, they had particular problems with whooping cough, mumps, measles, chickenpox, tuberculosis, typhoid, typhus, and cholera. Consequently when the Old World diseases hit their population centers you ended up with 90 to 95% death rates!
There's only one verifiable instance of any individual using smallpox against the Indians, and for the life of me I can't figure out why he did it since all he'd have to do was cough vigorously in their presence and most likely some of them would be dead by dawn the next day. After all, why send second best when #1 is right at hand, eh?!
Mexico is estimated to have had about 35,000,000 people upon the arrival of the Spanish. Within the space of a generation the native population was reduced to less than 5,000,000 people. Unfortunately nobody worked up a really good census on this so the deaths have to be inferred from the estimates of the original population. Peru is another case where the Indians had a really tough time with Old World disease.
The question arises "Hey, if they all died how come so many Latin Americans look like Indians". And, the answer is "they don't!".
Frankly, they all look pretty Middle-Eastern and North African to me. Only a few look tremendously Indian. You have to remember that just about all of the people in the world with Indian ancestry have European, Asian and African ancestry added to the mix since Columbus' arrival. That is, we are all mestizos, and odds are that in the United States most such folks look so "white" or so "black" that they are thought of as "white" or "black". Indians without the requisite admixture of Old World genotypes die quickly of Old World diseases, usually as children.
Blood tests will eventually resolve all of this.
BTW, the English "mixed" with the natives at the same rate as any other group. Englishmen, after all, are not sexless, nor, reportedly, are they built differently than other men.
If your name is Romero or Cruz and your momma and poppa don't want you to learn Spanish, then you will grow up to be an Anglo.
This discussion on illegal immigration shows the strength of our party as a party of ideas. If you think Union rats resent illegal immigration your correct, but you will never hear John Sweeney say so. Immigration is a loser issue for Republicans. If this was not true Buchanan and Tancredo would not be the laughing stocks they are today. If Hillary succeeds in making the rats the party of border patrol storm troopers so much the better.
More likely, most of the Old Right will complain that the SS overhaul doesn't solve the problem, actively block it's passage, and then ignore that it passed while continuing to criticize the GOP...just like welfare reform and the PBA ban.
That being said, I would agree that you're not an anti-semite or a Father Coughlin follower, and think that both those allegations are equally in bad tase.
I agree.
So I want legal immigration to be thorough but easy, as it was in the early 20th century. I want illegal immigration to be nigh impossible, with millions of Americans looking for illegals and the $100 bounty.
I think if we solve the problems of legal entry to the US we will solve much of the illegal immigration problem.
I've spent a great deal of time in both Latin America and the Middle East. This includes a good deal of time in Bolivia and Peru. Unlike the rest of Latin America, most of Bolivia and Peru were never really settled that much by Europeans. Today, the populations of Bolivian and the Peruvian interior (away from Lima) are still decended from 80-90% Indian stock, and, in fact, still speak Amayya and Quechwa as first-languages -- not Spanish.
They look very different from people we could characterize as "Latino" or "Hispanic."
Latinos and Hispanics also don't look Middle Eastern. I've seen plenty of Arabs and Sephardic Jews. They look nothing like Hispanics.
Rather, Hispanics look exactly like what they are: people of mixed descent amongst Indians, Europeans, and African slaves.
I despise these immigration threads. Under the guise of "closing the borders" they give free reign to some of the ugliest sentiments that afflict the human spirit.
I live in NYC
If you live in NYC you should understand that weak kneed RINOs are the only kind you can elect. When the people of NYC stop being socialist screw-ups then NYC can start electing conservatives. You seem to think the problem with Republicans is that they do what the voters demand. all successful politicians do what the voters say they want. Idiots like Keyes try to tell the voters what they want. It don't work that way.
You showed you have a deeper intellect than many other posters.
Illegal aliens need to be stopped from crossing the border, but if they are willing to work and contribute taxes, and add value to our country...let's help them do that 'cause there are some in our country who would rather have the handout. If they've got the work ethic and desire to be American Citizens then let's put Lady Liberty at the southern border.
You expressed your thoughts well and I agree.
"Hyperbole about "enforcing our existing laws" simply won't cut it."
You mean the instant a federal task force swoops down and confiscates the local McDonalds, jails the owners and managers, and fines them millions of dollars, that all the other employers of illegals won't dump their illegals?
You mean the banks who financed the place who just lost their ass won't make demands of their other borrowers to dump the ilelgals?
How well did that confiscation trick work for the War on Drugs?
I believe a large segment of the zero immigration crowd doesn't vote anyways. Their is no party to turn to which reinforces their bigotry plus most of them can't read. Most Republicans who disagree with Dubya on immigration are not likely to vote for rats because they identify with Republicans on taxes, defense, abortion, or other issues.
Could Conservatives flock to a third Party - which I understand would not stand a chance against the two present-day blocs - or would they punish the GOP by a large abstention ?
It is probable some Republicans who see immigration as their #1 issue may stay home instead of vote. Their numbers are not substantial in my opinion.
These are likely the same people who deserted the party in 2000 for Buchanan/Fullani. 2.3% of the vote I think and many of those votes are stragglers from 92/96 Reform party members who can't believe the dream is gone. The Old Right always plays the spoiler. They make the claim they are "taking their ball and going home," when in fact they rarely vote Republican anyways.
If you go back to the Freepers home page of many of those most critical of Dubya on immigration you will find they were critical last year and the year before. In 2008 they will say "I voted for Dubya last time but this time I'm voting for some neverheard-of-little sh*t congressman."
Yes. Many Americans woke up this first morning of the year with their hangovers and cursing the illegal immigrants just like you every morning day after day and year after year. Sad news Vision...I looks like this is gonna be very bad year for you again.
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