Posted on 11/15/2005 6:51:13 AM PST by DTogo
Thanks for saying that. You know, I don't want to put people feeling like they have to say "I like Mexicans too." The problems I have with people here on FR are the people who make snide, ugly hateful remarks directed at them just because they are Latino. A preacher friend of mine once said that he never "laid into" his parishioners because "the ones that I am aiming at never pay any attention and the ones whose consciences are smitten are the tender hearted people who I wasn't aiming at anyway." That seems to be my experience about people with bad attitudes toward latinos on FR. You can tell who is reasonable and who isn't. Anyway, although we might differ on stuff, I never have seen anything from you that indicated you have something personal at stake against latinos.
Nothing personal, but believe very strongly that my country's future is at stake....which is personal...I have children who must live here after I'm gone; things need to be done before they inherit a greater, possibly no longer fixable, mess.
On that point I believe you are correct. This one IS different. Because of that, I think our immgration policies should reflect our "next door" status. It just makes sense to me that we would give "first place" in line to people who can come in when they need to, but who may wish to return. Now, people come and stay b/c being illegal, they can't go and come back.
I am a guy who believes the huge outflow of funds to Mexico (remitted US dollars is the biggest source of revenue to Mexico..., bigger than tourism or oil) is actually a good thing in the long run. Those dollars wind up coming BACK to the US in terms of capital goods bought. If you look at the increase of goods purchased from the USA over the last 6 years, and the estimates of money into Mexico from here, the net cash flow is actually projected to go positive in 5-7 more years. It is like Henry Ford paying his guys more than the prevailing wage saying "how else are they going to buy my cars?"
It is that dynamic, and other political issues that make me want to give Mexico "first place" in line for immigration status (to pick up on an earlier thread).
Please don't bother... I was hopelessly confused and it showed. Just go to the next post and bury this one. Thanks.
The phrase "knowingly employ" is better, but I believe that is already a violation of US tax law. I (literallly) just got up from an appt with an electrical contractor who had a kid working for him a few years ago who, when he sent in his 941s got a letter from the IRS saying that if he continued to employ this person, he was subject to fines of $4,000 a day. "He was the best worker I ever had. I send him contract work whenever I can."
And I would venture to say, never with so few controls. Even before quotas and such, most people had to reach land via ships and get off, versus simply walking or driving across the desert as millions have done over the last five years. In the 1940s/50s' waves, people were screened for diseases.
Now the government just winks and nods, and the states blames the feds and the local govts set up water stations and day laborer centers. Meanwhile the serfs continue to pay $4 - $6/head of lettuce when you factor in what we pay for the illegal alien healthcare, schools, welfare, highways, etc. ad nauseum.
Well unfortunately you may just get your wish. The language coming out of the administration about this "guest worker" program suggests a prejudice for mexicans on top of deeper and deeper integration with mexico.
BQ the Americas was the refuge to those who were suffered under tyranny...
But those "South of the Border" are either blind or failed to recognized they are in the Americas and the South of the borders are their birthright which they seems not grasp...
They must tame their homeland in order to achieve sovereignty!
THOSE "SOUTH OF THE BORDERS" NEED TO BE REMINDED DAILY
That they need to stay home and focus on what the good Lord gave them... that they are in the promise land the Americas but they failed to recognized their birth right...
SOUTH AMERICA'S
They need to be shown the alterative they have, and it is NOT here in the USA OR NORTH AMERICA
Those living here should take the opportunity to plan to correct MEXICO/SOUTH AMERICA corrupt living conditions and government so they can live like sovereign people in their OWN homeland!
They need to be shown or pointed out instead of dying to get to USA, they should focus towards claiming their birthright and rid their own homeland of thugs...
It is time MEXICANS OR SOUTH AMERICANS say enough is enough and get REAL to be good neighbors and clean up their own backyard!
IT IS IMPORTANT THOSE SOUTH OF THE BORDER FOCUS ON THEIR PRIORTY, DIGNITY AND ENERGY TOWARDS VICTORY IN THEIR HOMELAND!
Allow me to excerpt just a few of your many observations that deserve (constant, drumbeat) repetition:
If thats what it takes to once and for all stop the illegal alien lawbreakers, Im all for one big honkin wall and the sooner the better.
They [illegals] represent a threat to those values I consider most important: sovereignty, borders, culture, customs, traditions and language.
I do not support the Bush proposal because it is essentially an amnesty dressed up as a guest worker program A guest worker program which merely passes a magic wand over 20 million illegal aliens and pronounces them all guest workers is nothing this country is going to accept. Ever. You do not eliminate illegality by pronouncing everyone legal.
The problem we have here, and have been discussing ad nauseum, is that what you are for comes up short when tough measures must be put in place because that is where you go all wobbly on us with compassion. I reserve my compassion for our citizens in the border states and elsewhere who have had to bear the brunt of the illegal alien invasion. Save your compassion for them.
Youre either for aggressively defending American sovereignty, protecting and securing our borders, and the preservation of American culture, customs, traditions and language, or youre not. According to your own words: yes, you believe in this provided I dont have to use lethal force to do so; yes, I believe in that as long as I dont have to build a wall.
You may consider yourself a loyal American conservative. I do not. Feel free to come back and apply again when you dont have to hang so many ifs, ands and buts onto your answers.
You happened to hit on one of the explosive issues about which I am particularly sensitive and I dont intend to be posting much over the next couple of weeks so I feel a case of wordity (as fellow FReeper First_Salute would call it :) welling up. You may want to bookmark this for reading sometime when youre down with a cold, or you may want to schedule a bathroom or dog-walking break somewhere in the middle. :)
I believe the most erosive threats to our republics sovereignty, security, and retention of our ancestral roots lie in the threats posed by terrorism, illegal immigration, the tyrannical nature of the judiciary, federal fiscal irresponsibility, and the desperate need for tort reform (in that order).
I live in Lancaster Country, in south-central Pennsylvania. Rural farm country that boasts the most fertile, non-irrigated farmland east of the Mississippi. We have virtually no illegal alien problem. We have a fairly large Vietnamese and Ukrainian population -- as a matter of fact a Ukrainian electrical engineer just purchased the house we have lived in for thirty-two years, and two of my younger piano students are from Vietnamese families. Every one of the Vietnamese and Ukrainian immigrants that I have met is here legally, and is employed, hard-working and extraordinarily family-oriented.
So I cant empathize, firsthand, with the hell on earth that is being created by illegals for those Americans living in the border states. Heck, my blood pressure rises significantly every time I read accounts of the cost to the American taxpayer (and the borders state residents in particular) of educating the children of illegals, providing benefits that their employers do not, subsidized housing, disproportionately high incarceration, pro bono legal services, etc. and the increasing arrogance with which these perks are demanded. I find unimaginable the thought of personally dealing with such circumstances on a daily basis.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a detailed description of where I believe the solutions to this deadly problem lie. Many of the suggestions would have to be implemented by those with a much more specific knowledge of the logistics, structural, personnel, etc. considerations, but I believe the proposals are feasible.
From our correspondences, and your posts here, I do not believe there is any major aspect of this issue on which we disagree, but Id like to add a few more thoughts, even though I strongly suspect that you have formulated them yourself, or, if not, you will be justifiably predisposed to accusing me of preaching to the choir. :)
Americans used to take pride in the fact that we were considered the melting pot of the world. That label presupposes that the various ingredients poured into the mix eventually are going to be combined into one relatively homogeneous whole.
The concept of the homogeneous whole has found itself relegated to the dustbin of history, as more recent (over the past four decades) immigrants, both legal and illegal, have simply refused to melt. Assimilation is no longer pursued, and past allegiances are no longer renounced in deference to the ideas and principles that once made this republic unique among civilizations, past and present. Instead, balkanization has been increasingly encouraged, even sometimes initiated, by leftist leadership that has developed (over the same four decades) an insatiable desire to increase the number of people living within the borders of this republic who are:
(1) dependent on the largesse of the state for their survival, and
(2) willing to vote for politicians who will see to it that the continued burgeoning of the nanny state is not imperiled.
Those who cross our southern borders without following the proper channels make up an inordinate, and illegal, portion of (1). At the same time, any American citizen who observes the above aloud or in print will invariably find himself branded (by the political, media and academic elites) as ignorant at best, and racist at worst.
In five years (more than four of which occurred post-9/11), the Bush administration has authored absolutely nothing of substance in its policy-making targeted at confronting the illegal immigration threat. Indeed, the half-hearted, dangerously compassionate political trial balloons being launch of late almost seem aimed toward diffusing the anger of the electorate rather than actually addressing the festering, potentially deadly problem. And the administration is accomplishing neither of the above.
The last time Congress attempted to address the issue of illegal immigration was during the Reagan administration twenty years ago. And that attempt was scuttled, mainly because the general public was not yet as aware of, and enraged about, the issue as we are today, and the voices of those businesses who employed illegals at the time were significantly louder than the relatively small fraction of the (then) electorate who had a vital interest in stemming the flow from the south.
The countless amnesty (although those proposing the programs have employed the semantics of political convenience in order to tap dance around the term) programs currently being proposed by the administration and other inveterate compromisers on the Hill (McCain and Kennedy chief among them) also conveniently tap dance around the unwritten bottom line in all of their proposals: Eventually rewarding those who have committed a crime amounts to defining as naïve suckers those who have played by the rules and entered the country through legal channels. And, even worse, it encourages others to follow the example of the lawbreakers. Always has and always will.
Our so-called leaders unwillingness to punish lawbreakers both the illegals who have already entered from the south, via deportation and those hundreds of businesses who knowingly employ them on the financial backs of the American taxpayer, via fines and imprisonment is at the core of the present problem.
And our so-called leaders unwillingness to funnel resources out of supporting crime (i.e., using taxpayer money to subsidize illegal activity) and into formulating viable ways of walling off our southern border, portends a deadly sovereignty and security risk, and a looming economic cataclysm that defies description.
Walling off our porous southern border must be our first line of defense a fifteen-foot high cement tourniquet, if need be, Any other proposal is simply political window dressing a band-aid applied to a severed artery.
A porous border is not only an invitation to illegal workers, and non-citizens who freely feed at the tax-payer-funded public trough. It is also an invitation to the criminal element whose crossing is being aided and abetted by the Mexican government itself (Heres your official government copy of The Guide for the Mexican Migrant, courtesy of Vicente Fox, and replete with tips on how to steal across the border and avoid detection and good riddance!)
And then there are the drug smugglers and the terrorists of all stripes.
Ernesto Zedillo appears to have been not only Vicente Foxs predecessor, but also his mentor. Zedillo told a public audience of Mexican-Americans in the US about ten years ago that they are not Americans, but Mexicans living north of their countrys border. And, when addressing a La Raza meeting shortly thereafter, he told the members that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders, and that Mexican immigrants are a very important part of this expansion.
Both Zedillo and Fox appear to be intent on creating a trans-national North America, using the European Union as an example. The only problem with that comparison is that the nations that make up the European Union entered that union (1) on a relatively equal basis, and (2) with a formal written agreement.
And it would appear that the past three American administrations and their respective congresses have been, and continue to be, far less focused on preserving the American language, tradition, republican form of government, and sovereignty than their Mexican counterparts of the past two decades have been focused on insidiously and covertly erasing their northern border.
We cannot allow the most moral, prosperous civilization in the history of the world to fall as a result of a combination of phony compassion born of political expediency and citizen malaise.
We must see to it that people like this
are free to spew their socialist, one-world propaganda on the other side of something like this
~ joanie
I remember reading somewhere about a farmer or a rancher in one of the border states who used to feel sorry for the Mexicans coming across the border near his house. He used to invite some of them in for a hot meal, and offer them hospitality of different kinds. But he said things have really changed. Many of the illegals coming across the borders are breaking into people's houses and taking what they want, etc. They aren't waiting very long to commit their crimes.
I used to think that the idea of a wall like the Israeli's have built was a far fetched solution, but not anymore. It's the most sensible one around.
I don't understand the President's ignoring of this problem. It's not that he'd lose the Mexican American vote. All of the polls say that the Mexicans who are in this country are against illegal immigration. I'm also not surprised at the comment you mentioned that was made at a LaRaza meeting. They might just be as big a threat to us as any Muslim terrorists.
Thanks for the great post Joanie.
(How's the new house coming?)
Right on point and correct.
"From our correspondences, and your posts here, I do not believe there is any major aspect of this issue on which we disagree,..."
Indeed, there is not.
"Assimilation is no longer pursued, and past allegiances are no longer renounced in deference to the ideas and principles that once made this republic unique among civilizations, past and present. Instead, balkanization has been increasingly encouraged, even sometimes initiated, by leftist leadership that has developed (over the same four decades) an insatiable desire to increase the number of people living within the borders of this republic..."
This is a critical point that must be stated and re-stated until it finally sinks in to the collective consciousness of American citizens. Here in southern California, the result of this misplaced "compassion" is easy to see: Little Tokyo, Little Saigon, mosques all over the place, Koreatown, Chinatown, and on and on ad nauseum. This problem is way out of control.
"In five years (more than four of which occurred post-9/11), the Bush administration has authored absolutely nothing of substance in its policy-making targeted at confronting the illegal immigration threat. Indeed, the half-hearted, dangerously compassionate political trial balloons being launch of late almost seem aimed toward diffusing the anger of the electorate rather than actually addressing the festering, potentially deadly problem. And the administration is accomplishing neither of the above."
Lets call this one "Requiem for the Bush Administration", Sub-title "How Everything Went Wrong on the Way to My Legacy". Making light of this is about all we have left since it has become quite clear this administration has no intention of taking the tough reform actions that are absolutely essential. The President has only himself to blame--he has not leveled with the American people on this issue.
"The countless amnesty (although those proposing the programs have employed the semantics of political convenience in order to tap dance around the term) programs currently being proposed by the administration and other inveterate compromisers on the Hill (McCain and Kennedy chief among them) also conveniently tap dance around the unwritten bottom line in all of their proposals: Eventually rewarding those who have committed a crime..."
Another bulls eye.
"Our so-called leaders unwillingness to punish lawbreakers both the illegals who have already entered from the south, via deportation and those hundreds of businesses who knowingly employ them on the financial backs of the American taxpayer, via fines and imprisonment is at the core of the present problem...A porous border is not only an invitation to illegal workers, and non-citizens who freely feed at the tax-payer-funded public trough. It is also an invitation to the criminal element whose crossing is being aided and abetted by the Mexican government "
This point, along with the progressive deterioration of our once respected institutions of government (FBI, CIA, etc.), has finally led to the one problem Washington refuses to recognize: an increasing level of citizen distrust of the federal government. Enforcement of U.S. immigration law is virtually ignored. When the federal government makes clear it has no respect for the rule of law, why should citizens be expected to "turn square corners" in complying with the law?
"Zedillo told a public audience of Mexican-Americans in the US about ten years ago that they are not Americans, but Mexicans living north of their countrys border."
And Mexicans can apparently have dual citizenship. So much for allegiance to America. Retaining allegiance to another country should automatically disqualify an applicant for U.S. citizenship.
"Both Zedillo and Fox appear to be intent on creating a trans-national North America, using the European Union as an example."
And we can now add Bush to this cabal. Preserving and protecting American sovereignty is apparently no longer a matter of any particular importance.
" And it would appear that the past three American administrations and their respective congresses have been, and continue to be, far less focused on preserving the American language, tradition, republican form of government, and sovereignty..."
You are far too kind here. In fact, being "less focused" would be one hell of an improvement over what has actually been going on. A federal decision to ignore enforecement of our immigration laws and, worse, to actively work toward initiatives and measures designed to eliminate national sovereignty in favor of an "Integrated North America". "Treason" is not too strong a word.
Your posts are too infrequent to suit me, but they are always worth the wait.
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