Posted on 04/01/2006 11:14:03 AM PST by neverdem
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March 28, 2006, 7:22 a.m. Illegals vs. Enforcement The protesters in the street get it. Does Congress?
Advocates for illegal immigration might have trouble ginning up much support for their cause if they didnt have recourse to a handy expedient: constantly importing more supporters. Every day that more illegal immigrants arrive in this country is a day that the constituency for defying our immigration laws grows larger.
Illegals demonstrated that last weekend when they swelled the ranks of anti-enforcement protesters in a Los Angeles rally estimated at 500,000, and in rallies in Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, and Milwaukee that drew tens of thousands. The protests generated sympathetic media coverage that emphasized how much opposition there is to a House bill toughening enforcement, although the idea of stricter enforcement is wildly popular with the American public.
Proponents of an amnesty and guest-worker program often say, There are some jobs Americans wont do. When it comes to manning massive protests against our immigration laws, they are right. For that, you need illegal labor.
In the short term, the anti-enforcement protests might backfire. In 1994, illegal immigrants were part of a huge protest against Californias Proposition 187, which denied various public benefits to illegals. But the specter of protesters waving Mexican flags only fueled public support for the measure, which passed handily. This time, there was an ample supply of American flags at the L.A. rally, but influential blogger Mickey Kaus still reports that there was an even split between Mexican and American flags. If you said Mexican flag every time you saw a Mexican flag, Kaus writes, you never stopped talking.
Well, arent there plenty of Irish flags at St. Patricks Day parades, and Italian flags at Columbus Day celebrations? What makes the Mexican displays more ominous is their hint of a large, unassimilated population existing outside Americas laws and exhibiting absolutely no sheepishness about it. As the New York Times put it delicately in a report on the protests, they included immigrants who were long thought too fearful of deportation to risk so public a display. But there is safety in numbers.
Opponents of immigration enforcement hope to create demographic realities on the ground that inevitably shape our policy. Already, one of their favorite arguments is to ask, with exaggerated incredulity, What are you going to do with the eleven million illegals already here, deport them all? Mass defiance of immigration laws serves to make those laws seem steadily more unenforceable, undermining them from within.
Democrats are happy to stoke this self-perpetuating dynamic, since it directly benefits them. Political scientist James Gimpel of the University of Maryland says that Latino voters who have recently become citizens vote Democratic by a margin of 2-1. So, the more new Latino voters there are, the stronger the lax-enforcement Democrats become.
Republicans are tempted to get on this treadmill, too, in order not to alienate the Latino vote. It used to be only California that the GOP had to fear losing, but now its also Arizona, Texas, and Colorado, with Latino voters becoming more important in southern states like Georgia and North Carolina as well. But whatever Republicans do to allow more Latinos into the country only creates more Democratic voters in the near term.
If demographics isnt quite destiny, it really matters. Look at Europe. Muslim immigration is challenging the cultural identity of Holland and has created unpoliced no-go zones in the Paris suburbs. The nightmare is something similar happening here, unless we pause to culturally digest our recent immigrants. Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, who presciently wrote of a clash of civilizations years before 9/11, warns of the threat to Americas national cohesion from an ever-growing, poorly assimilated Latino population.
All such warnings seem unduly dire until, as the Europeans have learned, they come to pass. Then its too late (what are you going to do, deport them all?). The stakes in the current immigration debate are huge, in both defining our laws and what we are as a nation. The protesters in the street get it. Does Congress?
Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
(c) 2006 King Features Syndicate
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http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200603280722.asp
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That large majority favoring guest workers is a figment of the liberal times immagination. ( and yours)
Do tou think they fabricated the poll?
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant!
Tonk?
What I'd like to know is:
Member Opinion
Oppose 16.4% 291
100.0% 1,776
We have 16% here that still don't get it?! How is that even possible?
Non-Member Opinion
Oppose 18.9%
"We have 16% here that still don't get it?! How is that even possible?"
It's what happens when party "talking points"
are more important than America's future.
Amnesty over my dead body!
Semper Fi'
Jarhead
Well, put it this way: If this was really such a popular idea, why would Congress have any issues about first passing a border-security bill? Then they could go ahead with guest workers, and still have popular support for it, right? But they won't do that, precisely because they know that once the border is secured, there won't be the same appetite for guest workers.
Poor Linus is not a 'protected' child!!
LA Harbor Shut Down
by Pachuco Saturday, Apr. 01, 2006 at 1:28 PM
Is a shut down of the LA Harbor possible?
The port truckers will be demonstrating and marching in Wilmington near the L.A. Harbor on May Day - 2006.
Efforts should be joined with the port trucker L.A. Harbor demonstration since that will involve actually shutting down the Los Angeles Harbor.
The "marches and speeches and then go home" model of demonstrating is good but actually shutting down the Los Angles Harbor is a whole other dimension - it is a dimension that many cannot even conceptualize since it has been so long ago in American history that those tactics have been used.
The port truckers are virtually all Chicano and/or Latino and are a high percentage immigrants as well. Of course, they are also all workers. Will the middle class and "liberal" groups support the port truckers as they attempt to hold a General Strike and close the Los Angeles Harbor.
www.cirnow.org/content/en/caworkersday_050106.htm
However bad that might be, we can take consolation in the fact that the Bush Plan is dead. Hah.
"Do tou think they fabricated the poll?"
Yes, I do when every other poll taken over the last few years shows an overwhelming opposition to this. There is a collection of the polling data at fairusa if you don't believe me.
Teddy isn't capable of stopping the Republicans from introducing border-security bills. Only they can stop themselves from doing that, despite the fact that such bills are guaranteed to enjoy broad public support.
The Bush plan is the Kennedy plan just like the Bush education plan was the Kennedy plan. The Bush/Kennedy/McCain/Hillary amnisty is the one favored by the ruling political class.
Look at what they are all saying. They are all reading the same talking points.
by "Ingsoc" May 7, 2005 at 04:58 AM
> wrote in message... To all white thiefs! >
Latinos will take over this country in the next 30 years. If you whites don't like it, move elsewhere. You stole 1/2 of Mexico and we are rightfully taking back what is ours. Our women are told to have as many babies as their health will allow, each latino baby is another victory for the reconquest of OUR land. The more latinos we have here, the more political power we have. We will take more political offices and then create new laws to tax whites more and more and more. This will give us extra money for our needs and make whites angry and thus cause them to move away, away from OUR land.
> We even have the full support of President Bush, he is clearly on OUR side and agrees with us! Bush is really a latino at heart, he speaks perfect Spanish and is a good friend of the great Mexican President Vicente Fox.
Viva Mexico! Viva Aztlan!
source: http://talkaboutgovernment.com/group/alt.politics.correct/messages/263499.html
Introducing a bill and passing a bill are different.
Sure they have. Didn't you read Specters initial draft or Frist's bill. Of course both got blown out of the saddle. By you know who.
Poor Pubbies - looks like the chickens are coming home to roost ...
If the Republicans let him exercise any degree of power, especially over a bill that would meet with the approval of the vast majority of voters, then they're just as guilty as he is.
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