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The Solution to the Immigration Crisis — Nothing for Nothing
Toward Tradition ^ | 4APR06 | Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Posted on 04/06/2006 10:04:41 PM PDT by freddymuldoon

The Solution to the Immigration Crisis — Nothing for Nothing

© Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Whenever the topic of immigration comes up on my radio show, callers challenge me, “All Americans started as immigrants.” Since my accent offers a clue that I wasn’t born in the Bronx, callers imply that I personally must be pro-immigration. And I am. However, I along with many Americans do not favor being taken advantage of.

Not everyone who comes to this country deserves the title of immigrant. That word describes someone who emigrates from his country of birth and fondly embraces his new home. Until about 1965 that meant that while retaining fondness for native foods and cultural customs most immigrants wanted a fair chance to build a new life in a wonderful new country. They asked for nothing more than that. And through their exertions they built their lives and contributed mightily to everyone else’s.

More than anything else they wanted to become Americans. They struggled to make sure they and their children became productive and successful citizens. They all came to America to become American, not just to find jobs. Economic opportunity was one of the benefits luring them to this country, but it was part and parcel of a whole package that included the English language, citizenship, pride in America’s history and gratitude for becoming part of her destiny.

Today, while many who come to the United States are made in the same image as these earlier immigrants; far too many are not. Many are not even migrants. To use an old xenophobic British term—they are foreigners. It is not I labeling them thus. In both word and action they proudly proclaim it themselves.

Many Americans feel concern about the masses coming over our borders, and find it difficult to distinguish between immigrants and foreigners. One need only be honest to observe the following three trends:

1. America’s educational, medical, and welfare resources are disproportionately burdened by foreigners.

2. This group is disproportionately represented among criminals and prison inmates.

3. Government lacks methods to distinguish between those who wish to adopt the English language and integrate into American culture and those who don’t.

All this flows from a mistaken idea that has become a fatal fault line in the bedrock of American immigration policy. Government has violated a law of nature as surely as if it had attempted to violate the law of gravity. American policy has codified the idea that a person can be a recipient without incurring any obligations in return. It has violated the natural law of reality which is that one cannot get something for nothing.

The good Lord created a world in which He intended humans to learn that one receives in relationship to what one gives. Human society functions best when those who give nothing, get nothing in return. That way, at least the next generation learns the lesson of reality. Even charity and compassion must be delivered with certain expectations from the recipient.

We have to exert ourselves to make anything good happen. In the very beginning Man was placed in the Garden of Eden to work the garden and make things grow. If you do not plough and plant, you will not reap—not even if your name is Adam. Nobody has any right to live by the sweat of another man’s brow.

Noah was instructed to build an ark which would hold two of every creature as well as all their nutritional needs for a year. That is one big boat for a 600 year-old man to build. It is just not possible for any human to have built a vessel larger than a coastal freighter, in the one year God gave him. How do believers explain this gargantuan feat of backyard boat-building? The obvious answer is that God assisted Noah with a miracle. In true rabbinic fashion, this answer only introduces another more important question: if an old man’s twelve months of exertion brought an ark into being only through a miracle, why didn’t God just go ahead and cause the ark to appear overnight through the same miracle? Doing so would have saved poor old Noah quite a few blisters. Why should Noah have had to labor for an entire year? The purpose of the story is to teach us—nothing for nothing. You want a miracle? Just start the job. Get going and God will help. But you have to put in your part. Nothing for nothing.

One critical distinction exists between government administered assistance and that offered by private individuals and private charitable organizations. Government is unable to ask or even expect anything in return from the recipient, be it a student benefiting from public education, a mother benefiting from food stamps, or an illegal immigrant benefiting from the hospital emergency room. So insidious is this inability that eventually government assistance programs get called “entitlements.”

When Congress wished to appropriate money for helping people in need, it was Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett who in a speech to Congress in about 1830 said:

Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

That is right. Government should not be in the charity business. The most successful private and faith-based charitable organizations administer their aid expecting something in return. This protects the human dignity of the recipient. God created us to be givers not merely takers. Government charity turns recipients into takers.

Most Americans are compassionate and fair. We are willing to give a chance for a new life to people who wish to seize the opportunity and become assets to their new country. If a school announces that all students will get A’s no matter their tests results, the industrious student is penalized. When a country announces that everyone coming over the border will be automatically eligible for medical care, schooling and other government charity, the foreigner is attracted. The genuine immigrant suffers.

The road back leads via the realization that nothing truly does beget nothing. Only that way will America once again be able to distinguish the immigrant from the foreigner.

***


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: banditos; immigration; mexico
I got this from a Toward Tradition email.
1 posted on 04/06/2006 10:04:44 PM PDT by freddymuldoon
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To: freddymuldoon

Welcome to FR


2 posted on 04/06/2006 10:10:14 PM PDT by SteveMcKing
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To: freddymuldoon
Socialism is about giving something for nothing to those who don't deserve it. The Senate's so-called "compromise" besides breaking this country's laws, is blatantly socialist in design. Some solution we have here to our immigration crisis.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

3 posted on 04/06/2006 10:10:21 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: freddymuldoon


The City of New York is getting tough on immigration. Their crackdown consists of letting illegal immigrants vote. (So I guess al Quada's next attack on New York will consist of getting their people elected there.) The Senate is getting tougher, making all illegals register with the federal government (if they decide to show up.)

Meanwhile illegals all across the United States are protesting for their "rights". And when they say "rights" they mean things like welfare, social security, use of the schools and several other things they don't pay for. True - they pay sales taxes, but they're exempt from the hardcore income taxes, FICA and all the other heavy prices that the Political Elite punish the rest of us with. It's nice that these invaders feel entitled to the fruits of American labor - not that they want to have anything to do with us. So they do have something in common with the people in our government.

Neither of these groups even deems us worthy of communicating with. One wants to speak Spanish only. The other wants to tell us that English words don't really mean what we think they mean (depends on how you define the word "is".)

If the United States really wants to crack down on illegals the solution is easy. You don't have to build a wall. You don't have to have scores of people patrolling the border. All you have to do is CUT THESE PEOPLE OFF. Deny them welfare. Deny them Social Security. Don't let them sue in our courts. Bust companies that hire illegals. DON'T GIVE THESE PEOPLE A REASON TO COME HERE.

They complain that they were poor in the Mexico. That's fine. But for some reason it's a crime that they're poor here. It keeps getting tossed in my face like I'm guilty of some horrible theft. They want to do the job that no one else wants do for a wage that no one else will take. You're saying that to a guy that works for two dollars an hour (plus tips.)

My heart bleeds....


4 posted on 04/06/2006 10:13:03 PM PDT by Tzimisce (How Would Mohammed Vote? Hillary for President! www.dndorks.com)
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To: freddymuldoon

---Nobody has any right to live by the sweat of another man’s brow.---

Except lawyers, politicians, and their retainers, certain protected classes, and the list is growing longer.


5 posted on 04/06/2006 10:29:07 PM PDT by claudiustg (Build a fence. They won't come.)
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To: Tzimisce

I'd rather pay a buck a head for lettuce than an extra thousand a year in taxes to support acouple Illegals.


6 posted on 04/06/2006 10:57:42 PM PDT by holyscroller (A wise man's heart directs him toward the right, but the foolish man's heart directs him to the left)
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To: holyscroller
I'd rather pay a buck a head for lettuce than an extra thousand a year in taxes to support acouple Illegals.

Same here.

7 posted on 04/06/2006 11:06:51 PM PDT by Marine Inspector (Government is not the solution to our problem; Government is the problem)
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To: freddymuldoon
Welcome.

I have been psuedo-blogging, for years, a couple of the elements in WWIV ( III being the Cold War ), in which we find ourselves engaged.

The first element?

Islam, a Religion of Peace®? ( links, blogs, quips, quotes, aggravating pictures ) is located here- click the Pic, and scroll backwards:

The other, somewhat interlocking element is this one:

"Thunder on the Border," click the picture:

( PS- my personal prediction? That picture will become one of the most widely distributed, and most hated, pictures on the internet. The Illegal lobby could not have done more damage to themselves with that "Mexican Flag Superior, America in Distress" photograph if they had tried... )



8 posted on 04/07/2006 2:32:47 AM PDT by backhoe (Just an Old Keyboard Cowboy, Ridin' the Trakball into the Dawn of Information)
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To: freddymuldoon

The more we crack down on illegal immigration, the less Mexicans in Mexico will cling to the Leftist frontrunner in this July's presidential elections who is suddenly in a statistical deadheat for the first time with right-leading Felipe Calderon. That Chavez-admiring Leftie had been ahead in the polls literally for years on promises of free money and threats of nationalization and such. Suddenly the immigration pressures have helped lead to a declining peso relative to the dollar, though, and voters (who know how much Mexico desperately needs the USA) are noticing growing U.S. disapproval for how Mexico's government still won't stand up to telecom monopoly magnate Carlos Slim (#3 on Forbes wealthiest list). Let's keep up the constructive pressure so that Mexicans who don't want to have to abandon Mexico can stay there (which most WANT to do anyway, to be with their families where they speak the same language and don't have to wash bathroom floors and pick pesticide-laden vegetables).

Meanwhile, don't we owe it to our American people struggling in Mexico who endure Mexico's shamelessly racist immigration restrictions to keep the pressure up and thereby empower reformers in Mexico in that way, too? Can you believe Mexico's hypocritically anti-gringo immigration laws which Rush Limbaugh now calls "Limbaugh's Laws" while saying we should try running the USA in a similar way to see what the reaction would be? Here they are:

http://www.directory.com.mx/immigration


9 posted on 04/07/2006 9:34:07 AM PDT by Shuttle Shucker
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To: Tzimisce
This month, I filled out my Federal Income Taxes, State Income Taxes, State Real Estate Property Taxes, and State Personal Property Taxes.

Just knowing the 20 million tax evader Illegals are here, taking advantage of better living conditions, bought and paid for from my tax dollars ..boils my blood.

Oh, I forgot...they pay taxes on purchases they make. Well, so do I.

sw

10 posted on 04/07/2006 9:48:47 AM PDT by spectre (Spectre's wife)
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