Our Quisling "leaders" will express shock.
Posted on 04/09/2006 2:54:11 AM PDT by Tom D.
No Easy Answers On Immigration Conundrum
April 9, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Here's my immigration "compromise": We need to regularize the situation of the 298 million non-undocumented residents of the United States. Right now, we get a lousy deal compared with the 15 million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented American community. I think the 298 million of us in the overdocumented segment of the population should get the chance to be undocumented. You know when President Bush talks about all those undocumented people "living in the shadows"? Doesn't that sound kinda nice? Living in the shadows, no government agencies harassing you for taxes and numbers and paperwork.
Go ahead, try it. In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there. The very next day, the two guys returned with two pals of their own, and used their own brand-new state ID on which the ink was not yet dry to obtain in turn brand-new state ID for their buddies. A couple of weeks later, all four of them used their Virginia ID to board American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and plowed it into the Pentagon.
Think about that. From undocumented illegal alien in the 7-Eleven parking lot to lawful resident of the State of Virginia in just a couple of hours. Wow. Say what you like about Luis Martinez-Flores, but he runs one efficient operation.
By comparison, say you've got two kids under 5, and you'd like to bring over a nice English nanny to look after them. Name of Mary Poppins. Good references, impeccable character. If you apply now, there's a sporting chance the process may be completed before your children's children are in college.
Given that the new immigration "compromise" bill retrospectively approves all the millions of people who've been through the super-efficient Luis Martinez-Flores immigration system but without doing anything to improve the sclerotic U.S. government immigration system, maybe it would be better just to subcontract the entire operation to Senor Martinez-Flores and his colleagues. It would certainly be cheaper. The extensive Undocumented American support network manages to run it out of the back of the car from a parking lot without a lot of air-conditioned offices full of lifetime employees on government pensions, and given that the net result is exactly the same people who'd be living here anyway, why not go with the lowball bid? Legal immigrants to the United States can only envy the swift efficient service Messrs. Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar received outside that 7-Eleven.
All developed countries have immigration issues, but few conduct the entire debate as disingenuously as America does: The president himself has contributed a whole barrelful of weaselly platitudes, beginning with his line that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." True. They don't stop at the 49th parallel either. Or the Atlantic shore. Or the Pacific. So where do family values stop? At the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you're an American and you marry a Canadian or Belgian or Fijian, the U.S. government can take years to process what's supposed to be a non-discretionary immigration application, in the course of which your spouse will be dependent on various transitional-status forms like "advance parole" that leave her vulnerable to the whims of the many eccentric interpreters of U.S. immigration law at the nation's airports and land borders.
Here's another place where family values stops: The rubble of the World Trade Center. Deena Gilbey is a British subject whose late husband worked on the 84th floor: On the morning of Sept. 11, instead of fleeing, he returned to the building to help evacuate his co-workers. A few days later, Mrs. Gilbey receives a letter from the INS noting that as she's now widowed her immigration status has changed and she's obliged to leave the country along with her two children (both U.S. citizens). Think about that: Having legally admitted to the country the terrorists who killed her husband, the U.S. government's first act on having facilitated his murder is to add insult to grievous injury by serving his widow with a deportation order. Why should illegal Mexicans be the unique beneficiaries of a sentimental blather about "family values" to which U.S. immigration is otherwise notoriously antipathetic?
How about "the jobs Americans won't do"? Most of them would be more accurately categorized as the jobs American employers won't hire Americans to do -- that's to say, in a business culture ever more onerously regulated, the immigration status of one's employees has become one of the easiest means of controlling costs. I see no reason why this would change, and given that, as a matter of policy, U.S. illegal-immigration law is not enforced by the U.S. government, it's hard to know why private employers should do it.
Meanwhile, U.S. immigration is cracking down on classical violinists. Don't ask me why. Presumably, Brahms' violin concerto falls into the ever dwindling category of jobs Americans will do. At any rate, the Halle Orchestra of Manchester, one of England's great orchestras, has just canceled its 2007 concerts at Lincoln Center. Why? Because all 80 musicians plus the 20 support staff are required -- under new "homeland security" regulations -- to be interviewed personally at the U.S. Embassy in London before each visa can be issued. They can't go en masse on the tour bus: They have to make individual appointments stretched out over several weeks. And they can't go to the local U.S. consulate in Manchester because -- and this detail is worth savoring five years after 9/11 -- the consulate's computers cannot handle the biometric data. The orchestra worked out that in train fares and accommodation it would cost about $80,000 to get the visas and decided it would rather cancel the tour. The good news is that Lincoln Center subscribers don't have to worry about the tuba player having plastic explosives packed down there. The bad news is, if a rogue tuba player ever breaks through the system, Homeland Security won't be able to e-mail his data back to the U.S. consulate in Manchester for a background check.
We're now expected to believe that this system will be able to stop hassling 68-year-old cello players long enough to process an extra 10 million-plus immigration applications, and that furthermore an agency that keeps no reliable records of legal entry into the United States will somehow be able to determine on the basis of utility bills whether this or that undocumented alien falls into amnesty-eligibility category.
Sure, believe that if you want to. It'll be good practice for swallowing the amnesty for the next 40 million circa 2025.
© Mark Steyn, 2006
Copyright © Mark Steyn, 2006
True, it's a two-tier system.
I just went to email this to my senator, and what do I find on the TX senate webpage at the lower left?
Hell I still havent met my sister inlaw and nieces of 2 years
They are still awaiting visas
I'm a legal immigrant too, 1 of the 298 million non-undocumented residents. I have the requisite documents. I was denied citizenship once, falsely (must've been the W pin that I had on at the interview). If anyone should get immediate citizenship, it should be me and other victims of bureaucratic errors. It burns me up that these socialist jerk-offs of the no-hablo-ingles-I-can-park-wherever-I-want-don't-care-at-all-if-you-are-impressed-with-law-and-order camp even have the right to protest. The INS enforcement officers should be right there, round them up and send them home. Process me to enable me to vote this November. Certainly, I won't be inspired to vote Republican after all this surrendering that they're doing, but I do feel morally obliged to keep the Democrap out of the hallowed halls. At least, I care to participate.
bfl
Our Quisling "leaders" will express shock.
bttt
Who are the morons that say the illegals are NOT VOTING?...
If you can get 500,000 to come out for a simple rally.. in one city.. What do you think "they" will Do about voting?.. (local, county, state and federal) How many illegals are quasi legal?.. its easy to register to vote with fake ID... in most places..
(Jaws theme) Hillary is just off shore.. and local sharks are growing..
bttt
I'm learning quite a lot about this process. I just received a receipt on my form I-130 that I filled out for my wife. The I-130 is merely a "petition" requesting permission to bring my wife over here. I typed in my receipt number at the USCIS web page and learned that estimated time to approve or deny this petition is currently in excess of 900 days. Yes, that would be nine hundred days! And I'm a born and bred American citizen proudly serving my country.
Thank God for the LIFE Act that allows me to fill out a virtually identical form, the I-129F, after receiving a receipt on the I-130, and hopefully she can come over here while she waits for her I-130 to be approved (or denied). But God forbid she should have to return to Ukraine for a family emergency before her I-130 is approved. I could quite possibly have to start to process all over again.
And once she gets here there is another mountain of forms to fill out (and fees to pay) to USCIS to allow me to keep her here and allow her to get a job.
Mark Steyn Rocks! BTTT
Most Americans don't deal with the INS so they don't realize how stupid and capricious it is. Legal immigrants often don't know what to expect from INS, day to day.
Steyn is one of the best of the best.
I have a Nepali friend, been trying to get a green card for a couple of years, comes here every year to work (legally). Now the rules have changed, and he probably won't be able to get a green card. He's a musician and farm worker, manages others, takes a lot of responsibility.
The only way he'll get here legally is to get his family over to Mexico City, dress up in Mexican looking clothes, and sneak across the southern border. Voila!
He's as harmless as the day is long, educating his whole family, and would be an asset to our country. Makes me sick that he can't come here, and yet millions of illegals - a goodly percentage of them thugs, drug runners, and so on - are likely to get some sort of shamnesty.
I never got to meet my European mother in law because she died before we could get the legal stuff (and money) worked out to get her here.
Steyn, being a LEGAL alien knows far more about this system than most of us do. But honestly, aside from political blather, is there anybody who has ANYTHING good to say about INS?
If journalists conducted their work in an unbiased and thorough manner, the Communist regimes around the world would cease to exist, Liberals would never again acquire power, unions would disintegrate, and Islam would be a historical footnote.
Oh, and Hollywood would be fun again.
Thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the heads up, mylife.
I believe Mr Steyn has it in his sights
bttp
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