Posted on 05/23/2006 8:25:20 AM PDT by Gordongekko909
The immigration bill before Congress has some of the most serious consequences for the future of this country. Yet it is not being discussed seriously by most politicians or most of the media. Instead, it is being discussed in a series of glib talking points that insult our intelligence.
Some of the most momentous consequences -- a major increase in the number of immigrants admitted legally -- are not even being discussed at all by those who wrote the Senate bill, though Senator Jeff Sessions has uncovered those provisions in the bill and brought them out into the light of day.
How many times have we heard that illegal aliens are taking "jobs that Americans won't do"? Just what specifically are those jobs?
Even in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the great majority of the work is still being done by people who are not illegal aliens.
The highest concentration of illegals is in agriculture, where they are 24 percent of the people employed. That means three-quarters of the people are not illegal aliens. But when will the glib phrase-mongers stop telling us that the illegals are simply taking "jobs that Americans won't do"?
Another insult to our intelligence is that amnesty is not amnesty if you call it something else. The fact that illegals will have to fulfill certain requirements to become American citizens is supposed to mean that this is not amnesty.
But let's do what the spinmeisters hope we will never do -- stop and think. Amnesty is overlooking ("forgetting," as in amnesia) the violation of the law committed by those who have crossed our borders illegally.
The fact that there are requirements for getting American citizenship is a separate issue entirely. Illegal aliens who do not choose to seek American citizenship are under no more jeopardy than before. They have de facto amnesty.
Yet another insult to our intelligence is saying that, since we cannot find and deport 12 million people, the only choice left is to find some way to make them legal.
There is probably no category of law-breakers -- from counterfeiters to burglars or from jay-walkers to murderers -- who can all be found and arrested. But no one suggests that we must therefore make what they have done legal.
Such an argument would suggest that there is nothing in between 100 percent effective law enforcement and zero percent effective law enforcement.
The reverse twist on this argument is that suddenly taking 12 million people out of the labor force would disrupt the economy. No one has ever said -- or probably even dreamed -- that we could suddenly find all 12 million illegal immigrants at once and send them all home immediately. This is another straw man argument.
The real question is what we do with whatever illegal aliens we do find. Right now, there are various communities around the country where local officials have a policy of forbidding the police from reporting illegal immigrants to federal authorities.
Why are people who are so gung ho for punishing employers so utterly silent about needing to punish government officials who openly and deliberately violate federal laws?
Employers, after all, are not in the business of law enforcement.
If some guy who runs a hardware store or a dry cleaning business hires someone who shows some forged documents, why should the employer be fined for not being able to tell the difference, when government officials who can tell the difference are not doing anything -- or are even actively obstructing federal laws?
Putting unarmed national guardsmen on the border is another cosmetic move, a placebo instead of real medicine. The excuse is that it is not possible to train more than 1,500 border patrol agents a year. Meanwhile, we have trained well over 200,000 Iraqi security forces while guerilla warfare raged around them.
You can put a million people on the border and it will mean nothing if those who are caught are simply turned loose and sent back to try again tomorrow -- or perhaps later the same day.
One of Thomas Sowell's principles of conservatism--- what he calls the constrained vision--- is that while leftists believe in total, free lunch solutions i.e. "we will eliminate poverty--- forever!" conservatives believe in incremental approaches to problems that seek to gain gain a net benefit, recognizing that any approach will have costs as well as benefits.
The cost of not electing Republicans is electing Democrats. To think that simply because Thomas Sowell criticizes President Bush and the Senate he doesn't care whether or not the Senate remains Republican would be a unwarranted leap of breathtaking proportions.
"The public subsidizes these wages through indigent health care and public school load, along with increased crime rates."
This is the case for any group of low skilled, low paid workers whether they are legal or not. Assuming Americans took the jobs now being done by illegals, these costs would still be there.
The article states that 24% of ag. jobs are filled by illegals. And you imply that if the illegals vanished, then employers would be forced to raise wages to attract Americans to do the work. Perhaps you're right. But we've all heard the stories about jobs in urban areas disappearing because low skilled unemployed were unwilling to work for the wages that employers were capable of paying. We once had theater ushers, sweepers, bag boys, etc. No more.
Thank you for that. I read what he posted as well and was scratching my head wondering how on earth he got what he did from your post.
susie
The current economic costs, while huge, are not the main issue. You'll have literally millions of anchor babies born every year, which will skyrocket those costs, but that's not the main issue either. 5-10 years from now the campaign will start to publicize their status as "second class human beings," worthy of the same lifestyle and amenities as Americans; but that's not the main issue either.
America isn't the place where I work; it's the place I live. The addition of 100 million Third World "immigrants" and their families and offspring will have a profound effect on our culture and civic life. America isn't a place, it's a state of mind and a mindset. The intellectual soup is going to get pretty thin.
The current economic costs, while huge, are not the main issue. You'll have literally millions of anchor babies born every year, which will skyrocket those costs, but that's not the main issue either. 5-10 years from now the campaign will start to publicize their status as "second class human beings," worthy of the same lifestyle and amenities as Americans; but that's not the main issue either.
America isn't the place where I work; it's the place I live. The addition of 100 million Third World "immigrants" and their families and offspring will have a profound effect on our culture and civic life. America isn't a place, it's a state of mind and a mindset. The intellectual soup is going to get pretty thin.
Agreed, of course. You should've directed that post to the FReeper I directed my question to.
A real master of invention, you are.
Now don't get all huffy. You do realize, don't you, that there was a time not so terribly long ago, when anyone could immigrate to this country? Then we placed significant restrictions on immigration. Today, mostly because of economic demand, we find those immigration laws being violated on a massive scale. The idea that we can make this problem go away by simply "enforcing the law" is exactly like claiming we could have stopped illegal drinking the same way. Note that I'm not saying we should do away with all immigration laws. I'm just saying that in contrast to Sowell's point, we are not obligated to deport all illegals nor to refrain from changing the law.
Excellent points all. When we talk about compromising the rule of law, we're talking about the premier clause in our social contract. Without the rule of law, we we have no basis for union. I'm getting increasing cynical of those who wish to trash it "for a good cause."
That's like saying, "I support showers, but I don't support getting wet."
Well, of course. That's because the minimum wage is set as the floor. But to think raising that floor doesn't distort prices is mistaken; look at teen unemployment. As I understand it, the teen employment rate in 2004 was the lowest since 1948.
Amen.
Do you just make this stuff up?
susie
No, it's more like saying "I want my child to be safe, but I'm not going to keep her under lock and key."
" find it odd that you have to hunt hard to find any everyday leftist liberal progressives in favor of this.
The pols have some agenda, other than pleasing their voters."
I have a theory...this is a battle not between republicans and democrats, but between normal citizens and political check writers....On the republican side, check book republicans, or the 5% of the base that funds the party and wants cheap labor as opposed to the 95% who vote and do the election work who want the invasion stopped.
"Do you just make this stuff up?"
I was simply asking a couple of questions. I may have made a typo in the first clause of the sentence--it should have read "...coming here illegally..."
" (Save the Senate for judicial nominees) Allow the Dems to take the House for the next two years as a message if this passes."
But is this not the political version of 'amnesty'? We punish the branch of congress that is doing what the public demands and we grant amnesty to the branch that is selling us out!
No, it's more like saying, "I want my child to be safe, but I'm not willing to lock the door to the house."
susie
Right now, there's an active thread with all the GOP/Bush supporters giving each atta-boys about how Bush has had to endure so much and is really a great president - up there with Washington & Lincoln.
No one seems to understand that the game is up. 500 years of European hegemony over the upper 2/3rds of the N.American continent is coming to an end. Our ancestors practically wiped out native indigenous peoples, but now they're in the process of taking it all back.
The much more interesting question is what happens during the transition? We know the two biggest beneficiaries of open-borders are businesses and politicians. While investing in businesses that benefit from income divergence (ie upper-class professionals vs low-income servants) is pretty straight forward, I'm still puzzling through the political angle.
We know corruption is widespread in Latin America, so as that trends continues here, how does one position themselves to partake? It might be profitable to set up a public interest group that advocates open borders and/or minority set-asides in order to get financing from Latino political blocks.
Again, as I've referred to on other posts, the working model is California. What happened here will happen to the rest of the US. Deconstructing and analyzing the various pieces could yield tremendous returns by turning on others as to the potential opportunities.
Ah, so you just leave the door unlocked and let any stranger wander in off the street, eh? Poor child.
Like so many of your kind, you confuse the difference between locking our own people in and locking unknown invaders out.
There really is a profound difference between the two things.
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