Posted on 05/24/2007 12:57:12 AM PDT by ruination
Compromise is incessantly praised, and has produced the proposed immigration legislation. But compromise is the mother of complexity, which, regarding immigration, virtually guarantees as the public understands weak enforcement and noncompliance.
Although the compromise was announced the day the Census Bureau reported that there now are 100 million nonwhites in America, Americans are skeptical about the legislation, but not because they have suddenly succumbed to nativism. Rather, the public has slowly come to the conclusion that the government cannot be trusted to mean what it says about immigration.
In 1986, when there probably were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, Americans accepted an amnesty because they were promised that border control would promptly follow. Today the 12 million illegal immigrants, 60 percent of whom have been here five or more years, are as numerous as Pennsylvanians; 44 states have populations smaller than 12 million. Deporting the 12 million would require police resources and methods from which the nation would rightly flinch. So, why not leave bad enough alone?
Concentrate on border control, and workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who are or will arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away.
Under current immigration policies, America is importing another underclass, one "with the potential to expand indefinitely," according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute. To sentimentalists who cling to "the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue," she says:
From 1990 to 2004, Hispanics accounted for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. Only 53 percent of Hispanics earn high school diplomas, the lowest among American ethnic groups. Half of all children born to Hispanic-Americans in 2005 were born out of wedlock a reliable predictor of social pathologies.
The legislation supposedly would shift policy from emphasizing family unification to emphasizing economic criteria (skills) when setting eligibility for immigrants. Critics will say this will sunder families. But the sundering has happened; it was done by illegal immigrants who left family members behind and are free to reunite with their families where they left them.
Anyway, the supposed shift from emphasizing family relations the emphasis that results in "chain migration" to economic merit may be diluted to nothingness. It is highly suspicious that there was a rush fortunately stymied to pass this legislation through both houses and get it to conference, where the majority of participants will be Democrats eager to court Hispanic votes.
Some Democrats argue that liberalism's teetering achievement, the welfare state, requires liberal immigration policies. The argument is: Today there are only 3.3 workers for every retiree. In January, the first of 77 million baby boomers begin to retire. By the time they have retired, in 2030, there will be 2.2 workers for every retiree but only if the work force is replenished by 900,000 immigrants a year.
On Monday, however, Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation stunned some senators who heard his argument that continuing, under family-based immigration, to import a low-skilled population will cost the welfare state far more than the immigrants' contributions to the economy and government. He argued that low-skilled immigrants are costly to the welfare state at every point in their life cycle, and are very costly when elderly. Just the 9 million to 10 million illegal adults already here will, if given amnesty, cost an average of $300,000 cumulatively, more than $2.5 trillion in various entitlements (Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc.) over 30 years.
To those who say border control is impossible often these are the same people who said better policing could not substantially reduce crime, until it did one answer is: It took just 34 months for the Manhattan Project to progress from the creation of the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee wilderness to the atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N.M. That is what America accomplishes when serious.
In an attempt to anesthetize people who sensibly say "border control and workplace enforcement first," important provisions of the legislation would supposedly be "triggered" only when control of the border is "certified" by the president. But in what looks like a parody of the Washington mentality, certification would be triggered not by border control but by the hiring of border control agents and other spending. So, the supposedly hardheaded aspects of the legislation actually rest on the delusion that spending equals the achievement of the intention behind the spending. By that assumption, we have long since tranquilized and democratized Iraq.
...related.
Fred Thompson NOT Good on Illegal Immigration Issue
(Power Line News)
http://www.plnewsforum.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/18610/
Rudy couldn’t shine Thompsons shoes.
Mighty suspicious if you ask me.
Could it be all those great Tex-Mex cafes one finds in Tejas.
: )
The Left wants to desrroy the USA they are gramscian marxists...death to the Left!
Ain’t politics fun.
Reading all this crap about the Democrats is a dang good excuse to have what the Mexicans down here on the border call a Chelada or Budweiser and Clamato juice a poor man's drink so say the libs.
Ain’t life beautiful.
Yep : )
"Hey George Will - F_ck you!"
Rudy? Thompson? Where in this thread....???
woe to us who now use this highbrow terminology to couch our bigotry.
How about the term, "hungry." Ever heard that? Like, "Oh, they were hungry back then."
It means, "they hustled because they wanted it."
Hungry people work. Underclass, indeed. Easy for ivy league detritus to toss words like that around. Hey, maybe George Will would like to go pull weeds for a living, just so his kid can afford lunch money.
20th century abortions are up over the rest of human history. The meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee generation.
BTW, there were substantial numbers of Mexicans in (mostly Southern) California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, but they fell into two categories: if they were ordinary peasants, they lived an essentially subsistence life not much different than in Mexico. if they were part of the old Spanish/Mexican upper class, they integrated pretty successfully.
In California, for example, the old Spanish/Mexican elite were known as Californios and were often highly respected members of the upper reaches of California society. As a small child in San Francisco, I remember being introduced to one or two of them, very very old women (in their 90s-100s in the early 1950s), as great ladies of California.
Some Democrats argue that liberalism’s teetering achievement, the welfare state, requires liberal immigration policies.
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Social and education welfare workers need jobs.
Underclass immigrants are a jobs program for middle class liberal/Marxists with little ability and talent. The welfare system has **nothing** at all to do with helping the poor become prosperous. It has **everything** to do with providing jobs to middle class Democrats who have attended college.
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This needs to be said plainly and often.
Leftists are Marxists.
Leftists are Marxists.
Leftists are Marxists.
Leftists are Marxists.
They hate America and want it destroyed.
The Democrats want more undereducated prolific welfare recipents to further increase the public pay rolls with govt workers with big paychecks, retirement and health care.
CA has reached the tipping point. The state is really broke..selling bonds to finance current non-capital expenses. The cities in CA are in worse shape. San Diego can’t sell any bonds.
White tax payers are fleeing..and being replaced by non-high school grads and single Moms with delinquent kids.
White tax payers are fleeing..
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They are moving into my state by the thousands every year. Sadly, they bring their Liberal/Marxist mentality with them.
It might bankrupt the country, but the elites who crave cheap labor will get wealthier than ever.
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