Tancredo plays right into their hands with his over the top retoric.
I am going to point something out here that some on the Right are going to want to hear. The simply fact is we have had these arguments before.
If you are really interested in an honest historical comparison instead of one that merely fits your political opinions, read about the Know Nothings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know-Nothing_movement
Comparing people who voluntarily come to this country with the slaves kidnapped and forced here is absurd.
Some of the arguments being thrown around on the Right today are almost word for word repeats of the same arguments the Know Nothings made against the Irish and the German immigrants in the 1840s.
These are the arguments where you lose me. I can agree with the arguments that base themselves on the idea that this is an overly bureaucratic, unworkable bill. That adding another layer of bureaucracy is a mistake. However. some of the other arguments being put forward are pure emotion based rantings with utterly NO basis in any factual reality.
The argument that the immigrants will some how “destroy the Republic” or “Demographics are fate” are pure nativist rantings.
There is utterly no evidence that Hispanic Immigrants will do any such thing. Anymore then the Germans, the Jews, the Irish, the Blacks, the Chinese, the Japanese et al did. So if you want to argue this issue, I suggest Tancredo stick to the economic or small Govt argument and leave the rest out of it. But when he starts arguing that the Hispanics are the “Wrong sort of Immigrants”, he loses.
Every immigrant group has it share of problem children. But we have gangs and thugs that are native born Americans too. Most of the Hispanics I meet, or served with in the US Military, are descent hard working respectable people. Average voters see the same thing in their daily lives in the Hispanics and they are going to dismiss the sorts of over the top rantings Tancredo engages in as the mindless drivel of either a bigot or nut case.
So if Tancredo wants to win this argument, I suggest he leave the more emotional, over blown rhetoric behind and concentrate on making a calm rational factual argument.
Many of the people who a Presidential Candidate need to convince to vote for him have ancestors that faced the same sort of Nativist opposition when then came to this country. They are not going to be swayed by these sorts of Nativist arguments.
So if Tancredo wants to argue this issue and win, he needs to argue it on the merits NOT on some hysteric nonsense about “the Mexicans are coming, the Mexicans are coming”.
There is a taxpayer funded safety net that is already underfunded. It is a financial obligation we will be required to meet through higher taxes.
This was not the case 100 years ago.
Why do you hate “the Right”?
Oh don't worry! Silly you! THEY'RE ALREADY HERE!
Others were literally kidnapped from the sides of icy mountains where they'd been peacefully tending their reindeer and dragged off to a totally undeveloped wilderness for the sole purpose of cutting down trees for use by the Swedish navy.
I bet they, their children, great grand children, and so on down through the generations were quite proud of their survival and how they tamed the land and made it habitable.
By the time they got to the 1700s their settlements were overrun by bizarre people who spoke a strange language; who worshipped God according to unusual rituals, and whose main ambition was to make money.
They had to move far to the West to escape the foreign devils.
Except for George Washington's family, and maybe the Lee's, we'd probably be ahead of things if we could ship 'em all back where they came from.
Hmmm 1840’s to 1850’s, that is only a decade before what? Oh yeah THE CIVIL WAR! You sir are a rocket surgeon.
Go back more than a few hundred years and you’ll see that the ‘immigrants’ DECIMATED the Roman Empire. Have you ever heard of the phrase “The Barbarians at the gates”? That is exactly what can happen here without our vigilance.
We didn’t have SSI, Medicare, FREE schooling, etc... for the illegal Irish, Germans, etc to milk from in the 1850’s.
We didn’t have 30% of the illegal immigrant population in prison in the 1850’s.
I could keep going, but I digress...for now.
And yes, these illegal immigrants will change our society. By and large, they are uneducated--many do not even read Spanish. One more thing: do a search on the word "reconquista"
How many billions of dollars more should we spend to have so much printed twice--even down to our voting ballots? This was not done for other large groups of immigrants--not the Irish, or anyone else.
This is a ridiculous post. Past German immigration and irish immigration caused some problems - a lot less with Germans who once they learned the language caused few problems, mass Irish immigration into American cities caused problems - read up on the New York City irish draft riots (Blacks targeted for murder), yeah we came through it OK, but there were major policy changes made to address real problems (crime, public health, political corruption through block ethnic Machine Democrat parties).
Mass immigration now from rural Mexico and especially Central America caused huge problems for America. No amount of propaganda name calling (”You’re a RACIST, KNOW NOTHING”) is going to get Americans to accept the lie that North American Anglo culture is the same as the culture from war torn Nicaragua, El Salvador. Think East LA is a nice “American” place to live now? Few Americans do.
Also, note that Mexico has very strict laws and policies for people who want to come into Mexico, Mexico has armed troops on its Southern border with Guatemala - invading illegal aliens trying to sneak in to Mexico face Mexican troops who will shoot the invaders.
OK, so enough spins, propaganda. Mass immigration in the age after 9/11/01 is opposed by most Americans. It is just common sense.
stoptheamnesty.com
Immigration is not the issue.
Illegal immigration is an entirely different matter.
The immigrants from Europe came through one portal, did they not? And they were screened. Controlled entry into this country.
The argument that the immigrants will some how “destroy the Republic” or “Demographics are fate” are pure nativist rantings.
By that statement, I have to ask if you are thinking that there will be no impact on Social Security, the health care system (which has already been over-run by THEIR numbers), the education system.....with the additional burden of 20 million INSTANT citizens. Followed closely by all of their relatives.
Seems like a good way to "Destroy the Republic" to me.
There is utterly no evidence that Hispanic Immigrants will do any such thing. Anymore then the Germans, the Jews, the Irish, the Blacks, the Chinese, the Japanese et al did.
Of course there is no evidence (duh!) - we have never let something of this scale happen before!
Most of the Hispanics I meet, or served with in the US Military, are descent hard working respectable people.
Ditto from me. Your circle of friends is obviously very much larger than mine. Like 20 million.
They all on your Christmas card list, too?
Average voters see the same thing in their daily lives in the Hispanics and they are going to dismiss the sorts of over the top rantings Tancredo engages in as the mindless drivel of either a bigot or nut case.
Sorry, Johnnie, Tancredo is not the one spouting "mindless drivel"
You are just about the last person who should be advising anyone to avoid "the more emotional, over blown rhetoric".
You are one of the worst, if not the worst, offender of that advice on FR, Johnnie.
Good post. Right on about the overblown rhetoric and emotion.
Why do you have such hatred for people who would put America/ns interests first?
“Every immigrant group has it share of problem children. But we have gangs and thugs that are native born Americans too. Most of the Hispanics I meet, or served with in the US Military, are descent hard working respectable people.”
So what?
Most people of any ethnic group are “good people”.
Why this nonsense of tying it to “Mexicans” or “Hispanics”? It’s a complete red herring. This is about the fact that illegal immigrants who according to law should not be here are being allowed to be here. To give amnesty to lawbreakers is a slap in the face to legal immigrants and undermines rule of law. There are brilliant and wonderful people from Ireland, including my relatives, but if there is an Irish illegal immigrant, the appropriate remedy is deportation.
As for the influence of immigrants, one major problem is confusing legal immigration with illegal immigration; immigration today vs 100 years ago when skills needed in the economy were different. Apples v oranges. There are positives to having a member of society who is here to work. So let’s not cut immigration to nothing. OTOH, there is plenty of evidence that buying into legalization for 12 million illegal immigrants, the majority of them from Mexico and with low education and skill levels, is in effect importing poverty and creating a new ethnic-based underclass. This will worsen inequality, add to the welfare state costs ($2.5 trillion 25 year cost on Federal govt), impose unfunded mandates on states and local govts, and make our politics far more leftwing and disagreeable to the conservative view. This is not emotional statement, but clear and based on evidence. The amnesty of 2007 is as big in about 20 states as the 1986 amnesty was in California.
As goes Cali from 1986 to 2007 so goes the nation in 20 years... Is that what you want, MNJohnnie????
Last, I agree that Tancredo is not the man we need to run for President. But if a few people are being over the top, so be it. Al Gore is over-the-top on Global Warming, yet he is praised as some kind of prophet. Sometimes you need a lightning rod to get attention.
There are important differences between the immigration waves of today and yesterday.
1) It was the 1840s - no foreign language television and radio networks. Immigrants were forced to assimilate.
2) Those immigration periods did not last indefinitely. They were cut off, often for decades. This allowed ample time to assimilate. The current mass immigration wave is unlikely to end anytime soon - if ever. The 1986 amnesty that was supposed to stop it did not, the 1996 expedited deportation bill - never enforced - did not, the 700 mile turned 2 mile fence did not, and this bill will not stop it either. In another 25 years we could have triple or quadruple the number of illegal aliens that we have now, if we used the ‘86 bill as a means of extrapolation. Reminds me a bit of the third Punic war. The Romans demanded the Carthaginians do more and more to avoid war; they did almost every that was demanded until the Romans, eventually, abandoned pretenses and did what they wanted to do all along: destroy Carthage. We pass one bill, then another and another…
It’s ironic that you use the argument “that’s the same thing they said before.” Thousands of years ago, in the early fifth century, Catholic Church officials used many of the same arguments that the pro-amnesty lobby now use; one example would be “they only want to make a better life for themselves.” In smaller numbers, which was the case in the early empire, that could work. But as massive, unprecedented numbers of immigrants entered the empire the Romans realized, too late, that when very large groups of people enter a region there is less pressure for them to assimilate - so much so that they can speak their own language and get by just fine. In California, the census bureau reports that the number of people who speak Spanish at home has skyrocketed, and in some counties it will be the majority language within a few years. Couple that with massively exploding populations, increased collectivization and fewer pressures to learn English (Spanish television, radio, ethnocentric organizations like MECHA and La Raza, and corporations catering to the Spanish speaking crowd) and we could find our selves in the same position, a few decades from now, as the Romans were in the latter stages of their empire: balkanized with many languages and cultures instead of one.
The Romans mistakenly believed that their past experiences with assimilating groups would hold true indefinitely, they were wrong. They found out, the hard way, that there is a difference between “immigration” and “massive, unending immigration"; the latter is better called “colonization” than immigration.
Furthermore, Mexico once made a similar mistake to the one we are making now. They let large numbers of immigrants into Texas and the Southwest - eager to populate it. They made the immigrants promise to convert to Catholicism and to become loyal subjects of Mexico - they promised but did not follow through. Soon, American immigrants outnumbered Mexicans 10 to 1 and succeeded.
The argument that the immigrants will some how “destroy the Republic” or “Demographics are fate” are pure nativist rantings.
Can’t argue with history, see above. Or the Balkans. Arguing that the past always equals the future is incorrect, and so is pretending that everything will be just fine no matter what happens.
3) The scale of this immigration period is unprecedented, even by past standards.
4) The current group which makes up the vast majority of illegal aliens, Mexicans, has a historic grievance with the United States - the 1848 Mexican American war. Many believe that the South West was stolen from their homeland of Mexico. The immigrants of the past, mainly from Europe, had few important grievances with the United States; also, the countries from which they originated were very far away - hard to maintain allegiances with. On the other hand, Mexican politicians and others have done a great deal to make sure that illegal immigrants here maintain cultural ties with Mexico (president Fox often used the phrase “Mexicans living in America”), which is not so difficult considering that Mexico and the United States share a boarder in excess of a thousand mile long. Throw in millions of unassimilated people who identify with a bordering foreign nation, millions of aliens entering every few years, ethnocentric politicians like the LA mayor (former member of MECHA who once flew a Mexican flag an illegal immigration rally), white flight (gigantic numbers of whites and blacks left California in the 90s), and fewer and fewer reasons to assimilate and, one day, we might regret not preserving our sovereignty when we had the chance.
What's happening now is that politicians, eager to compete with a future populous China, and greedy corporations have sold America down the river for perceived short term gains - neglecting the long term.
The argument that the immigrants will some how “destroy the Republic” or “Demographics are fate” are pure nativist rantings.
There is utterly no evidence that Hispanic Immigrants will do any such thing. Anymore then the Germans, the Jews, the Irish, the Blacks, the Chinese, the Japanese et al did.
Tell that to the Indians.
Care to argue?