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How I Rethought Immigration: One Man's Confessions
American Enterprise Institute ^ | June 8, 2007 | David Frum

Posted on 06/18/2007 8:38:12 PM PDT by Delacon

I also began to learn that you could hardly name a social problem without discovering that immigration was aggravating it to the point of unsolvability.

Health insurance? Immigrants accounted for about one-quarter of the uninsured in the early 1990s, and about one-third of the increase in the uninsured population at that time.

Social spending? The Urban Institute estimated in 1994 that educating the children of illegal aliens cost the State of California almost $1.5 billion per year.

Wage pressure on the less-skilled? The wages of less-skilled Americans had come under ferocious pressure since 1970. How could you even begin to think about this issue without recognizing the huge immigration-driven increase in the supply of unskilled labor over the same period?

Competitiveness? How could the U.S. remain the world's most productive nation while simultaneously remixing its population to increase dramatically the proportion of poorly educated people within it?

A 1997 study by the National Academy of Sciences found virtually zero net benefit to the U.S. economy from immigration. Immigration yielded benefits, true--but also costs in the form of lower wages and higher social-welfare burdens. Balance costs and benefits against each other, as a rational policymaker should, and you arrived at a favorable balance of $10 billion, less than a tenth of a percentage point in a $12 trillion economy.

And this favorable balance was composed in a way that would normally disturb a rational policymaker: The largest share of the benefits went to the immigrants themselves, and almost all of the rest to people at the top of society. Almost all of the costs were borne by people at the bottom.

(Excerpt) Read more at aei.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: aliens; amnesty; bush; davidfrum; frum; illegals; immigrantlist; immigration; noamnestyforillegals; paleos
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To: holdonnow

(( ping ))


41 posted on 06/18/2007 11:32:00 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: IncPen

ping


42 posted on 06/18/2007 11:40:02 PM PDT by Nailbiter
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To: donna

Pick up a copy of Chronicles. Go to the Occidental Quarterly, Vdare.com, American Renaissance, and see what they believe in.


43 posted on 06/19/2007 12:23:32 AM PDT by rmlew (Build a wall, attrit the illegals, end the anchor babies, Americanize Immigrants)
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To: dynachrome
Because Frum is not just talking about illegal ill migration but legal immigration as well.
And you do realize taht the Senate Bill, so aptly given the titular year of the Black Death, increases legal immigration as well.
44 posted on 06/19/2007 12:25:28 AM PDT by rmlew (Build a wall, attrit the illegals, end the anchor babies, Americanize Immigrants)
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To: Delacon

Bump. Great article. I am ready, too.


45 posted on 06/19/2007 12:35:07 AM PDT by Yaelle
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To: SirJohnBarleycorn
It will be worse for Bush personally if the bill succeeds. For which is a worse crime, to try to sell out your country to open-borders business interests and La Raza, or to actually succeed?

Perhaps Bush wants historians of the future to consider him as one of the "Founding Fathers" of the soon to be created North American Union. He doesn't care about destroying that "old" nation state, that constitutional republic, the United States of America.

46 posted on 06/19/2007 1:10:52 AM PDT by Colorado Buckeye (It's the culture stupid!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

ping to #32. Email list of top aides’ to all senators.
Large list. split into parts.


47 posted on 06/19/2007 4:39:04 AM PDT by dynachrome (Henry Bowman is right.)
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To: dynachrome

Why can’t they call them what they are INVADERS?


48 posted on 06/19/2007 4:40:20 AM PDT by GailA (I'm a quilt-a-holic and proud of it. Run Fred Run!)
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To: SirJohnBarleycorn
A hasty and careless economic calculus, a poorly considered political gamble, and self-righteous moral grandstanding have together pushed the president to the worst domestic political and policy error of his presidency.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Of his presidency? Of any presidency.

49 posted on 06/19/2007 4:48:55 AM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: dixiechick2000

Haven’t you noticed that they never seem to cull or merge their mailing lists? I have not donated in over 2 years. We left the local GOP in 2005. I have argued with every RNC, et al, caller for that period of time. Yet, I did receive a Christmas card in 2006 and a photo in the past 6 months.

To add insult to injury, in the past I donated with checks from a joint account in my married name and once with a credit card under the name I use professionally (my maiden name). So, despite calling their attention to this situation way back in 2004, I still get three solicitations (one addressed to my husband) during every fundraiser and the calls come in for both of my names and for my husband. Since this probably happens to many more people, it must be expensive for them, relative to the return.

The fundraising seems to be on automatic with a huge disconnect from reality.


50 posted on 06/19/2007 5:00:37 AM PDT by reformedliberal
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To: donna

“This is the same as calling those who are against the current bill racist today. Twenty years from now he will write that it was a true fact.”

Frum responded to this in a response to an attack on this very article by Vdare.com’s Steve Sailer. In fact, its what lead me to the original article I posted. Its here.
http://frum.nationalreview.com. Frum wasn’t calling the anti-immigration movement racist or racialist. He was saying there is that elliment within the movement that has to be attacked head on or the movement may be doomed. Exerpt here.

“Racialism is to immigration reform what communism was to American socialism. It is the enemy within, the flaw that can destroy everything you hope to achieve. It is also, as should go without saying, historically obtuse, intellectually corrupting, and morally wrong.

I have known Peter Brimelow for more than two decades. He is a man of keen intellect, of real courage, and of surprising emotional sensitivity. I cannot begin to say how deeply I am grieved and saddened, how much I personally feel the loss, of the path he has chosen to walk in consequence of his “no enemies to the racialist right” approach to politics.

The VDare website has broken important stories and published important analytic work. Steve Sailer is no dunce either, obviously. Yet they pollute all the good that they do or could do when they give way to racial contempt and antisemitic paranoia.

If I were the only person repelled by this, I suppose it would not matter very much. But I don’t think I am. And if we are trying to understand why the immigration reform cause has not had better success over the past 15 years, that repulsion is an important part of the story”


51 posted on 06/19/2007 5:41:26 AM PDT by Delacon
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To: Delacon

Amnesty didn’t work in ‘86, and it won’t work now. Heritage estimated that this bill would cost us trillions of dollars, because they are allowed to bring their relatives.

How can we believe the elite politicians when they won’t even build the 854 mile fence that was signed into law by the president, and they call us racists, just because we want to honor the law.

I would like to raise the level of LEGAL immigration, and cut the red tape for LEGAL immigrants, but we are a nation of laws, and no one should be allowed to break the laws, and that includes ILLEGAL immigrants.


52 posted on 06/19/2007 6:44:39 AM PDT by Sun (Vote for Duncan Hunter in the primaries. See you there.)
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To: 1_Inch_Group; 2sheep; 2Trievers; 3AngelaD; 3pools; 3rdcanyon; 4Freedom; 4ourprogeny; 7.62 x 51mm; ..

ping


53 posted on 06/19/2007 9:01:00 AM PDT by gubamyster
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To: Delacon

Get a grip - who he screws is of very little concern to him. He wants his own way; he won’t listen. He is not worthy of anyone’s time or thought. He can kiss my cold instant grits (Yes, I stole that from a fellow FReeper - and I intend to keep it!!)


54 posted on 06/19/2007 10:16:44 AM PDT by twonie (Keep your guns - and stockpile ammo.)
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To: rmlew; Delacon
In the late 1980s, a group of self-described "paleoconservatives"

Since when is that the definition of paleoconservative?

In twenty years he'll say the same of Minutemen.

55 posted on 06/19/2007 10:29:39 AM PDT by donna (They hand off my culture & citizenship to criminals & then call me racist for objecting?)
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To: rockabyebaby
ping to #32. List of emails of top aides for all the Senators.
Long list. Works better if done in chunks of 25 or so.
I got some "invalid email" replies and a lot of "out of office" auto replies. Nothing from a real person yet.
56 posted on 06/19/2007 11:18:03 AM PDT by dynachrome (Henry Bowman is right.)
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To: alexsmithers; beaversmom; b4its2late; BigTom85; BikerJoe; blackdiamondracer; Brad's Gramma; ...
Thanks to dynachrome for alerting me to this....ping a ding ding.............

ping to #32. List of emails of top aides for all the Senators. Long list. Works better if done in chunks of 25 or so. I got some "invalid email" replies and a lot of "out of office" auto replies. Nothing from a real person yet.

57 posted on 06/19/2007 11:25:50 AM PDT by rockabyebaby (HEY JORGE, SHUT UP AND BUILD THE BLEEPING FENCE, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.)
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To: rockabyebaby

Lotta people hiding in D.C. : )


58 posted on 06/19/2007 11:42:56 AM PDT by stephenjohnbanker ( Hunter/Thompson/Thompson/Hunter in 08! "Read my lips....No new RINO's" !!)
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To: stephenjohnbanker

Hell yea, isn’t it amazing!


59 posted on 06/19/2007 11:49:57 AM PDT by rockabyebaby (HEY JORGE, SHUT UP AND BUILD THE BLEEPING FENCE, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS.)
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To: Delacon

Re your post 33 - you just signed up today to pump this bilge?

Take it somewhere else.


60 posted on 06/19/2007 11:56:53 AM PDT by surely_you_jest (I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. - Will Rogers)
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