Ultimate explanation for George Bush's immigration & amnesty push - by John Derbyshire

National Review ^ | July 2, 2007 2:20 PM | John Derbyshire

[dennisw]

What a Waste. Steve Sailer said it all.

[L]et's stop and think about what an enormous waste of six years it has been for the President, aided and abetted by the almost the entire American Establishment, to pursue his delusion of imposing his immigration obsession on the citizenry. Even leaving aside how much better the immigration situation would be if Bush had followed his oath and simply enforced the damn laws, imagine what he would have been able to accomplish legislatively in other areas without wasting time, energy, and political capital on a losing proposition like this.

Well, why did he? Why did the president push this appalling bill with such passion and such arrogance? A number of theories are current. On a realist-to-romantic, or prose-to-poetry, spectrum, they are:

Machiavelli. Bush has been persuaded, probably by Karl Rove, of the following theorem: Hispanics are now a large proportion of the electorate, and are destined, via differential birthrates, to become a larger one. It’s important for the Republican party to win over these voters by doing Hispanic-friendly things. As a rough first approximation, Immigrant=Hispanic, so that a kind’n’gentle policy on immigration should be pleasing to Hispanics.

Bicycle. Someone — perhaps a visitor from the Wall Street Journal editorial page — has persuaded Bush that the U.S. economy would come to a juddering halt and fall over if not fed by a steady stream of unskilled immigrants working for below-minimum wages.

Pauline Kael. Bush has never in his life mixed socially with any person whose job or neighborhood quality is threatened by mass unskilled immigration. To the people he does mix with socially, unskilled immigrants are a good source of servant labor, or a way to “socialize the costs, privatize the profits” of enterprises they own or invest in. This puts us in somewhat the same zone as Pauline Kael’s famous bafflement on hearing that Nixon had been elected president: “How is that possible? I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” Can elite Americans really be that out of touch with reality? Believe me, gentle reader, they can.

Noblesse oblige. Bush’s childhood experience of friendly, deferential Mexican servants and employees, and of his Dad’s elite Mexican friends in the oil business, disposed him so kindly towards Mexicans in general, he is keen to do anything to (a) please the Mexican authorities, and (b) avoid any appearance of unkindness or lack of generosity towards Mexicans in general (e.g. by apprehending illegal Mexican immigrants). The first approximation here is even rougher than the Rovian one: Immigrant=Mexican.

Evangelical. The president is known to cleave to a generous and universalist (if you like it), or naive and sappy (if you don’t) style of evangelical Christianity. He sees himself, in his own mind, holding out his arms, murmuring: “Suffer the little immigrants to come unto me.” While by no means despicable as a personal lifestyle choice, this may not be a good foundation for national policy.

My guess is that there is some combination of all these at work, but with the center of gravity down in the romantic zone. W is an intelligent man, but he’s a feeler more than a thinker, consulting his heart before his head, and sometimes forgetting to consult his head at all. This can be an endearing trait under some circumstances. The forming of national policy is not one of those circumstances.

[dalight]

Actually Big Business probably has convinced Bush of this canard, and were slobbering at the mouth with the prospect of a sudden windfall of cheap legal labor. Too bad Bush swallowed it whole.

I am sure you are a bright and caring person, but if you subtract 12 million workers from our labor force you get a below zero unemployment rate. There are not 12 million workers among the current illegals, but the number to get to 4.5% works out to 145M * 0.045 = 6.525 Million a number that is easily covered the current number of illegals. And a below zero unemployment number is an absurdity.

It isn't possible. What happens in this situation is that the wages demanded by all workers rise as businesses compete for scarce labor, which is already beginning to occur without the subtraction of illegals, but the low cost services labor positions held by these people have to go unfilled or done by more expensive professional staff. Use of higher skilled labor for cleaning and whatnot means more demand for these people too.. and thus demand pull inflation goes into an upward spiral.

This isn't rocket science, simply economics 101. Which obviously you skipped.

[Travis McGee]

Great to see Derbyshire quote Steve Sailer of VDARE.

A great patriot, and a great website.

Is VDARE still unwelcome on FR?

[puroresu]

I think President Bush is worried about how he’ll be treated in the history books. He assumes, probably correctly, that future history books will be written by leftists (as they mostly are now) and that he’ll be trashed in them, particularly for the Iraq War. So he needs something to make him popular with the elite crowd.

Take LBJ as an example. He gets trashed in the history texts for Vietnam, but it’s more than balanced by the praise which befalls him for enacting the Great Society, three major “civil rights” bills, and the 1965 immigration bill.

Bush figures he’ll be treated like dirt by future historians for Iraq and for his conservative court appointments. He’s done a few things to appeal to the left, such as the No Child Left Behind debacle and the prescription drug entitlement. But those positives (from the “liberal” point of view) aren’t nearly of the magnitude of the bills LBJ got enacted, which included not only the ones I’ve already cited, but bills to provide federal arts funding, federal TV & radio channels (PBS & NPR), and more.

Bush desperately needed a big, bloated, proposal which would stick it to middle America and pander to elite opinion in a major way, an unforgettable way that cultural elites would still be celebrating decades or even centuries later. The Bush-Kennedy immigration bill would do that. It would doom America to eventually become a third world nation and would set the GOP on a path to extinction. That would indeed be something that future leftist historians would praise to the heavens, perhaps even eclipsing their hatred for Bush based on other issues.

[dalight]

at least DISCREDIT the messenger

I resemble that remark!

Actually, it has nothing to do with that, but after a while you learn to pick up on the assumptions of the people who write this crap and this guy is a lib posing as a Conservative.

This is why I started saying Troll even though he is a columnist. He had this big thing on the absence of slavery in Islamic nations is proof that all of this hoo haa about Islam having inherently evil tendencies is just Chicken Little yelling.

Except.. in the news this very day...Muslims Outraged Over Anti-Slavery Sanctions Which just goes to expose his intellectual laziness. This is a source that is not to be trusted. So an attack at his credibility is entirely justified.

[garbanzo]

That’s an irrational statement. If your statement were correct, companies would always be hiring and never outsource or have layoffs.

Note that I said "to first order" (look it up if you don't under what that means) - obviously at some point the diminishing returns sets in and incremental productivity goes to zero. For many enterprises, a good rule of thumb is increased manpower is increased output. Otherwise nobody would hire anyone and they'd just build robots to do everything.

Higher order increases in productivity do come from technological advances. But technology investment is high risk and capital intensive and productivity gains (over the short term, at least) are often smaller than simply increasing manpower. I wasn't ignoring this but for the short term, losses in manpower are typically loses in productivity.

[garbanzo]

One minor correction...

instead of "incremental productivity goes to zero" should be "incremental returns go to zero". Production can go on until a business runs out of resources (money, credit, land, etc). That doesn't mean it can profitably sell the amount of goods produced though.

[dalight]

Finally, if the inflation is caused by higher wages for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, then what is wrong with that? Isn't that the way the marketplace is supposed to work?

Well, it doesn't go like that. What normally happens, as you pointed out.. is the downside of the economic cycle. The Fed sees demand pull inflation picking up and moves to take away the proverbial "Punch Bowl."

This is done by increasing marginal interest rates and taking the steam out of the economy so that the labor force supply comes back into balance with the demand. They keep applying the breaks until inflation comes back into their target range. This is rocket science but the Fed has become very good at it since 1979 when they took the economy through an over-damped cycle and got the analytical tools in place to fine tune their responses.

However the Fed doesn't answer to political authority directly but instead acts to preserve the value of Bonds and thus our money. Thus, if protecting the value of the Dollar costs the Republicans all three branches of Government, so be it. The Fed just doesn't care that much, but Bush and Rove do.

As in all compromises, you get some evil with your good, and the butcher's bill is getting pretty obvious.

Regular immigration and births and untapped labor pools are all possibilities for the future, but to sustain the Social Security system, more than replacement growth is needed.

Ultimately, Americans have to face some of these tough problems and our current legislators cannot find their way out of gotcha to get-er-done. This is on both sides, and unfortunately, this is not an accident.

Our political system is being manipulated cynically in a manor labeled as a Hegelian Dialectic forcing the extremes to the front to battle uselessly until people are sick of the bickering and elect fascist populists who offer "simple solutions." And the guy in the front of this pack of Billionaires is Soros.

[Beagle8U]

“There are plenty able workers on welfare that could fill any jobs needed without importing workers but why work when you can sit on your a$$ and collect welfare?”

Hungry people make ambitious workers and good workers seldom stay poor for long.

[kabar]

Regular immigration and births and untapped labor pools are all possibilities for the future, but to sustain the Social Security system, more than replacement growth is needed.

The SS system can't be sustained. It is structurally flawed. Increasing the population by importing millions of high school dropouts is not going to save the system. We are an aging population. The demograhics of that fact are not going to change anytime soon, even with the current invasion.

[longtermmemmory]

Your are Correct.

They TOOK by a criminal act so they will logically side with the Democrat party which promisese to give something for nothing and PUNSH the percieved “haves” for being successful.

[LucyT]

Just where IS that White House guy who showed up here on FR briefly just to lobby us against opposing the Prez on immigration??

His screen name is nthompsonwhitehouse. I'm pinging him. Thus far, he has posted five comments.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

Pauline Kael. Bush has never in his life mixed socially with any person whose job or neighborhood quality is threatened by mass unskilled immigration. To the people he does mix with socially, unskilled immigrants are a good source of servant labor, or a way to “socialize the costs, privatize the profits” of enterprises they own or invest in.

Wow! Old Pauline really redeemed herself with that one (not that she really needed redeeming having been the solitary early critical voice noticing that The Godfather was a great film.)

Pauline passed on ~several~ years ago...I wonder when she said this.

[Guenevere]

We are an aging population...who have aborted 50 million of our potential citizens.

[riri]

I don't know how people miss the obvious.

Two of the Bush brothers married Mexican. The Bush family tree now turns south of the border. See George P. They think they will be one the ruling familes South American style oligarchy.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

Steve Sailer ROCKS, even if he does appear frequently on another site (we dare not speak its name)

[Clemenza]

In a fight, would the Pod People beat the Crab People?

[SergeiRachmaninov]

My guess is that there is some combination of all these at work, but with the center of gravity down in the romantic zone. W is an intelligent man, but he’s a feeler more than a thinker, consulting his heart before his head, and sometimes forgetting to consult his head at all. This can be an endearing trait under some circumstances. The forming of national policy is not one of those circumstances.

This insightful analysis makes me feel so small [wince]. It is exactly what I think about the president, even though I have lately -- in my anger and frustration -- indulged myself in a frenzy of Bush-bashing, "moron" being my favored term of derision.

[Clemenza]

She never did. What Derbyrshhire is referencing is when Pauline Kael said she couldn't believe Nixon won because "nobody I knew" voted for him.

BTW: You find the same attitude among conservatives. I remember folks telling me how it was "impossible" that Gore did so well in Florida because "everyone I knew voted for Bush." I then pointed out the inconvenient truth that every single one of my parents neighbors in Boca Raton (Palm Beach County) voted for Gore.

We all live in our little ghettos, and it gives us all tunnel vision. In Pauline's ghetto (Manhattan) nearly everybody did vote for McGovern.

[SergeiRachmaninov]

Thank you...that makes sense, Pauline being a few years departed.

Of course her remark about Nixon is very famous. I thought about it during Bush's last election when my dad -- then 90 and now departed -- assured me that Kerry had no chance as he [dad] didn't know anybody who was going to....! Poor old guy, was quite astute about these things until the years finally overtook him. In the end, he saw no more clearly than a Manhattan intellectual.

[dennisw]

Yes Steve Sailer is very good at site X. He also has own site and blog. My only problem with him is he is anti Israel. I suspect he is an atheist. Check out this blog that Steve likes:

http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html