How can you possibly say that if you read Two Sides of the Same Coin The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration?
I don't know how you come to the conclusion that, Those who try to tie the two together are those who believe that the U.S. cannot withstand the impact of enforcing our laws." That certainly was not my point. I want the laws enforced, but some of the laws need to be changed, e.g., chain migration, the visa lottery program, birthright citizenship [anchor babies], etc.
The easy issue is illegal immigration. It must stop—Now! Existing laws should be enforced, including a crackdown on businesses who hire illegals as their workforce. Including interior enforcement. Including border control. Including federal withholding of dollars to cities providing sanctuary. The result should be an outflow of aliens back to their native land, or some other country (no longer our problem). By stopping the inflow of illegal aliens, and incentivizing the departure of those already here (Big Stick), we stop the continuation of the anchor baby effect. Overall, we’ve made some progress.
You are preaching to the choir. I am part of a grassroots immigration reform group that has been lobbying Congress on almost a daily basis. Congress is gearing up in September to again trot out comprehensive immigration reform. They are still trying to get it passed piecemeal or in its entirety. The Dream Act is being appended the Defense appropriations bill.
As to legal immigration, I don’t see the structure or laws being a problem. Perhaps their strategy or policies need revising. The issues outlined in the two papers you cited should be genuine considerations in developing sound domestic LEGAL immigration policy for the long term.
We are taking in over 1 million legal immigrants a year, 60% of whom come from Latin America. Prior to 1965, we were averaging 178,000 a year. The numbers will continue to mushroom due to chain migration and the lack of caps on various categories. The demographics of this country are being changed dramatically. Our current LEGAL immigration policies are more dangerous to our future as a nation than illegal immigration and more difficult to solve.
Some of those factors should include the ability of the economy to absorb new citizens without harming the existing population (jobs, schools, infrastructure), the speed at which various groups are assimilating, education levels, etc. Instead of sound policy, we have seen the legal process poorly implemented, probably influenced by the overwhelming reality of millions of illegal immigrants. A sound LEGAL immigration policy cannot be effected until ILLEGAL immigration is addressed and stopped.
The Dems and Open border types have tried to tie the two together holding border security [including a system to track and deport visa overstays] hostage to comprehensive immigration reform. The two should not be linked. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't move ahead on both fronts. Cong. Gingrey (R-GA) intoduced legislation to eliminate extended chain migration and limit it to the nuclear family. There is no reason why we can't eliminate the visa lottery program, which brings in 50,000 immigrants annually. The top priority is securing the border and enforcing the laws on the books, but we can't wait three or four years to address the problems associated with legal immigration policies.
Now, I don’t know what in the above requires anyone to be particularly P.C. about anything. Perhaps that would come to light in establishing a LEGAL immigration policy. But you alluded several times to the “ethnic” component. I don’t share that concern. In most ways, I have much more in common with folks from Mexico than I do with people from France. I certainly would not like to see immigration quotas disproportionately favoring groups who come from communist countries or others who do not share some of the same values as the United States. I guess I don’t think of that as “ethnic,” so every time someone implies that this all comes down to race, I react. It doesn’t for many of us.
Read the The Hispanic Challenge By Hargvard Historian Samuel P. Huntington and we can discuss it.
As to immigration changing the demographics—well, yes. It always has and it always will. I guess there are folks who are against any kind of immigration as a result. I’m not one of them and I don’t think ElkGroveDan, or any significant number of freepers fit that category.
Here we go with being against immigration because you are against illegal immigration and want to change legal immigration policies. I am not against immigration. My wife is an immigrant. My grandmother was an immigrant. I have lived 25 years of my adult life abroad in nine different countries. I am not a xenophobe or a racist. The point is that we can't continue to take in the numbers of people we are and assimilate them. We need to craft an immigration policy that will benefit this nation. The current policies do not.
What is happening now is unprecedented in our history. Your failure to comprehend what is happening is similar to the frog who is put into a pot of cold water that is slowly heated. By the time the pot is boiling, the frog realizes too late what is happening. 1965 was a watershed year in immigration history. We are just beginning to see the consequences. Today, half of the children ages 0-5 are minorities. Hispanics and blacks have the highest high school dropout rates. Demography is destiny.
The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate – even more than unbounded levels of immigration – will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades.
By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by midcentury, twice the current ratio.
It's the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country – over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly 1 ½ times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for unmarried white women, 22 for unmarried Asian women, and 66 for unmarried black women.
Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent for whites and 15 percent for Asians. Only the percentage for blacks – 68 percent – is higher. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.
People don't want to be labelled racists when they are not! Period! While all sorts of factors may come into a domestic policy on LEGAL immigration, the ILLEGAL immigration problem is about individuals not following the law and our own government failing to enforce those laws. Period. That is all I was trying to say.