Posted on 10/02/2007 8:17:23 AM PDT by fweingart
OUR OPINION: LOCAL LAWS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL REMEDY
Riverside, a small New Jersey town, got more than it bargained for after passing a get-tough immigration law last year. Proponents of the law blamed newcomers from Latin America for crowding, scarce parking, increased crime and strained public services. Although it never was enforced, the law worked anyway.
Influx of strangers
Hundreds, if not thousands, of Brazilians and other immigrants fled. Now the town has other woes: a deserted downtown, economic malaise and lingering resentment. Two weeks ago, Riverside repealed the law in the face of mounting legal bills and lawsuits likely to be lost.
Riverside's dynamics were predictable. Wary of strangers who spoke a different language and brought different customs, many residents rebelled. They feared the sudden influx of strangers: Why can't they speak English? They are taking our jobs.
Ironically, Riverside had experienced many immigrant waves before. Portuguese settled there in the 1960s and built businesses. This made the town attractive to Brazilians, who began arriving in 2000. How many of the new arrivals had legal status is unknown. But they revived the local economy.
Then came the new law. It mandated fines, jail time and possible loss of business licenses for anyone who knowingly rented housing or employed an undocumented immigrant. Soon after the law passed, many newcomers left. Along with them went the prosperity that their work and earnings pumped into the town.
Sad to say, Riverside's experience is quintessentially American. It reflects the love-hate relationship with immigrants that has existed since before our nation's founding. In the 1750s, Benjamin Franklin railed against German immigrants and their presumed threat to the English language. But our language and system of government survived the Germans, along with succeeding waves of Irish, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Mexican and Cuban immigrants. And the United States thrived.
Sensible solutions
Those groups arriving during eras of highest immigration were key to building U.S. industrial and economic power. The current wave, marked by immigrants from the Southern hemisphere, is no different.
Amid this wave, Riverside blamed undocumented immigrants for its woes, as did many of the 30 towns nationwide that enacted similar laws. Congress shares much of the blame for this. For years, the immigration system hasn't worked in the nation's best interest. Lawmakers with sensible solutions have been outflanked by a resilient minority. Municipalities would be better off lobbying Congress. Self-defeating local laws are no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform.
Give it time. Perhaps some Americans might move back in. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for tolerating porous borders through which flow the scum of what exists south of the border. Additionally, a gateway is provided by clueless politicians through which pass terrorists mixed in with the other illegals.
These illegals must be rounded up (ala Eisenhour administration in the 1950's) and shoved back across a secure border.
A nation has completely lost its idenity when he allows its population to become adulterated with the castoffs of another nation's populace.
Let's cut our own grass or give the neighborhood kid a job. Get him off his duff.
Due to the lack of patriotism on the part of the liberal pansies we’ve elected to rule over us we’ll never get the chance.
Yes, but the difference is that those waves of immigration happened back when we were a "melting pot," when everyone more or less had a deep sense of themselves as being Americans, where there was love and respect for American culture, and the concepts of "diversity" and "political correctness" were not yet a gleam in the eye of our nation's academics and political leaders.
It was also a time when immigration laws were enforced, and new arrivals could not live off free US government benefits while not paying taxes, hording their cash, and sending it out of the country.
Very sensible response.
While driving home yesterday, I went by a new business construction that is going up. Shift was over, 8-10 workers sort of milling around - not a single one of them was Latino. All these black guys and white guys, doing jobs Americans won’t do. Whodathunkit?
Well, we all know that Spain ceased to exist after they expelled the Muslims. </s>
What happens when immigrants go away? For starters, Miami might revert to being an American city instead of a Third World outpost.
The left wants to end illegal immigration. They want to disolve the border altogether.
Rather than stop the illegal immigrants from coming here illegally, they just want to call them legal residents who should be able to vote and steal IDs at will.
They aren’t interested in actually becoming citizens. Citizens have to pay taxes and are fingerprinted when they are arrested and are subject to the death penaltiy while citizens of other countries who commit capital crimes here are not (international law).
It doesn’t pay to be a citizen of the USA anymore. Others here have more rights and protections.
It bugs me that this debate is beginning to morph “Immigrants” and “Illegal Aliens” as identical concepts: they ain’t.
If you went thru border control and did the paperwork and made the sacrifices, then you are an Immigrant.
If you sneaked across and cheated your way in, you are an Illegal Alien.
Two different animals.
I am proud to be an Immigrant to New Zealand. It took bloody hard work to get here. I had to earn the right. And now I am a Citizen. These are *achievements* that took *effort* and *commitment*, and I had to jump thru reasonable hoops to get here, and make sacrifices, and go thru processes that were, at times, inconvenient. But all in all, this was worth doing because it is something that I wanted, for my family and for me.
An Illegal Alien sneaks his way in, and cheats, stealing from the rest of us who have jumped thru the hoops, and from those who were born here and whose citizenship is theirs as a birthright.
So it really brasses me off when these two concepts become blended. I earned my right to be a Citizen, and earlier to become an Immigrant, and how *dare* somebody jump the queue and seize by cheating what I had to earn!
My two-cents worth anyrate.
*DieHard*
...and the sprawling Los Angeles area might get a decrease in crime, traffic congestion, overcrowded hospital indigent care, relieve the burden on the taxpayer for free services, and open up some entry level jobs for Americans.
. Oh yeah , I almost forgot, the immigrants built this place :^)
Though I'm sure the Miami Herald would agree that economic strength is more important than the health of our citizens.
((yes that was said tongue-in-cheek)
Except that what LA has now are "colonists", not "immigrants".
Given their choice, they'll turn the American Southwest into the same third-world hellhole they came from.
Probably the downtown was deserted by the law abiding citizens when it was overrun by MS-13 and other thugs in this country illegally. If it is safe and there is a reason to go downtown, people will return. Until the libs take over again.
Another example of a writer deciding on his conclusion first and then finding facts to support it.
Almost comical, because we all remember firsthand what happened when the illegals walked out last year to protest the immigration bill. Nobody noticed. In fact, traffic was lighter, there was less crime, and we all saved some $$ by not eating out. The only people who missed them were the restaurant employers who saw revenues tumble.
I wish they would take off a whole week this year. And we’ll see if anyone misses them (I think not)
It was also a time when immigration laws were enforced, and new arrivals could not live off free US government benefits while not paying taxes, hording their cash, and sending it out of the country.
This is exactly correct.
I think it was the conservative writer John O'Sullivan who, several years ago, said something like this: If you will abolish the welfare state and rescind the doctrine of multiculturalism, I will withdraw my objection to large-scale immigration.
Even under those conditions, however, I would still take offense at the illegal variety of "immigration"--more precisely, a bloodless invasion.
Ironically, many of the Portuguese who came to the US in the 1960s and 1970s (fleeing the draft for Angola in many cases) were illegal as well. I don’t seem to remember the law being enforced to deport the thousands of illegal Portuguese in Newark, Harrison, Riverside, etc. back then either.
You lost me here. In reality, most southern and eastern European immigrants lived in self-segregated ghettoes (many of which remained for three generations). Most came solely for economic opportunity (not to "become American: whatever that means) and many initially came here with the idea of staying temporarily.
The attitude of the elite back then was, essentially, "we don't care as long as they don't overthrow the government or move into our areas." The attitude of the masses was negative, which is why the KKK had its peak years of membership from 1900-1925, when it was an explicity anti-immigrant organization.
The concept of the "melting pot" was actually an idea proposed by American liberals, as an alternative to the "cultural exclusionism" favored by the Right at that time. It never really was true, it took 3 generations for eastern/southern Europeans to fully assimilate (and become largely indistinct from other white Americans in terms of behavior and social mores), while blacks and Asians were not part of the "we" of the melting pot (even the liberals back then had their racial issues).
What we really need is enforcement of current immigration laws, an inculcation of constitutional principles among both the native born and the immigrants, as well as (dare I say?) a more inclusive sense of "we." That's my 2 pennies FWIW.
ping
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