The Open-Borders Conspiracy

If I could choose to have my readers learn one and only one thing from what I write, it would be that America's problems are not the result of blind, much less inevitable, forces, but are the consequences of deliberate political action by motivated individuals and groups. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of our ongoing immigration crisis. Let's trace the lines of influence in the open-borders conspiracy, a word I use despite its connotations of grassy knollology because in this case it is factually appropriate. Given who has been pushing mass immigration in America and how open they have been about why they are doing it, it boggles my mind that anyone who considers himself conservative can still support this policy.

Starting with the hardest Left, there is the radically pro-immigration position of the Communist Party of the United States. Don't discount their significance because of their tiny membership and marginalized position in mainstream political discourse; their positions are indicative of the consensus of the most radical and determined core of the Left. This is true because much of the Left's fundamental thinking is done by avowed communists and their splinter groups, and because these groups have all sorts of ties through shared personnel with mainstream organizations. This radical core authenticates its positions as the extreme leftist view, at which point it is picked up on by more moderate leftists and endorsed in kind but with a difference of degree. The CPUSA supports immigration because it believes that this will enable it to solve the fundamental problem it faces in America: a materially contented working class. As put in William Hawkins's excellent 1994 book on the open-borders conspiracy, Importing Revolution,

The solution? Increase immigration, especially that of undocumented, illegal workers. The Communist Party, USA, in its publication, Political Affairs: Theoretical Journal of the Communist Party USA, understands well the cause-effect relationship of this: "undocumented workers in any work... have the effect of depressing wages and lowering the quality of working conditions." In other words, CPUSA and its fellow travelers suggest that, in order to "save" workers, the working class must first be destroyed through declining wages and living standards!"

This is the first prong of the Communist assault: worsen conditions for American workers.

The second Communist prong is to use immigration to increase the numbers of racial minorities, whom they believe can be relied upon to be disloyal to the existing regime. As the Marxist theoretician Mike Davis puts it in his book Prisoners of the American Dream,

The real weak link in American imperialism is a black and Hispanic working class, fifty million strong. This is a nation within a nation, a society within a society, that alone possesses the numerical and positional strength to undermine the American empire from within."

One of the ironies of the significance of communists in the immigration debate is that the origin of American communism itself lies in immigration. As Nathan Glazer reports in his study of the movement's formative years, "the most striking characteristic of Communist Party membership throughout the 1920's was that it was overwhelmingly composed of recent immigrants. Probably only one in ten of the members was a native American." (The Social Basis of American Communism) These immigrants came to this country in the great wave from 1890 to WWI, and therefore the New Left, which two generations later grew out of the intellectual and social milieu these communists created, is yet another baleful indirect consequence of immigration. Now let's move (a little) towards the center and look at the ideas of the National Lawyers Guild, which is not openly communist but is a front organization for communists. One of their leaders once said, speaking of immigration, that, "[T]o adopt a liberal policy would provide the basis for thousands of non-white, often left-leaning and politically conscious individuals to remain lawfully in the United States." He was speaking specifically about one provision of law, so his numbers were a bit off; we are currently taking in nearly a million a year. Notice the way that left-wing politics is linked to race: there is a pervasive anti-white bias running through all these people. The NLG worked on a number of individual and collective legal cases for immigrants, but its most pervasive influence has been in its ability to insinuate its staff into other organizations. For example, one Amy Novick, a member of its National Immigration Project, its principal tool for promoting open borders, became the assistant director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. (Its extremism has been so offensive that even liberals like Robert F. Kennedy and Americans for Democratic Action have denounced it). It helped found the National Immigration Forum in 1981.

Again moving a little to the center, next comes the Ford Foundation, an organization that has contributed to the problem of immigration in a number of ways. Following is an incomplete list of organizations the Ford Foundation has funded that promote immigration. My point in subjecting the reader to this mind-numbing list is to make the point of just how busy Ford has been in pushing this agenda, and how innocuous-sounding are so many of the organizations they use to do it. Ford often uses organizations that have some legitimate aspects to them to provide cover, giving funds to finance a specific pro-immigration program within the organization. To wit:

Arizona Farmworkers Union, African-American Institute, American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education, American Civil Liberties Foundation, American Council for Nationalities Service, American Friends Service Committee, American Immigration Law Foundation, American Public Welfare Association, Asian-Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, Bilateral Commission on U.S.-Mexican Relations, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, Casa de Proyecto Libertad, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Economic and Social Studies of the Third World, Center for Migration Studies of New York, Center for Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement, Center for Teaching and Research in Economics, Central America Resource Center, Centro Presente, Chinatown Resources Development Center, Christian Community Service Agency, Clinica Monsignor Oscar A. Romero, Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services, Farmworker Justice Fund, Haitian Centers Council, Haitian Refugee Center, Haitian Task Force, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Indochina Resource Action Center, Institute for Regional Education, International Refugee Center of Oregon, Inter-University Program on Latino Research, Intertect Institute, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Lutheran Council in the USA, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Migrant Legal Action Program, Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy Center, National Association for the Southern Poor, National Bureau of Economic Research, National Chicano Council on Higher Education, National Coalition of Advocates for Students, National Coalition of Haitian Refugees, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum, New York Association on New Americans, Policy Sciences Center, Population Council, Population Reference Center, Potomac Institute, Refugee Policy Group, Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid, Research and Education Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition, Texas Legal Services, Travelers and Immigrants Aid Society of Metropolitan Chicago.

The point is that all these organizations are not just pro-mass immigration by nature; they are specifically paid - bribed - to be so by massive handouts of Ford Foundation money. Other left-wing foundations - and most foundations are left-wing - have behaved similarly.

When bribing existing organizations hasn't been enough, the baleful Ford Foundation has established entire groups from scratch to promote its mass immigration agenda. Case in point is the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is almost an entirely artificial creation. Only 2% of its budget comes from grass-roots donations. MALDEF has lobbied for:

1.Higher quotas of legal immigration to the US. 2.Non-prosecution or deportment of illegal aliens. 3.Non-guarding of our border with Mexico. 4.Amnesty for illegal aliens. 5.The right of illegal aliens to welfare and other public services in America. 6.Bilingual education (which is known to fail). 7.The right of illegal aliens to vote in American elections. 8.Hate crimes laws against free speech.

Continuing with the Mexican theme, another major player in the open-borders movement has been the government of Mexico, which openly proclaims (only to its own people, of course) its intention of reconquering the parts of the Southwestern United States that were conquered from them in 1845. It has done a number of things:

1.It financed the notorious Supreme Court case Plyler vs. Doe, which established a "right" for the children of illegal immigrants to attend school. 2.It has a deliberate policy, called acercamiento, (reconciliation or bonding) of attempting to use Mexican-Americans as a voting bloc to advance its political interests, principally in increasing immigration, opening America to Mexican trade, and dealing with Mexico's foreign debt.

Basically, the Mexican government adopts one, very smooth, tone when speaking to its patsies in America, and another, very militant, tone when speaking to its own people about its ruthlessness in pursuing its own national interest at the expense of ours. As long as political correctness makes people cowards about blowing the whistle on this scam, and as long as the Mexican government continues to bribe the American corporate elite with a supply of docile cheap labor, we may expect this to continue. The other problem with the immigration debate in this country is that nominally moderate groups have been perverted by the influence of highly-motivated extremists. For example, the Marxist National Lawyers Guild has been able to infiltrate its people into the American Immigration Lawyers Association. AILG has about 2,000 members, but is dominated by the 100 or so members who are also members of NLG.

There have been other communist front organizations active on the immigration issue, like the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. Then come the Marxist-influenced organizations like the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights. There is also the Center for Constitutional Rights is a group organized by William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy. Kunstler (recently deceased) was a well-known extremist lawyer; Kinoy was a Trotskyite attorney who was twice president of the National Lawyers Guild and worked with the American Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born. All these groups, which have appeared, split, and mutated over the years, have worked to undermine the immigration-control laws and increase the number of immigrants

The American Civil Liberties Union, as one might have known, has been busy over the years working mischief on the immigration issue. Its basic strategy has been to use extreme "civil liberties" claims to hamstring enforcement of the immigration control laws. In addition, it has an Immigration Task Force with a list of 40 issues to litigate, including:

1.Weakening employer sanctions for employing illegal aliens. 2.Making it impossible for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to conduct inspections without a search warrant. 3.Allowing "political" and "religious" refusals to present proof of citizenship. 4.Requiring the INS to provide free legal counsel to illegal aliens. 5.Requiring the INS to release illegal aliens who contest their deportation. 6.Preventing the denial of welfare to illegal aliens. 7.Expanding anti-discrimination law to require employers to hire illegal aliens.

The ACLU also actively works with MALDEF to encourage immigrants to file allegations of discrimination. Mexican ethnic organizations are not the only ones behind the push for more immigration. Surprisingly, given that substantial Jewish immigration to this country ended two generations ago, so are Jews. One major force behind the disastrous 1965 Immigration "Reform" Act that caused the current crisis was organized Jewry. According to J.J. Goldberg's approving book Jewish Power,

Everyone agreed that the Jewish community must undertake a massive effort to repeal the quota system, but the ADL and the American Jewish Committee refused to join an operation under NCRAC auspices. Instead, Minkoff put NCRAC immigration specialist Jules Cohen in charge of a "non-auspices committee," operated by NCRAC under its "non-auspices." In 1955, this committee spearheaded the formation of a broad coalition for immigration reform, made up of civic associations, labor groups, and Protestant and Catholic groups. For a decade the coalition lobbied, leafleted, planted articles in magazines, and held public meetings on the racist nature of the immigration quota system. The entire operation was run by a steering committee of the "non-auspices committee," made up of four staffers from the three defense agencies and NCRAC. The quotas were finally repealed by the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, passed by Congress during the civil rights surge of President Lyndon Johnson's early years. (p.127)

Thus the gates were opened to the Moslem immigrants who today chant "Death to Israel" on the streets of Brooklyn, New York and Dearborn, Michigan. It is only fair to remark that some of the most courageous opponents of mass immigration, like Dan Stein, head of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the major group working on the issue, are Jewish.

Now we come to the saddest dupes of the immigration debate: what Lenin called the "useful idiots" of the Right. These are basically a combination of extreme libertarians (like the Cato Institute) who support immigration on ideological grounds and hired guns who promote it on behalf of interested economic constituencies like the cheap-labor lobby, which is composed of agribusiness and other employers of immigrant labor. (Naturally, there exist some genuinely intelligent libertarians like Nobel laureate and former Chicago economics professor Milton Friedman, who has said, "it is obvious you can't have open immigration and a welfare state." Of course it is.) It is time for these people to wise up and realize that they are pawns of a far-left agenda. Immigrants who come to this country only fatten the voting blocs of the Left which oppose the economic agenda of libertarians, anyway, so these people are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Note: I have started writing a blog every business day at http://www.robertlocke.com.

Has Capitalism Failed?

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

U.S. House of Representatives, July 9, 2002

It is now commonplace and politically correct to blame what is referred to as the excesses of capitalism for the economic problems we face, and especially for the Wall Street fraud that dominates the business news. Politicians are having a field day with demagoguing the issue while, of course, failing to address the fraud and deceit found in the budgetary shenanigans of the federal government – for which they are directly responsible. Instead, it gives the Keynesian crowd that run the show a chance to attack free markets and ignore the issue of sound money.

So once again we hear the chant: "Capitalism has failed; we need more government controls over the entire financial market." No one asks why the billions that have been spent and thousands of pages of regulations that have been written since the last major attack on capitalism in the 1930s didn't prevent the fraud and deception of Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossings. That failure surely couldn't have come from a dearth of regulations.

What is distinctively absent is any mention that all financial bubbles are saturated with excesses in hype, speculation, debt, greed, fraud, gross errors in investment judgment, carelessness on the part of analysts and investors, huge paper profits, conviction that a new era economy has arrived and, above all else, pie-in-the-sky expectations.

When the bubble is inflating, there are no complaints. When it bursts, the blame game begins. This is especially true in the age of victimization, and is done on a grand scale. It quickly becomes a philosophic, partisan, class, generational, and even a racial issue. While avoiding the real cause, all the finger pointing makes it difficult to resolve the crisis and further undermines the principles upon which freedom and prosperity rest.

Nixon was right – once – when he declared "We're all Keynesians now." All of Washington is in sync in declaring that too much capitalism has brought us to where we are today. The only decision now before the central planners in Washington is whose special interests will continue to benefit from the coming pretense at reform. The various special interests will be lobbying heavily like the Wall Street investors, the corporations, the military-industrial complex, the banks, the workers, the unions, the farmers, the politicians, and everybody else.

But what is not discussed is the actual cause and perpetration of the excesses now unraveling at a frantic pace. This same response occurred in the 1930s in the United States as our policymakers responded to the very similar excesses that developed and collapsed in 1929. Because of the failure to understand the problem then, the depression was prolonged. These mistakes allowed our current problems to develop to a much greater degree.

Consider the failure to come to grips with the cause of the 1980s bubble, as Japan's economy continues to linger at no-growth and recession level, with their stock market at approximately one-fourth of its peak 13 years ago. If we're not careful – and so far we've not been – we will make the same errors that will prevent the correction needed before economic growth can be resumed.

In the 1930s, it was quite popular to condemn the greed of capitalism, the gold standard, lack of regulation, and a lack government insurance on bank deposits for the disaster. Businessmen became the scapegoat. Changes were made as a result, and the welfare/warfare state was institutionalized. Easy credit became the holy grail of monetary policy, especially under Alan Greenspan, "the ultimate Maestro." Today, despite the presumed protection from these government programs built into the system,

we find ourselves in a bigger mess than ever before. The bubble is bigger, the boom lasted longer, and the gold price has been deliberately undermined as an economic signal. Monetary inflation continues at a rate never seen before in a frantic effort to prop up stock prices and continue the housing bubble, while avoiding the consequences that inevitably come from easy credit. This is all done because we are unwilling to acknowledge that current policy is only setting the stage for a huge drop in the value of the dollar. Everyone fears it, but no one wants to deal with it.

Ignorance, as well as disapproval for the natural restraints placed on market excesses that capitalism and sound markets impose, cause our present leaders to reject capitalism and blame it for all the problems we face. If this fallacy is not corrected and capitalism is even further undermined, the prosperity that the free market generates will be destroyed.

Corruption and fraud in the accounting practices of many companies are coming to light. There are those who would have us believe this is an integral part of free-market capitalism. If we did have free-market capitalism, there would be no guarantees that some fraud wouldn't occur. When it did, it would then be dealt with by local law-enforcement authority and not by the politicians in Congress, who had their chance to "prevent" such problems but chose instead to politicize the issue, while using the opportunity to promote more Keynesian useless regulations.

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military – industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!

To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political spectrums. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names – Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.

What is not discussed is that the current crop of bankruptcies reveals that the blatant distortions and lies emanating from years of speculative orgy were predictable.

First, Congress should be investigating the federal government's fraud and deception in accounting, especially in reporting future obligations such as Social Security, and how the monetary system destroys wealth. Those problems are bigger than anything in the corporate world and are the responsibility of Congress. Besides, it's the standard set by the government and the monetary system it operates that are major contributing causes to all that's wrong on Wall Street today. Where fraud does exist, it's a state rather than federal matter, and state authorities can enforce these laws without any help from Congress.

Second, we do know why financial bubbles occur, and we know from history that they are routinely associated with speculation, excessive debt, wild promises, greed, lying, and cheating. These problems were described by quite a few observers as the problems were developing throughout the 90s, but the warnings were ignored for one reason. Everybody was making a killing and no one cared, and those who were reminded of history were reassured by the Fed Chairman that "this time" a new economic era had arrived and not to worry. Productivity increases, it was said, could explain it all.

But now we know that's just not so. Speculative bubbles and all that we've been witnessing are a consequence of huge amounts of easy credit, created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. We've had essentially no savings, which is one of the most significant driving forces in capitalism. The illusion created by low interest rates perpetuates the bubble and all the bad stuff that goes along with it. And that's not a fault of capitalism. We are dealing with a system of inflationism and interventionism that always produces a bubble economy that must end badly.

So far the assessment made by the administration, Congress, and the Fed bodes badly for our economic future. All they offer is more of the same, which can't possibly help. All it will do is drive us closer to national bankruptcy, a sharply lower dollar, and a lower standard of living for most Americans, as well as less freedom for everyone.

This is a bad scenario that need not happen. But preserving our system is impossible if the critics are allowed to blame capitalism and sound monetary policy is rejected. More spending, more debt, more easy credit, more distortion of interest rates, more regulations on everything, and more foreign meddling will soon force us into the very uncomfortable position of deciding the fate of our entire political system.

If we were to choose freedom and capitalism, we would restore our dollar to a commodity or a gold standard. Federal spending would be reduced, income taxes would be lowered, and no taxes would be levied upon savings, dividends, and capital gains. Regulations would be reduced, special-interest subsidies would be stopped, and no protectionist measures would be permitted. Our foreign policy would change, and we would bring our troops home.

We cannot depend on government to restore trust to the markets; only trustworthy people can do that. Actually, the lack of trust in Wall Street executives is healthy because it's deserved and prompts caution. The same lack of trust in politicians, the budgetary process, and the monetary system would serve as a healthy incentive for the reform in government we need.

Markets regulate better than governments can. Depending on government regulations to protect us significantly contributes to the bubble mentality.

These moves would produce the climate for releasing the creative energy necessary to simply serve consumers, which is what capitalism is all about. The system that inevitably breeds the corporate-government cronyism that created our current ongoing disaster would end.

Capitalism didn't give us this crisis of confidence now existing in the corporate world. The lack of free markets and sound money did. Congress does have a role to play, but it's not proactive. Congress' job is to get out of the way.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

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Out of ignorance

Country-western singer Chad Brock admits he had no idea there were so many Hispanics in Greeley. Where did he think he was performing? In Dixie?

Most ethnic comments are made out of ignorance and not malice. Brock has shown his ignorance of U.S. culture, history and demographics. He's also alienated a growing audience. By some estimates, one in 10 Americans can, or soon will be able to, claim Hispanic heritage.

Some of them even like country-western music.

DEBORAH MENDEZ-WILSON

Highlands Ranch