Pretending immigration isn't an issue

The Republican National Committee's mail-order fund-raisers often contain a comprehensive multiple-choice survey so that prospective donors can give their opinions on topics of national importance. One issue, however, is conspicuously missing from the list: immigration.

The omission isn't an oversight; it's a deliberate policy. The National Republican Congressional Committee has been advising its candidates not to mention this issue in their speeches or campaign literature.

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., gave Republicans the opportunity to seize this issue when he addressed a radical left-wing Hispanic group, The National Council of La Raza, in Miami on July 22.

He announced a Democratic Party plan to introduce legislation to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Nothing is more unpopular with voters than amnesty (which Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., called "sheer lunacy"). If the powers that be in the Republican Party don't realize this, they are out-of-touch with the grass roots.

The shyness of the Republican Party and the Bush administration about immigration explains why they manifest a deafening silence about Rep. George Gekas's bill called Securing America's Future through Enforcement Reform. The Pennsylvania Republican's bill is completely in accord with public opinion polls, showing that the majority of the American people want government to reduce the number of legal immigrants, to stop the irresponsible issuance of visas, to deport illegal aliens and to use U.S. troops to guard our borders (instead of the borders of Eastern Europe).

Title I, called Securing the Border, would increase the number of INS investigators and enforcement personnel, lengthen criminal sentences for alien smuggling, beef up the Border Patrol and use U.S. military troops until the Border Patrol reaches full strength. It would stop granting visas in countries that refuse to cooperate in combating alien smuggling.

Title II, called Screening Aliens Seeking Admission, would tighten the visa program to reduce the risk of aliens using fraudulent passports, require in-person interviews before issuing all visas, and bar any alien who is a member of a terrorist group or supports terrorism. Most people don't understand why this isn't already the law.

Title III, called Tracking Aliens Present in the United States, would establish a comprehensive entry-exit control system with registration and fingerprinting (which the INS has promised for years but never implemented). At least 40 percent of illegal aliens are visa overstayers. Several of the 9/11 hijackers had overstayed their visas.

Title IV, called Removing Alien Terrorists, Criminals, and Human Rights Violators, would authorize the INS to deport any alien who was inadmissible in the first place or is suspected of being a terrorist. This title would reverse several court decisions that accord unreasonable "rights" to terrorists claiming asylum, and would prevent the courts from releasing criminal aliens into the community.

Title V, called Enhancing Enforcement of the Immigration and Nationality Act in the Interior, would protect Social Security cards against counterfeiting and fraudulent use. This title would increase the number of INS investigators, as repeatedly requested by the INS, and double the number of INS detention beds.

Title VI would eliminate excessive review and dilatory, abusive tactics by aliens in deportation proceedings. It would also exclude aliens who knowingly make a false asylum application.

Title VII would clean up the problem of voting by illegal aliens. It would require verification of citizenship for voters and applicants.

Title VIII, called Reforming Legal Immigration, would repeal the infamous Diversity Immigrant Program which admits 50,000 immigrants a year, mostly from the Third World, including countries that sponsor terrorism, and helped the Fourth of July LAX murderer win U.S. residency. It would reform the abuses in the refugee program and in the extended-family visa program, and reduce the number of legal immigrants by 20 percent.

This would still leave immigration nearly double the traditional level. The INS is unable to cope with its current backlog of 5 million applications.

Gekas, chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, will start hearings on his bill next month. He should then add one more section requiring the INS to screen out aliens with diseases, such as the West Nile virus, malaria, Chagas disease, intestinal parasites and tuberculosis.

The BBC reported that the current epidemic of the West Nile virus (a central African disease) was probably brought to America for the first time three years ago by an imported exotic bird. The Centers for Disease Control reported that 16,000 foreign birds passed unscreened for West Nile virus through JFK airport in 1999. Where are the environmentalists when we need them?

Saber--the state of California was trying to make policy on something that is a federal issue. States can't do that. Period.

That's the spin of the left, but it doesn't hold up.
All California was trying to do was require proof of legal residence before granting State benefits to applicants. Some of these are benefits that most States don't offer at all, so there is no federal compulsion.
Further, States may, if they choose, require legal residence before issuing drivers' licenses. Is that also in violation of federal authority?
California passed a three-strikes law... if one of the strikes was a federal conviction, it still counts. Is that an abrogation of a federal prerogative?
Despite the propaganda, what did Prop #187 actually attempt to do? Did it really deny medical benefits, welfare, and education to Illegals?
No, it merely stated that California wasn't going to pick up the tab. It said nothing about private or federal entities providing those benefits.

Wilson knew that 187 would (a) get HIM re-elected and (b) never stand up to the most cursory judicial review, saving him any real political heat over having to enforce it. The initiative's drafters didn't help any by failing to include a severability clause. If one element was thrown out, the entire thing would get tossed.

If Prop #187 was a sure-fire judicial loser, why did Gray Davis make the unprecedented move not to pursue the appeals?
Mariana Pfaelzer is a judicial radical... there was no guarantee that her decision was going to be upheld, and plenty of doubt. That's one reason why she took so long to finally rule on the case in March of 1998, after issuing a restraining order against its implementation in 1994. If it was a slam-dunk, she'd have ruled far more expeditiously. By not doing so, she allowed the issue of whether or not to appeal Prop #187 to become part of the 1998 California Gubernatorial campaign.
Gray Davis won, despite lying that he would respect the will of the voters of California on #187. The only dilemma was how to execute the deception. Davis, in full-court pander mode, couldn't risk allowing the appeal to continue, so he let the case be arbitrated... itself a legally dubious decision.
If Prop #187 was really as dead as a Constitutional doornail, why didn't Davis just say so and go through the motions until it was killed by the U.S. Supreme Court? Precisely because he knew it wasn't.
The only sketchy aspect of Prop #187 was the provision not to use California State funds to educate Illegal Alien children. This would have required the SCOTUS to overturn Plyler vs. Doe (1982), a 5-4 activist decision of the Burger Court which had placed that requirement to educate Illegal children on the States.
However, Justice Brennan, in his majority opinion, did not cite the naturalization clause of Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution, as would be the case if the matter hinged on a dispute over a State infringing on duly empowered federal authority. Instead, he based his ruling on an expansive reading of the Self-incrimination Clause of the 5th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th...

Held: A Texas statute which withholds from local school districts any state funds for the education of children who were not "legally admitted" into the United States, and which authorizes local school districts to deny enrollment to such children, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
LINK

It's unlikely that the Supreme Court of the late 90s would have issued such a ruling, leaving the very real question of whether not they would overturn precedent, void all or parts of Plyler, and uphold Proposition #187.
How would the Supreme Court have ruled? No one knows, not you, not me, not Gray Davis, and not Pete Wilson. Despite the Clinton appointees, the Rehnquist Court of the 1990s was certainly more conservative than the Burger Court of 1982. Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and O'Connor (she voted against Plyler) would certainly have voted to overturn. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and probably Breyer would have voted to uphold it. Center-right Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy and would have been the swing vote.
It's simply revisionist to suggest that the judicial stillbirth and an eventual ruling of unconstitutionality on Prop #187 was a fait accompli.

Why? Because all of us "white folks" have decided not to make babies anymore.

Who says, you? I see plenty of white babies where I live. All I have to do is to go to my nearby Chick-fil-A to see tons of kids. If you go to a nearby walking trail, parents are pushing their kids in strollers, walking them in a backpack on their back, or the kids are riding bicycles or roller blades. All this talk of "not having kids" is a misrepresentation of the truth, even though whites are having fewer children than in past generations. A 1.9 birthrate is not the destructive force that a 1.2 or 1.3 birthrate is. Furthermore, within the past year or two, from reports I've read, the birthrate among white Americans is finally starting to rise.

At current rates, with zero immigration, it would take at least 125-200 years for whites to be a minority in this country. If the U.S. went back to a predominately European immigration policy, then whites would likely never be the minority. Furthermore, you're not taking into the account that birth rates will not stay constant among whites and minorities. They'll likely stabalize somewhere.

What you're advocating is basically a balkanization style immigration policy, especially in this time of group politics.

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