On immigration (Good Read)

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/ ^ | October 4, 2003 | Richard D. Lamm

[getget]

On immigration

Should illegal aliens have driver's licenses, amnesty, welfare, and the right to move their families to the U.S.? Illegal aliens are, as is often pointed out, "good, hard-working people who just want the American dream." But is that the end of the argument? The trouble with that level of analysis is that there are billions of "good, hard-working people" and their dependents in the world who would love to come here, and obviously we can't take them all. We are also a nation of laws, with our own unemployed and underemployed, and our nation needs to come to some enforceable consensus on what our policy should be on people entering the country illegally.

Polls show that more than 70 percent of Americans object to illegal immigration, and we run a serious risk of a backlash against all immigrants if we don't reach some consensus on this issue. Polls also show that there is no issue in America where there is a bigger gap between public opinion and opinions of the media and other "elites."

Reasoned dialogue is rare and issues of immense importance to America's future are not being discussed or even debated.

Public policy requires us to be wise enough to appreciate cumulative effects. We already have approximately 10 percent of all Mexico living in the U.S. either legally or illegally. We owe it to the future to have a candid debate on the demographic impact of a mass migration of this magnitude. Consider:

1. We are a nation built on law. It almost sounds old-fashioned in contemporary America to ask that people obey the law. But when we start deciding which laws to obey and which to ignore, we start down a dangerous path. There are millions of potential immigrants patiently waiting in their home countries to immigrate here, playing by our rules. Illegal immigrants "jump the line."

2. As every house needs a door, every country needs a border. By turning a blind eye toward illegal immigration, we are encouraging countless numbers of these people to attempt to sneak into America. I spent a night with the Border Patrol in California, and was amazed to find people from India, Bangladesh, Iran, Egypt, Africa and China among the people detained.

3. Illegal immigration hurts America's poor. Illegal immigrants compete for the jobs our own poor need to start to move up the economic ladder. A study by The Center for Immigration Studies finds: "Mexican immigration is overwhelmingly unskilled, and it is hard to find an economic argument for unskilled immigration, because it tends to reduce wages for (U.S.) workers." The study goes on: "Because the American economy offers very limited opportunities for workers with little education, continued unskilled immigration can't help but to significantly increase the size of the poor and uninsured populations, as well as the number of people on welfare."

4. We are told that illegal immigration is "cheap labor," but it is not "cheap labor," it is subsidized labor. The National Academy of Sciences has found that there is a significant fiscal drain on U.S. taxpayers for each adult immigrant without a high school education. Illegal immigration is something that benefits a few employers, but the rest of us subsidize that labor through the school system, the health-care system, the courts and in other ways that this form of labor imposes. With school spending of more than $7,000 per student per year, even a small family costs far more than a low-wage family pays in taxes.

5. America is increasingly becoming, day by day, a bilingual country, yet there is not a bilingual country in the world that lives in peace with itself. No nation should blindly allow itself to become a bilingual-bicultural country. If it does, it invites generations of conflict, tension and antagonism. America has historically demanded that its immigrants be self-supporting and English-speaking to join our polity. We vary from that rule that made us "one nation, indivisible" at great risk to America's future. Today, when over 40 percent of today's massive wave of immigrants is from Spanish-speaking nations, people can move to America and keep their language, their culture and their old loyalties. If the melting pot doesn't melt, immigrants become "foreigners" living in America rather than assimilated Americans.

6. Our social fabric risks becoming undone. It is important to America's future that we look at how Mexican immigrants are doing. Too many of our Hispanic immigrants live in ethnic ghettos. Too many are unskilled laborers, too many are uneducated, too many live in poverty, too many are exploited, too many haven't finished ninth grade, too many drop out of school. The Center for Immigration Studies issued a report last year, which found: "Almost two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in 10 natives not completing high school. Mexican immigrants now account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force."

But what is most disturbing is that second and third generations don't do much better. Again, the study from The Center for Immigration Studies: "The lower educational attainment of Mexican immigrants appears to persist across the generations." A recent report from the center shows that two-thirds of Mexican immigrant workers lack even a high school education; as a consequence, two-thirds of Mexican immigrant families live in or near poverty. The question has to be asked: By tolerating illegal immigration are we laying the foundations for a new Hispanic underclass? A Hispanic Quebec?

[Elliott Jackalope]

Oh boy! A new "reformer" is coming up in Mexican politics. You say their name is Lopez Obrador? I say they will turn out to be just as big of a disappointment as every single other "reformer" who has become Presidente of that hopeless country. The only "reform" that is going to happen will be to their bank account, as they "reform" themselves from being a millionaire to a billionaire.

Face facts, kiddies. This situation is only going to get worse until we either build a fifty foot wall between here and Mexico and start imprisoning those who hire illegals, or we invade Mexico and annex it to the U.S. and make it a U.S. protectorate like the Virgin Islands. One or the other. Nothing else has a prayer of working.

[FITZ]

Lopez Obrador is of the PRD party ---- those are the anti-NAFTA pro-campesino people. I'm not sure if he's good or bad.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

OK, I just like to point out that there is a legal immigration problem in this country.

I believe Suozzi is on 540 AM one morning during the week, he is an illegal lover too, maybe you can call him.

[Elliott Jackalope]

No problem, I have the answer to your question. There is no such thing as a "good" Mexican politician. Period. If they weren't totally corrupt they would never get elected dog catcher. That entire country is an infinite cesspool of corruption. Their police pay for their "routes", and then they extract "la mordita" from everyone unlucky enough to fall into their net. They don't get a salary, they are expected to extract their incomes form the people they supposedly "serve". That's just the traffic cops! It gets worse as you go up the chain of command.

The corruption there is bottomless and infinite. They really need to be invaded and to have an actual government imposed upon them, because they are totally incapable of creating one for themselves. Hey, we could do it for the Iraqis, why not for the unfortunate people of Mexico?

[Waco]

If I should ever want to slip into Canada or Mex. on the QT, the gov't has pamplet fom the GPO that will help me do so, right? No? Damn! Bet the drivers lic. isn't ready and waiting either!

[FITZ]

That's true. This guy is the current mayor of Mexico City --- so that should tell us something. He's against the privitization of Pemex and I think is quite Marxist.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

Interesting, written by Richard Lamm, Former Governor of Colorado, home of my favorite politician.

[FITZ]

They really need to be invaded and to have an actual government imposed upon them, because they are totally incapable of creating one for themselves.

That's true. The Mexicans deep down some know it too or they wouldn't be heading en masse to the USA. Compare Texas with Chihuahua or Arizona with Sonora. But we've got Mexicans like Bustamante who actually have plans to do the opposite --- put half the USA under Mexican control.

[FITZ]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/susana_hayward/6267216.htm

Information on Lopez Obrador. The election is only 3 years away.

[HiJinx]

Welcome aboard FR, Gallegos.

I see you haven't yet put your locale or any info on your FR Home page...are you the Gallegos I know in southern Arizona?

HJ

[philetus]

That would apply IF they were refugees.Which they are not.

[FITZ]

And more:

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/comment/prd_success_oct97.html

Mexico is going to take a sharp turn further to the left it looks ----- I guess the way they vote in California and other areas of the USA is just par for the course.

[El Conservador]

Another aspect of this is that the Mexican rural workforce is almost nonexistent, because almost all of them have already crossed the border.

If I dropped you in any little Mexican town, especially in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca, and you ask every family in town if they have relatives "al otro lado" (at the other side, which is the almost Eldoradesque name they give to the United States), most likely 90% of them will say "yes".

The money transfers are, as it has been explained, most of the livelyhood of rural Mexico, thus sparing the elitist Mexican government from taking care of its populace, since the "migrantes" have already done that.

But there's a flipside to this: Mexican workers coming from the same town form "civic organizations" in the United States that pool and send money to the municipal administration, so it can be spent in infrastructure projects (parks, sewage, schools, roads...), and this takes away from the Mexican Federal government. Mexican state governors would rather cater to their communities overseas than to the instaters.

But the Mexican government is no fool, and hasn't conceded the right to vote to its citizens abroad, because if the government did so, it'd be giving away the influence to the citizens abroad, which have both political and economic power (just try to stop money transfers to Mexico for one month, and see what happens...).

The Mexican government has awoken to the fact that 15 million Mexicans mainly in the United States are a formidable political player, but now they'll have to mess with an 800-pound gorilla.

[Elliott Jackalope]

Thanks for the links. I'll read them later, after I've digested my dinner and I don't have to worry about ejecting it all over my computer screen.

[cyborg]

WLIE has switched over to a business format. I used call there all the time esp. during Ed Tyll's show when it was talk radio.

Sure I don't mind limiting legal immigration. That's a country right. However, we don't even have a grip on illegal immigration. US gov't has a lot of catching up to do.

[FITZ]

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0905politics05.html

Another good one. I guess he's pretty into government handout programs. No surprise he's doing so well I guess. Plus when you look at how PAN seems to be only able to come up with Vicente's Hillary-type wife of a couple years for their next candidate.

[JNB]

I hate to say this, but it probably would be better for the average Mexican if the PRD wins the presidential election in 2006. The revisons to NAFTA to protect Mexican farmers and rural Mexico are badly needed to reduce the flow of illegal aliens(along with throwing Americans who hire illegals in jail).

[FITZ]

Half of the state of Zacatecas is in the USA. Instability is all that all this is doing ---- to both countries.

[FITZ]

I tend to agree. For a couple reasons, for one the Mexican oil ---- which there is a lot of, is nationalized but so far that benefits only a very few ---- that money goes directly into the pockets of the already wealthy elite. So at least if this guy is making welfare programs for Mexico's poor, he can pay for those from that oil money and it at least gets a little spread out. He sounds like he's against the decadent behavior the Mexicans usually have --- he tells the PRD guys to drop their mistresses (gasp!! what a concept that must be for them!) and stay in less than luxury hotels.

And you're right about NAFTA, it's destroyed the Mexican peasant, and it's time they bring it down.

Also this is the buy that brought Guiliani into Mexico City to try and do something about the very high crime rate there.