I'm not a nice guy about this crap. We're at War with an enemy we cannot allow to prevail. Victor Hanson called this the most important election since 1864 for the future of this country. And you people are jacking around. Let's see what happens.
Here's what else Hanson has to say... President Bush's recent proposal to grant legal status to thousands of Mexican citizens currently working in the U.S. under illegal auspices seems at first glance to be a good start--splitting the difference between open and closed borders, and between amnesty and deportation. Politically it was a wise move on the eve of a Mexican state visit to grant some concessions to Vicente Fox. After all, the president of Mexico cannot ignore the $12 billion in worker remittances sent his way--and he can either encourage or discourage millions more of his citizens to head north in lieu of needed radical reform at home. Yet the proposed legislation, even if it should pass in Congress, will create more problems than it might solve--the fate of all such piecemeal legal solutions to systematic problems of illegality. Once the U.S. government--not to mention the Republican Party--commits its good name and legal capital to regulate, rather than end, the current chaos, a number of contradictions will arise that will only make things either more embarrassing or, in fact, worse. < -snip- > Instead of squabbling over piecemeal legislation in an election year, rolling amnesties or a return of braceros, we might as well bite the bullet and reconsider an immigration policy that worked well enough for some 200 years for people from all over the world. Reasonable advocates can set a realistic figure for legal immigration from Mexico. Then we must enforce our border controls; consider a one-time citizenship process for current residents who have been here for two or three decades; apply stiff employer sanctions; deport those who now break the law--and return to social and cultural protocols that promote national unity through assimilation and integration. In the short term, under such difficult reform, we of the American Southwest might pay more for our food, hotel rooms and construction. Yet eventually we will save far more through reduced entitlements, the growing empowerment of our own entry-level workers (many of them recent and legal immigrants from Mexico), and the easing of social and legal problems associated with some eight million to 12 million illegal residents. More importantly still, our laws would recover their sanctity. Without massive illegal immigration, Americans would rediscover their fondness for measured legal immigration. At a time of war, our borders would be more secure. And we could regain solace, knowing that we are no longer overlords importing modern helots to do the jobs that we, in our affluence and leisure, now deem beneath us.
El Norte (The case against Bush's immigration plan.)
Wall Street Journal (FR link) - 1/19/04 - Victor David Hansen
Want more? We never would have had this conversation [about Illegal Aliens] in 1950. There was no conversation about a wall or a fence. It was very simple: If you came across the border illegally, you were deported. The employer was not to hire people who were here illegally. It's very simple to do, but it just requires a degree of courage.
Paradise Lost? (Victor Davis Hanson comments on Bush's immigration proposal)
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (FR link) - January 10, 2004
Bill Steigerwald with Victor Davis Hanson
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