Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
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Posted on 05/16/2005 6:44:31 AM PDT by Tolik
Open borders are a disaster. They undermine respect for the law, imperil homeland security, allow Mexico to export its apparently unwanted people rather than embrace much-needed economic reform, and preclude unionization by poorer, entry-level American workers.
One proposed solution, a new guest-worker program, ignores why the old bracero program was scraped decades ago, when laborers resented the idea that they were good enough to work for, but not to live among, Americans. The proposed program also lacks enforcement provisions to deal with the millions of aliens who will not participate in the program but still try to cross the border.
There is a reasonable approach to the United States' immigration problem, but it would require concessions all around....
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
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 Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson "DESPITE ITS STATUE OF LIBERTY, recitations of Emma Lazarus's poetry, and melting-pot imagery, America has always struggled with issues of immigration-mostly when it was a..." (more) |
I was going to chime in yesterday on another thread with a similar argument (ie, mow your own lawn).
During the Depression, you might have worked two jobs cleaning toilets and you were happy that you had both jobs. Granted, this isn't a depression, but everyone starts somewhere.
Then again, this is a whacked-out country where people can be too proud to flip burgers and yet they are NOT too proud to accept welfare when they can't find a job they like.
TS
Good article bump.
Indeed. It is in part a misunderstanding of the underlying class issue. In the old days, when there was a tiny upper class and a relatively small middle class (what we'd now call upper middle class), the middle class aspired to respectability and feared anything that would make them declasse and part of the working class: hence an aversion to any sort of 'working with one's hands'. It was a carry-over from Europe, distorted: in Europe -less in England than on the continent- aristocrats ran a serious risk of a loss of position if they did anything that smacked of 'engaging in trade'. The upper class lived primarily from the fruits of capital rather than individual work. Those who aspire to an aristocratic lifestyle -- think especially the professionals and politicos -- ape what they think is that style without understanding that while real aristocrats had many servants, they very often did not disdain physical work, at least such as they chose on their own estates. Curious how in this country it's been transformed in the current middle class from a reluctance to make one's livelihood from manual or 'blue collar' work to a horror of any physical work at all!
But the REALITY IS that there are some jobs that just aren't worth a decent wage.
A person might think a decent wage is $30,000 a year, but flipping burgers at Mickey D's isn't going to get you that.
Its the individuals resposibility to make himself worth whatever pay he wants. If he wants $30,000 he knows that flipping burgers at Mickey D's ain't going to cut it. But management will. So he works hard and works his way to that $30,000 job.
The problem is, libs see employers being responsible for a persons livelyhood, and not the person themselves.
Interesting, but a little to old style Democrat for my taste: accept all the illegals now here, and accept unionization? I don't think so.
Nothing will happen until thne GOP is throw out of DC. Which can begin to happen in 06. If the GOP will not enforce the laws throw them out of office.
I'm not talking about McDonalds. Those jobs have always been low paying jobs perfect for teenagers the same as farm work.
allow Mexico to export its apparently unwanted people rather than embrace much-needed economic reform,
1 we have a winner!
2 IMO those that come over the borders (for a job) are just the people Mexico should be doing whatever they can to keep at home. The ultimate answer is found in "embrace much-needed economic reform". A question I heard asked (on a talk show) was. How come we don't have the same problem on our northern border?
As usual, Mr. Hanson has hit the nail on the head.
There is a reasonable approach to the United States' immigration problem, but it would require concessions all around.
The right would have to quit calling reformers "nativists" and "protectionists" and accept strict employer fines for hiring undocumented aliens. These conservatives should then expect to pay more for unskilled labor and see it organized and unionized. They'd also need to accept a legitimate, foolproof national identity card, and grant a one-time amnesty — not the periodic pardons of the past — for the millions of Mexicans who have lived in the United States for at least five years.
For its part, the left would have to jettison the tired "racist" slurs and accept that a nation has the right to secure and patrol its own borders. Liberals should concede that Mexican illegal immigrants do not have greater rights to entry than legal emigrants from the Punjab, the Philippines or South Korea who queue up for years waiting for proper documentation.
Latino immigrants must also make concessions. We are a melting pot, not a salad bowl — a multiracial not a multicultural nation. So those who come north should expect, as do those from Asia, to learn quickly to speak and read English, forgo the romance of la Raza ("the Race") and welcome their own integration, assimilation and intermarriage into the American body politic.
And replaced by the democrats?
Oh, no, most of the people that are coming over from Mexico are exactly the ones that Mexico doesn't want. It's not the Mexican doctors and engineers and educated people who are risking death in the desert and climbing over fences and dodging the border patrol to get here; it's people who have no other choice. Those people who have no other choice are exactly the ones who the Mexican government doesn't need. I work with Mexican illegals every day, and believe it's significant that at least half of the illegals I see are illiterate to the point of not being able to write a complete sentence in Spanish, or any other language. Perhaps 10% are so illiterate that they can't recognize a single letter. That's some serious illiteracy. Add in the higher crime rates among the illegal Mexicans in the US than among other ethnic groups, and you can see that these are people that Mexico is better off without.
I'll do my dishes, but what about my yard?????
One more time, if you think illegals are expensive now wait until we legalize them. Another braindead liberal idea that is coming home to roost.
IMO, that country is such a complete wreck (it is FUBAR writ large) that economic reform is only one of the answers. There's also political reform needed. And a legal system based on Napoleonic code is, well, crap. Mexico has also no meaningful private property rights.
A question I heard asked (on a talk show) was. How come we don't have the same problem on our northern border?
Because Canada isn't a third world rat hole.
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