Posted on 05/08/2006 12:20:20 PM PDT by Mount Athos
One of the bloggers suggests that 2006 may be the year of the Lou Dobbs voter. The blogger, the Influence Peddler, is no fan. He considers Dobbs a demagogue, but he wonders whether voters are ready for a Dobbsian program of opposing illegal immigration, "throwing the bums out of Washington" and staying wary of international trade.
On immigration, this suggestion may reflect a shift in public opinion after the May 1 marches, away from the belief that the pro-illegals lobby had decisively altered public opinion, toward the realization that the marches may have created a powerful backlash.
Citing Arizona's new anti-smuggling law, the sheriff of Maricopa County (Phoenix) announced that a posse of a hundred deputies and volunteers would begin patrolling the desert. This appears to be an act of official frustration, not one of those cosmetic attempts to placate the right. The Minutemen, denounced as vigilantes by President Bush but greatly respected in the state, are now building a fence on private land along the Mexican border. They are going national too, with chapters popping up in Virginia and elsewhere.
The frustration level in Arizona is so high that a local prosecutor, Andrew Thomas of Maricopa County, organized a national immigration conference and gave a fiery speech on the chaos, crime and cost of the tide of illegals. Last spring, I managed to get lost in one of the rugged canyons of southeast Arizona, and stumbled on two camping areas for illegals, each with about as much debris as you might expect from an airliner crash.
Mercedes Maharis, who lives near that canyon, has just released a documentary on DVD, "Cochise County, USA: Cries From the Border." The eeriest footage is infrared photography of illegals, maybe a hundred or more, swarming across the border at night. The turning point for one woman came when she set up a tepee in her back yard and noticed one morning that a group of illegals was living in it. The withering remarks in the film are not aimed at the illegals, but at Washington for abandoning its constitutional duty to guard the border.
The national news media, which spent most of its energies covering the marches as a heartwarming civil rights effort, is belatedly recognizing that much of America doesn't see it that way. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Activists who take the toughest stance against illegal immigration have formed too many groups to count, and more seem to crop up every week."
Around 67 percent of Americans have been telling pollsters for years that they want illegal immigration curtailed. Soon the media will notice the populist appeal of this huge constituency facing off against two sets of entrenched elites, the corporate elites of the right, supported by Republican politicians, and the academic elites of the left, supported by Democratic politicians.
Editorialists seem to discuss the illegals mostly in terms of compassion and the impossibility of deporting the 11 million already here. But the core of the problem is that illegal entry is a never-ending process. An amnesty-light compromise in Washington is unlikely to do much more about this than the allegedly tough amnesty-light program of 1986. In a poll last August, about 40 percent of adults surveyed in Mexico said they would like to move to the United States. If so, there would be another 28 million people. Mexico has a high birthrate, a broken political culture and a government determined to dump its poor on the United States. It even publishes a comic book showing illegals how to avoid the U.S. border patrol.
High and continuous immigration is occurring under conditions of bilingualism and multiculturalism, rather than assimilation. In the name of diversity, the academic elites have encouraged immigrants to maintain their birth-country cultures and to adopt a stance of separatism and pugnacious victimization. Political scientist Samuel Huntington argues that this amounts to a deconstruction of American identity that has been "gradually created over three centuries." In his book "Mexifornia," Victor Davis Hanson says California is not quite Mexico, but not quite the United States either.
The political culture of Washington, focused on cheap labor and Latino votes, is nowhere near recognizing what is happening.
Yes . End the gravy train . Bush says we are now in WW3 , yet we refuse to control our borders . Lets simply adopt the same immigration policies as Mexico . It works for them.
I like my amnesty plan!
Please call them INVADERS and don't compare them to people who are legal aliens!
IF you aid and abet CRIMINALS, you are a criminal!
President Bush has been great on most things except for our border.
He has been great on the war on terrorists.
But on the border he is a gross failure.
He acted fast and correct on the 3,000+ people murdered at the world trade center.
He ignores the many rapes, murders and robberies which might be larger than the murders and money loss at the world trade center.
More Americans are abducted on the border of Mexico than in Iraq!
Start building the fence.
It should be made a felony for Criminals who overstay their visas and Invaders.
I believe we should give amnesty to these poor CRIMINALS or INVADERS.
This should be a 2 week amnesty to get the heck out of our Country.
The ones who ignore this amnesty should be buried in a tent city jail and fined $10,000 or buried elsewhere.
All aiders and abettors of these CRIMINALS or INVADERS should get 1 year in a tent city jail and a $10,000 fine for each CRIMINAL aided.
Those in government should be the first ones charged.
The $12 figure came from an article here yesterday on the changes illegals have brought to NOLA; it was a pretty lengthy article.
My heart goes out to you. What Washington DC is doing to Middle america is tragic! But we ain't done yet : )
It's everywhere, now. Except, apparently, where Mr. Sinister lives.
Very interesting point. There's one of the "hidden" costs of illegal immigration that often gets overlooked.
By the way, here's a chart that shows some interesting numbers, total yearly USA expenditures on Public Elementary and Secondary Education from 1961 through 2003.
Long story short, we spend almost 4 times as much now on education as we did 40 years ago.
Fences take time
We need to build 'em but I'd start w/ some announcements that would disturb the comfort zones
Verifiable SS# required for:
.....school enrollment
.....social services
.....legal employment
Folks caught here illegally must wait 10 yrs to apply
The voluntary deportation would start immediately
Maybe Houston doesn't have such a problem since so many have gone across the border to Louisiana to work since Katrina???? Sadly, Houston inherited the murder rate from LA.
Good analogy.
Interesting chart. Thanks.
And our school districts are falling behind -- afterall most graduates can't even locate Mississippi there days -- Why do I suspect a lot of that additional money we all pay is going to bilingual education... the thing that drew Tom Tancredo into Congress.
I really never thought much about them and here in my neck of the woods there are tons of them. Years ago, when my grandparents lived in the valley and we always noticed the wetbacks. So it was kinda a way of life. The Marches did for me. I'm now totally against the illegals. That's the BLOW BACK...they've all shot their selves in the foot.
The "classic misdirection" is actually in your post.
You are trying to equate the controlled immigration of people who wanted to assimilate into American culture and who played by the rules, with the uncontrolled, bursting-at-the-seams illegal immigration of millions who do not want to play by the rules and do not want to assimilate into American culture, but rather to push their border farther northward to reclaim land they believe is theirs.
" How serious are they ?..or are we just protecting the Tysons, ADMs & Hormels of this country"
All your comments are spot on!
One the one hand I can vote for a Democrat that I know will raise my taxes and use them for useless things and "vote buying".
On the other hand, I can vote for a Republican whose "turn a blind eye" attitude to the illegals effectively raises my taxes because I have to pay for services for illegals via higher health insurance premiums, property taxes, etc., in order to subsidize cheap labor for corporations.
Either choice sucks, and I will not vote for either one.
The nation is saying: NO MAS. And at this point, you can post all you want on an internet forum, but we are in the midst of an unstoppable tsunami of voter energy. There's nothing, nothing, that can be done to put this genii back in the bottle.
I agree with you. You can feel it coming and when it does it's gonna be ugly.
agreed. and 30 years ago we didn't have the 29% of our prison population as illegals.
30 years ago we didn't have Latin Kings or MS-13 in Minneapolis.
We didn't have "sanctuary cities" encouraging more illegals to come.
We didn't have Spanish only versions of our National Anthem.
Backlash Ping!
You may get flamed for stating that, but I agree with you.
Can you make this larger.....excellent!
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