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.
"Sentiment Against Illegals is Powerful and Growing"
AS IT SHOULD BE!
Ain't it the damn truth?
Does that mean that Wisconsin is really Germania...when all those Germans settled there way back when?
Not saying that illegal immigration isnt a problem, but this is classic misdirection.
The Federal Goverment needs to keep its eyes on the ball in regard to world wide terrorism, nuke proliferation, and the national economy...empower the states to manage their borders.
The more I see the outrage over illegals, the more I get the sense that something sinister within this country is driving the ire...
Exactly! The in-your-face defiant demonstrating has awakened people to the problem it really is. The fact that they are costing taxpayers in welfare benefits, the overcrowding and the rhetoric where they cite they want all gringo's gone and this is their country and we all need to get out did not help the situation.
Viva la National Security!! Viva la border control!
"The more I see the outrage over illegals, the more I get the sense that something sinister within this country is driving the ire..."
Interesting. I see something more sinister pushing the amnesty and "no borders" crowd. It's called socialism and communism.
There is nothing "sinister" about expecting people to obey the laws of this country. There is nothing "sinister" about protecting our borders. There is nothing "sinister" about attempting to relieve the HUGE burden illegals pose to our social services, prison sysytem and education system. I could go on and on...
Let me see if this makes a much non-sense to others as it does to me.
The illegals who want to "retake" the US southwest via sheer numbers of people voting in the pro Mexican candidates to California's and other states legislatures want to reclaim these states as part of Mexico. So they want to extend the Mexican border to encompass these states and bring in the same corrupt Mexican government they have today to run these states as a part of Mexico. Why? So they can then illegally migrate to the rest of the US to escape once again the corruption, lack of a vibrant job creating economy, rule by bribe or thuggery that is the current state of the Mexican government? What sense does this make. When they have taken over all of the US, where will they then go? to Canada? These people are totally bonkers. To undermine the only country where they can make a decent living, raise their families in relative safety, and maybe realize their aspirations is total insanity. I cannot fathom the mind that thinks this is a good idea.
Not umtil they read their reelection stats.
Perhaps when they need to call Allied Van Lines to come pack them up to move elsewhere (of course never back home where they might have to rub elbows with their great unwashed former electorate.)
I am not in the "open border" crowd. I am in the anti-hysteria...this has been around for 30 years...why is this now being used to bash bush crowd, understand?
Again, Illegal immigration has been a problem but now it's being used as an alarmist propaganda tool of those with an agenda to depose the Republican Leadership. I am also in the rational, get to the root of the problem (Corrupt Mexican Government), crowd.
And they did it without any funding from Soros, the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, etc. and with nary a dollar from any government grants (aka taxpayers' dollars).
Ping!
Typical misdirection. There is no comparison between the Germans and other nordic people settling areas in our northeastern states(such as WI) and ILLEGALS swarming across our borders today. The people who settled WI ASIMILATED and didn't maintain a seperate culture, they came here legally and they came to be Americans.
BSing yourself and others about ILLEGALs will not make the problem go away. There is a huge problem here with national security and the soverienty of the US. If you can't see it, I pity you. The republicans pols had better act fast or they will find themselves replaced in Nov.
ping
The Capital of the US should be moved to Phoenix or Denver or Dallas.
More representative of the present instead of the past.
ping
They can't do that! The fence to keep all those poor peasants out would cost too much.
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