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.
Check its veracity at snopes.com........
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/borderpatrol.asp
That's a fair question, but I'm not sure it really matters. The issue is here now, and it should be addressed. And if the answer is "maintain the status quo", there's nothing improper about discussing whether that course of action is appropriate.
I am also in the rational, get to the root of the problem (Corrupt Mexican Government), crowd.
The problem with that approach is that the lag time is huge. Even if you could reform completely the Mexican government, how many decades would it take before the economic opportunity in Mexico and the U.S. was equivalent?
I agree that some of the wild-eyed xenophobia is out of place. I prefer some form of reliable securing of the border, but I don't demand kicking them all out of this country either. A better I.D. system, integrated with the IRS and immigration control would be fine. As long as they work and obey the laws, I think they should be able to stay, for the most part. That makes me a RINO to some, but oh well.
But as moderate as I think I am on this, I'm still a bit flabbergasted by Dubya's position on this. Making these people into full citizens when they entered the country illegally, and when we don't even have an accurate count, is ridiculous. Give them a guest worker status, with some limited rights to leave and later return, is fine. But don't make them all citizens, particularly when the net effect is to bump them ahead of the folks who have been trying to immigrate legally.
If Dubya is way out on one side on this issue, well, maybe he should have a political price to pay.
What I'd like to know is which country do they want to give Texas back to? Spain? France? Mexico? The Republic of Texas? Huh? No, they just want it for themselves because they think they can have it.
"I am the one lacking common sense in thinking that maybe, just maybe, Bush hasnt advocated amnesty"
Yes, you are correct.You are lacking common sense.
Press 1 for English.
R O T F L M A O
Good to emphasize that!!!!!!!
Clever, brainiac.
Lol.. true..
Republicans(generally) must be quite dumb..
Yes, in Texas it's been a problem ever since April 22, 1836, but the ratio between citizens and illegals hasn't been so close as it is today. They weren't taking over the country before now.
My point is...Bush is not maintaining the status qou, that's a myth currently being perpetuated by his political enemies.
"They are in for a very rude awakening."
And the time is now!
Ack, not Dallas. Dallas thinks it's NYC now days. Ft. Worth or Lubbock are better options.
Flying robot attacks?
oops, wrong thread!
Visit California sometime. It might open your eyes.
Over the past years, true. But you must have missed the protests of Viva Mexico and changing the anthem to Spanish. Buy a clue, bro.
.......And the time is now!.......
Can't come soon enough for me.
Now lets find someone in congress that takes 80 percent of the Peoples side. That's what has me most frustrated. There doesn't seem to be one person out there with a spine willing to stand up and do the will of the people and not the will of LuLac and every other special interest group.
What I want to know is , where is the Sierra Club and the other environmentalists who are supposed to be so concerned about the desert ?
If so, it's from the left, it's their way.
Wake up.
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