Walls Are for Losers

The Ming dynasty emperors in China (1368-1644) were the biggest builders of the famous Great Wall. A native Chinese dynasty coming to power in the wake of a Mongol occupation, they wanted to strengthen their defenses against the nomadic peoples to the north. But a Manchu army crossed over it and conquered them anyway.

In the years after World War I, France, recognizing its weakness vis-à-vis Germany, built a supposedly invincible fortification along its frontier with Germany called the Maginot Line. Built very high, of concrete and steel, with forts at 10-mile intervals, the wall nonetheless failed to prevent Germany from conquering France with lightning speed in 1940.

In 1961 the Communist regime of East Germany found itself suffering from mass emigration to the freer and more prosperous West. To prevent this outflow they built the Berlin Wall. When the workers of East Germany tore down that wall, they brought down the East German regime with it.

America doesn't have a frontier with hostile barbarians who want to conquer us. Instead, we have a frontier with friendly Mexicans who want to work for and with us. Nonetheless, the historical pattern—walls are for losers—still applies. It plays itself out, not in battles or revolutions, but in elections.

From 1991 to 1999, Pete Wilson was governor of California, a state where Republicans had long been competitive. Indeed, California was the home state of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Pete Wilson was a prominent supporter of Proposition 187, a harsh crackdown on illegal immigration (later overturned by the courts). Since then (at least until Arnold), the Republican Party's support in California has collapsed.

In 2005, Jerry Kilgore and Tim Kaine faced off in the race for governor of Virginia. Virginia is a Republican-leaning state which Bush won easily in 2004. But Kilgore ran as an anti-immigration candidate and lost.

Also in 2005, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed HR4437, a fiercely anti-immigrant bill which would have legally defined millions of peaceful, though undocumented workers, as felons. It criminalized those who assisted illegal immigrants as well, and could have led to the jailing of Catholic clergy who ministered to them. (Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles pointed out that the bill would oblige the Catholic Church to engage, not for the first time, in civil disobedience.)

That bill didn't get through the Senate, but another one did. This fall both the House and Senate passed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing a 700-mile fence along the southern border. President Bush signed the bill on October 26.

Republicans had held the House of Representatives for twelve years. After the fence bill was signed, they lasted just twelve days before the voters gave them the boot. Of course immigration wasn't the only, or the main, issue; Iraq was. Nonetheless, the "walls are for losers" pattern has claimed another scalp. Meanwhile, even the Republican Senate, which, before the fence bill, hardly anyone thought was even in play, looks at present writing like it may have fallen to the Democrats.

Why do politicians who take a stance against immigration keep losing—especially when more Americans want reduced immigration (40%) as opposed to the present level (37%) or increased (17%)?

For one thing, though Americans may prefer less immigration personally, they may understand that the government has, and should have, only limited say in immigration levels. The immigration decision should be in the hands of the immigrant. Americans hate high gas prices, too, but at least some of them understand that these are, and should be, a function of market forces.

But the main reason is probably simpler: the political spectrum. Swing voters are in the center. When Republicans crack down on immigration, they lose votes in the center, and gain none on the right, since they had those anyway. It's a guaranteed net loss. It should have been obvious that signing the fence bill on the eve of the election could only be troublesome for Republicans. Congressmen get reams of letters from angry types who want to close the borders. This time, they listened to the siren song.

Despite signing the fence bill, President Bush has long supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. As he said in January 2004:

"Many undocumented workers have walked mile after mile, through the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Some have risked their lives in dangerous desert border crossings, or entrusted their lives to the brutal rings of heartless human smugglers. Workers who seek only to earn a living end up in the shadows of American life -- fearful, often abused and exploited. When they are victimized by crime, they are afraid to call the police, or seek recourse in the legal system. They are cut off from their families far away, fearing if they leave our country to visit relatives back home, they might never be able to return to their jobs.

Now, with the Democrats in charge of one or both Houses of Congress, President Bush—like another Texan president overseeing an unpopular war, Lyndon Johnson—may have his chance to improve his legacy by achieving a major civil rights advance.

from the November 06, 2006 edition The Christian Science Monitor (snips)

After the Amnesty: 20 years later

In 1986, the US government offered amnesty – legal status – to 3 million illegal immigrants.

Twenty years ago Monday, Congress passed the largest effort to date to curb undocumented immigration to this country. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), employers were sanctioned for the first time for hiring undocumented workers. The bill also called for tighter controls along the Mexican border. But the bill was a compromise: Enforcement was balanced by an amnesty provision.

Under IRCA, undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States prior to 1982 and those who had worked as seasonal agricultural workers before May 1986 could seek legal status and eventually US citizenship.
Nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants were granted legal residence under the amnesty. Most of them were Mexican (more than 80 percent) and lived in the Los Angeles area. Salvadorans, Filipinos, Haitians, Poles, and Vietnamese also benefited from the program.

But two decades later, illegal immigration is still a hot-button issue and amnesty is a dirty word to some. Private-citizen minutemen and National Guardsmen have rushed to the Mexican border. This spring, millions of undocumented immigrants and others marched in the streets of US cities to protest federal legislation that would criminalize illegal immigrants.

Critics say the bill set a damaging precedent for future amnesties. IRCA supporters say the word "amnesty" mischaracterizes the bill's intent.

"An amnesty cleans people who have broken the law," says former US Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D) of Kentucky. He and former US Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming were the primary architects and cosponsors of IRCA. "But in our bill, you had to prove that you were a law-abiding person who honored the institutions of our country.... So you can take your pick of euphemisms, but if you use the word 'amnesty,' people will get angry, throw their hands up in the air, and scream: 'They're rewarding people for misbehaving!' "

Today Mr. Mazzoli defends the bill as the best way to combat illegal immigration at the time. The six administrations that followed, he says, are to blame for not enforcing tighter restrictions. And now, "It's déjà vu all over again," Mazzoli says. "These are the same issues that we had 20 years ago."

William King Jr., was the Western regional director of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and responsible for carrying out the amnesty program. He says that he had hope that the legislation would work at first. But IRCA was a three-legged stool, he says. One leg was employer sanctions, another was increased border security, and the third was the amnesty program. "In truth, only the amnesty program became a fact," he says, and the effort failed.

To John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that wants tighter immigration controls, IRCA was well intentioned - but implementation was lacking. "There was a half-hearted attempt at immigration control by the late '80s and early '90s by the old INS," he says, but political pressure brought that to a "screeching halt" by the middle of the decade.

One of the big problems with the IRCA amnesty was all the counterfeit applications, especially from seasonal agricultural workers. Economists Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny studied the effects of amnesty programs on undocumented immigration and presented their findings in the August 2003 issue of Demography magazine. They say that the number of seasonal workers qualifying for amnesty was about 300,000. But in the end, more than 1 million applications were granted. "Most people agree that there was substantial fraud because the document requirement and the residency requirement were quite low for that part of the program," Ms. Zavodny says.

"I don't think anyone says that it deterred illegal immigration," says Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of The National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Latino advocacy group. "But it succeeded in legalizing 3 million people. Their wages went up, and they're fully integrated into American society."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1106/p13s01-ussc.html

"But a Manchu army crossed over it and conquered them anyway."

The Manchurian people were already on the Ming side of that wall, exactly like most of latin America is on this side of our border. Because the Chinese found it "more convenient" to deal with the Manchu than await supplies from other parts of the dynasty, traders and traitors sold out China and allowed an enemy within their gates. Sound familiar?

"Built very high, of concrete and steel, with forts at 10-mile intervals, the wall nonetheless failed to prevent Germany from conquering France with lightning speed in 1940."

The sheer power of warfare had drastically changed from 1917 to 1937. Battle tanks were of sufficient mass to crush that wall. Illegal aliens haven't crossed the border with a 25 ton tank and AP shells either.

"To prevent this outflow they built the Berlin Wall."

Enough repudiation is contained within the comment itself.

"Walls Are for Losers"

OK fine let us go with this theory.

Now we are told that the citizens voted to bring home the troops. OK I agree.

We are also told that the citizens want border security. OK I agree.

Lets us combine the two. First we need a law in congress addressing the borders and which suspends any part of Posse Commitatus that would interfere with our troops protecting our borders.

Then Bring 'em home. And I mean all of them. Korea Germany every where we have troops stationed bring 'em home!

Then have the troops build some bases and outposts along both borders and have them actively patrol.

No longer should we risk our troops lives on foreign soil and let America's Liberals and the Main Stream Media undermine their sacrifices for political and financial gain.

Bring 'em Home and let them defend us instead of a bunch of ungrateful foreigners.

This could be the Republican's new platform and hit two issues in one pass.

I think it is a winner.

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