Posted on 01/07/2008 9:38:06 PM PST by forkinsocket
It is easy for the Republican candidates to claim they are against amnesty, and, indeed, we all should be, given how the 1986 act only made the problem much worse.
But the devil is in the details. All can agree that should we close the borders (through fencing, employer sanctions, more patrolling, enforcement of the law, etc.), and should deport those with criminal records, and perhaps illegals who have been on public assistance instead of gainfully employed.
And perhaps we can even come up with a general sense that those who just arrived here a year or two ago, or even three or four years ago, should be sent back home. But what about those who have been here for several years, have been gainfully employed, never been on public assistance and are free of criminal records? What are we to do with these?
Rounding up several million (8-9 perhaps of the 11-15 here) won't be easy. I can just imagine some 60-year-olds in my home town, still at work in landscaping after 40 years, who have never been arrested, own homes, and haven't a clue what Oaxaca looks like after 40 years, suddenly put on a bus back there. So while it is easy to say, "I oppose amnesty in all its forms," note apparently how difficult it is for the candidates to make the next intellectually honest and logical corollary, "Thus I am for the mass deportation of all illegal aliens."
It is fine and good to talk of "attrition" by slowly and incrementally rounding up illegal aliens as they come in contact with government agencies and need various licenses, papers, statements, etc., but you are still talking about deporting millions, who are currently working and crime-free, rather promptly. The odd thing is that should illegal immigration cease at the border, the pool of illegals here, properly screened, would become static, and not be replenished, and, if the past is any guide, within a generation melt into the American pot.
So it seems that while "amnesty" is a political death sentence, so is mass deportation-the only element of the immigration debate that would play into the hands of the Democrats who otherwise lose big on the issue.
Far better it would be for the Republican candidates to talk of securing the border first, weeding out those who just arrived, have been convicted of crimes, or never worked, but then talking of an earned citizenship program, that has rather clear markers like learning English, paying a fine, and passing a citizenship test — while still working and residing in the U.S. If the border was secure, all of that need not morph, as in the past, into a rolling amnesty.
Bottom line: Republicans have to be careful that they don't turn a windfall issue (the Democrats are mostly open-borders and captive to the identity-politics wing of the party) into a mass deportation albatross.
Hansen has this wrong.
Fred’s plan is best out of all the candidates.
1. Build the Fence
2. Deny Illegal Aliens already here employment and they self-deport.
Problem Solved!
This is a canard. Why does everybody got to cite this?
Build the fence, establish interior enforcement, remove the magnet. Most will self deport. We don't have to round up millions.
False choices. Attrition thru enforcement will work. There is no sense of urgency to remove those already here. If we cut off the supply, the problem will wither away. No Rep is advocating mass deportation.
We don't do anything with them. It was our policies that gave them the incentive to come here illegally on their own. If we change our policies, they will leave the way they came, on their own and if they are caught here illegally, they lose their opportunity to return here legally. Comprehende?
That is the definition of amnesty. We tried it in 1986. It doesn't work. It will only encourage more people to come here illegally.
Another great irrelevant piece by Mr. Hanson. None of the GOP candidates are proposing mass deportation.
What part of illegal don’t you understand?
U.S. citizens illegally in Mexico would never, ever be treated with the same dignity and kindness that so many los illegales have experienced here in this country.
Enforcement of our present laws will make life so uncomfortable for foreign nationals here without legal papers that they will have to go back where they came from eventually. If I sound unsympathetic, well yes, I am.
I remember on September 1, 2001, the televised scenes of citizens in Mexico City celebrating the attack against the United States. After 9/11 I vowed I would no longer leap to donate money or effort to help Mexicans during catastrophes. They may be our neighbors to the south, but they have never shown that they are our FRIENDS!
“Rounding up several million (8-9 perhaps of the 11-15 here)”
I’m thinking it’s more like 40+
No illegal alien should have the legal standing to file suit in civil court -- and any illegal alien who is charged with a crime should have their case adjudicated not in a criminal court, but in a U.S. military tribunal. Anyone who enters this country illegally and commits a violent crime is not a criminal . . . he's a FOREIGN INVADER.
ping
I have been saying this in here for years...at the cost of many FRiendships!
Thank you Mr. Hanson!
Not one politician on the GOP has the balls to come out and say this because of the lost 'YAHOO' voter in OUR party.
I cannot believe how uninformed people are on how economies work...but then again with our education system.....
Everybody wants the borders 'sealed'. But you cannot deport that many people without suffering irreparable damage to the country and the Republican Party.
None of them are offering details and specifics either...so the MSM continues to paint the GOP as the Boogey Man.
There is a long distance from amnesty to deportation. There is got to be a point in-between satisfying the majority of the country.
Hanson is a talented man and as a human can make mistakes. But I don't see any mistakes here. Propaganda machine clobbers us with the deportation stigma. Words and images do matter. We should counter-attack and take it off from the public perception. As people here said, build the fence and seal the border, deport criminals, sanction and penalize employers, enforce our present laws AND say loudly "no mass deportation".
Agree with essentially everything you've written EXCEPT "penalize employers".
If an employee provides a SS# or tax ID #, it's not the employer's job or problem to verify it.
And for umpteen years, the Federal Government has implicitly agreed, collecting BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of money in their withholding and social security tax funds.
Now that those small business owners have achieved success and have mortgages and tuitions and car payments, it's not fair for the feds to suddenly find religion and enforce the existing laws.
Change the laws....register, tax, fine and leave them [the immigrant] alone.
On the whole, a reasonable post. Dead wrong about the melting part, though. Illegals and their legal offspring ... and their children ... will soon be the dominant non-European ethnic group in the US. I would not be surprised if their number tops 30%. Add the 12% or so of African-Americans, throw in the Asians and you can see why the Census Bureau says that by 2050, people of white, European ancestry will be in the minority in the US.
I suppose there are sensible ways out of all this, but all we are getting is nonsensical hysteria from the voters and buullshiite from the politicos. What do you say we (A) Close and Control the borders and (B)End automatic citizenship for the children of illegals to bring us into lone with every other country on the planet?
Let's face racial facts, those steps cannot end the demographic shift, but it will give us a better chance of properly integrating these people before they inundate and integrate us. IMHO, that is probably our only chance. Deportation? Forget about it. Didn't work when Woody Guthrie was singing about it, and it would never work now ... except that we should insist on it for criminals and those receiving public assistance.
The time to have been anti-illegal immigration and done something about it was in the 1960's. After Ted Kennedy's Immigration Reform Act of 1965 it was truly all over. Those of us who said so at the time got our asses kicked then and can expect no apology now!
Attrition thru enforcement. The 12 to 20 million didn’t get here overnight and they won’t leave that way. There should be no sense of urgency in removing them. Aas long as we secure our borders, including visa overstays, let them whither on the vine.
“We don’t have to round up millions.”
Actually, we do. There are two million with criminal records, making money from gangs, drugs, prostitution, fraud, etc. or defying deportation orders and they must all go. They do not have a job, so workplace enforcement will not cause them to self-deport.
Luckily, everyone is wrong about it being “impossible” to round up millions of illegals. We have a half million law enforcement officers. Offer them $1000 bonus per illegal alien apprehended, and you’d see just how fast millions of illegals could be rounded up and deported. Even if there are 20 million of them, it still only costs a one-time $20B expenditure and that’s less than it is costing us in free medical, education, foodstamps, etc. EVERY year.
“... with a spectacle of putting them into the busses/rail cars and shipping out.”
They wouldn’t be going to a gas chamber. They’d be going home.
“They wouldn’t be going to a gas chamber.”
You are talking about cold facts. I am talking about emotions steered by videos. Everybody have a video camera now. “don’t taze me, bro..” and edited video of Rodney King - will be nothing comparing to a video of ANY force used to remove any illegal family. There is no political power anywhere in the country to sustain a handful of such videos, no less an avalanche that is sure to come.
Let’s stick with criminals and everything else you said in your previous post. Lets do possible than proclaim actions that nobody can accomplish and that compromise everything else that we can do. Anyway, any discussions make no sense until we build a fence and seal the border. I don’t want any comprehensive plan. Just build the fence. Then we can talk.
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