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PLAGUE ON BOTH OUR PARTIES Democrats demand fealty to the United Nations, sucking up to Kofi Anan and his corrupt African Mafia. Further, they assert no military action by the United States is legitimate unless it is approved by France and Germany. That England, Spain and over 30 other nations agree with us about Iraq is of little account. Because the French and Germans are missing, the major Democrat candidates demagogically say our effort is fatally flawed. Were we to impose these conditions on ourselves, the United States would both submerge its national identity and cede its national sovereignty. Such a condition would allow the French or the Germans a functional veto over the American military’s deployment even when authorized by Congress pursuant to a request of the President. Not to be outdone in the destruction of American sovereignty, the President has proposed illegal immigration “reform” –- read amnesty – which, if passed as presented, would essentially do away with our national borders; America would be open to every person, from any country, who claimed an American job. Those who came would rarely return. And we know that the INS -– now known as the BCIS – has neither the political support nor sufficient staff to round up and deport those who overstay their visas. In fact, illegal immigration is an issue that ALL candidates, from either party, are literally afraid to discuss, in any degree, anywhere, anytime. It is never mentioned by those watchdog denizens of the press, never raised in a “debate” and never raised by a candidate of his own volition. We are faced with the most serious question a nation ever has: Are we a people, a nation under either God or Mammon? Who and what are we? The proposals of today’s candidates and our President say we are now a nation but we should become less of a nation. True, the President doesn’t want to obliterate our uniqueness by kow tow to the French and Germans but he doesn’t mind genuflecting before Senor Vicente Fox, el Presidente of a third world country. Democrats seem to have no concern about the Continental Euro-trash politicos plus they will certainly pander to Fox and his successor so as to pull in all those Hispanic voters. It is a disgusting and disgraceful sight to witness. It is dispiriting as well that few in the fourth estate have sounded any alarm. It is surprising that few others see these as parts of a terrifying whole. If allowed to prosper, either will do great harm to our country. Should both succeed, we are done. It will take time but America will be finished; not conquered, but dismembered by the Lilliputians of the left and the right. The President started the New Year with his terrible proposal allegedly reforming immigration as it relates to illegal aliens, mostly Mexican or other Hispanics. The ideas floated are more of the same spin that plagues anything to do with illegal immigration except that Mr. Bush’s proposal encompasses all the wrong notions and none of the right notions. It is pandering of the lowest level, sans principle of any kind except one: the issue is on the table. It is important for the issue to be debated. It is critical to the survival of the American Southwest as we know it and, to a large extent, to the fabric of American culture as we know it. It is an issue on which Americans must speak and speak without fear of being called a racist, an immigrant-basher, anti-Hispanic or scapegoating Mexicans. None of those flashy, easy-smear labels should matter when the subject is so vital to the heart of this nation for the generations to come. Mr. Bush or his advisors may take the short-term view of their re-election this year. We, the People, should take the longer view and then communicate that view to our representatives and the White House. If you have an opinion and fail to inform your representatives about it, it is as if you do not exist. The squeaky wheels get heard. It’s your fault if your opinion isn’t heard and you will have defaulted your right to complain later. Illegal immigration sharply divides the country. But the divide is not like Roe v Wade which is an almost even split. Over 80% of Americans want tight border control and illegal aliens deported. It is surprising who falls into which camp too. For example, capitalism’s and Republican stalwart, The Wall Street Journal, is an enthusiastic and uncritical endorser of the President’s proposal. The Journal is so rabid on this issue that it virtually precludes -- censors, if you will –- any opposition on its pages and has done so for years. Its WallStreetJournalOnline never, and I mean never, has anything critical to say about illegal immigration. That topic is taboo to all but the Grand Poobahs of the Editorial page. The Journal’s justification relies on its view that the labor market should be globalized as are, say, the capital markets. You would think the Journal was the faculty of a public university in the way it stifles any dissent from its position. Also in favor and without reservations are America’s labor unions. One would have thought that Big Labor would be protecting jobs for Americans but, no, it prefers to have new members who pay dues, hence power and influence, and to the dustbin with America’s lesser skilled working men and women. Others aligned are the race-baiters whose very existence depends on stirring the pot, on the myth that Mexico must reconquer the American Southwest territory. These groups inflame by shouting America “stole” those lands after the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. Mexico lost the war. Usually, the loser loses something. We could have taken the land, but as usual, we did not. We purchased it for hard cash; $15 million in gold plus the assumption of any claims of damage due to the war fully exonerating Mexico. Moreover, we gave Mexicans living in the territory a choice. They could sell their possessions and take the cash to Mexico without tax of any kind or they could stay put and become American citizens. Want to read all about it? See the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in Mexico City, on February 2, 1848 between Mexico and the United States. It’s on the Internet. So, don’t fall for the myth that we stole the land. We won it, negotiated a treaty and paid for it, all fair, square and above board. We made the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million earlier that century without France trying to reclaim New Orleans decades or centuries later. Why listen to the Mexicans? Aligned with the President are certain large industries, certainly those who use unskilled labor such as farmers, Wal-Mart, meat-packers and you, Dear Reader, you who hire the illegal because (s)he is relatively inexpensive and you pay cash so that a. you break our law by not paying the employer’s payroll taxes and b. the illegal remains off the books and pays no income taxes. Some of the logic in individual hires makes no sense. For example, California’s public schools are, in the main, disgraceful; one reason is that they are jammed with the children of illegals who do not speak or learn English, have a terrible home environment for scholarship and who are not chosen to be the old school chums of Yuppie kids. Most people who hire illegal nannies send their kids to private school. Were there no illegals, hence no illegal students, the public schools would at least be attractive as opposed to the $15,000 per year per child paid today by Yuppie families. They do not stop to think that what they spend on school far outweighs what they “save” on Hispanic nannies. One could double the nanny pay for less than the cost of one child in private school. Four states - California, Texas, Florida and Arizona - comprise 85% of the illegal immigrant Hispanics in America. The remaining 15% are scattered among the remaining 47 states. Clearly then, the arguments made on behalf of the illegals apply only to those states and only to the extent they are valid. We have previously written about jobs Americans won’t do. (See the archives below: Americans Won’t Do that kind of Work: July 25, 2002) All those jobs Americans won’t do they actually do in the other 47 states. Remember: these are jobs, not careers. Americans take jobs; Americans do jobs. They just won’t do them for almost nothing. Which brings us to another Mexican myth. It is frequently said that if we paid the farm worker American level wages, farm prices would skyrocket and lettuce would be $5 per head. As is frequently the case, this is simply untrue. Actually, it is a lie told to panic the unwary and uncritical. Labor, field labor, is about 10% of the retail price of farm products. If direct labor costs doubled, prices would might increase from $1 to $1.10 or $1.15. But remember that is only for vegetables and fruits harvested or grown by unskilled Hispanics, not all food. Moreover, farmers would have an incentive to further automate their business which they do not have while labor is so cheap and plentiful. Further, without illegals, the huge costs of illegals would disappear, offsetting price increases even further. For example, one of the quiet costs of illegal labor is unemployment paid to American workers displaced by Hispanics. Returning to the President, he proposes a guest-worker program where any American employer who cannot fill a job is able to recruit a guest-worker. [NOTE: Guest-workers are not limited to Mexico; they may be imported from any country in the world. And all they need is a job offer paying about $10,000 per year.] Think of the Bangledeshis one could import or the Ukranians or the Tutus or whatever. The whole world is being invited to crash the party at the invitation of George Bush, paid for by you and me, not him and his. This is an awful thought. And they will come, believe me. I have practiced political asylum immigration law and I can tell you they will come by the millions. The President says, of course, that these are guests only, that we know who they are and, therefore, they cannot over-stay their leave or visa. Really? That is what millions of illegals are doing at this very moment in these very United States. And what is done with them? Nothing. Not one single agency actively deports illegals or visa over-stayers. And they will not do that to guest-workers who overstay their leave either. For one thing, it takes absolutely years to prosecute one, single deportation case. In the meantime, the illegal has children whom courts term citizens thus complicating the issue. There is not the will nor the resources to deport the millions now here. When there are millions more, it will be more difficult; there will be more who support the illegals plight and less political will – if that’s possible – than there is today. In all of this, what about the border? Who is watching the border? Unsurprisingly, it’s the same understaffed Border patrol people who have been relegated to a third or fourth tier level in the boondoggle bureaucracy known as Homeland Security. Did you know that the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) has changed its name to BCIS or USCIS (Bureau of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services)? Worse, it has been stuffed down the hierarchical ladder so as to give it less power with concomitant less clout to the Border Patrol. Since 9/11, e.g., the number of new Border Patrol officers has been increased by 1,000 whereas the number of agents checking out Grandma’s luggage at the airport has gone from absolute zero to over 40,000 in the same time-frame. Do you need more proof of the waning notion of border control? We
have written before on the issue of border control. Given the history
of lax border control, changing that to a policy of tight border control
will require some drastic measures. It will require troops on the
border, replaced over 18 months by 20,000 new border patrol agents.
It will require the actual shooting and killing of some illegals attempting
entry. Actually, this is a good thing because under current rules
about 300 or so illegals die each year trying to enter the United
States. Were we to shoot a dozen or two, the flow would slow to a
trickle and the number of the living would increase. Unlikely to happen?
It depends on how serious one is. If you want to stop illegals, you
must first stop the inflow. Troops, with orders too shoot, is the
only way to stop the inflow. Nothing else works and, each year, the
problem grows by another 500,000 to 800,000 illegal entrants who hope
some day to bring in their families thus increasing the new resident
numbers by a factor of 6 to 8. If you stop the inflow, one can then
decide about amnesty or regularizing status to use bureaucrat-speak.
Or we could send them back as they showed up; one by one, as found
out. We will never do the latter unless we do the former. It would
be farcical.
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