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Monday, June 18, 2007
Eternity Road Colloquium #9
The questions for this week's colloquium are:
Why have Congressional Democrats and a substantial fraction of Congressional Republicans converged on the current immigration bill? Does each party expect to benefit from the situation that would result if it were to be enacted into law? If not, what would the motivation be for the legislators from the party that would not benefit to join in supporting it?
1. From The Beach Girl:
I am nearly violently opposed to the amnesty bill. And I condemn all who vote for it to Hell along with their children into the next century. The fact is the President and the Senate folks who support the amnesty bill want the North American Union; they want the destruction of our national sovereignty; they want to marginalize American blacks totally; and they want to start the process of disengaging from American whites although illegal Mexicans are considered white. It is all in how we are classified. The only option for me when identifying my ethnicity is “non-Hispanic white.”The question of illegal immigrants and the current immigration bill is a tough issue for me personally. I have seen our citizenship diluted since the Immigration Bill of 1965 under which every person with one drop of non-white blood met the “affirmative action” quota criteria. Anyone who could not “prove” they had a drop of non-white blood went to the back of the hiring line.
Simply, the Imperial Congress and the Executive Caliphate are engaged in abdicating their responsibility under the Constitution. Remember 50% of the illegals are “other than Mexicans” who have overstayed their visas. Yes, they both are looking for benefits and they both have written off their constituent base and are betting on the illegals. Entering this nation is a “privilege” not a “right.”
I’d point out to the illegals of today, you can be and will be undercut by elected officials when you are no longer of use to them.
To me, those who do not support the current immigration bill are trying to be statesmen. Anytime you get Ted Kennedy in cahoots with a so-called Republican president, you get nothing good for the American people.
Anytime you get me agreeing with Democrat Dorgan and Republican Jeff Sessions both at the same time on the same issue, something is going on.
2. From ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ:
The late conservative columnist Samuel Francis said it best when he characterized the Republican Party as: "The Stupid Party". It is difficult to improve on that observation.
3. From Akaky Akakyevich Bashmachkin:
1. Why have Congressional Democrats and a substantial fraction of Congressional Republicans converged on the current immigration bill? Because immigration has become a hot topic social issue and politicians of all political stripes like to be seen doing something about social issues. This is a bad habit amongst politicians, like smoking or barbecuing small children, and is not readily ameliorable except with a prolonged and probably prohibitively expensive 12 point program that they can write off as personal expenses on their income taxes. 2. Does each party expect to benefit from the situation that would result if it were to be enacted into law? Do bears shit in the woods? The Democrats expect to gain a substantial underclass that will vote the straight Democratic ticket in every election come hell or high water; the Republicans expect to get huge campaign contributions from businesses who rely on cheap illegal labor to expand their profit margins. Everybody's happy!
4. From Wahrheit:
To the first part the answer is: hubris. It is impossible that the Congresspersons of both parties were unaware of the deeply-held objections to parts of the bill by a large majority of their constituents; but having worked for politicians for several years in my former life I know the feeling of superiority they get when they believe they know best, when they conclude that they average voter just doesn't understand the complexities, the nuances, the Big Picture.In other words, they only act this way when they think they're smarter than we are.
Politically, Republicans seem to harbor some fantasy about winning over the millions of new voters who will be created some years down the road by the bill. Democrats, with a lot more reason, seem to think the same. Demographically, millions of Mexican-Americans could replace the millions of potential Democrats who were killed by abortion in the last 35 years.
The only other explanation I can come up with is that the One-World-Illuminati-Trilaterlist-Bilderberger-CFR-Grand Conspiracy really does run the government, both parties and everything else. But if that were true, you'd've thunk they could have got the thing done a few weeks ago.
What I think actually happened is that the Solons got two earsfull when they were home for the holidays and some of the Republicans actually woke up the the mistake they were making. The Democrats woke up to the fact they were going to have to put a lot of lipstick on the pig to try and sell a New, Improved version. Thankfully, the interested portion of the public is now on full alert and are unlikely to be seduced by an oinker, even one wearing the best cosmetics money can buy.
5. From Aaron Brenzel:
It should surprise no one that vast majority of the Democrat caucus has converged behind the immigration bill. For one, they are in the majority, and they fear the label of incompetence and intransigence that the GOP majority earned in the final year or so of its majority, and it is believed that immigration is one of the issues that the public is demanding action for. Furthermore, the immigration bill is a logical extension of the Democrats' political strategy of the past 60 or 70 years, which is to win elections by cobbling together various minority groups into a coalition. Hispanics are the most obvious new candidate for this coalition, and I believe Democrats were stung in 2004 when Hispanics went from voting roughly 70-30 Democratic to voting only 55-45 for Kerry. They worked hard to paint Republicans as insensitive to minority needs and sometimes even as outright racists, and yet somehow the reviled Bush was able to more or less split the nation's fastest growing minority down the middle.The 2004 results surely explain the support of the Bush family (both George W. and Jeb) as well as RNC chairman and Florida Senator Mel Martinez. It is also no coincidence that they, along with Senators McCain and Kyl, two of the bill's most prominent GOP supporters, either represent or represented at some point in their careers border states, where the problem of immigration is most visible. This may seem odd to many on the right, who generally assume that opposition to illegal immigration must be strongest in those states where it is most obvious, and that therefore McCain's and Martinez's constituents would be more in favor of enforcement-only than the country at large.
This is not, however, generally true. In border states like Arizona, where I have lived for about 14 years and where I am still a legal resident despite going to school in Chicago for the past 2 years, opinions of Mexican immigrants actually tend to be more favorable than the country's opinion at large, regardless of their legal or illegal status. Certainly, most Arizonans also favor tighter control of the borders, but most also want immigration reform to go further than that. For instance, in 2004, the first year in which I could vote, Arizona had a referendum on the ballot called Proposition 200, which denied "public benefits" to those who could not produce proof of citizenship (the definition of "public benefits" was later narrowed by our Attorney General to mean only state discretionary programs), as well as requiring identification to vote. These sorts of policies have long been on the enforcement-only agenda, and might have been expected to pass in Arizona handily - after all, liberal California had enacted much the same policy in the form of Proposition 187 in 1994, though it was later struck down by courts. Proposition 200, however, only passed 56-44. Even my dad, who in many ways is much more conservative than I am, voted against it. Both business and labor groups were united in opposition, a dynamic which may explain a lot of the narrower than expected majority, but I also believe that the positive feelings many in Arizona have for Mexican immigrants also played a role. Had the proposition not included voter identification, I believe the majority would have been smaller still, and perhaps may have become a minority.
At the same time, Arizona voters have also voted overwhelmingly to make English the official language of the state (2006, with 74%) and to force public schools to abandon bilingual education and teach English through immersion programs (2000, with 63%), so it is not fair to say that Arizonans have jumped on the open borders bandwagon. Yet, we are also a state that has re-elected overwhelmingly a Democratic governor who is committed to supporting comprehensive immigration reform. The political picture is never as simple as it seems.
As for the rest of the Republican caucus in the Senate that supports the current immigration bill, they are made up of the usual suspects like Hagel, Specter, Snowe, and Collins, and their support probably needs little explanation. Suffice to say that I would argue that those Democrats and Republicans who are supporting the immigration bill are doing so because they truly believe it is in their political interests.
The floor is open.
Comments
Francis - these responses are good. The key point is that the politicians are looking out for THEIR best interest, not necessarily our national best interest.
I have spent a great deal of time in Texas for months at a time so I am very familiar with parts of that great state. The prevailing attitude there by the Texans I have met is that they’ll take “their” Mexicans anytime over other ethnic miniorities. So, politicians are just being politicians putting our money on the table and placing their bets.
Posted by Beach Girl on 06/19/2007 at 12:50 AMPer Aaron, “..opinions of Mexican immigrants actually tend to be more favorable..”
In the POS bill known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we are not, for the most part, discussing immigrants.
What we are dealing with here are foreign nationals mainly from Mexico and other Latin American countries, with a smattering from where-all-else, in this country illegally.
I don’t know if you were referring to illegal aliens or not, but if you were please keep the terminology straight.
We need a wall on the border, manned. We need to enforce the current laws against hiring illegals, cut all the entitlements, and fix the anchor-baby legislation (I’m not buying the ‘it’s a Constitutional Amendment; that was intended to make former slaves and their children citizens).
They will self-deport, once they see we are serious, if we EVER GET SERIOUS, and I will be glad to see them go.
Want to see what a former aid to Vicente Fox has to say about what our representatives, both R & D, are up to? A little population shift, actually, to hispanics. More inclined to support the padrone, donchaknow.
Read. http://www.cis.org:80/articles/2006/back706.html
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 03:30 AMCindi - I meant both legal and illegal immigrants. Even if Arizonans are uncomfortable that illegal immigrants have broken the law, many still hold high opinions of their personal characters. Polls over and over show us agreeing that illegal immigrants are hardworking and religious. My point is that the attitude expressed by President Bush, that illegal immigrants are just hardworking folks trying to make it for their families, often decried by enforcement-only activists as being out of touch, is actually much more prevalent than some seem to believe. At least that is true in border states. I think this explains why conservatives like Kyl, McCain, and many in the Arizona House delegation (even Jeff Flake, if I recall correctly) would get behind this bill.
Still, I don’t deny we all have some discomfort about illegal immigration, whatever we may think of the immigrants themselves. Immigration referenda that have passed during the last 6 to 7 years in Arizona seem to show that our biggest discomfort is the fact that around half to three quarters of them speak virtually no English. Last year, when I came home for Christmas break I took an overnight stocking job at a local Target to make some extra spending money, and many of my co-workers were fairly obviously illegal immigrants. They worked hard and long hours, longer than I did, but it was incredibly frustrating sending requests to the backroom for this or that product to shelve and not having the people back there understand the request. That’s why even though I tentatively support the immigration bill, I would like to see it more explicitly emphasize the learning of English.
As for your point about self-deportation, I think the irony is that if our borders were less secure or there was some kind of guest-worker program, a lot of these immigrants would leave. Not permanently mind you, but they certainly wouldn’t remain more or less permanent residents here. I think the reason many don’t return home is that they’re afraid they won’t be able to get back, or they can’t afford to pay again the folks we refer to as coyotes here the exorbitant fees they charge to smuggle immigrants through the desert. That’s why I think a guest-worker program is such a good idea, because I think a situation that allows Mexican immigrants to come and go as they please would alleviate a lot of the problems they create when they attempt to live here permanently illegally, which range from their concentration into barrios to stress on the health care and educational systems.
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 12:18 PMSo, Aaron, it is in the interests of America to turn into a workplace for Mexicans? Why should they receive such a boon? Why not setup weekly flighst to and from Honduras, or Costa Rica, or Ethiopia?
The vast majority of those people do not speak English either. And I suspect they would proove hard working and religious as well.
And do you actually think that the Mexicans going through this revolving door border you propose would go home to Mexico for medicla care? Emergency rooms in the US are still obligated to care for them if they come in.
How does this “revolving door” policy deal with the American security nightmare that is Mexico, and our border with it? How does it keep the hundreds of thousands of Other Than Mexicans who cross our southern border out? 3 of those Fort Dix thugs illegally crossed down there? Will this policy include a secured border, with a fence or other barrier to travel?
And how do you propose to build a relvoving door “guest worker” policy for Mexicans who like American wages, but not America, that does not let in bad actors - drug smugglers, gun runners, terrorists? Because I doubt you will see your “hard working and religious” Mexicans waiting days or weeks for background checks every time they cross the border. Are you going to count on Mexican identification? With the corruption down there, I doubt OTMs will have much trouble getting Mexican ID. Have the US issue ID for “guest” workers? And how will you make forgery proof?
And what about behavior requirements for our “hard-working and religious” guests? What if they rape 6 year olds? Or strangle women for challenging their manhood? Or get drunk and ram cars full of people into the paths of oncmong trains? Will they be allowed to stay, or come back, after they serve their sentences?
My real problem with your view, Aaron, is it seems based on the supposition that the millions of people who violated out borders, carried out fraud, identity theft, and often worse, have a right to come to America to make a living. If they are actually our guests, they would come when we invited, behave themselves, and leave when the invitation was withdrawn. Have any of the criminal aliens coming into America now: Mexican, Guatemalan, Irish, Albanian, Jordanian; ever behaved that way in the past? And if not, why expect them to do so now?
And when in the past 20 years, has the United Staes government actually done what it said to secure out sovereign borders? In 2006, the Congress ordered, and provided funds for 700 miles of fence. 13 miles were built, because DHS spent the money on other things.
I do not trust criminals, of any national origin, to behave in a lawful or socially acceptable way. And I do not trust the Federal government to take any physical steps to secure out border, the noise coming from Kennedy, McCain, Bush, or any other policitian notwithstanding.
So, Aaron, can you offer any evidence that my opinions are founded on incorrect or incomplete information?
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 01:23 PMJust a couple of observations:
First of all we have defacto amnesty now don’t we? I mean ICE will rarely round up and deport huge numbers of illegals now. I know that, given the authority and 30 days I could grab over a thousand within a 50 mile radius of where I am sitting right now. It ain’t gonna happen with our current police authorities.
Most states deny their local police from enforcing immigration law? Why? A Federal bounty of say $150 to $200 paid directly to any local law enforcement agency that catches and deports an illegal would clean up this problem real quick. That would be better than a fence.
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 01:29 PMPuckman, I am all for interior enforcement, and punishment of business owners that make use of criminal alien labor. But once we catch and deport them, or get them to leave for lack of employment, how do we keep them out?
And what about the Other Than Mexicans coming accross the southern border whose plans are not for traditional employment? Employer sanctions do little to keep out drug smugglers, gun runners, and terrorists. An actual physical barrier would help deal with some of that problem.
Is a border wall or fence the end all solution? No. But I find it hard to believe that one can effectively secure our border without a substanial physical barrier, either of manpower or some other material. And concrete cannot be intimidated, bribed, or murdered.
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 03:51 PMFor more information on the Immigration Reform Act of 2007 please visit http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=13409 or call our hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART.
Posted by Project Vote Smart on 06/19/2007 at 06:24 PMEric,
Unfortunately, I think some of our disagreement stems from the way other supporters of comprehensive immigration reform have framed the debate, so I want to dispose of that first. You said -
“My real problem with your view, Aaron, is it seems based on the supposition that the millions of people who violated out borders, carried out fraud, identity theft, and often worse, have a right to come to America to make a living.”
No, I do not believe they have any inalienable “right” to be here. I don’t traffic in the rights rhetoric that much of the left seems to like, coming up with all sorts of rights for everything from health care to a good paying job to whatever. In my personal view, no one has a “right” to any of this. What I try to deal with is realities, especially economic realities, which are usually very difficult for even the most concerted collective action to overcome. You asked why my position doesn’t justify us sending planes out over the world to bring back “hard-working and religious” immigrants from far-flung nations to work in America. In principle, you are correct that my position could be used to justify such a policy. However, if we deal squarely with reality, then we realize that while lots of other nations may have potential willing immigrants that could do what Mexicans are doing now, it is in fact Mexicans who are coming because that is our geographic reality.
So, without declaring some sort of phantom right to live and work in the United States, I believe I can still stand by my position on purely pragmatic grounds. Pragmatically speaking, I think a) it would be a good idea to secure the borders physically, to prevent OTMs as you call them from crossing, and b) that a guest-worker would be good for the United States both economically and socially. Economically, because businesses will get the cheap labor they need (unlike the liberals that support my position, I am not afraid to say this), and socially, because it will, as I said, alleviate some of the problems that occur when illegal immigrants concentrate in large cities and then more or less become permanent residents because of the uncertainty of being able to return here if they attempt to go home.
You make points about the serious issues illegal immigrants have caused our educational and health systems. I think you have misidentified the problem. It is not so much that illegal immigrants by their nature wreak havoc on hospitals and schools; what they have done is expose weaknesses that have been forced upon those systems by years of leftist mismanagement from the government. For instance, your point about illegal immigrants and emergency rooms is only a problem because since the 1986 EMTALA bill, the government has imposed absurd requirements on emergency providers. Any immigration reform should be accompanied by a hard look at our overregulation of health care. Similarly, many of the problems inflicted by illegals on our schools can be explained by liberals’ insistence that they not have to learn English or American culture. That’s why I would like to see the bill more explicitly emphasize English education, and even make English our national language if that is what is needed.
All of these things - border security, guest workers, educational and health care reforms, and a plan to deal with the illegals already here - need to be part of a solution to this issue for it to be politically feasible, and for it to work in a practical sense. I think a strict focus on maintaining our “national sovereignty,” in the narrow sense reinforcing our border, is misguided. As I argued in my initial defense of the bill on this website, global capitalism has and will continue to undermine our traditional conceptions of what a nation is. That does not mean I necessarily buy into the “supranational argument” that Fran takes down in his post above this one. What I mean is that the forces of free trade and communications are making physical borders more and more meaningless, and we had best learn to adapt our ideas of national sovereignty to that new reality or we will end up embracing distructive policies like protectionism is a misguided attempt to protect a sovereignty that no longer exists.
That’s why I hold the position I do.
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 07:19 PMYou want to deal with reality, Aaron? Fine. When the “comprehensive” immigration bill in the Senate says that illegals no longer get health care, or can attend our schools, we can talk. Hell, when Congress passes a bill saying that emergency rooms do not have to help every person through the door, period, let me know. When the immigration bill says children here illgally do not get schooling, or orders states to stop subsidizing illegals going to college, your position may become more teneable. Do you think, with all the skepticism I have for the Government, that I think government run public schools are effective, efficient, or good for America? Allow me to remove all doubt: they are not, and neither are teachers’ unions. However, until such time as we can remove those disasters from the scene, we should not be allowing illegals to make use of them. And the immigration bill in the Senate does nothing to handle this matter.
As for free trade and communication making our “physical borders meaningless”, last time I checked, legal trade travelled by boat, truck, train and airplane, and that the US had border crossings and inspection points for such. How does a fence in desert designed to prevent human foot traffic affect communication or legal trade?
You speak of the social benefits for America of a guest worker program, Aaron. Will such a program make foreign nationals in the US less violent, or larcenous? Will it require their best behavior for them to stay? And why do we need another one, anyway? We have over a dozen guest worker programs right now. Why are none of them good enough for the criminal aliens coming here? Is it maybe that they would have to stay with one employer for the duration of their stay? That many of them do not possess any skills that the US actually needs?
How are these “guest” Mexicans going to be “cheap labor” for our businesses, anyway? Labor laws will still apply. They must still pay them the minimum wage, most states will require benefits if the workers work all those hours you spoke of earlier. How will they be cheaper, as legal workers, than Americans? And will the economic benefits equal out the costs we will accrue from their presence?
So you do not believe that aliens have a right to come here? Good. Now explain how, as legal workers receiving all the benefits that entails, they will be an economic boon for America, seeing as how most of them bring few skills outside of manual labor.
And why should I trust the Feds on the enforcement matter, when their track record is so poor? And if the border is not enforced, what is going to prevent millions of criminal aliens from coming, just as they did after 1986?
Posted by on 06/19/2007 at 07:54 PMAaron, you argue this:
“What I mean is that the forces of free trade and communications are making physical borders more and more meaningless, and we had best learn to adapt our ideas of national sovereignty to that new reality or we will end up embracing distructive policies like protectionism is a misguided attempt to protect a sovereignty that no longer exists.”
In support of this:
“ I think a strict focus on maintaining our “national sovereignty,” in the narrow sense reinforcing our border, is misguided. As I argued in my initial defense of the bill on this website, global capitalism has and will continue to undermine our traditional conceptions of what a nation is.”
In other words, despite your denial, you argue we need to accept ‘supranationality’ because it’s inevitable.
It’s a circular argument: there is nothing inevitable about it, providing we don’t allow it to be so.
I want the hard-working illegals working hard in their own NATIONS, for the good of their OWN NATIONS.
I’m not accepting what you state as inevitable merely because you believe it is so. People with your beliefs are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
Posted by on 06/20/2007 at 12:05 AMNot only that, Cindi, but like many of the people defending the Senate bill, Aaron seems unable to explain why we should believe the Federal Government when it says there will be immigration law enforcement this time.
Posted by on 06/20/2007 at 12:19 AMA couple other things. Distructive policies like protectionism. Destructive to whom? There is no global ‘free market’; many countries with whom we trade have trade tarriffs on imports. We should reciprocate.
I’m not concerned, although no doubt some believe I should be, with the starving Indian and our trade policies as regards such. It’s not in our self-interest to worry about that and that’s what I care about: what are WE doing here, and everywhere, to protect OUR OWN INTERESTS? If the secondary effect is a boon to another (which is what capitalism and trading freely produces anyway - mutual beneficence from self-interest), then good. If not, then too bad for them.
I also don’t see how the continual importation of cheap labor benefits anyone in the long-term; it’s a distortion of the ‘market’, and there are hidden costs. Minimum-wage mandates do the same thing in the opposite direction. We have both at work here, pulling in opposite directions.
Nation-states work because they are necessary because human nature demands a somewhat closed society of members to ensure trust. Human nature is not infinitely malleable, notwithstanding the efforts of the globalists; populations are not made of interchangeable parts which can be moved will-nilly as some grand economic plan would demand.
Posted by on 06/20/2007 at 01:07 AM
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