Barbarian Invasion
Rush Limbaugh stirred up a hornets nest the other day with his discussion about illegal immigration. His points touched on the lack of enculturation by the illegals, but he failed to follow up on that adequately. I would like to make a few points about this issue.
First, let`s get the economic arguments out of the way. I am rather dubious about the argument that floods of immigration are necessarily good for the economy. Heavy, sustained immigration was critical to the growth and expansion of the United States while we had a frontier, when we had negative unemployment and vast tracks of agricultural land needing to be developed. Likewise, industrialization required uneducated people ready to work hard and long, and immigrants provided the necessary manpower. I doubt that a great influx of immigrants into a post-industrial economy has serious benefit; few will be well educated or trained for the jobs an information-age economy supports, many of the less skilled jobs are being outsourced to India ,and the Ebeneazor Scrooge wages paid for grunt labor will require the immigrants to utilize a considerable amount of government largess, which will require higher taxes and will strain the social services. Rush touched on this in his discussion. Further, they take jobs away from the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The working poor become the unemployed because they are being replaced by illegals at lower wages (who also take advantage of the social safety net). Bear in mind, I`m not talking about legal immigrants; the illegals are here to make money to send to their families in Mexico and elsewhere. They are taking money OUT of the economy. Also, I would like to point out that in a nation which is settled and has essentially full employment, illegals are artificially depressing the market when they break the law and enter the workforce for less than the market will bear.
Having said all that, I really don`t care about the economics of this at all! My problem is one of culture. This is not akin to Italians or Russian Jews coming into the United States in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Those groups came in legally, in relatively small numbers, and came to become Americans. What is occuring along the Mexican border is not immigration-it`s an INVASION! Estimates for the numbers of illegals entering this country are as high as a million people per year! Think about that; the population of the United States is, what? 290 million. That means that in 29 years one tenth of the population of the United States will be illegal immigrants! How can our nation sustain this? We supposedly already have ten million illegals living here. All of these immigrants will have children (Mexicans tend to have large families) and so their numbers will actually rise much faster. If left unchecked, the exponential growth of these illegals will have a profound impact on the demographics, politics, and culture of the United States.
Already we see the signs of the latinization of America; signs in Spanish, product labels in both English and Spanish, a Spanish voice mail menu. This will become more and more prominent in years to come. If the current invasion rate continues, English will appear with continually diminishing frequency (particularly in the southwest and California)until it is mostly gone. I don`t want that! I believe in America, I believe we have the right to maintain our distinct culture and our island of English in a Latin sea. (Consider, there are only three nations on the Continental North America which speak English, and just one in South America! We have a few English speaking islands in the Carribean as well as the Falklands-that`s it! The rest speak either Spanish, Portuguese, French, or, in the case of Surinam, Dutch.) An invasion of culturally indigestible peoples will destroy us.
It has happened many times, to many peoples throughout history. The Roman Empire fell not because of military invasions but because they lost the will to control their borders and allowed far too many non-Roman peoples to immigrate illegally. These Germanic peoples never adopted Roman culture or Roman ways, and they eventually tore the Empire to shreds. In modern times, Lebanon allowed Palestinians to enter as an act of mercy, and the Palestinians began to breed prodigiously. Lebanon went from being a predominantly Christian nation to predominantly Palestinian and Muslim-and Lebanon was destroyed by the civil war which followed. It is entirely possible for a people to lose their Nation by being too soft on illegal immigration. Are we destined to follow?
I have one final thought; a religious and moral musing. Upon their entry to the Promised Land, God warned the ancient Israelites that he was going to remove the indiginous peoples from the land of Canaan because of their immorality. He warned the Children of Israel that He would do likewise to them if they turned away from Him and behaved like the Canaanites. He did exactly as He warned; not once but twice! God blesses a righteous, obedient Nation, and destroys an evil one. Considering the apalling morality we have witnessed in recent years, and the profane disobedient spirit of America (Terri Schiavo and the Deathheads), perhaps God is going to remove US from this land, and give it to another he deems more worthy.
First, let`s get the economic arguments out of the way. I am rather dubious about the argument that floods of immigration are necessarily good for the economy. Heavy, sustained immigration was critical to the growth and expansion of the United States while we had a frontier, when we had negative unemployment and vast tracks of agricultural land needing to be developed. Likewise, industrialization required uneducated people ready to work hard and long, and immigrants provided the necessary manpower. I doubt that a great influx of immigrants into a post-industrial economy has serious benefit; few will be well educated or trained for the jobs an information-age economy supports, many of the less skilled jobs are being outsourced to India ,and the Ebeneazor Scrooge wages paid for grunt labor will require the immigrants to utilize a considerable amount of government largess, which will require higher taxes and will strain the social services. Rush touched on this in his discussion. Further, they take jobs away from the bottom rung of the economic ladder. The working poor become the unemployed because they are being replaced by illegals at lower wages (who also take advantage of the social safety net). Bear in mind, I`m not talking about legal immigrants; the illegals are here to make money to send to their families in Mexico and elsewhere. They are taking money OUT of the economy. Also, I would like to point out that in a nation which is settled and has essentially full employment, illegals are artificially depressing the market when they break the law and enter the workforce for less than the market will bear.
Having said all that, I really don`t care about the economics of this at all! My problem is one of culture. This is not akin to Italians or Russian Jews coming into the United States in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Those groups came in legally, in relatively small numbers, and came to become Americans. What is occuring along the Mexican border is not immigration-it`s an INVASION! Estimates for the numbers of illegals entering this country are as high as a million people per year! Think about that; the population of the United States is, what? 290 million. That means that in 29 years one tenth of the population of the United States will be illegal immigrants! How can our nation sustain this? We supposedly already have ten million illegals living here. All of these immigrants will have children (Mexicans tend to have large families) and so their numbers will actually rise much faster. If left unchecked, the exponential growth of these illegals will have a profound impact on the demographics, politics, and culture of the United States.
Already we see the signs of the latinization of America; signs in Spanish, product labels in both English and Spanish, a Spanish voice mail menu. This will become more and more prominent in years to come. If the current invasion rate continues, English will appear with continually diminishing frequency (particularly in the southwest and California)until it is mostly gone. I don`t want that! I believe in America, I believe we have the right to maintain our distinct culture and our island of English in a Latin sea. (Consider, there are only three nations on the Continental North America which speak English, and just one in South America! We have a few English speaking islands in the Carribean as well as the Falklands-that`s it! The rest speak either Spanish, Portuguese, French, or, in the case of Surinam, Dutch.) An invasion of culturally indigestible peoples will destroy us.
It has happened many times, to many peoples throughout history. The Roman Empire fell not because of military invasions but because they lost the will to control their borders and allowed far too many non-Roman peoples to immigrate illegally. These Germanic peoples never adopted Roman culture or Roman ways, and they eventually tore the Empire to shreds. In modern times, Lebanon allowed Palestinians to enter as an act of mercy, and the Palestinians began to breed prodigiously. Lebanon went from being a predominantly Christian nation to predominantly Palestinian and Muslim-and Lebanon was destroyed by the civil war which followed. It is entirely possible for a people to lose their Nation by being too soft on illegal immigration. Are we destined to follow?
I have one final thought; a religious and moral musing. Upon their entry to the Promised Land, God warned the ancient Israelites that he was going to remove the indiginous peoples from the land of Canaan because of their immorality. He warned the Children of Israel that He would do likewise to them if they turned away from Him and behaved like the Canaanites. He did exactly as He warned; not once but twice! God blesses a righteous, obedient Nation, and destroys an evil one. Considering the apalling morality we have witnessed in recent years, and the profane disobedient spirit of America (Terri Schiavo and the Deathheads), perhaps God is going to remove US from this land, and give it to another he deems more worthy.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 3:43 PM
3 Comments:
This is such an important issue that the media all but ignores except to condemn the civilian patriots standing watch on the border. When was the last time Nightline, 60 Minutes, Dateline or any CNN or FOX host featured this topic and what it portends for the future. Remember, you and I are racists simply for having these concerns. I would feel better about it if these people were coming here to become Americans - but they are not. Again, the media inside and outside this country have so poisoned the rest of humanity about the real America that the original calling to the "huddled masses" is unrecognizable.
We can help put our finger in the dike by opposing bi-lingualism and laws that give favorably treatment to lawbreakers such as drivers licenses and in-state tuition (in other words a lawbreaking illegal can go to college in Minnesota cheaper than an American living in Wisconsin). We also need to let the President know we expect far better border security. An beyond that we can't support that a$$hole president of Mexico.
Tim, I have to commend you for another timely and important article on a matter of vital importance -- you should work this up into a piece for the American Thinker. I completely agree with everything you've said, and I'm an immigrant myself, as you well know.
Bush appears to be completely out to lunch on this subject and I think he is going to lose a lot of conservative support as a result. I think he and Karl Rove plan to win the Hispanic vote with these shenanigans, but legal Hispanic immigrants resent these illegals as much, or even more than we do. In addition we have to admit that Bush is probably doing this to help all those corporate and agribusiness interests that rely on this low wage labor - let's face it - it's virtually slave labor, which as you correctly point out, takes entry level and low way jobs away from legals and artificially suppresses wages.
There is virtually a border war going on down there in the Southwest, have you heard that El Presidente Fox has detailed 1000 Mexican troops to the Arizona border to escort illegals, including drug runners, to safe areas to cross to avoid the Minutemen?
He has also threatened to sue any Minuteman who comes into contact wit h illegals and haul America into the International Court in the Hague because of Arizone\a prop. 22. And Bush does nothing and puts in no calls to his pal Vicente Fox.
You called it right, Aussiegirl; the illegals are being paid virtually slave wages. What the Federal Government is doing is subsidizing the agricultural sector via an unfunded mandate. State and local agencies are forced to supply services to the illegals while the corporate interests profit all because the I.N.S. refuses to do it`s job. Why have a central government at all if they fail in their most basic of duties-controlling the borders?
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