Common Sense on Immigration
Lawrence Henry hits the bulls-eye on this whole immigration issue at TAS:
THIS CANNOT HOLD. Not because there's such a split between the two houses of Congress over an immigration bill, not because there's an even sharper split between elite opinion and the people's opinion, but because a country, no more than an individual or a business, cannot hold two opposing moral ideas at the same time. A business cannot run for profit and yet wink at employees stealing 10 percent off the bottom line. Mob-run businesses collapse from the skim. A country may get away with a little bit of illegal foreign labor. But not a lot. (Cf. France.) A country may escape a reckoning for some moral hypocrisy. But not a lot of it.
Start with arresting, punishing, and deporting illegals. I myself wrote some months ago that it would be impossible to deport 11 million people, that America would be scored for "cultural genocide" and worse by the BBC and NPR and the rest of that pack. And maybe we would, but I got brought up short and sharp by a clear-thinking John Derbyshire. Derb pointed out correctly that you don't have to deport 11 million illegals. Just catch, punish, and deport regularly, on a rational basis, and many of the rest will go of their own accord. We don't catch all burglars. It doesn't stop us enforcing the laws against house breaking.
Be sure to read this article in it`s entirety.
THIS CANNOT HOLD. Not because there's such a split between the two houses of Congress over an immigration bill, not because there's an even sharper split between elite opinion and the people's opinion, but because a country, no more than an individual or a business, cannot hold two opposing moral ideas at the same time. A business cannot run for profit and yet wink at employees stealing 10 percent off the bottom line. Mob-run businesses collapse from the skim. A country may get away with a little bit of illegal foreign labor. But not a lot. (Cf. France.) A country may escape a reckoning for some moral hypocrisy. But not a lot of it.
Start with arresting, punishing, and deporting illegals. I myself wrote some months ago that it would be impossible to deport 11 million people, that America would be scored for "cultural genocide" and worse by the BBC and NPR and the rest of that pack. And maybe we would, but I got brought up short and sharp by a clear-thinking John Derbyshire. Derb pointed out correctly that you don't have to deport 11 million illegals. Just catch, punish, and deport regularly, on a rational basis, and many of the rest will go of their own accord. We don't catch all burglars. It doesn't stop us enforcing the laws against house breaking.
Be sure to read this article in it`s entirety.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:10 AM
7 Comments:
Thanks for highlighting this article. Lawrence Henry brings much to the discussion of immigration. His position is clear and straight forward and I appreciate that.
On a side-note, I was discussing this topic with a co-worker. I was shocked to hear him say that not only should the U.S. extend to them guest-worker visas, but because these illegal aliens are receiving substandard pay doing jobs Americans won't do, we really should supplement their pay with taxpayer money.
To be honest, I almost punched him in the head! I could not believe what I was hearing. He was actually advocating subsidizing illegal activity. He was telling me right to my face that he thought it a great idea to steal money from me and give it to someone who was working here illegally. What amazing ignorance!
I just ran across another article you may find interesting...
Hi Don!
Thanks for an excellent comment, and thanks for that link; it was a terrific article!
So what do we do about this? It is obvious that those in power are going against the will of the people. It is obvious that our country is doomed if this is allowed to continue. It also is plain that our elected officials do not support our laws and constitution and are thus guilty of treason.
Great question, Al! How DO you reverse such an enormous movement?
First, politicians must be made to fear the wrath of the public; a large part of the problem is that they fear losing Hispanic votes and business donations more than the outrage of the public. Any politician (from either party) who supports amnesty or failing to enforce the law must be punished. They must be targeted at the next election, must have their financing boycotted, what have you. It must be made clear that America welcomes those who come here legally and with the desire to live as Americans, but that we will not tolerate tresspassers who want to milk our system and eventually take our lands away from us.
Second, there are things the individual citizens can do; the Minutemen proved that! We need to hold our own rallies, need to guard the borders, need to set up watch groups to monitor businesses which use illegal labor. This can be done.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and our population has been shrinking due to abortion, affluenza, and (liberal) altruism. Abortion has greatly reduced our population growth. Affluence has made us not want the trouble of large families so we can live the ``good life``. Liberal altruism has pushed the idea that to ``save the planet`` we must stop having children. Latin Americans have no such compulsions, and so they are breeding much faster than us gringos. Abortion must be restricted, affluenza must be immunized with faith, and altruism must be tempered with duty to our nation. We need more children.
(Al, a little theologicl side note; remember when Israel was about to enter the Promised Land, God warned them that the land would ``vomit them out`` as it was about to disgorge the Canaanites if they followed the same willful, agnositic, immoral path? It looks like this is happening in Europe, and America may be following.)
Third, we need to have a foreign policy which deals harshly with Mexico as long as the Mexican government encourages this. We hold a number of things over their heads-including massive debt. Make it clear to Fox that we will not tolerate this policy any further, and that his government may fall if illegal immigration stops but it will certainly fall if it doesn`t. We can boycott Mexican goods purchased. We can boycott tourism. These things will hurt. We can go to Belize instead of Cancun.
I would like to point out that if the illegals are given legal status, the AFL-CIO could unionize them and add 10 million new members to their rolls. Anyone who thinks this is good for Republicans is daft. (And, the illegal problem will continue, since the union shops will soon price themselves out of the market leaving the situation as before.)
We`ve got to deal with this now, if we are to have a country which lasts into the 22nd century.
This is an eye-opener:
Those who support illegal immigration claim that those who skip across the boarder illegally “contribute to our economy”. Some go as far as say that they are the backbone of this country. This is in no way true. While they do indeed pay some taxes, the cost of having them here far outweighs any taxes collected.
Here’s the break down:
Illegal immigrants pay approximately 16 Billion dollars per year in taxes.
Sounds pretty good right?
This is how much they cost us:
They cost Arizona taxpayers alone over $1 billion annually in services for schools, medical care, welfare anchor babies, loss of tax base and prisons.
Illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars last year according to Harvard Professor George Borjas.
75 percent of drugs arrive from Mexico at a net cost of $120 billion hard currency that leaves our country for good. In addition, our tax dollars pay $80 billion for the War on Drugs each year.
$1.6 billion annually in prison costs to house, feed and clothe those filling 30 percent of our federal and state prisons “not to mention TV, movies, weight rooms and other entertainment” they enjoy while being incarcerated.
The average annual cost per child K-12 is $7,161.00 and exceeds $109 billion annually per cycle of anchor babies. That is your money given out to 300,000 moms and their kids annually and all they did was get pregnant and birth that child on U.S. soil.
Average bilingual education is $1,200.00 per illegal alien student. Get this! We educate 1.1 million illegal alien children each year. Georgia taxpayers paid a whopping $242 million for educating illegal alien kids in 2003.
The average head of household illegal alien costs you $2,700.00 in welfare money over and above any taxes he or she pays in their meager paying jobs. With 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in the USA, that figures exceeds $20 billion of your tax dollars.
$56 billion in pure cash illegal migrants sent to their home countries last year and every year? That’s after their kids enjoyed free education, free lunches and free medical care paid for by you. Mexico receives $15 billion annually from its worker drones. No wonder Vicente Fox sent us 9.2 million illegal alien Mexicans so far.
The lifetime net fiscal drain “taxes paid minus services used” for an adult immigrant is $55,200.00. $27 billion to provide forms, ballots, interpreters and brochures for languages other than English
It costs $200 million to provide for emergency health care for illegal aliens in the Border States annually. California with over three million illegals paid $79 million, BUT four of their major LA hospitals bankrupted and shut their doors in 2004. Texas with 1.5 million illegal aliens paid $74 million in hospital care.
Georgia ran a $63 million deficit for 64,000 unpaid doctor visits. The total of illegal aliens flooding into the United States this year will total three million “enough to fill 22,000 737 Boeing airliners, or 60 flights every day for a year”.
YOU DO THE MATH.
The above is so important to share that I've posted the entire thing. Pardon my rudeness.
Thanks, AOW! I`m going to move these comments to a post so everyone sees them; they`ve all been terrific!
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