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Even after its divisive support for John McCain's "comprehensive immigration reform" helped sink Republicans in 2006 by estranging working-class voters from the GOP, the Wall Street Journal keeps plugging away, arguing the economic case for amnesty and open borders.
How many times have I had this discussion with my libertarian friends? Human beings are not commodities, and therefore free-trade rhetoric cannot applied to immigrants as if they were analogous to imported goods.
My 2004 KIA Optima does not burden public schools, does not impose health-care costs on taxpayers, does not require the accommodation of Korean bilingualism.
I grow weary of hearing immigration discussed as if it were a purely economic issue, where the costs and benefits can be calculated by experts applying algorithms to statistics, without regard for the political and cultural realities involved.
In 1965, the year Ted Kennedy pushed the Immigration and Nationality Act into law, we were a nation of 195 million. Today, our population exceeds 300 million, of whom the 2000 Census counted 31 million immigrants; responsible estimates of the number of illegal immigrants range as high as 12 million.
Beginning with the 1965 law, there has been no significant change to U.S. immigration law in the past 44 years that was not approved by Ted Kennedy.
In other words, we have a liberal immigration policy which, as is true of all other liberal policies, has produced disastrous consequences. And, as is so often the case, liberals now insist that the solution to the problems resulting from their own policies is . . . wait for it . . . more liberalism.
For at least 15 years, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have played a perfidious and dishonest role in the debate over this issue, obscuring rather than enlightening, like a squid inking the waters, and heaping opprobrium on any conservative who dares speak blunt truth.
Calling them out won't stop them from continuing their harmful folly. They have shown themselves to be beyond shame. But it is alway important to call things by their right names, and this principle extends to accurately describing as worthless two-faced sons of bitches the editors of the Wall Street Journal.
(Via Memeorandum.)
Shoe Leather Reporter States Obvious Truth
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Captain Kidd: Well Captain Barsiliano are you satisfied? Captain
Barsiliano: I still put no trust in him. Spitfire Stevens: Well I do and
enough to give hi...
1 hour ago
Inter alia, the Kennedy bill limits immigration from Mexico to 12,000/month, a patently ludicrous lowball.
ReplyDeletePJBuchanan suggested that the US should favor immigration from Western countries (which would include Mexico) because IT IS THE CULTURE, STUPID!--or something like that.
The best argument for increasing immigration (from culturally compatible countries) is the Social Security/Medicare deficit. That deficit cannot be paid off if population-increase depends on the increasingly-less-fertile anglos....
This is a helluvamess, and yup, it's the Kennedys.
I am all for sealing the border. But the border has been porous for decades, with millions of latino working families living in, and contributing to, our communities -- most with US citizen children. Saying eased immigration policy "helped sink Republicans in 2006 by estranging working-class voters from the GOP" is a red herring. The ad hoc ICE enforcement that grabs up working fathers and deports them is being blamed on the GOP and the 2008 latino voting trends prove it out. See http://www.cfr.org/publication/14244/
ReplyDelete.
Latinos that are here legally will not forget how the GOP treated their loved ones. ICE enforcement is particularly egregious because the most stable and productive latino homes are the ones most likely to be outed, while the illegals engaged in crime remain drifters that don't get caught.
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Latinos are the fastest growing voter segment - and they moved the GOP's way under Dubya. It is beyond me why the GOP thinks it makes sense to indiscriminately deport illegals instead of getting them identified under a guest-worker program so that: i)they can continue to support their US citizen children, ii) we can improve homeland security, and iii) the GOP can make more gains in latino voting.
The fundamental problem is that in the view of the WSJ the United States is a corporation, not a nation. And a corporation can fire its employees and hire new while crowing about the economic benefits. The message to Americans from both wings of the political machine that rules us has been drearily the same. "You're fired!" The right has fired us because we are too fond of a middle class lifestyle and the left has fired us because they hate us. Both already have in mind a people/workforce to replace us with.
ReplyDeleteMcCain was the biggest supporter of Open Borders and the biggest Hispanic Pander bear in the Senate. Result: He got 35 percent of the Hispanic vote.
ReplyDeleteAnd Gee, I wonder why the liberal Democrats love open borders too ? Hmmm....
Some seldom heard reasons that wetbacks are harmful:
ReplyDelete1) They hurt Mexico by removing the most capable, informed and ambitious leaving behind the dreges.
2) They distort US politics by adding undeserved House seats and electoral votes to border states
3) They inhibit innovation by distorting labor costs downward
Dean Z. Douthat
Mark3030393425789
ReplyDeleteYou are a bit off.
Legal immigrants are pissed off that illegal immigrants are getting a cut in line. Which is why there was such an outcry to put a stop to amnesty.
as for indiscriminately deporting illegals.. If it's done correctly, there will be no discrimination about it.
Enforce current laws on the books about employers hiring illegals. That will stop the draw here.
Build the fence. If border enforcement is good enough on Mexico's southern border, it should be good enough for the northern as well.
Then start to deport the nasty illegals. Do you want to keep members of MS-13 here or there? The drunken drivers who had no license and ran over someone. The illegal immigrants who show blatant disregard for the laws of our country. Even more so than the normal illegal immigrant.
The loss they might get will be a wash compared to the votes they will receive from legal citizens who vote for showing a backbone.