The American Spectator

thirteen28| 2.19.09 @ 12:38PM

Your last paragraph makes it sound like a lose-lose proposition. If that's the case, we should lose standing on our principles, instead of abandoning them wholesale as Nadler would have us do.

J David| 2.19.09 @ 12:57PM

Bush signed into law, that is LAW(means you have to do it, at least if you are not the privileged class of the oligarchic royalty above the LAW, in gov't)a border bill that was immediately suppressed, and allowed prosecuted, in a kangaroo court, those sworn uphold and enforce the LAWS of immigration in the US. Bush blatantly BROKE the law, allowed evidence suppressed, and went to court, with the Hague, against Texas on behalf of a double-murdering illegal alien rapist.

El Presidente Jorge Boosh committed treason, in knowingly breaking, or helping to break, laws he was sworn to uphold, and attacking those who were doing so. Bush, and every Republican senator and representative legislator who allowed it acted against the country. Now Mexico is about to collapse and we are naked, especially those who LIVE HERE on the border!!

I sit here reading a calm discussion of the advisability of Republicans, politically, agreeing to rewarding the breaking of US LAWS to be rewarded for invading the country, from a country that enforces its immigration laws, and I want to scream. What a bunch of lily-livered pragmatic, amoral weenies this country is filled with...THIS IS ROME. We are betrayed!

That EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN legislator has not brought suit against the Justice Dept for the spurning of the basis of LAW, the Constitution, and its protections of citizen's rights, tells me that the *end* is here. We are betrayed!

Norski| 2.19.09 @ 2:08PM

Per recently published Pew Center data approximately 81% of all Illegal Immigrants in the USA are identified as Hispanic. Assuming there are 12 million Illegal Immigrants as also estimated by the Pew Center, then by comparing those figures to Census figures one cannot help but conclude that 22% of people who identify themselves as Hispanic in America are Illegal Immigrants. Any survey that purports to show how people who call themselves Hispanic will vote must contend with this huge disconnect.

But rather than face these facts and deal with them, too many would rather cry racist and let slip the dogs of intolerance. Dr. King said the people of the USA will "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Apparently those who lament the lopsided manner in which those who call themselves Hispanic Voted in the last election seem to think that those voters did so because they reject the ideas of Dr. King. Instead they supposedly voted on the basis of skin color or national origin first and character second. When one stoops to blaming the politics of division for one’s defeat one need only look as far as the closest mirror to see the true enemy.

whiterb| 2.19.09 @ 2:25PM

Are people born here from families with deep roots, centuries old assimilated culturally and economically ? Ever hear of California ? Go for just one rule, you knock up the girl, you marry the girl, you be good daddy. No do this its adios, au revoir, les hey, Chai fui, davizdane, Hamba kahle, sayanora, ciao,auf wiedersehen. Not just daddy goes, but mommy and the bundle of joy as well. Enforce this and everything else will be ok.

C Bowen| 2.19.09 @ 4:38PM

It's slight of hand to tie the discussion of conservatives to the 'Republicans'.

It's quite simple really, if Gore had won in 2000, launched a war based on lies the Clinton--Gore--and Kerry cooked up circa 1998 and tried an Amnesty, a remarkably Old Right (if in rhetoric only) Republican President would be sitting in office right now.

It is the height of stupidity to suggest the Republicans don't, if only for the sake of tactical politics, don't go hard Right on immigration (illegal, legal, and the absurd refugee program) in districts where it makes sense.

While, agreed, the enforcement part in the age of the Patriot Act is a tough sell, cutting welfare bennies and highlighting the savings is an obvious program--so obvious it won't happen and the charade will continue.

William R| 2.19.09 @ 6:11PM

I don't hear anyone calling for massive roundups of illegals. There is no Eisenhower on the horizon willing to enact another Operation Wetback. But we should enforce the law. Workplace enforcement and illegals will beging to self deport. They already are. Conservatives should go Populist on the issue. Talk about massive immigration holding wages for working class people. The Elites in both parties against mainstreet. It's a winning issue.

Paul E. More| 2.19.09 @ 6:13PM

The Democrats have depended on immigration to increase their voter base for decades, even back to the 19th century. Mass immigration guarantees a virtual one party state with the Democrats in control as far into the future as one can imagine.

Enforcing the law to force illegal immigrants out, repealing “birthright citizenship” which was a fraud from the start, and reducing legal immigration so that it does not affect population growth would take away the immigration advantage the Democrats have and prevent the devolution of the USA into a third world one party virtual dictatorship.

Phil Jones| 2.19.09 @ 6:19PM

Of course restricting immigration is a winning issue, especially if sold as a way to protect jobs and increase wages. We are currently importing more workers than we were creating jobs even before the downturn became obvious.

Ask why we need 1.5 million new imported workers this year alone when we are losing millions of jobs. The only explanations would be to reduce wages and or to force American citizens out of more jobs.

The left wants more and more immigrants for political and cultural reasons. The business lobby wants cheaper and cheaper wages, but that road leads to the collapse of the country and the economy.

If conservatives don’t favor protecting American workers and their standard of living, then what are they in favor of protecting?

Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 6:37PM

America? you mean Amerimexico?
Jose has his fingers firmly on our short hairs.

Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 6:37PM

America? you mean Amerimexico?
Jose has his fingers firmly on our short hairs.

Alan Brooks| 2.19.09 @ 6:40PM

oops, bad server.

but you DO get the point now. we don't own our nation anymore. and Jose threw the last election.

BJC| 2.19.09 @ 7:20PM

Count me (regarding this issue) in the camp not of Ramesh Ponnuru but of Victor Davis Hanson. I've been following the referenced discussion over at NRO, and I grew very outraged at the latest salvo of vicious slander Richard Nadler lodged in his defense of illegal immigration. I've lived all my life on the West Coast, a lot of it in California, although I defer to Hanson for his family having longer, deeper roots in California experience. Lest you forget, Hanson wrote the book "Mexifornia," to detail the deleterious effects of illegal immigration on the state.

I was nearly ready to whip out my leather glove, to smack Nadler in the face for impugning my honor, challenge him code duello, invite his second.... But I'll reply here instead.

Like Hanson -- well, like me or like anybody who's lived awhile in California -- once you've become immersed in it, you develop not just an appreciation but a real fondness for the Californio culture that birthed the Golden State into the Union. It's a melding of the Western pioneer/commercial spirit, seasoned with cowboy/vaquero confidence, and tempered with the civilizational/cultural/moral influences from the Catholic mission system. (Pick up a Louis L'Amour novel set in Los Angeles or New Mexico to catch the flavor.) I speak passable Spanish and have no grudge against any individual based on personal characteristics. Character is another matter.

Jim, you really hit the nail on the head with this observation: "Almost nobody of consequence advocates mass deportation. ...But immigration enforcement isn't painless: to the employers, friends, and families of any illegal immigrant denied entry or asked to leave the United States, the act of enforcing the law is going to look a lot like a mass deportation." The worst slander Nadler lobbed up was conflating any (even meager) supports and efforts toward enforcement of immigration laws on the books as equivalent to "mass deportation." If any serious accountability for violating an existing immigration law is unacceptable, then what could be a fair description for Nadler's position except that he advocates a "culture of lawlessness"?

As with any tough issue, the way to dissect this one is to begin from first principles then analyze forward from there. I suppose what may be at root of the viciousness of the conservative-on-conservative conflict is disagreement over what is that primary bedrock principle. I'd tag it as a shared culture of liberty among free individuals. Brave venturers survived and prospered in a wild land through self-reliance, free exchange and acknowledged dependence on God for protection. I believe that then naturally produced the principled ideas expressed explicitly in the Declaration of Independence, and subsequently put in practice in the Constitution and its corollary laws. So, of course, I believe the solution is active Americanism efforts for new legal immigrants -- so that new arrivals learn by living that cultural experience of liberty and connect that to the laws guiding our practice of self-government together.

The second most vile slur from Nadler (and sadly enough from Ponnuru too if in softer form) was that because Hispanic media outlets overdramatize incidents of enforcement of immigration laws -- for divisive political purposes, mind you -- those lies have to treated as truthful and accepted at face value. No, the way to deal with a large lie of that magnitude of calumny is not to make your own political gain off it -- as Nadler seems happy, even eager, to do -- but to challenge it for the outright falsehood it is.

Troublesome too to me is how corporate welfarism has combined with welfare statism and academic multiculturalism to oppose rectifying endeavors that would restore our ability as free individuals to govern ourselves, without oppressive, intrusive state interference disguised as benevolent "management" of ethnic misunderstandings and grievances. Big government has too big a stake in keeping us all at each other's throats, in order to justify keeping big government "big enough" to keep peace amongst us.

Phil Jones| 2.19.09 @ 8:25PM

I find it strange that people, whether Nadler or others, would find it troubling that restricting immigration by enforcing the law against illegals and or reducing legal immigration would be objectionable from the stand point of the self interest of those in favor or virtually open borders.

If the self interest of illegal immigrants and legal immigrants and the lobbies in favor of them are to be considered paramount, then it follows that the self interest of the majority of the existing citizens of the US will not be considered.

Someone must explain why the self interest of ethnic lobbies like La Raza, the cheap labor lobby and the political multicultural left that is hostile to the historic culture and citizen population and wants to replace it with immigrants trumps the self interest of the pre-existing citizens of the USA.

What we have is a conflict of interests, and Nadler has sided with the interests that for the most part are on the radical left either explicitly or implicitly. Those of us who don’t want to be transformed into something very different and even alien from that which we have been have every right, indeed, a duty, to oppose continued mass immigration that threatens that which we wish to conserve.

Rich Rostrom| 2.19.09 @ 9:28PM

The present Republican immigration position combines the worst aspects of several different positions. Republicans submit to being labeled racist by the Left for proposing to enforce immigration law, but instead allow the cheap-labor business lobby to neuter enforcement, thus ensuring the continued expansion of the Democrat voter base (not to mention the continued disruption of our society and economy). As to "mass deportation", either we stand up for the law or give up.

Phil Jones| 2.20.09 @ 6:14AM

In a 1992 book, the late Senator Eugene McCarthy described the United States as a “Colony of the World.” Nothing has changed regarding that description.

For those who claim that enforcing the law would require mass deportations of illegals, they should consider that the history of the 20th century consisted in significant part of third world countries “mass deporting” Europeans who had run the colonial affairs of those same countries. The difference now is that most third world immigrants into the first world are forming a new underclass rather than a technical elite whose presence is required for the continued functioning of first world countries. However, one can see how the attempts to use H1-b visa workers to displace Americans may be based on more than love of cheap labor but ultimately a desire to reduce first world nations to the status of colonies dependent on outsiders to function.

Norski| 2.20.09 @ 10:49AM

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics there are 17.2 million Americans looking for work right now. These Americans are either Citizens or Legal Residents. According to the Pew Center there are 7.2 million non-Americans who are in the United States illegally holding jobs. Yet those who support Illegal Immigration continue to push some form of Amnesty and continue to do everything to destroy the enforcement of our laws.

It should come as no surprise that per a recent study 60% of the lobbying for "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" is paid by big business. And it should come as no surprise that those who stand to gain the most in political power ruthlessly push their agenda. Somebody stands in their way? Label them a racist. Or call them a cultural bigot. Or charge them with being a nativist. That way the debate switches away from the real issues of employment, standard of living, and over-population to the nebulous realm of morality where even the most craven of motives can be shrouded in a cloak of respectability.

The road to the truth is the toughest road to follow. In a world of sound bites the truth often takes too much time and thus is left by the wayside. But as Lincoln said “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

What are the people who support illegal immigration really defending? In fact, illegal immigration kills the development that would solve the illegal immigration problem. One need only look back to the decades of the 1950’s through the 1970’s to see that this is true. Back then, when the USA had more jobs than there were workers, excess jobs were exported to other countries. It resulted in the economic development of Korea, Taiwan, and the other economic powers of the Pacific called the “Four Tigers”. And it supported the redevelopment of Western Europe after the destruction of World War II. At no point did their development make the USA economically weak overall. While USA economic expansion made those countries strong.

To see how this could have worked since the last Amnesty Bill let’s use Mexico as an example. Per the Pew Hispanic Center six million Mexicans have illegally immigrated to the USA, over three million of which are working. Per the CIA World Fact Book the 2006 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of Mexico was $741.5 billion and the Labor Force numbered 38 million. That means that the average GDP per working person was $19,513. If the USA had exported three million jobs to Mexico and paid the average GDP rate (a mere $9.38/hr.) and the six million illegal immigrants would have stayed home, we would have pumped $59 billion in wages into the Mexican economy. In the USA economy approximately 57% of our GDP is made up of wages. Wages generate business, which in turn generates more wages, which in turn generate more business. Assuming this same job multiplier for Mexico means that an additional $59 billion in wages added to the Mexican economy would increase the GDP of Mexico by more that $103 billion or 14%. And the GDP of the USA would increase as well with repatriated profits.

But instead, greedy people wanted a continued source of cheap labor and like true misers they wanted to keep economic development in their own backyard while denying it to other countries. And other greedy people see illegal immigration as a ticket to power. This dooms countries south of our border to being nothing more than a continued source of cheap labor for the USA. Every time a person chooses to support Illegal Immigration they support this system of exploitation. This leaves but two choices. Either admit that Illegal Immigrants displaced US workers, or admit that those "jobs Americans won't do" exist in the USA purely for the greedy exploitation of people purposefully kept in poverty. And it is difficult to deny that the flood of unskilled illegal immigrant labor into this country is responsible for eroding real wages in many labor markets. This shrinks overall disposable income. And disposable income is the engine that drives our economy. And if overall disposable income is shrinking, what does that say about the cost of this type of greed and our current recession?

So why are we talking about racism, cultural bigotry, and nativism? That seems a bit too much like Nero for my tastes.

Goudy1| 2.22.09 @ 11:54PM

Obviously deportation is required. Otherwise, the issue is a joke and legal citizens are laughed at by the ethnocentrics and big business.

No welfare, more ICE raids, vigourous enforcement of hiring only those legally here are the ways to pursue deportation. Stiff fines for illegally coming here (the govt. can raise new sources of revenue by charging as much as the Coyotes) and deportation through enforcement of all existing laws will help in this process.