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Mickey Kaus Is Making Sense

By W. James Antle, III on 12.18.10 @ 6:33AM

On the DREAM Act, scheduled to be voted on by the Senate today. Kaus writes:

I'm anti-DREAM. The key point to make, at this moment, is that nobody who is reasonable in this debate wants to deport the appealing would-be beneficiaries of the proposed law: those brought across the border when they were young, who've known no other country—the high-school valedictorians, the law student who calls himself "a typical American kid who grew up in Brooklyn and roots for the Yankees," and "dreams of becoming a J.A.G. officer to defend the country I love." The DREAM "kids" like these that you read about are clearly carefully selected for their appeal, and they lay it on a bit thick, but I assume their stories are real and there are tens of thousands of other stories sufficiently like theirs.

Many DREAM opponents also want take care of these "kids" (or former kids) by making them legal. Mark Krikorian, the anti-amnesty advocate whom I cite most, wants to take care of them. Even Roy Beck of Numbers USA seems to want to take care of them. But there is a way to do it that minimizes the unwanted long-term side effects of encouraging future illegal immigration from parents now living in other countries (who'd understandably like their kids to be made Americans, too), which would set the stage for another amnesty, which in turn would build up a constituency for the next amnesty in a cycle that doesn't seem to have any end point
And there is a way to do it that maximizes those long-term effects, by maximizing the number of immigrants who would be covered by DREAM, by offering no effective way to combat fraudulent applications, by creating rules so complex they'll collapse of the own weight, by passing the bill in a wave of ethnic passion and recklessly including no additional enforcement measures. That's the bill they'll vote on Saturday.

There are two major problems with legislation ranging from the DREAM Act to "comprehensive" immigration reform. One is that the conditions attached to the amnesty are, on careful examination, either unenforceable or close to meaningless. The second is that they don't deliver on their core promise of doing anything to deter another inflow of illegal immigration that will have to be dealt with another amnesty at a later date. Unfortunately, both these problems tend to exist by design.

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Ken (Old Texican)| 12.18.10 @ 9:00AM

Jim,
Sometimes I am thankful that I am old. I don't think I shall quite live long enough to see our country smothered under foreign cultures.

I hope and pray that this act does not pass. It is the ultimate stupidity, almost as sad as suicide.
...Suicide on a national scale.
Many of our illegal immigrants come from basket-case countries...like bees to flowers. I don't blame them.
Many come from essentially dictatorial tyrannies. I don't blame them.

I have a novel solution. Give them all rifles and some ammo, and train them some...and help them go home and throw the bums off the top of the heap.
The successive rounds of amnesty you outlined is essentially national/cultural suicide.

Curly Smith| 12.18.10 @ 11:30AM

I agree with Ken's solution. The trouble with the DREAM Act, and all of the other amnesty nonsense, is that it utterly fails to address the real problem - the cesspools of tyranny and incompetence that are most national governments.

Mexico has been ruled by what amounts to an oligarchy for over 100 years. It's incompetent, corrupt and completely self-serving (and it's indistinguishable from our Congress). The difference in economic outcomes of Mexico, the former Soviet Union and the United States, all nations with vast natural resources, lies solely with the compounding effect of freedom. Free people left to do as they will are always more successful than those ruled by tyrants, or even a benevolent dictator. And prosperity breeds more prosperity because a hand-to-mouth hard-scrabble existence leaves no time, energy or resources for innovation and creativity, which are both necessary components for expanding prosperity.

The DREAM Act makes Mexico's mistakes our problem without forcing Mexico to fundamentally reform. It makes the claim that it's our fault that Mexico choose tyranny while our ancestors choose freedom. Mexico is where it is because of prior poor decisions. We should not be rewarding those poor decisions, particularly when the reward punishes our good decisions.

The same argument, of course, holds true for bailing out California or any other liberal bastion of corruption and tyranny. It also explains why Congress refuses to cut income taxes and allow a free people to flourish. Free people have little tolerance for petty tyrants and bureau-weenies.